Yankee Conference (1982)

If you like some excitement and drama in your college football (and if you don't, you're probably watching the wrong sport), then 1982 was quite the vintage season in New England. 

A sophomore named Flutie was leading Boston College to its first bowl game in 40 years. And on a smaller level, the Yankee Conference had its wildest season ever, as four of the league's six teams shared the conference crown. With two weeks left in the season, all six teams still had a crack at the title, with Boston University holding the inside track thanks to tiebreakers. When the dust settled, BU, Maine, UMass and UConn all had a share of the YC's Bean Pot trophy with 3-2 records, but the Terriers came away with the league's automatic NCAA I-AA (FCS) tournament berth despite a 5-6 overall record. 

The Ivy League also had its share of drama, as it was playing its first year as a I-AA league after being dumped from I-A/FBS for money reasons (shock!), and three teams (Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn) split the league title. 

Today we're going to take a look at the teams and uniforms of the '82 YC season, and hopefully get to the Ivies down the road.

In control of its own destiny, Boston University lost to UConn 13-10 in its league finale to set up the four-way tie. Thanks to a complicated series of tiebreakers that probably required a call to nearby MIT, BU secured the automatic bid to the 12-team tournament, where it lost 21-7 to Colgate. (Oddly enough, BU's season finale a week earlier was against Colgate, a 22-21 loss in front of a rousing throng of 1,887 at Nickerson Field.) Future Colts/Bills wide receiver Bill Brooks was named YC rookie of the year, and teammates Paul Lewis (RB), Mike Mastrogiacomo (G), Paul Farren (C) and Mike Pierro (DT) were named all-conference. 

The uniforms are pretty standard, with two stripes apiece on the sleeves and socks. The  helmet logo — "Boston" with the tail underneath — is a little awkward; Maine and Dartmouth adopted the tail-under-the-school name helmet later in the decade. (The constant in all this? Buddy Teevens, the BU offensive coordinator and later head man at Maine and Dartmouth.)

I wrote about Maine's trials and tribulations in this post from 2020. Long story short: If not for the YC's overtime rule, the Black Bears finish 7-2-2 and likely get into the NCAA tourney. As it was, Maine was the only YC co-champ with a winning record, and the Bears' four losses were by a combined 21 points. The title was Maine's first in eight years and last for another five.

The uniforms, as you can see, are essentially Penn State's with blue helmets. Among Maine's unis all-time, these rank near the bottom for me. Among the notables were QB Rich LaBonte (YC offensive player of the year), RB Lorenzo Bouier (still second on the program's all-time rushing list), coach Ron Rogerson (YC coach of the year) and longtime radio analyst Bob Lucy, who has been calling Black Bears games with Rich Kimball since I was student there, and I haven't been a student there in quite a while.

UConn helped create this delightful mess by defeating Boston University and Rhode Island in its last two league games to force the four-way tie. The Huskies' big star was linebacker John Dorsey, who was named YC defensive player of the year. After a six-season NFL career in Green Bay, Dorsey went on to a longtime career as an NFL executive and GM; these days he's a senior personnel executive for the Detroit Lions.

This was during the period when UConn abandoned navy blue for a lighter shade, almost like the NHL's Quebec Nordiques. But after years of almost annual changes, the Huskies stuck with this basic look from 1977-88 before returning to navy blue, still using the same template. I wrote a little about this uniform here.

Another year, another Yankee Conference title for UMass, its 14th since 1960. Like UConn and BU, the Minutemen finished at 5-6 overall. Late-season wins over UConn and New Hampshire secured UMass a share of the crown. RB Garry Pearson was a Division I-AA All-American; he is fourth on the school's all-time rushing list.

This was near the end of the period when the Minutemen used gold as a trim color, which, as I've probably said a billion times before, gave them more than a passing resemblance to their rivals on Chestnut Hill. Speaking of which, '82 was the last year of the annual UMass-BC game, which had been played since 1965; Flutie and the Eagles downed Pearson and the Minutemen 34-21. I wrote a blurb on UMass' unis here. 

Although Rhode Island ended up out of the title picture, the Rams still finished 7-4, highlighted by the six-OT win over Maine (see the Maine link above), which probably garnered more ink and camera time than any league title ever could. As noted in that other post, this was during a rare hot period for the usually dismal program, which reached three I-AA tournaments between 1981-85. Tackle Rich Pelzer was a I-AA All-American, and wideout Tom (You Mangy) Mut was a first-team all-YC selection, as were defensive linemen Dennis Talbot and Tony DeLuca and cornerback Jim Roberson.

Like UMass, Rhody was into the gold during this time period; it was used as a secondary color during the entire coaching reign of Bob Griffin (1976-92), but never before or sense. I'd love to see this style return as a throwback uni. 

You know it's a crazy season when perpetual title contender New Hampshire finishes dead last; amazingly, this is the last time to date UNH has finished last. (I don't count the aborted spring 2021 season, when the Wildcats played only one game.) TE Paul Gorham, T Ken Kaplan and S Arnold Garron were all-YC selections. Arnold Garron and his brother, RB Andre Garron, are UNH Hall of Famers; their dad, Larry Garron, was a fullback for the AFL Boston Patriots from 1960-68.

The uniforms are the classic UNH style worn from 1976-99; I've written about the unis and teams here, here and here and probably a few other places. 😎