Wartime Football (Part III)

It's time for Part III of our look at how select college football programs handled World War II. Parts I-II can be found here.

This time, we're going to check out four programs that operated throughout the war, but on a decidedly limited basis. They may have played, but they certainly didn't have visions of bowl games or national titles dancing in their heads. And let's start with a team had gone bowling in recent seasons.

Despite a run of three bowl appearances in four years (a pretty amazing feat back when there were five bowl games, tops), Boston College opted to dial down the program during the war. Holy Cross and Clemson were replaced with the likes of Camp Hingham, Rome Air Force Base ... and Harvard, which also went informal. (True fact: BC and Harvard have played each other only four times in football, twice in WWI and twice in WWII. Hopefully they won't play again for a LONG time.) Quarterback and future Holy Cross coach Ed Doherty was the lone Eagle from the '42 team that lost to Alabama in the Orange Bowl.

Yup, BC once faced Harvard on the gridiron, and
this page from the Sub Turri yearbook has the info. 

BC's uniforms kept the pace from recent seasons, and for some reason in '45 the Eagles unearthed the maroon pants from the late '30s. 

Unlike its Ivy brethren, Harvard opted to dial it down during the war. Yale and Dartmouth were dumped for gentler foes such as Tufts and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in addition to BC. Weird to imagine D-III Tufts hosting FCS Harvard today, but it happened. With the war over in August 1945, still-informal Harvard decided to add full-speed ahead Yale to its schedule. Yale prevailed 28-0 on Dec. 1, one of the latest dates in The Game's history.

As you can see from these photos, Harvard's varsity rosters
were tiny during WWII. (The second photo appears to be just a starting lineup,
however, and not a full roster.)

Harvard's helmets were a little odd, as the back top half of the crimson helmets were painted white. The jersey numbers were identical to the ones used by the Boston Red Sox, as noted here.

Maine barely qualifies for this post by virtue of a 1943 game against a prep school — a 20-6 loss to Phillips Andover that served as the Black Bears' entire schedule. In '44 Maine played New Hampshire and Norwich (Vt.) twice, and in '45 it faced UMass and UConn twice and Rhode Island once; I believe it was the last season Maine and UNH didn't face off until the truncated Spring 2021 season. 

The season summaries in the UMaine Prism yearbooks note that many team members had not previously played football, and if you look at the photo below, you can tell. Because most of the players were too young to serve Uncle Sam, it looks more like a high school team than a college team.

The 1944 Black Bears, who appear to wearing practice uniforms.
What photos I've seen of them in action are in the all-blue versions.

Wisecracks aside, the fact that these schools were able to put a football team on the field amid depleted manpower was a victory in itself.

Princeton is an odd case. The Tigers went 1-6 in 1943 as a "full speed ahead" team and retreated to informal status in '44, defeating Muhlenberg before losing to Swarthmore and Atlantic City Naval Air Station. (The NAS team was known alternately as the Corsairs, Hellcats, Sailors and Tars. Tars?) But in '45, Princeton reverted to a full-blown schedule and went 2-3-2, playing mostly against Ivy League foes.

I'm not 100% on the uniforms, but it appears the Tigers had orange numbers on the front and white numbers on the back. The traditional tiger stripes adorned the sleeves and socks.