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..

Boston University (1925); Providence College (1925)

In sporting circles, Boston University and Providence College are far more well known for hockey than for football (BU has five NCAA titles, PC one, and they're not slouches on the basketball court, either). The Terriers dropped football in 1997; the Friars way back in 1941, and no one on either campus is clamoring for the sport to return. But when I saw this picture below, I had to whip up a couple unis, right?

So many football photos from olden times are either grainy, taken from about eight miles away, or both. But here's something from the '20s as rare as legal booze: A bright, sharp photo with a good close-up of the players and uniforms -- and a stiff-arm, too! 

The game is from Nov. 14, 1925 at Fenway Park, when it bore only a mild resemblance to today's Fenway (look closely on the left and you can see Duffy's Cliff in front of the left-field wall) and the Red Sox were about as popular in the U.S. as the League of Nations. According to this article, BU prevailed, 14-6, for its only win of the year again five losses.  Providence finished 2-7, its wins coming over powerful Newport Naval Training Station and future Big East hoops rival St. John's. 

The Terriers played another game at Fenway in '26, and made it their regular home from 1947-52, after which they moved to the former Braves Field, which eventually morphed into Nickerson Field, which still exists today, even if the football team doesn't.

Both team's uniforms take their cues from Ivy League schools. BU resembles Princeton, only with red and white replacing black and orange. The numbers have a hand-cut quality that's considered quaint today, but would be ripped to shreds online if anyone actually tried that now. Providence is basically a dead ringer for city rival Brown (covered in this post), but with larger numbers on the back.

I originally profiled BU here and PC here and here.

An outstanding photo from football's Mesozoic era. Time to hunt for more!

Providence Friars (1941, updated)

A few posts back, I wondered if Providence College's final football team in 1941 wore white jerseys in addition to its regular black shirts. A few days ago, I stumbled upon the answer while doing research on Holy Cross' uniforms:

Thank you, Jack Lore! 

Oddly enough, this photo from the Holy Cross Tomahawk (as the Crusader was known in those days) might have been the only action photo the paper ran all year; everything else was posed shots. So here's the updated PC uniform for '41 (note the lack of socks for the road uni): 

Providence College (1941)

“What if’s” are tempting, but dangerous at the same time. You make assumptions, you try to imagine what other people think … there are no facts or empirical evidence involved, just opinion, shots in the dark and flat-out fantasy. That said, here are my what-ifs for the teams in our football graveyard, had they elected to keep the sport:

• Northeastern: Still treading water in the CAA.
• Fairfield: A competitive team in the NEC or Pioneer League.
• Boston University: Since BU’s other teams left the America East Conference for the Patriot League, the football team almost certainly would have joined the PL, and likely been a decent team, like BU's other teams.
• Vermont: Rhody North — an underfinanced team in a sub-par stadium, and likely still waiting for its first league title.
• Providence: Playing in the NEC, Pioneer or Patriot leagues. 

Ah, Providence … The basketball school tried its hand at football from 1921-41, with limited success. I’m guessing the Friars found football an uphill battle, as many other small Jesuit schools have before and since. (Among the Jesuit schools to drop football: Providence, Fairfield, St. John's, Villanova (dropped in '81, revived in '85), Marquette, Detroit, La Salle, Creighton, Xavier.) 

The team had only seven winning records over 21 years, and the onset of World War II spelled the end for the program. (St. Anselm College, a Catholic school in Manchester, N.H., also dropped football after the ’41 season and restored it in 1998.)

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Amazingly, the school maintains a site devoted to the football team that blows away what a lot of current programs have for history sites. It features team photos, action photos and memorabilia. It’s the source of just about all my PC football info.

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The last PC uniform, worn in 1941, is above: I’m not sure if there was a white road jersey, but it wouldn’t shock me, since the Friars wore white in the 1920s and ’30s.

A Providence-St. Anselm program from 1940.
Just a year later, both schools dropped football.

The 1941 Providence College football team, the last varsity squad in school history.
A club team was formed at PC in the 1960s.

Happy Halloween!