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.

Football Scrapbook (1926)

This doesn't necessarily deal with football uniforms or even college football, but what the hey? 

I wrote an essay for Central Maine Newspapers (my current employer) on a tattered scrapbook from 1926 filled with 150 pages of football clippings, mostly concerning Maine high schools and colleges. It's amazing something like this survived the ravages of time. And you can read more about it here:

https://www.centralmaine.com/2022/10/01/old-time-football-1926-scrapbook-provides-revealing-look-at-maines-gridiron-history/

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.

James Madison Dukes (1972)

A James Madison profile? In a New England blog? Yup.

James Madison University is normally out of the milieux of this site, being based way down in Harrisonburg, Va. (Although from the places I've lived the last 15 years or so, hamlets like Durham, N.H., and Amherst, Mass., are considered "way down.") But JMU, a longtime member of the Yankee Conference/Atlantic 10/CAA, has been on the brain since it announced it was moving on up to the FBS and Sun Belt Conference, effective 2023. It's sad to see the Dukes leave, but since they play in a football-rich region and have a rabid fanbase, my guess is they'll handle FBS better than, well, these guys have. 

The school was known simply as Madison College when it fielded its first football team in 1972. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true),  the school's president wanted to attract more men and change its reputation as an all-women's teachers college. 

James Madison University's first football team in 1972,
when it was still known as Madison College. 
You've got to start somewhere. 

A newspaper article from 1972
heralds the arrival of JMU football.

Judging by the results and pictures, the Dukes appear to have been little more than a ragtag club team in '72; they were shut out in all five games, with the "highlight" a scoreless tie with the mighty Hampden–Sydney jayvees. The uniforms, as you might expect, were pretty basic; they look barely above the level of practice duds. JMU wore yellow helmets (gold didn't arrive until the mid-80s) with an extremely basic "MC" on each side.

A couple shots of the first-year Dukes from the 1973 Bluestone yearbook.
Note that one Duke has a white helmet, a reminder of the first-year team's ragtag nature.
(No, I'm not putting it in the uniform graphic. That's just getting silly.) 

The '72 Dukes under the lights.

After a rough start, MC/JMU took off pretty quickly, going undefeated in 1975 and winning the Virginia Collegiate Athletic Association title. (Two members of the spotless '75 team also were on the winless '73 bunch.) The Dukes joined I-AA/FCS in 1980 and the Yankee Conference in 1993, and won NCAA FCS titles in 2004 and '16.

For perspective, a shot of the undefeated 1975 team in action.
Note the turf field and fans in the larger stands.

So just think: Somewhere out there, some small school no one has ever heard of is borrowing pads and socks and scrambling to put a club football team together. And that obscure team today may be playing for a national title in front of 20,000 fans in 20-30 years.

I also took a brief look at JMU in this profile of the 1996 Yankee Conference teams.

Holy Cross Crusaders (1971)

This week, we're going to profile the most boring uniforms I can find in our little project; I'm talking about outfits that can cure insomnia, the football equivalent of bran flakes. OK, these uniforms aren't as blah as Paterno-era Penn State, but you get the idea.

You could also call this "teams that wore blank helmets after they went out of fashion," and you wouldn't be totally wrong.

Actually, the (dis)honor of the most boring uniform doesn't even go to Penn State; that belongs to the 2004 Bowdoin College Polar Bears, just two towns over from my hometown. Plain black helmets, plain black shirts, plain white pants. It doesn't get any more generic than this, even with the Rebook and paw print logos:

In '05, Bowdoin shocked the football world by adding a stripe down the middle of the helmet. And you thought the Oregon Ducks were revolutionaries.

(No, I'm not adding Bowdoin or any other Division III teams to this project, but I couldn't resist sharing this one. You can find a neat gallery of Bowdoin team photos here.)

We start proper with the 1971 Holy Cross Crusaders, coming off the hepatitis-infected lost season of 1969 and a winless season in '70. Under new coach Ed Doherty, the Saders eliminated the "HC" on their helmets and the striped socks used occasionally the previous year. The result was something akin to a practice uniform, or one of those 1970s Topps football cards with the logos airbrushed off to save a few bucks.

Holy Cross bores the Colgate Raiders into submission in 1971.
From The Crusader.

Holy Cross shocked Harvard 21-16 on opening day for its first win since Nov. 23, 1968 and roared out to a 3-1 start, perhaps because opponents lulled to sleep by the generic unis. The Crusaders cooled off and finished the season 4-6, but Doherty was still named New England coach of the year. Holy Cross (with the "HC" logo restored to the helmets) won five games each of the next three years under Doherty - not great, but considering where the program had been, not too shabby, either.