Inside the Jersey: Penn Quakers (1993)

 

A while back, I used to do an occasional feature where I'd unearth a jersey from my collection and explore the ins and outs of it. Well, this golden oldie somehow fell through the cracks in the AstroTurf. Let's dig in!

The Jersey: 1993 Penn Quakers throwback, worn for one game only (Nov. 20, 1993 against Cornell, the 100th meeting between the ancient rivals). I discussed the uniform a bit in this post. As far as I know, this was the first throwback uniform in college football history. It was worn with Penn's regular helmet and a set of blue pants slightly different from its usual pants, which had stripes on the sides. (Ironically, the original 1970s blue pants had stripes.)

Penn edged Cornell, 17-14, to wrap up a 10-0 season and the Ivy League championship.

How It Was Acquired: eBay, $35. A steal of a deal.

Who Made It: Rawlings, which also made this great Cornell jersey in the late 1970s. When I was young, Rawlings made all the Major League Baseball jerseys, but the company dabbled in football, too.

The mark of a pro ... or whatever college football players are these days.

Who Wore It: Two different players wore No. 64: Linebacker Tim Gage and offensive lineman Jamie Santiago. It's not uncommon for multiple players to simultaneously wear the same number; usually one player is on offense and the other is on defense. 

Size: The label reads extra large, but it's probably closer to 2XL or even 3XL. I can wear it comfortably with an undershirt underneath. Today's XL jerseys look like they're spray-painted on the players, they're so tight.

Jersey Constriction: Good old-fashioned made-in-the-USA mesh. No PrimeKnit-HeatGear-TechFit blarney going on here.

The Penn throwback jersey in all its glory. I forget where 
this photo came from, but thanks to whomever used it first.

Design: It's based on the excellent style Penn wore from 1971-80. The numbers and "PENNSYLVANIA" wordmark are taller than on the originals. The Quakers have used the alternating dark red-and-blue sleeve stripes off and on since the 19th century, making it one of football's most enduring uniform characteristics. 

Condition: A little yellowed on the top, with some small stains on the front — possibly from game action, more likely from its current owner eating wings while watching a game on TV.

Other Stuff: The dark red on the sleeves is much closer to maroon, but it seems to match what the Quakers were using on the helmets at the time.

Final Verdict: Let's see ... Historic significance, great design, still fits: Yeah, I'd say this shirt rules.

Yale Bulldogs (1954)

The latest pull out of the bag of random brings the 1954 Yale Bulldogs, a team that started strong and finished, er, not strong.

The Team: The Bulldogs roared out to a 5-0-1 start before dropping their last three games to Army, Princeton and Harvard to finish 5-3-1. The Boston Globe account of the Army game noted that the sellout crowd of 73,600 was the "largest to congest this big crater in 24 seasons." Ah, old-time sportswriting. Army's stellar season (No. 7 in both the media and coaches' polls) and proximity to New Haven (about 90 miles) likely explained the big crowd.

You know it's the Ivy League when the starting lineup 
shows up in semi-formal wear. Boston Globe photo.

The Players: Yale was not a team of superstars, but center James Doughan made the Associated Press All-East second team, while teammates Paul Lopata, Philip Tarasovic, Thorne Shugart and Dennis McGill were honorable mentions.

The Coach: Jordan Olivar guided the Bulldogs from 1952-62, going 111-63-8 and winning two Ivy League titles. He resigned after the '62 season when, according a Hartford Courant account, the school wanted him to live in New Have year-round and "give up a thriving insurance business in California." Before Yale, he also coached at Villanova and Loyola Marymount.

I've probably run this photo before, and it's actually from 1955,
but this picture of Yale players on the bench is too good to pass up.

The Uniforms: As noted in this post, Olivar brought his flashy California style to the Ivies, and that included gold pants, which the Doggies wore from 1954-58. As you can see in the photo above, the white helmets, blue shirts, gray trim and gold pants make for a mish-mash design, like when you play Madden and go all random with the uniform selection.

This was the last year Yale did not wear white jerseys, as the Ivy League insisted all teams wear contrasting jerseys by the time formal league play began in 1956. Plastic helmet shells were in use, but facemasks were still a year or two away.

The Fallout: Yale went 7-2 the next year and 8-1 in 1956 to win the first formal Ivy League title. Olivar's best year came in 1960, when the Bulldogs went 9-0 and finished No. 14 in AP poll and No. 19 in the coaches' poll.

Columbia Lions (1968)

Whether you're a fan of sports history or American history, 1968 was an interesting year.

Columbia University was in the news quite a bit that year, and 99% of the time, it wasn't for football. 

A hotshot Ivy League quarterback was the talk of college football, and 99% of the time, it was this guy.

Although student protests and Brian Dowling dominated the headlines in Ivy-ville, a Columbia quarterback was making a name for himself. Marty Domres, an Ithaca, NY, native who opted for Columbia over his hometown Cornell Big Red, set at least 10 school records during his three years under center, and a Columbia Daily Spectator article from '68 said he set 31 school, league, regional and national records overall. 

Marty Domres. What's interesting is that he's wearing the 1970-73 uniform in this picture,
although he played at Columbia from 1966-68. Looking through Spectator archives, it appears
the Lions may have worn these for preseason headshots only.

His numbers appear quite modest in retrospect: His 4,492 career passing yards would have been third in FCS football for just the 2021 season. In a 46-20 season-ending win over Brown, Domres set Ivy records for attempts (54), completions (30) and yards (396), numbers regularly surpassed on any given Saturday. But as I've droned on more times than I care to remember on this little ol' blog, the QB's best pass was a handoff to the running back in those olden times. But Columbia, being bereft of talent, attached itself to Domres' rocket arm and let it fly. And when Domres wasn't throwing the ball, he usually scooped the ball under his arm and ran with it (198 rushing yards, 6 TDs) whenever his offensive line melted, which was often. 

Domres, right, lets 'er rip in the season finale against Brown.

A 44-16 loss to Princeton in Week 2 might sum up Domres' career best. Domres, "throwing from a roll-out, from a drop back pattern and lying on his back," in the words of the Daily Princetonian,  was 28-for-53 for 372 yards and a TD pass (not to mention five of his 15 interceptions that season). Quoth the Columbia Daily Spectator: "On almost every pass, the senior quarterback was demolished immediately after releasing the ball, and there were several occasions when you simply knew he wasn't going to get up. But he did. ... Domres' scrambling, passing and apparent sense of masochism with regard to defensive linemen scored high marks ..." No wonder he drew an ovation from the Princeton fans at Palmer Stadium when he walked off the field for the final time. 

Domres runs for his life — again — vs. Princeton.

While Domres was one of two QBs named to the all-Ivy team (Dowling was the other), he lacked Dowling's supporting cast, and the Lions went 2-7 for the third straight year. (In 1969, without Domres, Columbia slipped to 1-8.) Domres was a first-round draft pick of the San Diego Chargers in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft and was a backup for three years until 1972, when he was dealt to the Baltimore Colts and became the answer to a trivia question: Who replaced John Unitas as the Colts' QB when Johnny U was benched?

Under first-year coach Frank Navarro, Columbia's uniforms ditched 1965-67's rather busy look. Light blue pants and the faux-New York Jets jerseys were out, replaced with a simpler design used until 1970, when shoulder stripes were added ... although if you look at the above photo of Domres, you'll see the 70s shirts were hanging around, at least in the preseason.

I found this on Reddit while doing a Google search 
for anything Domres-related. Umm ...

Colgate Raiders (1964)

 

All right, we're overdue for a reach into the bag 'o random, and we pull out the 1964 Colgate (Red) Raiders. 

The Team: The 'Gate went 7-2, good enough for third place among "major" independents, although six of the Raiders' nine foes are FCS teams and a seventh (Merchant Marine) currently plays in Division III. And speaking of the Mariners, the sons of King's Point fell to Colgate 21-0 in the first college football game played at Shea Stadium. According to this list, only five other college games were ever played at the old home of the J-E-T-S. 

Not your typical team photo, as the Raiders line up 
in a "V" formaton.

Colgate gets defensive against Merchant Marine at Shea Stadium.

The Players: Quarterback Gerald Barudin threw for 605 yards and ran for 200 more, while Lee Woltman ran for 402 yards and caught for 192 more. Peter Beaulieu had a team-high 347 receiving yards in that run-first, pass-later era.

The Coach: Hal Lahar was in his second stint at Colgate following a .500 run at Houston; he apparently was the first coach in "major" college history to serve two separate stints at the same school, not counting guys like Frank Leahy who served in World War II. He was 53-40-8 at Colgate from 1952-56 and 1962-67 before he stepped down to become athletic director.

The Uniforms: Were it not for the white shoulder stripes on the home jerseys, Colgate's unis would almost be dead ringers for Alabama's. It's definitely one of the simpler styles of that era, even by 1960s standards. The Raiders wore sleeve numbers on the road, but not at home. 

Colgate (in white) chases down Holy Cross in '64.

The Fallout: The 'Gate went 6-3-1 in 1965 and 8-1-1 in '66 (future Oakland Raider running back Marv Hubbard was the Colgate Raiders' big star) before collapsing to 2-8 in '67, when Lahar stepped down.

Dartmouth Big Green (1952)

The latest dip into the bag-o-random gives us the 1952 Dartmouth Big Green, during a real dry spell for the program. 

The Team: Dartmouth went 2-7, the second of six straight losing seasons. The wins were over Rutgers (decades before that meant anything) and Columbia. A funny aside: As the Ivy schools were making plans for formal league play later that decade, they agreed in '52 to abolish spring practice. Even though Dartmouth played six Ivy teams that year (the exception was Brown), the Aegis yearbook trotted out the lack of spring practice as a reason for Dartmouth's poor record (another being that classic old-time chestnut, "bad breaks"). The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine was a little more blunt: "While there are no All-Americans on the squad, there are nonetheless some fairly talented players; but for some reason they don't function together as a unit, or the spark in most cases doesn't seem to be there."

I forget if I've run this photo before (probably), but this is a spectacular shot, between the action,
the expression on the player's face and, of course, the official's peaked cap.

Legendary sportswriter Dick Schapp was a Cornell undergrad when
he covered the Big Red-Big Green game for the Cornell Daily Sun.

The Players: It appears what few strengths Dartmouth had were on the line, as guard Pete Reich and tackle George Rambour were named to the United Press' All-New England team. Jim Miller did most of the passing at quarterback when not handing the ball off to Russ Smale, who in a 38-14 win over Columbia caught a 43-yard TD pass, returned a punt 60 yards for a score and intercepted a Lion pass.

The Coach: I touched upon DeOrmand "Tuss" McLaughry in this post about his Brown "Iron Men" teams of the 1920s. He guided Dartmouth from 1941-42 and 1945-54, serving as a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943-44. In 12 years with the Big Green, he had only four winning records, the last in 1949. For those Upper Valley residents who remember the McLaughry real estate clan, yes, they are descendants of Tuss, who lived in the area until his death in 1974.

Tuss McLaughry (standing) takes in the action in '52.

Tuss and captain Pete Reich, an all-New England lineman.

The Uniforms: I've discussed these in a few other posts, but green and silver was the order of the day. Different fonts were used on the home and road unis. Cornell used a similar helmet design, which sometimes makes it challenging to figure out which team is which in those grainy black-and-white newspaper photos.

The Fallout: After two more dreary seasons, McLaughry was let go and Dartmouth brought in Bob Blackman, who turned the program around in a jiffy and won seven Ivy League titles.

Delaware Blue Hens (2000)

The latest pulls from the grab bag and the random number generator give us the 2000 Delaware Blue Hens, one of the better non-title teams in that program's esteemed history.

The Team: The Hens went 12-2 overall and 7-1 in Atlantic 10 play, sharing the league title with Richmond (which Delaware defeated 24-17, which leads to this thought: Since the Hens defeated the Spiders in the regular season, why did they have to share the league title? Why not use tiebreakers, a la the NFL?). Delaware outscored its foes 570-238, surpassing the 40-point mark eight times. The topper was an 84-0 nail-biter over West Chester, a poor D-II team that was shut out four other times that year. (The Golden Rams must have been hard up for cash to take that body bag game.) 

The Hens crushed Portland State and Lehigh in the I-AA playoffs before falling to Georgia Southern, 27-18 in the semis.

A 2000 (Wilmington) News Journal front page spreads the good news. 

The Players: Three Hens — Brian McKenna (LB), Jamin Elliott (WR) and Jeff Fiss (OL) — were named I-AA All-Americans and all A-10, and McKenna was named A-10 defensive players of the year. Matt Nagy (QB), Chris Phipps (OL) and Mike Cecere (DL) also made the all A-10 first team. Nagy remains the school's all-time leader in passing yardage (8,214) and passer rating (146.74; what, you thought that Flacco guy held all the records?).

The Coach: Tubby Raymond, of course, is an all-time legend, going 300-119-3 from 1966-2001. Some fun trivia about Tubby:

1) He was the head baseball coach at Maine from 1952-54 and Delaware from 1956-64, going 164-72-3.

2) He played two years of minor league baseball.

3) He loved to paint and created pictures of senior players every year.

4) His son Dave was the original Phillie Phanatic. These days, he's a motivational speaker.

The Uniforms: Like Raymond, Delaware's unis were a constant, having undergone minimal change since the 1950s save advances in helmet/jersey technology. After Raymond left, the Hens experimented with their look more, adding stripes and giving their blue and gold a noticeably lighter tone. You can see last seasons unis here for comparison.

The Fallout: Delaware fell to 4-6 in 2001 as Raymond struggled to earn his 300th win. But his successor, K.C. Keeler, took the Hens to the I-AA national title in 2003. Keeler also won a title at Sam Houston State (2020-21), making him the only coach to win FCS titles at different schools.

Penn Quakers (1990)

This week's random team is the 1990 Penn Quakers, during a speed bump amid their 35-year run of dominance of the Ivy League.

The Team: Penn went 3-7 overall, 3-4 in Ivy play. After a 16-6 opening day win over eventual co-champ Dartmouth, the Quakers lost their next three games (all non-league), then beat Columbia to go 2-0 in Ivy play. But Penn dropped its next three games to fall out of the race.

The Players: Despite the blah record, Penn came up with the Ivies' only I-AA (FCS) All-American that year, offensive lineman Joe Valerio, who played for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1991-95. He also was used as eligible receiver in short-yardage situations, and thus has one of the most unique stat lines in NFL history: 4 catches, 7 yards, 4 touchdowns — 3 from Joe Montana. And you can see 'em here.

Back in the "junk wax era" of early 90s sports cards, many fly-by-night companies
came, spat out a set or two, and vanished almost as quickly as they came. Two of those quickies, Wild Card and Star Pics, put Valerio in their prospects sets ... and even used the same photo!

Valerio was an all-Ivy first-team selection, as were Joe Kopcha (LB and Rob Sims (P). Mohamed Ali (WR) and Eric Poderys (DL) earned second-team nods.

The Coach: Penn has had five coaches since 1981: Jerry Berndt, Ed Zubrow, Gary Steele, Al Bagnoil and Ray Priore. Steele, who went 9-21 from 1989-91, is the only of the bunch to not win an Ivy title. In fact, every other coach on the list won at least two championships.

The Uniforms: Penn continued to use the same style it had worn since 1981; the only difference  was a reduction in the sleeve stripes. The split-P logo looks great even on a bad team. Penn wore white jerseys for its home opener against Holy Cross, a rarity even today outside of Georgia Tech or LSU.

Penn's Harry Austin performs a suplex that
would put Scott Steiner's to shame. Almost.

Stripes were on their way out by the early '90s, and 
Penn's uniforms reflected that trend.

The Fallout: The Quakers endured one more bad season under Steele before turning to Bagnoli, who went 7-3 in 1992 and went undefeated in '93 and '94 on his way to becoming one of the GOATs of FCS football.

New Hampshire Wildcats (1952)

 

Let's pull out another team and season from Big Bag o' Random ...

The 1952 New Hampshire Wildcats.

The Team: This was a rare off-year for UNH, which suffered its first losing non-war season since 1939 and failed to win a game in conference play.

The Players: The leader of the offense was Dick "Dum Dum" Dewing, a fullback who starred on the Wildcats' undefeated 1950 team and an all-Yankee Conference selection in 1952. The UNH Hall of Famer made noise on the field as a player, and made even more noise in his later years.

After his playing days, Dewing, became the famed "Cannon Man," the leader of the famed group of men in colonial gear who fired a cannon after every UNH touchdown, a tradition he was part of until 2019. According to this article, Dewing was "an artillery officer with the First Newmarket Militia, a Revolutionary War reenactment group." The tradition apparently began when UNH athletic director Marty Scarano wanted to surprise coach Sean McDonnell on his birthday. Sounds like everyone got a blast of it (sorry, couldn't resist). Dewing, who also served in Vietnam, died in 2021.

The cannon men wait to fire away in 2009 at a game
 I attended at old Cowell Stadium. I believe Dick Dewing
is the one in front, facing left.

UNH's 1952 offense.

The Coach: Clarence Elijah "Chief" Boston got his name from his father, who was chief of police in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The Harvard graduate racked up a 60-57-10 record from 1949-64, which included four conference titles, two undefeated seasons and one winless campaign. 

UNH's 1953 home uniform, from the Granite yearbook.
Sadly, there's no caption, so I'm not sure who has the ball here.

Billy Pappas strikes a pose for The New Hampshire paper in 1952.
He is a member of the UNH Hall of Fame, so I'd say the caption's prediction was spot on.

The Uniforms: The basic home uniform — silver helmets with plastic jerseys, navy jerseys with two stripes on the sleeves and silver pants — went virtually unchanged from 1949-56, and the Wildcats even retuned to this look from 1960-64. The road shirts underwent some revisions over the years, but the 1949-55 versions mirror the home versions perfectly.

The Fallout: UNH went back to playing like UNH, going 13-3 in 1953-54 and winning the Yankee Conference title both times. I feel like in the early days of the YC, teams' records fluctuated more because of the obvious lack of depth compared with the big boys, even the Ivy League schools. But then, Vermont never won a conference title and UConn won five in a row later in the decade, so what so I know?

Brown Bears (1957)

Time for another dip into the bag o' random and see what we get ...

Brown, 1957. Let's do it!

The Team: The Bears went 5-4 for the second straight season and were 3-4 in Ivy League play, with the wins coming over third-place Yale, Harvard and Penn.

The Players: Here's an example of how much football has changed since the 1950s: Quarterback Frank Finney threw for two touchdowns and 11 interceptions ... and was still named to the All-Ivy second team in the backfield. Why? Well, he was also a pretty good defensive back and held the school record for career interceptions at one time. The 5-foot-10, 175-pounder (!) had a better passing season in '58, when he led the league with 982 passing yards. Did I mention football has changed since the '50s? Anyway, Finney left Brown with several career passing marks and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 1971.

Two of Finney's blockers, linemen Don Warburton (first team) and Gil Robertshaw (second), also received All-Ivy nods.

Frank Finney in the air and on the sidelines.

The Coach: Alva Kelley guided the Bears to a 31-39-2 mark from 1951-58.He later coached at Colgate (9-18 from 1959-61) and Hobart (20-41-3 from 1963-70).

The Uniforms: Brown wore plain white helmets with a brown stripe framed by white and tan stripes. White, presumably plastic, facemasks were used, which was common in the late 1950s-early '60s. The brown jerseys had sleeve stripes that remind one of the 1960s Buffalo Bills. Tan pants (tan figured prominently in Brown's uniforms for many years) were worn home and the road. One nice touch: The sock stripes mirrored those on the jerseys, with a white set worn to match the white jerseys. This style was worn from 1957-58 (numbers were added to helmets in '58) and was discarded after Kelley left.

Brown, in white, surrenders a touchdown to Cornell.

The Fallout: Brown had its third straight winning season (6-3) in '58, after which Kelley left for Colgate. The Bears didn't have another winning season until 1964 and didn't have three straight winners until John Anderson's teams reeled off eight in a row from 1973-80. 

This, my friends, is FOOTBALL.
No superlatives or poetic pontifications needed.

Boston University Terriers (1965)

Since we're knee-deep into the offseason and there's not much else to talk about, let's grab a team out of a plastic bag and a season from the ol' random number generator and see what we get.

Boston University, 1965. Not a bad selection.

The Team: The Terriers went 5-3-1 in its final season as a University Division team, technically the equivalent of today's FBS, before dropping down to the College Division (where today's FCS, D-II and D-III were all lumped together) in 1966. Don't get too excited; nothing on BU's '65 schedule would be considered on the level of 'Bama or Georgia today. Only Rutgers (a 30-0 win) plays in Power Five conference today. Anyway, BU had its best record since 1957.

The BU Terriers hit the field in 1965. I'm pretty sure
I've run these pictures from BU's yearbook before, but hey, I've
watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" more than once, too.

The Players: This one is hard since 1) stats aren't handy; 2) BU was independent and thus didn't have any all-conference players; 3) BU doesn't make its yearbooks available online except for a few on e-yearbooks.com. But let's give it a shot. Tight end Bobby Nichols played two seasons with the Boston Patriots; defensive back Dick Farley spent two seasons with the San Diego Chargers; sophomore Tom Thornton became the starting quarterback in midseason; and halfback Dave LaRoche (not the baseball player) scored three touchdowns in the aforementioned 30-0 rout of Rutgers.

The Coach: Warren Schmakel coached BU from 1964-68, going 26-28-2. He later served as the Terriers' athletic director and was scout for the San Francisco 49ers.

Warren Schmakel, left, as BU's athletic director in  this 1971 photo
from Digital Commonwealth. At center is men's basketball coach Ron Mitchell
and at right is assistant AD Charlie Luce.

The Uniforms: BU unveiled new helmets, switching to red lids after wearing white since the 1940s. For good measure, the Terriers added a vaguely Baylor-esque "BU" on each side; I think I've said before these are among my favorite helmets ever. The jerseys were carry-overs from the early '60s, but added a vaguely Michigan State-esque "BOSTON UNIVERSITY" word mark across the front in '66. (In previous posts, I might have had BU debuting the wordmark in '65; please ignore.)

BU on the road at Temple.

The Fallout: Schmakel stayed through 1968 and beam AD in '70. His successor, Larry Naviaux, led the Terriers to their first, last and only bowl game ... which you can read about here.

Connecticut Aggies (Huskies), 1919

The 1919 season should have been a happy one for the University of Connecticut's football program. After all, the Aggies (their name before Huskies was adopted in the 1930s) were back on the field after sitting out the last two seasons because of World War I, and like the rest of America, they badly wanted was a "return to normalcy."

Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

Gardner Dow was a Connecticut sophomore and a veteran of the U.S. Navy Reserve who was supposed to miss the Aggies' season opener Sept. 27 at New Hampshire with a bad ankle, but he decided to play anyway. During either the third or fourth quarter, depending on your source, Dow launched a flying tackle at New Hampshire ballcarrier Earl Farmer, who had been tripped up by the Aggies' Eddie Vorhees. Dow and Farmer collided in midair, and Dow's head struck Farmer's knee. Farmer got up; Dow did not. He died that night without regaining consciousness.

Newspaper reports on the death of Gardner Dow.

Three days later, classes and all other school activities were canceled while memorial services were held for Dow in his hometown of New Haven. On Oct. 6, the school renamed the field in his honor; Gardner Dow Athletic Fields, which housed several sports on campus, remained UConn's gridiron home until 1953.

The Aggies voted to continue the season in Dow's honor, and perhaps not surprisingly, they did not play well, losing their first six games before season-ending wins over Boston University and Rhode Island gave them a 2-6 record. Dow's death was college football's only on-field fatality of 1919; while the sport had come a long way toward cleaning up the game following the disastrous 1905 season, when 19 players reportedly died from on-field injuries, Dow served as a reminder that in football, danger is always right around the corner.

***

A group shot and a team shot of the 1919 "Aggies."

Connecticut's uniforms were typical fare for the era, with Princeton-style stripes down the sleeves. I can't tell if the Aggies wore numbers on the back based on the handful of existent photos, so for now they will be left blank. A couple years later, Connecticut decided to wear orange uniforms to stand out from blue-clad foes such as New Hampshire, Maine and Trinity.

UConn's 1920 Nutmeg yearbook was dedicated to the memory of Gardner Dow.