Friday, March 29, 2024

Boston State Warriors (1974-75)


No, this is not a mashup of two famous NBA teams, but a football team from a school that no longer exists. 

Boston State College operated under several names before settling on its final moniker in 1960. The school had a football team from about 1970 until the school closed in 1982 and merged into UMass Boston, which, alas, does not have football. After a few rough years on the gridiron, the Warriors were generally pretty decent, with their best season coming in 1975, when they shared the New England Football Conference championship with Nichols.

In '81, with the school's fate all but sealed, the lame-duck Warriors lost their first eight games before defeating Bridgewater State 12-2 in the program's final game. According to accounts from The Boston Globe and the school yearbook, only 22 players dressed for the finale — BSC started the season with 47 — and eight played both ways.


A couple shots of the 1974 Boston State Warriors,
taken from the BSC yearbook. The green and silver
with a hint of gold go well together.

Judging by photos from the yearbooks, the jerseys were pretty consistent throughout the team's existence: Plain green or white jerseys with a small Native American logo on one sleeve and no sleeve or shoulder numbers. The helmets and pants, on the other hand, seemed to change frequently.  The 1974 uniform shown above has a unique (well, unique for such a plain uniform), silver-green-and-yellow combo. Under first-year coach Mac Singleton in '75, the Warriors switched to green helmets and yellow pants, with a helmet logo that bears more than a passing resemblance to these guys. The socks came in all sorts of stripe combos; the one shown above seems to be the most frequently used.

BSC in action against (I think) Maine Maritime in 1975.
Someone's missing a logo on his helmet, tsk-tsk.

A close-up of the '75 BSC logo, not to mention
a helmet that's taken an absolute shellacking.

As for notable players, defensive back Earl Garrett was the next-to-last selection in the 1974 NFL Draft (Minnesota Vikings) and also was picked by the Detroit Wheels (no, Mitch Ryder was not the coach) in the World Football League draft that same year. For a Division III player, that's still a whale of an accomplishment. Quarterback John Rogan set New England career records in 1980 with 372 completions, 782 attempts and 5,133 yards and was named New England D-III player of the year by the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference and United Press International.

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