Yankee Conference 1947

Above are the uniforms for the Yankee Conference in 1947, the first season for the league that has since evolved into today’s Colonial Athletic Association (well, for football, at least).

The YC was established in 1946 when New England’s six land grant schools (i.e. cow colleges, and I can say that since I went to a Moo U😎🐮)  decided to form an athletic conference, effective with the ’47 season. In an era long before yearly conference jumping, the YC kept the same lineup until Boston University joined in 1972, followed my many other schools in the '80s and '90s. The league sponsored championships in other sports until 1978 and disbanded for football following 1996, its 50th season. The Atlantic 10 conference took up the banner from ’97-2006, and the CAA took over in ’07.  

The YC winner was presented with a trophy called the Bean Pot (not to be confused with college hockey's Beanpot), which was like the Stanley Cup in that the winner(s) got the keep it for a year, then passed it on to the next champ. (I seem to recall reading once that in the ‘70s, UMass coach Dick McPherson personally handed the Bean Pot over to UNH counterpart Bill Bowes after the Wildcats defeated the defending champion Minutemen for the title on the last day of the season at Cowell Stadium.) For years, I wondered whatever happened to the Bean Pot, but according to this thread, it resides in the trophy case of the College of William and Mary, which won the last YC title in ’96.

The Bean Pot, in all its glory.

Some other notes about the YC’s first season …

* As you can see, no one played a full 5-game league schedule. Some teams played as few as six games overall, and everyone had their own regional rivalries that took priority over the YC (ex. Maine had Colby-Bates-Bowdoin; Vermont had Norwich-Middlebury, etc.). Rhode Island was the first team to play a full YC slate (1955), and the first season when all six teams played a full schedule was 1966! 

New Hampshire went 8-1 overall, 4-0 in league play to capture the first YC title and play Toledo in the Glass Bowl. I discussed that team in this post. Three players (quarterback Bruce Mather, back Carmen Ragonese, and tackle Clayton Lane) were picked in the 1948 NFL Draft, and Ragonese also was selected in the ’48 AAFC Draft.

Maine went 6-1, with the one loss coming to UNH (of course!) and was the only other YC school with a winning record in league play. The Black Bears did sweep hated Colby, Bates and Bowdoin to capture the Barrows Trophy, emblematic of state supremacy (speaking of trophies and where-are-they-now …). Their coach was a gentleman named George Allen (no, not that George Allen), who took over in 1941, left to serve in World War II, and returned from ’46-48. His record at Maine was 15-11-2. This was the first of two seasons Maine wore tan pants in between stints with a monochrome look (examples here and here).

UConn went 4-4 under coach J. Orlean Christian, who went 66-51-4 with the Huskies from 1934-49. He also coached the baseball team (he reached the College World Series in 1957 and ’59), was athletic director from 1950-66 and was the YC’s first commissioner from 1966-71. The Huskies’ baseball field is named in his honor. I always thought the Huskies' unis from this era really stood out without being over-the-top (if you want over-the-top, check out UMass), and the sleeve stripes on the wrist are something different.

Rhode Island State (the “State” was dropped a few years later), as you can see  in the graphic above, didn’t have the most consistent helmet design, and the shirts and pants didn’t really match, either. Even the team photo resembles something more akin to a pickup outfit than a college team. The coach was Bill Beck (12-22-2 in 1941 and ’46-49), who later mentored the baseball team in the ‘50s.

Massachusetts, which later dominated the YC in the 1960s and ‘70s, tiptoed in the new league in ’47, playing only two league games and wining neither (the schedule emphasized regional rivals such as WPI, Springfield and Tufts). I have the team listed as “Redmen” above, but I believe the name wasn’t made official until after the season, in a January 1948 student vote. Massachusetts State College became the University of Massachusetts in ’47, and “Statesmen” was dumped for “Redmen” shortly thereafter. Of course, they have been known as the “Minutemen” since 1972. The coach, Thomas Eck (oddly enough, “Eck” was the nickname of Maine’s George Allen) was 17-23-4 over two stints from 1945-51. He coached at Maine’s Thornton Academy (I have family in Saco, so go Trojans!) in the ‘50s and won a pair of state high school titles. As for the uniforms, that all-gold ensemble as as garish as it gets, and as I've said a million times before about UMass in gold, it looks too much like Boston College. Thankfully, the gold shirts were replaced by white versions in '48.

Vermont also waded gently into YC action, and didn’t play anywhere near a full slate until the 60s. Coach John C. “Fuzzy” Evans ran the show from 1940-51 (and was an assistant for many years afterward) and also was a legendary basketball coach from 1940-65 (where his players included future coaches Rollie Massimino and Herb Brown, Larry’s brother). The Catamounts went 2-1 in state series games, defeating Norwich and St. Michael’s (which dropped the program in the ‘50s) and losing to Middlebury. Note the friction stripes on the back of the pants — those are at least a decade behind the times! (Trivia: UVM's QB was Gordon "Mickey" Cochran, patriarch of the Cochran ski dynasty and a pretty fair skier himself. He also played baseball and somehow found time to receive a degree in engineering.)