Boston College Eagles (1933)

Our latest random team takes us waaaay back to the Depression years with a Boston College team that was hardly depressing. 

The Team: The Eagles went 8-1 in '33, but don't look for them in any national title discussions. Most of the wins were against small Jesuit schools such as Saint Anselm, Loyola (Md.), Georgetown, Villanova and Holy Cross. The other victories were against Centre (a short-term power in the 1920s out of Kentucky), Boston University and Western Maryland (which was rebranded McDaniel College in 2002 and plays a Division III schedule).

Maybe the foes weren't so great, but the nicknames were. Centre was known as the "Praying Colonels" (just plain Colonels today) and Western Maryland/McDaniel goes by the "Green Terror."

The lone loss was 32-6 to Fordham at the Polo Grounds in BC's only road game; Vince Lombardi was a Rams freshman.

BC punts away during its only loss of the season, 
to Fordham at the Polo Grounds.

The Players: It appears the Eagles' big star was Flavio Tosi, whom the Sub Turri yearbook claimed was the best end in the East; according his BC Hall of Fame profile, he registered TEN sacks in a season-ending 13-9 win over Holy Cross. After the season, he signed with the Boston Redskins, becoming the first Eagle to play in the NFL.

Star end Flavio Tosi, wearing the older BC uniform.
Check out the socks!

Among the other stars:

* Quarterback Johnny Frietas, who also was a pretty fair punter and kicker, with a 40-yard drop-kick field goal (!) in a season-opening win over St. Anselm. 

* Paul Flaherty also played some QB and his passing led BC to a 25-0 win over BU. 

The caption says it all. The official on the left appears
to be wearing pants about six sizes too large.

* Bobby Ott and Johnny Dougan handled the running chores, and Ott also was a standout linebacker. 

* Frank Maloney, the captain, was described the the Sub Turri as "our greatest defensive bulwark, his blocking ability and inspiring leadership paved the way for a successful season."

Tosi and Frietas are in BC's Varsity Club Hall of Fame.

The Coach: Joe McKenney also is a BC Hall of Famer. As a player, he quarterbacked the Eagles to an undefeated season in 1926 and also was a track and baseball standout. As coach, he led BC to a 44-18-3 mark from 1928-34. McKenney later served as the director of physical education for the Boston school system and was a linesman for college football, the NFL and AFL. And on top of all that, he led the fundraising drive for the construction of Alumni Stadium in 1957.

This cartoon from the Sub Turri touts Joe McKenney while 
he discusses his team's accomplishments.

The Uniforms: Keeping in mind that there may be mistakes in the above graphic thanks to dark, murky photos, it appears BC wore two different jerseys in '33 with maroon helmets and gold/tan pants. According to Reid Oslin's excellent Boston College Football Vault, the Eagles debuted maroon jerseys with gold stripes in '32. Against Fordham (which also wore maroon), BC sported gold jerseys with maroon shoulder panels and numbers on the back, but not the front. By '34, numbers were added to the front of the gold shirts and the maroons followed suit in '35.

The Fallout: BC fell to 5-4 in '34 in McKenney's last season. Two different coaches guided the Eagles in '35 before personal favorite Gloomy Gil Dobie arrived in '36.

Harvard Crimson (1966)

Our last post concerned the 1966 Yale Bulldogs, so for this one we'll take a glance at their Ivy League doppelgängers. 

The Team: Harvard went 8-1 and shared the Ivy title with Princeton and Dartmouth. (Trivia: From 1960-83, at least one school out of Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton or Yale won or shared the Ancient Eight title each season.) The Crimson's lone loss was an 18-14 decision to Princeton on Nov. 5 at old Palmer Stadium. The Tigers drove 93 yards in the fourth quarter for the go-ahead touchdown, then stopped the Crimson in the red zone on fourth down with less than 2 minutes left to seal the victory. To complete the circle, Princeton's lone Ivy loss was to Dartmouth and Dartmouth's defeat was against Harvard.

The Players: Quarterback Ric Zimmerman threw for a modest 639 yards with seven TDs and seven interceptions, completing just under half his passes in an era when a 50% completion percentage was pretty darn good. Senior Bobby Leo led the ground game with 827 yards and seven TDs, followed by sophomore Vic Gatto with 700 yards and three scores. Junior Carter Lord led the receivers with a whopping 19 catches for 248 yards. (Ah, the '60s.) As many of you probably know, future actor Tommy Lee Jones played for Harvard and was a sophomore guard on the '66 team.

Vic Gatto runs against Columbia in 1966. Note that 
both teams are wearing dark jerseys.

The Coach: I wrote a bit about John Yovicsin in this post. This was his 10th year at Harvard and his second of three Ivy titles. His career record was 78-42-5. This Harvard Crimson article from 1966 takes a first-hand look at his personality and coaching style.

The Uniforms: Harvard's look was largely unchanged from 1964-71: Crimson helmets with black-and-white stripes with white numbers; crimson jerseys with smallish white numbers (reversed on the road); and light gold pants. In later years, Harvard added striped socks to the ensemble. 

Harvard breaks out the white jerseys and long sleeves
for its late-season loss to Princeton.

Harvard played only two road games in '66 (Princeton and Columbia) and wore the white jerseys only once, at Princeton. (For whatever reason, Harvard wore the "home" jerseys even when Columbia wore the light blue shirts at home, although '66 marked the time in years the Lions wore white shirts on the road.) The white shirts were long-sleeved for the late-season game, but the homes went with short sleeves all season long.

The Fallout: Harvard slipped to 6-3 overall, 4-3 and tied for fourth in the Ivies in '67, then in '68 ... ah, you all know that. 😎

Sure, everyone knows Tommy Lee Jones played at Harvard,
but how many people know he was a star on the old soap opera
"One Life to Live" from 1971-75?

Yale Bulldogs (1966)

The latest dip into the bag-o-random gives us the 1966 Yale Bulldogs, a historically significant team for uniform-related reasons.

The Team: This was a fairly middling bunch, going 4-5 overall, 3-4 in the Ancient Eight. The Bulldogs' three Ivy wins were all against teams with the same record or worse in the standings (Brown, Penn, Columbia); the losses were all to teams that finished higher. Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton all shared the Ivy title that year.

A Yale Daily News photo from Yale's season-ending 17-0 loss to Harvard.

The Players: Good news: This team had two all-time legends in quarterback Brian Dowling and running back Calvin Hill. Bad news: They were sophomores and did not play regularly. Dowling played mostly in the season opener — a 16-0 win over UConn — and tossed two TD passes. Pete Doherty was the starter in '66 and threw for 978 yards and 11 TDs. Hill ran for 369 yards in a time-share with Don Barrows (396 yards), Jim Fisher (262) and Chris Kule (147). Bob Kenney led receivers with 37 catches for 414 yards and four TDs.

A 1966 press photo of Brian Dowling, sans facemark.

The Coach: Carm Cozza was in the second season of his 31-year run in New Haven. A product of the Miami (Ohio) school of coaching legends, Cozza played quarterback for another pair of famed coaches, Ara Parseghian and Woody Hayes. Cozza was an assistant under John Pont at Yale and became the head man when Pont left for Indiana (where he guided the Hoosiers to their only Rose Bowl berth). Cozza, meanwhile, won 179 games and 10 Ivy titles.

The Uniforms: This was the season Yale placed the famed "Y" on the helmets, which remains there to this day. From 1997-2011, the Y had a double outline before the plain letter returned in 2012. The rest of the uniform was plain as plain can be; navy jerseys with white numbers and white pants with two navy stripes down the side. Except for some minor changes here and there, this look lasted through 1995.

The Fallout: Dowling took over as QB in 1967 and led the Bulldogs to Ivy titles in 1967 and '68, never losing a game (well, unless you count the '68 Harvard tie as a loss). Hill ended his Yale career with 1,512 rushing yards, 858 receiving yards ... and 298 passing yards. Yale won a third straight title without Dowling and Hill in '69.

Don't go to Benderly Kimberdict for betting tips.

Rhode Island Rams (1967)

College football is less than two months away. Let's get back into the swing of things and pull a team out of the bag o' random! This time, it's the 1967 Rhody Rams.

The Team: Between 1958 and 1972, Rhode Island has but one winning team, and this was it. Among the wins was a 28-17 opening-day shocker over Delaware in which Rhody scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns. (The Hens ended the season 2-7, their last losing season for 16 years.) Wins over Maine and New Hampshire and a scoreless tie against Vermont put Rhody in third place in the Yankee Conference.

The Rams take in the action from the bench.

The Players: In an era when passing was far more risky and interceptions far more common, Rhody QB Larry Caswell threw for 11 TDs and just two picks. He finished with 1,575 passing yards, a respectable total for that era. His favorite target was future NFL draft pick Frank Geiselman, who hauled down 48 passes for eight TDs. Brent Kaufman was the leading ground-gainer with 590 yards and eight scores. 

Frank Giesleman goes airborne to 
grab a pass against Maine.

The Coach: Jack Zilly was an All-American, national-title winning end at Notre Dame who played for the NFL's Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles from 1947-52, winning an NFL title in LA in '51. At Rhody, Zilly installed a pro-style offense (which would explain the Rams' air attack), but, the '67 team was his only winner; his final record was 21-41-2 from 1963-69.

The Uniforms: I've written about these uniforms before, but they're among my favorites of the '60s. In '67, Rhody ditched the navy blue LA Rams knock-offs (here's another example) and returned to the light blue it had phased out earlier in the decade. The new unis had white helmets with light blue horns and little notches in the horns. Light blue jerseys and white pants were worn at home, and the colors were revered on the road. 

The Fallout: Rhody won only five games over the next two seasons and Zilly was let go in 69. His successor, Jack Gregory (1970-75), also had only one winning season. It would take the magic of Bob Griffin to turn the Rams into a consistent winner for the first time since the early 1950s.

Buddy Teevens: Rookie coach

Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens, who became a national name in football circles after abolishing live tackling in favor of robotic dummies in an effort to prevent head trauma, recently lost a leg following a cycling accident. Here's a column I wrote for Central Maine Newspapers on how Teevens turned around a stagnant Maine program in the mid-1980s. 

A while back, I wrote about the changes Teevens made to Maine's uniforms here.

From Football to Baseball (Part II)

OK, I've procrastinated enough. Time for Part II of our series of New England/Ivy League college football players who went on to play Major League Baseball. Part I can be found here.

You probably know all about Harvard "beating" Yale 29-29 in the 1968 season finale in a battle of undefeated teams. But did you know the guy who caught the "winning" 2-point conversion was a baseball player? Pete Varney was a tight end on the football team and a catcher on the baseball team, where he batted .370 lifetime (still third on the all-time list) and was a first-team All-American at a school not known for its baseball exploits. Varney went on to play parts of three seasons with the Chicago White Sox and the Atlanta Braves. He later coached tag Brandeis University, where he won 705 games over 34 years.

Pete Varney, right, with old-school Coke can in hand, congratulates
Harvard QB Frank Champi after the Crimson's celebrated 29-29 tie with Yale in 1968.

Varney with the Chicago White Sox in the mid-1970s.

A search through Baseball-Reference reveals not one, but three guys named Mark Johnson who played in MLB between 1995-2008. The one we want is a native of Worcester, Mass., who was a first baseman-outfielder for the Pirates, Angels and Mets from 1995-2002. His second year with the Pirates (1996) was his best one, when he played a career-high 127 games and batted .274 with 13 homers. (I'll save the analytics for other sites.)

But on the gridiron, the left-handed Johnson was the starting quarterback at Dartmouth, where his name still dots the top 10 on many of the Big Green's passing lists despite playing only three seasons. He also played first base, right field and even pitched for the baseball team.

(Funny aside: Johnson's Wikipedia bio is probably longer than those of many Baseball Hall of Famers.)

Mark Johnson with coach Buddy Teevens c. 1988. (GET WELL BUDDY!!)
The caption is a reference to Johnson declining a Pirates contract offer
in 1989 in order to return to Dartmouth for his senior year. He signed with the Pirates in '90.

Johnson's 1995 Upper Deck baseball card.
I recall blowing $75 on an unopened box in '95 ...
only to buy the whole set for $25 a decade later.

Ah, the nomadic career of a left-handed relief pitcher. Ron Villone pitched 15 years in MLB, one for every team that employed him. OK, I exaggerate, but not by much; he took the mound for 12 different teams, never lasting more than two seasons with any one club. (He pitched three seasons for Seattle, but that was over two stints.) Amazingly, he's only tied for third for most MLB teams; Octavio Dotel and Edwin Jackson played for 13 each.

At UMass, the 6-foot-3, 245-pound Villone was a third-team All-American pitcher in 1992. But the oddity about Villone is that he was recruited to play football; according to this article, the baseball coach asked him to they out for baseball upon hearing about his 90-mph fastball.

Villone was certainly no slouch on the gridiron, where he was an all-Yankee Conference selection at tight end in 1990 and '91. He caught 47 passes for 651 yards and four TDs during his time at Amherst. 

Ron Villone, the football player: Intense.

Ron Villone, the pitcher: Also intense.
Here he is in his minor league days.

Mark DeRosa was in the news earlier this year for managing Team USA to a silver medal in the World Baseball Classic. Before that (and before he was bouncing off the walls every day on MLB Network) he played infield (and occasionally outfield) for eight MLB teams from 1998-2013. 

And before that, he was a killer quarterback at Penn who led the Quakers to Ivy League titles in 1994 and '95 — including an undefeated season in '94 — throwing for 3,895 yards and 25 touchdowns. DeRosa also played shortstop on the baseball team, and he signed with the Atlanta Braves following his junior season (he continued to attend class at Penn and earned his degree in 1997).

This 1994 Daily Pennsylvanian article highlights Mark DeRosa's
performance in the season-ending win over Cornell
that gave the Quakers an undefeated season. 

DeRosa (with awesome throwback jersey)
with the Atlanta Braves. 

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.

Holy Cross Crusaders (1967)

Our latest dip into the big o' random gives us the 1967 Holy Cross Crusaders.

The Team: The '67 'Saders went 5-5 against a hodgepodge of Ivy schools, small Eastern independents, Syracuse and Boston College, which beat Holy Cross 16-3 in the annual rivalry game. The 1968 Purple Patcher yearbook blames the mediocre record on injuries (of course) and the two-platoon system leaving the bench "thin and inexperienced." (Interesting, since college football was in its third year of unlimited substitutions, so you'd think The Cross would have been used to it by now.)

Holy Cross gets defensive against Villanova.

The Players: Someone at Wikipedia was nice enough to supply some stats for the team's summary page. QB Phil O'Neil threw for 1,378 yards and 10 touchdowns; running back Tim Hawkes ran for 458 yards and one TD and Bob Neary had a team-high 34 catches for 485 yards. Jon Vronis scored a team-high seven touchdowns.

One of the Crusaders' defensive backs was Pat Bourque, who later played parts of four seasons in Major League Baseball and even won a World Series ring with the 1973 Oakland A's.

I love photos like this one. Holy Cross's Pat Bourque (21) blocks a punt 
by Colgate's Mark Hubbard in 1967. Bourque later played Major League Baseball,
and Hubbard became a Pro Bowl running back for the Oakland Raiders
(who also had another Colgate RB, Mark van Eeghen). 

The Coach: First-year mentor Tom Boisture coached only two seasons in Worcester (1967-68), going 8-11-1. He later was a longtime scout for the New England Patriots and director of player personnel for the New York Giants.

A nice leaping catch on the road (Syracuse?)

The Uniforms: A new coach often means new uniforms, and 1967 Holy Cross was no exception. After several years with silver helmets, the Crusaders returned to purple lids and added a curved "HC" logo (a personal favorite of mine), which was abandoned in the 1970s and revived in 2015. The shirts had three stripes on the sleeves with numbers on the shoulders, a style made popular by the Dallas Cowboys in 1964. The socks also had three stripes. 

Not all the helmets had the HC logo, which is reflected in the graphic above.

The Fallout: Boisture left after the 1968 season for Tulsa, where he was an assistant for one season before joining the Pats. Bill Whitton took over in '69, when the infamous hepatitis outbreak damn near destroyed the program.

Yale Bulldogs (1940)

We're deep into the offseason, so it's time to pull out a team at random, and 1940 Yale is the "winner."

The Team: Yikes. The Bulldogs won one game, a 13-7 win over a decent Dartmouth team. Yale scored only 43 points all season and allowed 162. (By today's standards, 162 points allowed in eight games is great. Back then, it was 112th out of 121 "major" teams, per sports-reference.) The Bulldogs were shut out three times — including a 28-0 home decision to Harvard in The Game — and never scored more than 14 points in a game.

These photos from the 1941 Yale University yearbook show off
those old-fashioned photos labeling the players and dashed line following the path of the ball.

The Players: Yikes, Part 2. It's hard to find much info about a one-win team from 83 years ago, so instead I give you the starting lineup for the Bulldogs' game against Harvard, from the Yale Daily News:

The Coaches: I wrote about Ducky Pond in this post on Bates, where he coached after his time at Yale ran its course.  You can also read more about him here. The backfield coach, Earle "Greasy" Neale, left after the season to become head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, only to join the Philadelphia Eagles when the teams' owners swapped franchises. Neale won two NFL titles was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1969. He's also in the college football hall for his time as head coach at Virginia, West Virginia and Washington & Jefferson. (Quick quiz: which of those three teams went to the Rose Bowl under Neale? Hint: It wasn't the first two.) 

This photo ran in the Yale Daily News the day of the Harvard game in 1940.
Ah, the days when student papers engaged in unabashed boosterism.

The Uniforms: Yale wore a lighter shade of blue than the more familiar navy of today, and the pants were gold or tan. The helmets were white with a navy blue base and a wing pattern on the front. Even by 1940s standards, the look is a total mishmash.

The Fallout: 1940 marked the end of Ducky Pond's time in New Haven. Yale went 1-7 under one-year coach Spike Nelson, before Howie Odell went 35-15-2 from 1942-47.

Hi, Doggie!

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.