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:

Bates Bobcats (1946)

Confession time: I like the proliferation of bowl games on TV, although I didn't always feel that way. But what would you rather watch during the holidays: A bowl game, or something else, like an ESPN/FS1 hot-take show or a Hallmark film? (What? You said Hallmark?!?) While many of today's games seem rather flimsy in nature, the fact is that oddball bowls have always been around ... there just weren't as many in the past. (And if you don't believe me about past oddball bowls, just Google "Raisin Bowl," "Salad Bowl," "Gotham Bowl," "Cherry Bowl," "Knute Rockne Bowl" and a million others. 😎)

A while back, I profiled New Hampshire's journey to the 1947 Glass Bowl, which is right up there  with the Refrigerator Bowl among bowl games that need to be brought back. But one year earlier, tiny Bates College of Lewiston, Maine made its own trip to the Glass Bowl and was the first team from the Pine Tree State to play in a bowl game. (UMaine is the only other team from Maine to make a bowl game, in 1965.)

The 1946 Bates Bobcats, the first team from Maine to play in a bowl game.
I always notice how tiny the players were in the old days.

The Glass Bowl was played from 1946-49 at the stadium of the same name in Toledo, Ohio. The Toledo Rockets played in all four games, losing only the 1949 finale against Cincinnati. According to Wikipedia, the game was canceled due a combination of Toledo's declining play, poor weather and a lack of interest by opposing teams, which makes you wonder how many schools hung up on the Rockets before Bates and UNH said yes.

Bates, which didn't play in 1945 because of World War II and won just one game apiece in '43 and '44, made up for lost time, winning all seven regular-season games — five by shutout in those low-scoring days — while allowing only 11 points. One of the wins was a baseball-esque 7-4 decision over Maine.

A page from the Bates yearbook shows some highlights of the Bobcats' season.
It looks like they celebrated their state title in a muddy basement.

In the Glass Bowl, Bates allowed nearly twice as many points as it had allowed all season in a 21-12 loss to Toledo in front of an announced crowd of 12,000 fans, a crowd that probably dwarfs  many of today's bowl audiences. Despite the defeat, Bates halfback Art Blanchard was named the game's MVP.

Another notable name for Bates was head coach Ducky Pond, who guided Yale from 1934-40 (among his charges were Heisman Trophy winners Larry Kelley and Clint Frank) and Bates in 1941 and '46-51. His career record was 52-55-3; I wrote a little about his Yale teams here. Pond was ninth in the national coach of the year voting in 1946 — can you imagine a small-school coach doing that now?

As you can see, Bates was mighty proud of its Bobcats in 1946.

Amazingly, Bates hasn't reached the seven-win plateau since the Glass Bowl season; the Bobcats have reached six wins five times — and zero wins eight times. 

The uniforms were pretty basic; the one curveball comes with the helmets: some had stripes and some were plain. The jerseys have a similar template as Maine's and Dartmouth's from this era. 

You can read more about this team in this excellent article, which has tons of great details and photos. I wrote about Bates' 1972 unis here.

Bates Bobcats (1972)

We complete our NESCAC tour of Maine with Bates, a school with only one winning football team since 1981. In '72, the Bobcats upset American International to snap a 25-GAME losing streak, thus the inclusion of the '72 Cats in our profile of Division III uniforms.

The Bates Student front page from Bates' 17-14 win over AIC that
snapped a 25-game losing streak. If I used "WE" in a headline, I'd be tossed on the street.

The '72 Bobcats home uniform. Also from the Bates Student,
a paper whose layout often resembled a '60s-70s rock fanzie.

The uniforms bear a stringing resemblance to 1960s-70s Harvard, right down to the white belts. The big difference is the white helmets; most (but not all) had a teeny-tiny bobcat mascot on the sides. It's interesting how gold was an integral part of Bates' color scheme for many years, until black took over some time in the 1970s-80s.

The '72 Cats at Colby. Note the SILVER Colts-style helmets on the Mules.
The Bates player doesn't have a helmet stripe, but that appears to be an exception.

We'll scrounge around and profile another D-III school next week.

You get the impression from this picture that football was a
laid-back affair at Bates in the early 1970s.