Yale Bulldogs (1954)

The latest pull out of the bag of random brings the 1954 Yale Bulldogs, a team that started strong and finished, er, not strong.

The Team: The Bulldogs roared out to a 5-0-1 start before dropping their last three games to Army, Princeton and Harvard to finish 5-3-1. The Boston Globe account of the Army game noted that the sellout crowd of 73,600 was the "largest to congest this big crater in 24 seasons." Ah, old-time sportswriting. Army's stellar season (No. 7 in both the media and coaches' polls) and proximity to New Haven (about 90 miles) likely explained the big crowd.

You know it's the Ivy League when the starting lineup 
shows up in semi-formal wear. Boston Globe photo.

The Players: Yale was not a team of superstars, but center James Doughan made the Associated Press All-East second team, while teammates Paul Lopata, Philip Tarasovic, Thorne Shugart and Dennis McGill were honorable mentions.

The Coach: Jordan Olivar guided the Bulldogs from 1952-62, going 111-63-8 and winning two Ivy League titles. He resigned after the '62 season when, according a Hartford Courant account, the school wanted him to live in New Have year-round and "give up a thriving insurance business in California." Before Yale, he also coached at Villanova and Loyola Marymount.

I've probably run this photo before, and it's actually from 1955,
but this picture of Yale players on the bench is too good to pass up.

The Uniforms: As noted in this post, Olivar brought his flashy California style to the Ivies, and that included gold pants, which the Doggies wore from 1954-58. As you can see in the photo above, the white helmets, blue shirts, gray trim and gold pants make for a mish-mash design, like when you play Madden and go all random with the uniform selection.

This was the last year Yale did not wear white jerseys, as the Ivy League insisted all teams wear contrasting jerseys by the time formal league play began in 1956. Plastic helmet shells were in use, but facemasks were still a year or two away.

The Fallout: Yale went 7-2 the next year and 8-1 in 1956 to win the first formal Ivy League title. Olivar's best year came in 1960, when the Bulldogs went 9-0 and finished No. 14 in AP poll and No. 19 in the coaches' poll.