Columbia Lions (1915)

Many of you probably know that Rutgers and Princeton played the first intercollegiate "football" game in 1869, although that game bore little semblance to the game of even 30 years alter. A year later, Columbia University became the third school to take up the sport. The Lions (actually, they didn't use that name until 1910) were rather undistinguished until the turn of the century, when they went 49-22-4 from 1899-1905. 

But just as Columbia seemed to be getting it's act together, the school dropped football, citing the increase of violence that had plagued the sport in recent years, what with kicking, biting, flying tackles and the occasional death thrown in for good measure. Although a series of sweeping rules changes (highlighted by the addition of the forward pass) were passed in 1906, Columbia refused to reinstate the sport. (According to Mark F. Bernstein's Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession, the source for much of the info here, MIT, Northwestern, Trinity, Duke, California and Stanford also punted the sport after the '05 season.)

The Columbia student paper didn't hide its feelings on football.

After years of protest from students, Columbia allowed interclass games in 1914 and announced the return of the varsity game in February 1915. There were some conditions, however, including the prohibition of facing most of the big Ivy schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Cornell), games has to be restricted to campus and freshmen were forbidden from playing (a practice that eventually became universal). 

The 1915 Columbia Lions. Welcome back.

This illustration from the 1917 Columbian yearbook (which covered the 
1915-16 academic year) heralds the return of football to campus.

Columbia went 5-0 in its first season back, facing relative lightweights such as Stevens Tech, UConn and Wesleyan. The Lions played all their games on South Field on campus. And when I say "on campus," I mean "on campus." It looks like Columbia shoehorned a football field onto a campus mall or quad. Temporary stands were squeezed behind the sidelines. The Lions played in this makeshift facility until Baker Field opened in 1923.

The top photo is from 1915; the second photo is from 1919.
But they illustrate how Columbia's games were played on the heart of the campus.
Wonder if students walked across the field on their way to the library
 (the domed building in the background)? 

Columbia continued to play NESCAC-level teams the next several years, even after the ban against bigger Ivy schools was lifted. (In fact, Columbia didn't play Harvard again until 1948, Yale until 1934 and Princeton until 1932.)

Columbia's uniforms are pretty typical from the era; the trademark "Columbia blue" jerseys didn't arrive until about the late 1920s. The primitive numbers were sewn onto white squares that were stitched onto the jerseys.

The 1925 Project (Part 5)

Part 5 of our look at the New England(-ish) teams and uniforms of a century ago continues with eight schools that today are part of NESCAC (New England Small College Athletic Conference), basically the Ivy League's Division III Mini-Me. (And if you don't believe it, just remember NESCAC decided to allow its football teams to compete in the NCAA postseason not long after the Ivies made the same decision.)

I'm not going to go in to mountains of detail on each team here, but I will leave a few notes:

• Amherst was coached by DeOrmond "Tuss" McLaughry, who left after the season for Brown. His time with the Bears is discussed here. He also coached at Dartmouth. Also, I don't believe the Mammoths/Lord Jeffs had an official nickname at this point, so that space in the graphic is left blank.
• Notice how in the cases of Amherst, Middlebury and Tufts, some helmets had stripes and others did not. I *think* this was done to differentiate players based on position (remember, this was before teams wore uniform numbers on the front), but I could be wrong.
• The Trinity uniform could be a mash-up (see note on the graphic).
• Middlebury might have had the toughest schedule of anyone here. The Panthers opened the season against Harvard and Yale and lost by a combined score of 121-0. Middlebury also lost 33-0 to NYU, a well-regarded program.

And at last, the uniforms:

New Haven Chargers (1972, 2024)

New Haven? New Haven, you ask? Yes, New England's other UNH is moving on up to Division I from D-II this fall as a member of the Northeast Conference, bringing the number of active D-I football schools in New England to 17. Not bad for a region not known for college football in the grand scheme of things. (Six non-New England schools are also covered by this little ol' site.)

Looking over the Chargers' season-by-season history, I was struck by their long list of notable coaches:

• Larry McElreavy (1983-85, 12-18 record) later coached Columbia during their dark ages (going 2-28). When I lived in the Upper Valley, he coached Newport (N.H.). High to a state title or two.
• Chris Palmer (1986-87, 16-4) coached at Boston University for in 1988-89 and later was the first coach of Cleveland Browns 2.0 (1999-2000). He was New Haven's athletic director from 2018-19.
• Mark Whipple (1988-93, 48-17) coached four years at Brown, then led UMass to a I-AA (FCS) national title in 1998.
• Tony Sparano (1994-98, 41-14-1) went on to coach the Miami Dolphins to an AFC East title in 2008 during the thick of the New England Patriots' heyday. (Yeah, it was the season when Brady was hurt, but the Pats still went 11-5 with Matt Cassel at QB.)
• Darren Rizzi (1999-2001, 15-14) coached a year at Rhode Island (2008, 3-9) and was the interim head coach of the New Orleans Saints in 2024.

No matter their record, there's something to be said about a D-II/III program with three NFL head coaches among their ranks.

Another quirk about New Haven: The school dropped the program after the 2003 season and revived it in 2009. UAB, Villanova and Maine Maritime are other schools that eliminated the sport only to being it back in short order.

After fielding a club team for several years, the Chargers joined the varsity ranks in 1973 and promptly dropped their first 18 games before they finally tasted victory on Sept. 20, 1975 with a 13-7 win over Curry. The 1973 uniforms, shown above, are pretty basic with the exception of the triangles on the upper sleeves. The Pittsburgh Steelers wore something similar in the preseason during the 1960s.

A couple shots from New Haven's first varsity season in 1973.
The "field" looks more like a vacant lot on the outskirts of town.
Gotta start somewhere.

New Haven's 2024 uniforms rotated blue, yellow and white jerseys and pants. Not many teams in this site use yellow as a primary color, so hopefully the Chargers will break out the Screaming Yellow Zonkers look a few times this fall. 

The 1925 Project (Part 4)

A while back, we looked at four Ivy League teams as part of our tribute to New England college football of a century ago, including co-national champion Dartmouth. (Yes, you read that right.) Today, the rest of the not-yet Ancient Eight takes the snap. You can find more teams here and here.

Harvard

High Point: For a team with a winning record, I can't find any real high points. Three of the Crimson's four wins were over non-conference foes RPI, Middlebury and William & Mary. The fourth was a 3-0 win over Brown on Nov. 14, and even then Harvard was thoroughly outplayed if this article is to be believed. The big "victory" might be a scoreless tie with heavily-favored Yale in which the final whistle blew just as the Bulldogs lined up on Harvard's 3-yard line. (Remember, there were no digital scoreboards keeping time then, and only the officials knew the "real" time, kinda like soccer officials today.)

Low Point: Harvard was blown out by powerful Princeton and Dartmouth by a combined scored of 68-9.

Harvard opened the 1925 season against RPI;
today, the schools play in the same hockey conference.
Check out the RPI player with the letter "I" on the back!

Uniforms: Like many other teams of the era, Harvard had moleskin patches stitched on some jerseys in order to help the ballcarriers better protect the ball.

The Harvard brain trust had plenty to smile about
after a strong end to the season.

Other Trivia: Head coach Bob Fisher was 43-14-5 over seven seasons at Harvard, highlighted by a win in the 1920 Rose Bowl. As a player, he was a two-time All-American for the Crimson.

Pennsylvania 

High Points: There were 2: 

1) On Oct. 17, Penn beat Yale 16-13 for the Quakers' first-ever victory over the Bulldogs after 12 losses. Fullback Al Kruez led a bruising ground attack, stopped Yale's running game on defense, and his field goal proved to be the difference on the scoreboard.

Penn makes history against Yale.

2) The Quakers capped a successful season with a 7-0 Thanksgiving Day win over archival Cornell at Franklin Field. Penn's touchdown came on a Charlie Rogers 42-yard scoop-and-score in the final quarter. The Philadelphia Inquirer, using enough purple prose to drown a printing press, referred to Rogers as "The Camden Comet" (he was from Camden, New Jersey) and "the doughy scion of Jersey." The article later said Rogers "galloped like some elusive spectre, some ghost of the gridiron." Which leads us to ... 

Low Point: It might be unfair to call Penn's 24-2 Halloween loss to Illinois a "low point," since the main attraction wasn't so much the host Quakers as it was the Philly debut Red Grange, the Illini's "Galloping Ghost." Number 77 did not disappoint, running for 320 yards on 32 carries, including a 55-yard TD run on his first carry.

Red Grange, far right, leaves Penn in the dust. Or mud.

Oddly enough, the game drew "only" 60,000 fans to Franklin Field, 11,000 less than the Turkey Day turnout for Cornell. And probably 600,000 fans went on to tell their friends they were there when Red ran up, down and around the Quakers.

Uniforms: Even then, the Quakers had a recognizable look. Penn without the alternating red-and-blue stripes on the sleeves is like Ben Franklin without his bifocals. It's just not right. Going back to the 19th century, probably the only notable changes the Quakers had made to this point were the addition of helmets and numbers on the back. Notice the patches of the jersey fronts to help the ballcarriers. (I wonder if those actually worked?)

Other Trivia: Joseph Wilson, the captain, went on to serve 45 years as a United States district judge in Pennsylvania. ... Head coach Lou Young was 49-15-2 over seven seasons. It's interesting the note how successful coaches such as Young and Harvard's Fisher walked away from the game despite terrific records. My guess is that even then, coaching was a stressful profession.

Princeton 

High Point: It's always good to beat those traditional rivals, right? Princeton topped Harvard and Yale by a combined score of 61-12. The 36-0 win over Harvard was Princeton's most dominant victory in the rivalry to date.

Low Point: A 9-0 loss to Colgate in driving rain on October 24 cost the Tigers an undefeated season. Eddie Tyron, who I wrote about in this post, scored the Raiders' lone touchdown and bottled the Tigers on their half of the field with his booming punts.

Princeton and Navy face off in 1925. As is often the case,
good luck figuring out which team is which.

Uniforms: Like Penn, Princeton's basic design dates back to the 19th century with those gorgeous tiger stripes. From what I've been able to gather, some jersey numbers were orange and some were white. But with those grainy 1920s photos, you can never quite tell.

Other Trivia: Center Ed McMillan was a consensus first-team All-American. Like many Ivy players, his post-playing career differed from his contemporaries, as he served as an examiner for the Pennsylvania Securities and Exchange Commission. ... Fullback Jacob Slagle was a non-consensus All-American at fullback. ... Coach Bill Roper remains the Tigers' all-time winningest coach; the William Winston Roper Trophy, the school's highest individual honor for a male athlete, is named in his honor.

Yale

High Point: I'm tempted to say a 35-7 win over Georgia on Oct. 10, but a) Georgia was 4-5 that year; b) Southern football was on the rise (see Alabama's co-championship that year), but it wasn't quite SOUTHERN FOOTBALL yet, with Sammy Baugh and Davey O'Brien and those guys. There was a 28-7 win over Army on Halloween, but the Cadets' 7-2 record was deceiving (among their victims: Detroit, Knox, Saint Louis, Davis & Elkins and Ursinus). I'll pencil in a 20-7 win over Brown over October 24, by default of nothing else. (Yale's other wins were over Middlebury and Maryland; the Terps were kinda in the same camp as Georgia.)

Good seats were still available at the Yale Bowl
for the Bulldogs' 35-7 win over those other Bulldogs from Georgia.

Low Point: If Harvard's scoreless tie with Yale was the high point of the Crimson's season, I'm guessing it was a low point of the Bulldogs' season. Another downer was the aforementioned  16-13 loss to Penn.

Uniforms: Basic stuff. I'm not sure if the helmets are blue as in the above graphic; I'm guessing that's lost to history.

Other Trivia: Guard Herbert Sturhahn was named to the first of two straight All-America teams. ... Tackle Johnny Joss, who was named to the New York Sun's All-America team, later coached college football in Mexico.

1925 Project (Part 3)

It's strange to think, but as I've mentioned here a hundred times before, the teams that now comprise the Ivy League was once among college football royalty, right up there with the Michigans and Notre Dames of the world. Part 3 of the 1925 Project (here are parts 1 and 2) looks at the four of the eight Ivies, which were actually independents until formal league play commenced in 1956.  

Brown

High Point: The Bears opened their brand-spanking new Brown Stadium with a 33-0 shellacking of Rhode Island State.

Low Point: The Bears were shut out three times, by Penn, Dartmouth and Harvard (keeping in mind that football games were lower-scoring in those days and shutouts were more common).

R.J. Payor scores the first touchdown in Brown Stadium history on Sept. 26, 1925.
Note the sweater-clad official signaling touchdown on the far right.

Other Trivia: Brown played its entire 10-game schedule at home. ... Brown Stadium was built at a cost of $500,000, or $9.1 million in 2025 dollars. Wonder if included wi-fi, a retractable roof and craft beer options? ... Halfback and Michigan transfer Jackson Keefer was a third-team All-American. He was later named a member of the school's 125th anniversary team.

Uniforms: For many years, Brown wore white helmets with brown jerseys, tan pants and brown socks. Some jerseys had friction patches and stripes; others went plain.

Columbia

High Point: The Lions roared loudest against Army, winning 21-7 on Nov. 14 in front of nearly 50,000 fans at the Polo Grounds to hand the Cadets one of their only two losses in '25. Quarterback George Pease, who scored two TDs, earned a second-team All-America nod. (It was from the New York Sun, so I sense a possible hometown bias here.)

Low Point: Columbia lost 9-0 to a mediocre (4-3-1) Ohio State team on Oct. 17. 

Columbia takes on Syracuse at the Polo Grounds
— one of college football's hotbeds back in the day — in 1925.

Uniforms: As had been the case when one Lou Gehrig played for them a few years earlier, the Lions wore dark blue jerseys and socks. Like with Brown, some jerseys had friction strips/patrhes on the front and sleeves.

Other Trivia: Columbia's only "traditional" icy opponent was Cornell, which won 17-14 on Halloween. ... The Lions' schedule included lambs such as Haverford, Johns Hopkins and Alfred. ... First-year coach Charlie Crowley, a former teammate of Knute Rockne's at Notre Dame went 26-16-4 over five seasons. Legend has it that Crowley was Columbia's second choice after their first pick — Rockne — elected to stay in South Bend.

Cornell

High Point: Frederick Wester's fourth-quarter touchdown gave Cornell a come-from behind 17-14 win over Columbia on Halloween and give the Big Red — which went undefeated two seasons earlier — a 5-0 record.

Low Point: After a 5-0 start, the Big Red lost two of its final three games, including a 62-13 humiliation at pass-happy Dartmouth one week after the Columbia triumph. (This was the game where legendary Cornell coach Gil Dobie said the score should have been 13-0 Cornell because, in his words, "passing isn't football.")

Cornell tackle Frank Kearney, left and coach "Gloomy Gil" Dobie.
I'm not sure if that helmet could even protect anyone from sunburn.

Uniforms: Very similar to Columbia's, only with red instead of navy blue.

Other Trivia: Cornell fell 7-0 to Penn in the rivals' annual Thanksgiving tussle in Philadelphia.

Dartmouth

High Point: I wrote about the Big Green — the honest-to-god, co-national champions — a while back in this post. The 33-7 season season-ending win over Chicago (coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, a man who literally helped invent the game) wrapped up the undefeated season and, ultimately, a share of the title with Alabama. 

Low Point: Well, somehow they allowed 29 points all season. That's the best I've got.

Uniforms: Green, gray and tan. I'm honestly not sure if the Greenies wore green helmets or not; that's probably lost to history.

The champs.

Other Trivia: My favorite college football rabbit hole, TipTop25, said this: "If there had been a Heisman Trophy in 1925, Dartmouth's Hall of Fame halfback Andy 'Swede' Oberlander would have easily won it, despite this being Red Grange's senior season at Illinois." The site goes on to note that Oberlander was a consensus All-American and Grange was not (Red's big season was 1924 anyway). Oberlander accounted for 26 touchdowns in '25 — 12 through the air and 14 on the ground. In the aforementioned Cornell game, Oberlander amassed at least 477 yards in total offense (per TipTop) and tossed six TDs — ho-hum today, but in 1925, when 20-14 games were considered shootouts, this must have made Sunday newspaper readers spit out their coffee and eggs. Oh, and Oberlander was a tackle on Dartmouth 1923 team that went 8-1.

George Tully (end) and Carl Diehl (guard) also were consensus All-Americans.

The 1925 Project (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we looked back at the six New England state schools that played college football in 1925. Today, the spotlight shines on the non-Ivy, non-Moo U Division I teams. Part 3 will look at the Ivy League, back when Ivy football meant big-time football.

Boston College

High point: The Eagles ended the season with a 17-6 win over hated rival Holy Cross in front of 47,000 fans at Braves Field, back when BC-Holy Cross was one of the highlights of the New England sports calendar.

Low point: After a 5-0 start, BC fell to (distant) future Big East rival West Virginia to spoil any dreams of an undefeated season.

Other trivia: BC played its entire eight-game schedule at Braves Field. … Left halfback Jack Cronin went to play for the NFL’s Providence Steam Roller, who are the answer to a trivia question: What was New England’s only NFL championship team before Belichick and Brady came along?

Uniforms: Check out the Princeton-style striping on the sleeves. Otherwise, pretty basic stuff here.

Boston University

High point: The Terriers (or Pioneers; I’ve seen both names used for this season) defeated Providence 14-6 on Nov. 14 for their only win of the year.

Low point: All five BU losses were one-sided, but I can’t imagine a 51-7 loss to city rival Boston College was very fun.

Other trivia: The season was the fifth and final one for head coach Charles Whelan (three straight one-win seasons will do that to you). Whelan, a graduate of the Tufts School of Medicine, had been a chief radiologist and head of x-rays at multiple hospitals when not coaching.

Uniforms: I discussed the Terriers’ uniforms in this post. Note their use of white helmets when most other teams wore varying shades of tan and brown. Like their Commonwealth Avenue rivals, BU used Princeton-esque stripes on the sleeves.

Colgate

High point: On Nov. 14, Colgate defeated arch-rival Syracuse 19-6 in front of 30,000 fans at rain-soaked Archbold Stadium en route to its first undefeated season since 1892. All-American halfback Eddie Tyron scored two touchdowns and added a PAT.

Low point: A pair of ties against Lafayette (7-7) and Brown (14-14) were Colgate’s only blemishes on the season. 

Other trivia: Tyron, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, scored 15 touchdowns and 21 PATs in 1925. Two years earlier, he scored seven TDs (still a school record) against Niagara. He was later a teammate of Red Grange on the New York Yankees of the original AFL and lead the one-and-done league in scoring in 1926.

Colgate was one of the powerhouses of this era, as touched upon in this post, especially after Andy Kerr became head coach in 1929. Dick Harlow, the coach from 1922-25, went 24-9-3 before leaving for something called Western Maryland (now McDaniel, a D-III school). He also coached Harvard from 1935-42 and 1946-47, going 45-39-7.

Uniforms: Pretty basic stuff here. Nary a front patch or friction strip to be found.

Delaware

High point: The Blue Hens defeated Upsala 24-7 on the strength of two blocked kicks for touchdowns. (Upsala, which closed in 1995, sounds like the name of a place you'd be sent to without a paddle.)

Low point: Delaware ended the season with back-to-back shutout losses.

Other trivia: Frazer Field, the Hens’ home field in 1925, opened in 1913 and I believe is still used today in some capacity or another. ... Delaware may be jumping to FBS in 2025, but the 1925 schedule was littered with decidedly small-time fare, including Ursinus, St. John's of Maryland, Juniata, Haverford and Dickinson.

Uniforms: Again, very basic, but easy to figure out from my end.

Holy Cross

High point: Holy Cross’ 7-6 win over Harvard on Oct. 17 marked the Crusaders’ first-ever win over the Crimson after nine losses dating to 1904.

Low point: BC’s high point, of course, would have to be Holy Cross’ low point.

Other trivia: This was the first Holy Cross team to bear the “Crusaders” moniker. As I noted in the last post, Vermont and New Hampshire added their current nicknames in 1926; I get the impression that the concept of schools having an official mascot took off during this period. According to Wikipedia (which means you know you’re getting the straight dope), Crusaders won a student poll over Chiefs and Sagamores.

Look at those numbers! They look perfect!

Uniforms: I noticed looking through photos how professional the numbers look on Holy Cross’ jerseys — big, sharp block digits. So many other teams in this period had a decidedly amateur look.

Providence

High point: Yup, Providence College — better known for its feats in basketball and hockey — once had a football team. On Oct. 17, the Friars beat St. John’s — another future basketball power — 14-6 at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, speaking of entities not known for football.

Low point: PC lost to New England Jesuit rivals Boston College and Holy Cross by a combined count of 73-0.

Heck Allen is all like, "Helmets are for wimps, brain cells be damned."

Other trivia: PC was the anti-BC in another regard — the Friars played all nine games on the road. … Halfbacks Joe McGee, Junie Bride and Heck Allen are members of the Providence College Athletic Hall of Fame. 

Uniforms: I discussed them in the BU post linked above. All the Friars appeared to have friction strips and front patches to help grip the football better..