Stagg's Maroons. Note the shape of the ball.
November 14, 1908: American football has had several "snow bowls" in its history. This may have been the first.
Alone among the schools that would later be included in "the Ivy League," Cornell University is nowhere near what would come to be called "the Northeast Corridor." Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, isn't quite on it. But the rest are. From north to south: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Boston; Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; Columbia University in New York City; Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey; and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
In contrast, Cornell is not only, by far, the newest of the Ivies, having been founded by Ezra Cornell in 1865, but it is the furthest away: In Ithaca, New York, 223 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan, and just 51 miles southwest of Syracuse University, which, like its Keystone State counterpart, Pennsylvania State University in State College, is a convenient marker separating "the Northeast" as a region of the United States from "the Midwest."
Nevertheless, because of its inclusion with the Ivy League, Cornell is generally considered a "Northeastern" school, and so its contest on this date with the University of Chicago was considered an "intersectional" matchup.
UC's location on the South Side of the Midwest's biggest city belies the fact that, if there was a Midwestern equivalent to the Ivy League, it would be one of the schools in it, as would the school just north of the city in Evanston, Illinois, which, reflecting the early history of America, is named Northwestern University. Both UC and NU started out in the league that would become known as the Big Ten Conference. UC dropped its football program in 1940, and despite looking so bad, so many times, over the ensuing years, that it seems like they'd dropped football, Northwestern remains in the Big Ten.
Chicago came into the game 4-0, having beaten Purdue, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota, and only Illinois had gotten close. Cornell had not been as dominant in their wins, but they still came in at 6-0, having beaten Hamilton, Oberlin, Colgate, the University of Vermont, Penn State and Amherst.
The game was played at Marshall Field in Chicago. The stadium was named for the department store of the same name, which was named by its owner, of the same name, a major UC donor. But both teams were coached by the men for whom their next home field would be named: UC by Amos Alonzo Stagg, who, along with his fellow Yalie, Walter Camp, had done so much to create American football through standardization of the rules; and Cornell by Henry Schoellkopf.
Speaking of those rules: It was a different time. The forward pass had been legalized only 2 years before, but there were still restrictions on it, and it was rarely used. It would not be a factor in this game, even if the weather had been good. The field was 110 yards long, kickoffs were done at midfield, it was 3 downs to gain 10 yards, a touchdown was worth 5 points, and a field goal was worth 4 points.
In 1912, these would all be changed: The field would become 100 yards, a team would kick off from its own 40-yard line, it would be 4 downs to gain 10 yards, a touchdown would be worth 6 points, and a field goal would be worth 3. Men who could kick the ball a long way would still be important, but not nearly as important, moving American football even further from its English ancestors, soccer and rugby.
As for that weather: It snowed throughout the game, making running difficult, kicking and punting harder, and passing would have seemed to be all but impossible. It probably didn't help however many fans came out -- no attendance figure appears to have been recorded -- that both teams traditionally wore red: Cornell's teams have always been called the Big Red, while Chicago's were the Maroons.
Cornell scored in the middle of the first half, on a touchdown pass from Gardner to Mowe. The extra point was good, and their 6-0 lead held until the final minute of play. In the Chicago Daily Tribune, I.E. Sanborn wrote, "In a hard fought, exciting but poorly played game Chicago and Cornell broke-even on Marshall field yesterday, the final score being 6 to 6, leaving the question of supremacy between east and west suspended in the snow laden air."
Hard to believe that both UC and Cornell have good journalism schools.
Sanborn called the tying play a "triangular pass," "Steffen to Page to Schommer." Walter Steffen, later a city Alderman and Judge, was the captain and quarterback; Harlan Page, later UC's basketball and baseball coach, was an end; and John Schommer, who has been called basketball's first superstar, was a halfback.
So the "triangular pass" was probably a forward pass from Steffen to Page, and then a lateral from Page to Schommer. What would later be called a "hook and ladder," which, as Don Shula, who pulled it off a few times, pointed out is a corruption of its original name, "hook and lateral."
The following week, Chicago won a close one over Wisconsin, to finish 5-0-1, to win the league title. Cornell beat Trinity College of Connecticut. However, in what had already become their traditional Thanksgiving Day rivalry game, they went to Philadelphia to play Penn, and lost. They finished 7-1-1. Had there been an Ivy League at the time, Penn would have won the title.
*
November 14, 1908 was a Saturday. These other notable college football games were played:
* Harvard beat Dartmouth, 6-0 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.
* Brown beat Vermont, 12-0 at Andrews Field in Providence, Rhode Island.
* Syracuse beat Tufts, 28-0 at Archbold Stadium in Syracuse, New York.
* Army played Washington & Jefferson to a tie, 6-6 on The Plain in West Point, New York.
* Navy beat Penn State, 5-0 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.
* North Carolina beat South Carolina, 22-0 at Campus Athletic Field in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
* The Carlisle Indian School -- with Jim Thorpe as a freshman -- beat the University of Pittsburgh, 6-0 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh.
* Georgia and Alabama played to a tie, 6-6 at the Birmingham Fairgrounds in Birmingham, Alabama.
* Tennessee beat Clemson, 6-5 at Waite Field in Knoxville, Tennessee.
* In an intersectional matchup, Ohio State beat Vanderbilt, 17-6 at Dudley Field in Nashville.
* In yet another intersectional matchup, this one a battle of unbeatens like Cornell vs. Chicago, Penn beat Michigan, 29-0 at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
* Illinois beat Purdue, 15-6 at Stuart Field in West Lafayette, Indiana.
* Missouri beat Washington University of St. Louis, 40-0 at Rollins Field in Columbia, Missouri.
* Kansas beat Nebraska, 20-5 at Nebraska Field in Lincoln.
* In what would have been a battle of unbeatens had Princeton not lost to Dartmouth at the Polo Grounds the week before, Yale beat Princeton, 11-6 at University Field in Princeton, New Jersey.
* In contrast, New Jersey's other major team played a much less significant game, but won it: Rutgers beat Muhlenberg, 15-5 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick.
No comments:
Post a Comment