Harvard Crimson (1919-25)

Recently, I’ve been digging through Tip Top 25, which can be quite the rabbit hole if you have an interest in the history of college football, particularly from the first half of the 20th century. The site attempts to “fix” the season-ending AP polls going back to the first one in 1936, and also creates hypothetical polls from 1901-35. The latter is where the real interest lies for me, since it’s the era when teams from the East (and, thus, teams in this project) where actually relevant in college football before the Ivy League isolated itself from the rest of the world and was content to pad out its non-league schedules with Yankee Conference and Patriot League teams. 

The next several posts will take a look at some of these mythical national title contenders from that era (I wonder what a mythical national title trophy looks like?), beginning with the 1919 Harvard squad, since this is the 100th anniversary of the Crimson’s first, last and only Rose Bowl appearance. (Harvard even wore a commiserative Rose Bowl patch for a game earlier this season.) Much of the information here comes from Tip Top 25's articles on the 1919 season.

The 1919 Harvard Crimson. I had to dig through the 1920 Oregona
yearbook to find this one.

The Crimson went 9-0-1 in ’19 to claim a share of the national title; Harvard claims 13, most of them from college football Mesozoic era (this was No. 12; the Cantabs added No. 13 in ’20). Much of Harvard’s schedule was frankly weak, padded with wins over the likes of Bates, Colby, Springfield and Tufts (geez, guys, why don’t you just join NESCAC?). Other victims included Boston College — one of only four times the Crimson and Eagles have ever played in football, all coinciding with world wars —  Virginia and Yale, plus a tie with Princeton. 

Harvard accepted a berth in what was then called the Tournament of Roses game (the Rose Bowl stadium wasn’t built for a new more years) in order to generate interest in a fundraising campaign. The Crimson defeated the Oregon Webfoots (hey, that’s what Wikipedia says that was their handle then) 7-6 on a 15-yard TD run by substitute Freddy Church. Oregon missed several field goal attempts, and a Harvard clock-killing drive in the fourth quarter sealed the win. According to the Tip Top article, Harvard’s appearance helped propel the game from a post-season novelty into a major sporting event, one that continues to rivet the nation to this day. Who knew?

The star of the team was 150-pound halfback Eddie Casey, a College Football Hall of Famer, who was the MVP of the Rose Bowl and later served as Harvard's head coach.

With an undefeated season and a Rose Bowl win seems like a national championship from the surface, apparently that was not the case for Harvard. Eastern writers in 1919 thought Penn State was a better team (the Nittany Lions defeated top-10 teams Dartmouth, Penn and Pitt, while Harvard’s only ranked victims were top-20 Princeton and Oregon) and Tip Top rates the Crimson at a still-respectable No. 5, had there been an AP poll then. Tip Top has the '20 Crimson at No. 2 behind Rose Bowl-winning Cal.

Harvard’s uniforms, as you can see, were pretty basic: Crimson jersey, socks and helmet (I think; I wouldn’t be shocked if brown headgear was worn instead), and some jerseys had a big felt square on the front (the better to keep those footballs in place when carrying the ball!). This was Harvard’s basic look until 1926, when friction stripes replaced the squares  the front. I wouldn’t be shocked if other designs were out there awaiting discovery; I’m just dipping my toes into research for 1920s uniforms. 

Next time, we’ll look a team of iron men who played 60 minutes a game. No specialist wimps need apply!

Yeah, well, you still missed a bunch of field goal attempts.
Geez, even then the Ducks were an arrogant bunch.