The 1925 Project (Part 1)

Nineteen twenty-five was a pretty memorable year in college football. Coming off a monumental 1924 season, Illinois’ Red Grange continued to run up, down and around hapless foes before he took his game to the NFL upon season’s end. Alabama upset Washington in the Rose Bowl to claim a share of its first national championship.

And with whom did mighty ‘Bama share the title? Dartmouth. Yes, that Dartmouth, granite of New Hampshire in their muscles and their brains and all that. It’s the first and only “natty” the Big Green has claimed to date.

I thought it would be fun to look back at the teams covered in this little ol’ blog (and a few that aren’t) and how they fared — and looked — a century ago. We’ll start with the six New England state schools that later made up the late, great Yankee Conference.  

As for the Big Green, I covered them in this post a while back; we’ll revisit them along with their Ivy League brethren down the road.

One major caveat: I am far from 100% positive on certain uniform elements, such as helmet colors, jersey trim colors or number fonts (or if some teams even used numbers on the back; that’s how long ago we’re talking here). Some yearbooks (like Vermont’s Ariel) give a pretty good pictorial account of the athletic teams; others, like Rhode Island’s Grist … well, I have to sort through the grist and make an educated guess. 

But if anyone out there has an old Rhode Island jersey buried in the attic … 

Connecticut

High point: The Aggies (a nickname used by UConn, UMass and other cow colleges in that era) opened the season Sept. 26 with a 7-3 win over in-state rival Wesleyan. The ‘Farmers” (hey, that’s what the Hartford Courant called them in its weekly accounts) had not defeated Wesleyan in any athletic contest since spring 1922.

Low point: Following the Wesleyan win, UConn was shut out in three straight games, all losses. 

Other trivia: Tackle Oscar Nanfeldt and quarterback “Wallie” Moreland was named to the Courant’s All-Connecticut Valley team (!).

The 1925 UConn Not-Yet-The-Huskies.

Uniforms: And the fun begins right off the bat. As noted in this post, UConn flirted with orange jerseys in the mid-1920s, and indeed, the season summary in the Courant yearbook covering the ’25 season notes the orange attire. But photos from UConn’s game against New Hampshire shows UNH’s players in white vests, presumably to differentiate themselves from the normal blue-attired Aggies. But if UConn wore orange jerseys, why would UNH bother? Like they said in those Tootise Pop commercials from the ’70s, the world may never know.

Maine

High point: A 28-14 win over hated rival Bowdoin on Nov. 7 before 7,500 fans in Orono gave the Black Bears the state title, which as hard as it is to believe now, was a huge deal back then.

Low point: It’s tempting to list the 56-0 loss at Dartmouth, but those guys probably spent the rest of their lives bragging to everyone how they shared the field with the national champs. I’ll go with the season-ending scoreless tie against New Hampshire, Maine’s most hated out-of-state rival, on Nov. 14.

Other trivia: Maine claimed a share of the New England Conference title with a 1-0-1 record, even though UNH was 3-0-1 in league play. I have the Bears down for second. … Maine end Fred Newhall and tackle “Ginger” Fraser were named to the Portland Sunday Telegram’s All-Maine team.

Uniforms: About what you would expect from this era. Many, but not all, jerseys had those “friction strips” that were popular then. Maine also wore white helmets when many teams wore brown or tan lids.

Massachusetts

High point: UMass (then known officially as Massachusetts Agricultural College, or MAC) had an annual rivalry with Tufts that lasted decades. (Strange, since another future NESCAC school, Amherst, was far closer.) On Nov. 21, the Aggies defeated the Jumbos by the baseball-like score of 6-4 for their first win in the series since 1921. The series ended in 1954 — with Tufts owning a 28-14-7 advantage. In fact, UMass beat Tufts only three more times after ’25. Strange, indeed.

Low point: The season ended with an 18-13 Thanksgiving Day loss at Springfield (just down the road from Amherst) when the hosts used a “shoestring” play, in the words of the UMass Index yearbook, to take the lead in the fourth quarter. From what I’ve gathered from multiple newspaper accounts, a Springfield receiver named Maddox lined up near the sideline, apart from his 10 teammates — almost as if he were busy tying his shoelace before joining his mates — and MAC was caught napping. Of course, Springfield threw the ball to Maddox and he took off 30 yards for the winning TD.

Massachusetts decided to wear hoodies for its team photo.
As you can tell, some schools took this exercise less seriously than others
back in the day. 

Uniforms: Classic maroon and little else. Like Maine, some shirts had friction strips and others did not. I’m not 100% on the numbers.

New Hampshire

High point: The Granite yearbook doesn’t have a season write-up, so it’s hard to determine. I’d say going 2-0-1 in New England Conference play and grabbing the league title is a pretty good accomplishment, though.

Low point: The Oct. 10 game against Colby was cancelled because of SNOW. I know Waterville can be a little chilly in October, but still.

Other trivia: This was the last season before UNH adopted the “Wildcats” nickname.

Uniforms: Largely the same as in 1924, which I wrote about here. 

Rhode Island State

High point: Going by the season summary in the Grist yearbook, it sounds like Rhody’s best game was a 12-7 win over CCNY (CCNY? Wasn’t that the school embroiled in a basketball scandal?) on Oct. 24. Kenneth Brown threw a TD pass and returned a kick 65 yards for another score.

Low point: Rhody got to play the role of loyal opposition in a season-opening 33-0 loss to Brown in which the Bears opened their new stadium, which they still use today. 

Other trivia: On Oct. 3, the Rams played Western Maryland (now McDaniel College) in Baltimore at the site of the future Memorial Stadium, the beloved old home of the NFL Colts and MLB Orioles.

A college football team, or a semipro all-star bunch?

Uniforms: Another tough one to decipher. Are the shirts pale blue or dirty white? Are the pants brown or dark blue?

The team picture above shows the Rams in a motley assortment of jerseys, some of them torn and dirty. I'm guessing this was taken after practice. From what I've been able to gather, the version with the five friction strips was the one worn during games.

Vermont

High point: Like Maine, UVM placed heavy emphasis on in-state rivals, and Vermont earned wins over Norwich (3-0) and Middlebury (7-6) to claim the state championship.

Low point: Vermont was shut out four times, including three straight to Syracuse, Dartmouth and Springfield by a combined score of 82-0. If you go by the write-up in the Ariel yearbook, UVM had to overcome insurmountable odds every Saturday because of injuries or size disadvantages.   

Even in 1925, that made for a tiny lineman.

Other trivia: This was the last season before Vermont adopted the “Catamounts” nickname. The state population of actual catamounts: Zero. … Vermont ended the season with a 7-0 loss to Saint Louis, which like UVM later dropped football and became a force on the soccer pitch. (The Billikens have won 10 NCAA titles; the Catamounts recently captured their first.)

Uniforms: As basic as you can get, which makes it easier (albeit less challenging) to figure out. The Ariel yearbook covering the ’25 season was loaded with bright photos. 

From Football to Baseball (Part I)

After last week's post on the 1967 Holy Cross team, which noted that defensive back Pat Bourque went on to win the World Series with the 1973 Oakland A's, I decided to round up a list of other college football players from teams covered on this site who went to play Major League Baseball. Part 1 takes us from the early 1920s through the early '50s. Part 2 will come ... eventually. 😎 

I've written about some of these teams before, and chances are I've missed a few guys along the way. The numbers in the uniform graphics are the ones worn by the profiled athletes (Harry Agganis wore 33 at Boston U, etc.).

Let's save the best for first, as in first base. Lou Gehrig (Columbia) is a legend for his Hall of Fame career with the New York Yankees, his consecutive-games streak and his death in 1941 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or was it something else?) Before the Yanks came calling, Gehrig was a two-sport athlete at Columbia, where he was a starting fullback and defensive tackle on the football team. With pro football in its relative infancy, though, his odds of playing football for a living were between slim and none, and slim just went out for a bathroom break. 

Lou Gehrig plows through Wesleyan's defense in 1922.

The uniform graphic above is a rough estimate, especially the font of the number on the back. It appears some, but not all, of the helmets had white stripes on the front and sides.

At the University of Vermont, football and baseball are just rumors (football was canceled in 1974, while baseball was dumped twice — in 1971 and 2009). But in the winter of 1941-42, Winooski's Ralph LaPointe was a star on the Catamounts' freshman football, basketball and baseball teams. In the fall of '42, LaPointe joined the football varsity and was on the the receiving half of the "Goal Dust Twins" with quarterback Norm Beaulieu. LaPointe scored a TD in every game that season, including one in the season-ending 18-7 won over Middlebury. (Thanks to World War II, it was UVM's last game until 1946.) 

After World War II, LaPointe signed with the Philadelphia Phillies' organization and made his major league debut on April 15, 1947 — the same day Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers — as a defensive replacement at second base. While LaPointe's MLB career was short (he his .266 in 143 games), he established his legend as UVM's baseball coach from 1952-67, going 216-127 in a region not exactly hospitable to baseball in the early spring. He also served as an assistant on the football team during that time.

As you can see by the caption, Ralph LaPointe
got married after the 1942 season.

UVM's uniforms were heavy on the yellow (color rush before color rush was cool), with slightly darker shades used for the jerseys and socks, which had matching green stripes. 

I noted the achievements of UConn end-turned-Red Sox first baseman Walt Dropo in this post. Suffice to say, he was an amazing athlete during a period when multi-sport athletes weren't uncommon. Something was lost when specialization became the norm in college sports; when you play different sports, it forces you to use body and your mind in different ways.

The uniform pictured is from 1946, Dropo's senior year. During this period, UConn mixed and matched their helmets, jerseys and pants something fierce. In '46, UConn wore white helmets and blue pants throughout but trotted out three different jerseys, each with contrasting shoulder panels and stripes on the lower sleeves. 

Growing up as a Red Sox fan in the 1980s, I knew the tale of Harry Agganis very well, even though he had died more than 30 years earlier. Lynn, Mass., native; two-sport star at Boston University; spurned an offer from the Cleveland Browns to sign with his hometown Sawx; played solidly as a rookie first baseman in 1954; got off to a strong start in '55; got sick and shockingly died from a pulmonary embolism. To this day, he and Tony Conligliaro are the ultimate "what might have beens" among the Sox faithful. 

At BU, Agganis set single-season school records for TD passes in 1949 (15!) and passing yards in 1951 (1,402 in only seven games, pretty impressive in that era). He missed the 1950 season when the U.S. Marine Corps came calling. Somehow, the '51 team was ranked No. 16 in the final AP poll despite a 6-4 record, which would be like a 7-5 MAC team landing in the top 25 today. Apparently, the writers were blown away by those wins over Camp Lejeune, NYU and Wichita State.

A 1950 magazine article notes Harry Agganis'
 induction into the U.S. Marine Corps.

BU's uniforms were pretty basic: White helmets, red jerseys and white pants; I believe the white jerseys were worn only at Louisville and Temple, which also wore red at home.

Boston College didn't have much to write home about in the early 1950s (other than a mega-upset of nationally ranked Holy Cross in 1951), but the Eagles did have a super end in Mike Roarke, who was known as "Mr. Captain" for his role as captain of the baseball and football teams. His career totals of 49 catches and 12 touchdowns won't cause Zay Flowers to lose sleep, but they were pretty darn good in those passing-challenged times. 

In baseball, he was a star catcher who after BC toiled for many years in the minor leagues before spending parts of four seasons with the Detroit Tigers (1961-64) as a backup. He went on to become a pitching coach for MLB several teams, most notably Whitey Herzog's 1980s Cardinals. (Much of the info here on Roarke was taken from his BC Hall of Fame bio.)

Mike "Rourke" was as adept at catching a football as a baseball.

BC's uniforms didn't change much during this era, with plain gold helmets, a maroon jersey with gold numbers at home and a white version with maroon numbers on the road, all with gold pants. On at least one occasion, the Eagles broke out striped socks to match the road jersey sleeves.

I like the cartoons! They make me laugh!

A long time ago, long before memes or YouTube videos with thumbnails featuring shocked faces, emojis and arrows, athletes and sporting events were regularly portrayed in newspaper cartoons. (For those reading in 2053, this is what a newspaper was.) Papers big and small supplemented their articles, box scores and photos with illustrations of everyone from Joe DiMaggio to high school swimmers. They added a welcome dimension to the sports pages, and unfortunately the concept seemed to die with the '60s.

New England college football was no stranger to the cartoonists' pen and ink, so let's look at some vintage 'toons, shall we?

Perhaps New England's most famous sports cartoonist is Phil Bissell, who designed the New England (nee Boston) Patriots logo in 1960 and was recently revived for a couple of throwback games. Bissell drew for a number of newspapers from 1949-87, including the Boston Globe from 1953-65. His work also illustrated classic American Football League programs and media guides for Boston University and the University of New Hampshire.

The three cartoons above served the preview the weekend's college action. The first and third illustrations are from 1954; the second is from '55. About 4-5 games were typically highlighted, with the secondary games (Bridgeport-Brandeis?!?) written at the bottom on something resembling a royal scroll. The mascots and their natural habitats often made for easy subject matter. (Some, like Dartmouth and UMass's long-discarded Native American mascots, wouldn't fly today.) Boston University's terrier lives in a dog house, Princeton's tiger resides in the jungle, Boston College's eagle hangs out in a nest ... you get the idea.

After the game, a cartoon naturally wrapped up the weekend's action, often focusing on one game. Case in point, this Boston College win over Miami from 1958. (BTW, 6-2 wasn't BC's record, it was the final score. Old-time football, baby!) A cartoon would try to give a summary of the game for those who couldn't bothered to read the game story or watch the highlights on the nightly news, not that game highlights were a common thing in '58. Anyway, Bissell manages to squeeze in six key points in just a few columns of space, no small feat.

During the week, cartoons might focus on one or two players. This example from 1954 focuses on BC's Tom Magnarelli, who won the O'Melia Trophy for the MVP of the annual Boston College-Holy Cross game (once one of the highlights of the New England sporting year).

Let's take a gander at some other cartoonists. Frank Lanning was a longtime illustrator for the Providence Journal whose artwork for Brown and Rhode Island football (and their opponents) graced the paper's pages for decades.

This one highlights a Rhody win over Boston University in 1945. Eight key moments are shoehorned into one cartoon, anchored by Sal Vento, the "scatback from Saugatcuk."

Lanning goes off the board for this cartoon, which previews the 1965 Maine-East Carolina Tangerine Bowl. Linebacker John Huard, a two-time Little All-America, is generally considered the G.O.A.T. of Black Bear football players. 

Hubert Bushey's illustrations of University of Vermont sports appeared in the Burlington Free Press for years, and he even designed the old Charlie Catamount mascot (since replaced by Rally Cat). His most famous work might be from 1974, when the school pulled the plug on football after 77 seasons. The "30" was old-time newspaper jargon marking the end of a story, and, well, the Catamounts got hit with the "30" on the gridiron. (Baseball, which got the ax in 1971, was revived in 1978 and canceled again in 2009.)

From somewhat happier times, this cartoon previews UVM's '69 season. Bob Clifford, the head coach, resigned after a 3-6 season and threats of a player revolt.

And now, some miscellaneous cartoons:

This one is actually from Dartmouth's 1942 media guide. Dartmouth's "hometown" paper, the Valley News (where I worked for many years), wasn't born until 1952 and I don't think they ever did any Big Green cartoons.

Not sure where this one came from, but it illustrates Dartmouth's legendary "Fifth Down" game against Cornell in 1940. (Long story short: Cornell trailed 3-0 late in the game and threatened near the Dartmouth goal line, got an inadvertent fifth down from the refs and scored a walk-off TD to win 6-3. The Big Red "forfeited" the game a couple days later after reviewing the film, expecting Dartmouth to decline the forfeit. Of course the Big Green accepted and was declared a 3-0 winner.)

Not sure who drew this, but it highlights 1960s UMass stars Milt Morin and Bob Meers; Morin later was a star tight end for the Cleveland Browns. 

From The New Hampshire student paper, 1947 Glass Bowl coach Biff Glassford is profiled. I presume Vern Hall is the author.

I think this is from Daily Princetonian, but it illustrates Princeton's 14-0 win over Brown in 1964, when the Tigers went 9-0 and outscored their foes 216-53.

And last but not least, this piece of irreverence from the Yale Daily News in 1985, when Yale and Dartmouth played to a 17-17 tie. Alas, the Big Green's iconic Keggy was a long ways away. 

Vermont Catamounts (What If?)

It's time for the third and final installment in our "What If" series, imaging what uniforms of defunct college football teams would look like if they hadn't become defunct. This time, it's the University of Vermont, undefeated since 1975 and all that jazz. (And taking a glance at the recent Top 25 men's soccer rankings, I see the Catamounts aren't too shabby at that other football these days.)

Here's what UVM's unis looked like when the school gave up the sport in 1974.

Previous installments covered Boston University and Northeastern.

1975: After two years of going all green, UVM tones it down a bit and adds white pants while eliminating the horizontal stripes from the jerseys.

1978: The Catamounts do a total overhaul, with yellow taking prominence in the pants and numbers. The jerseys add a big "VERMONT" wordmark, and the helmets add yellow facemasks and an outline around the "V."

1983: The stripes and numbers on the socks and road jerseys are inverted.

1987: The deemphasis of yellow continues, as white pants return (again), and white numbers and stripes are used on the home shirts. The "V" on the helmet also changes.

1991: The "VERMONT" wordmark vanishes, as do half the sleeve stripes.

1995: The V-cat logo debuts on both the jerseys and the new white helmet, and the numbers gain a double outline. Also note the Yankee Conference patch, which the league's teams began to wear in 1993, and the small Russell logo on the sleeves.

1999: Green alternate pants are added, and the outline on the road shirts change slightly, making the numbers easier to read. In 1997, the Yankee Conference morphed into the Atlantic 10, and the patch on the jersey front reflects the move.

2001: The white pants are discarded. 

2004: Everything old in new again, and at UVM, it means the return if the all-green look, right down to the helmets.  Nike replaces Russell as the uniform supplier. Drop-shadow numbers, side panels and tiny wordmarks — uniform hallmarks of that era — also appear. The V-cat logo is modified, as it was in real life around this time.

2008: UVM continues to keep up with the joneses and add curved numbers — similar to what the hockey team wore around this time — and funky striping.

2011: A screaming yellow zonkers alternate is added. After facing a possible shutdown of the program due to the recent economic crisis, UVM moves to the lower-scholarship Northeast Conference for football only. (The real-life Catamounts dropped baseball and softball around 2009.)

2014: UVM switches from Nike to Adidas (which made the men's basketball uniforms during this period) and the uniforms return to a more basic look. The big "VERMONT" wordmark also returns. (You may notice many real-life Adidas teams have a big wordmark on the jersey fronts.)

2019: The Catamounts return to Nike and maintain the basic look — if you check UVM's website, you'll notice many of the their teams' uniforms aren't elaborate. The green helmets have a chrome look, while the jerseys and pants kinda resemble those of Princeton (another Nike team). The road uniforms are almost completely devoid of yellow. A 1960s throwback helmet is added in honor of college football's 150th anniversary.

2022: Some yellow is added to the white jerseys and pants, while an all-black alternate uniform debuts, with "CATAMOUNTS" up the side of the pants. (Well, I guess in this world, UVM does get elaborate.)