November 25, 1976: Rutgers Completes Its 2nd Undefeated Football Season

November 25, 1976, Thanksgiving Day: Rutgers University, which played and won the 1st college football game in 1869, completes an undefeated football season. This followed, earlier in the year, the school's basketball team nearly doing the same, going 31-0 and reaching the NCAA Final Four, before losing. Rutgers had previously gone 9-0 in 1961.

By no means were they a "big-time" college football team in those days. Rutgers Stadium, built in 1938 in Piscataway, Middlesex County, New Jersey, across the Raritan River from the school's main campus in New Brunswick, seated only 23,000 people, with grassy berms on either side of the north stand that could fill up with people and raise capacity to about 30,000. And they were playing other small Northeastern schools as well.

Here's the slate: 

* 1-0: September 11, beat the U.S. Naval Academy, 13-3 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.

* 2-0: September 18, beat Bucknell University, 19-7 at Memorial Stadium in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. That stadium would later be renamed for Bucknell's most famous graduate, Christy Mathewson, 1 of the 1st 5 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

* 3-0: September 25, beat Princeton University, 17-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey. Not only were Princeton their arch-rivals, but they were also their opponents in the 1st college game in 1869. (Rutgers won that, 6 goals to 4.)

* 4-0: October 2, beat Cornell University, 21-14 at Rutgers Stadium.

* 5-0: October 9, beat the University of Connecticut, a.k.a. "UConn," 38-9 at Rutgers Stadium.

* 6-0: October 16, beat Lehigh University, 28-21 at Taylor Stadium in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

* 7-0: October 23, beat Columbia University at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, Bergen County, New Jersey. This was the 1st college game played at the Meadowlands, which is closer to Columbia's campus than to Rutgers'.

* 8-0: October 30, beat the University of Massachusetts, a.k.a. "UMass," 24-7 at Rutgers Stadium.

* 9-0: November 6, beat the University of Louisville, 34-0 at Rutgers Stadium.

* 10-0: November 13, beat Tulane University, 29-20 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. This was the 1st game Rutgers had ever played indoors.

* 11-0: November 25, beat Colgate University, 17-9 at Giants Stadium.

Like Rutgers, Navy was not what it once was, but did join NCAA Division I-A, now known as the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). So did Louisville and Tulane.

The Ivy League, including '76 Rutgers opponents Princeton, Cornell and Columbia, joined Division I-AA, now known as the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). So did '76 Rutgers opponents Bucknell, Lehigh, UMass and Colgate. So did UConn, although they eventually moved up to D I-A/FBS.

This schedule was so lightly regarded that only after Week 10 was Rutgers ranked by the Associated Press' poll, Number 19. And they only got up to Number 17, because they turned down an invite to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana, thinking they would get an invite to a bigger bowl, but that invite never game. And so, 11-0 they remained.

And let's be honest: If there had been a Big East Conference, as Rutgers eventually joined in 1991, RU would have been slaughtered by the University of Pittsburgh, who went 12-0 and won the National Championship, led by Heisman Trophy winner and eventual Dallas Cowboys Hall-of-Famer Tony Dorsett.

Bret Kosup passed for 1,098 yards, Glen Kehler rushed for 764, and Mark Twitty had 514 receiving yards. The head coach was Frank Burns. No, not the incompetent right-wing surgeon then being played by Larry Linville on the TV show M*A*S*H. 

This Frank Burns was a native of Roselle Park, Union County, New Jersey. He had been a quarterback for Rutgers from 1945 to 1948, was an assistant coach "On the Banks of the Old Raritan" in 1949 and '50, served as head coach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1951 and '52, coached at Rutgers again in 1955 and '56, spent 4 years as head coach at Chatham High School in Morris County, New Jersey, returned to Rutgers as an assistant in 1961, was named head coach in 1973, and remained through 1983, the early years of Rutgers' attempts to become "bigger time" in football. His career record was 84-52-2, 78-43-1 at Rutgers. He died in 2012, at age 84.

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As I said, November 25, 1976 was Thanksgiving Day, therefore a Thursday. There was 1 other significant college football game played that day, instead of on the Friday or Saturday of Thanksgiving Weekend: Before 75,000 at Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas, and millions more watching in prime time on ABC, Number 11 Texas A&M beat arch-rival Texas 27-3. Texas would rebound the next year, led by Heisman Trophy winner Earl Campbell, and win the Southwest Conference, and nearly the National Championship.

And there was a relatively minor college game, not a rivalry game, in the Mid-American Conference: Kent State beat Northern Illinois, 42-0 at Dix Stadium in the Cleveland suburb of Kent, Ohio.

There were 2 NFL games played that day:

* The Detroit Lions beat the Buffalo Bills, 27-14 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan. In a losing effort for the Bills, O.J. Simpson rushed for 273 yards, a new single-game NFL record. I have a separate entry for this event.

Walter Payton would break that record the next season. O.J., of course, would go on to have a very different kind of "record."

* And the Dallas Cowboys beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 19-14 at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.

And Kent State beat Northern Illinois, 42-0 at Dix Stadium in the Cleveland suburb of Kent, Ohio.

One more note from football on this day: Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was born.

Major League Baseball was in its off-season. In recent times, the NBA and the NHL have avoided playing on Thanksgiving, so as not to compete for TV ratings with the NFL. But, this time, there were 3 NBA games:

* The Cleveland Cavaliers, beat the Detroit Pistons, 111-105 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Houston Rockets beat the New Orleans Jazz, 105-99 at the Superdome in New Orleans. In defeat, "Pistol" Pete Maravich scored 35 points.

* And the Phoenix Suns beat the Washington Bullets, 104-98 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

And there were 2 NHL games. The New York Islanders lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 at the Nassau Coliseum. And the Boston Bruins beat the Vancouver Canucks, 4-2 at the Boston Garden.

And there were 2 games in the World Hockey Association. The New England Whalers beat the Birmingham Bulls, 5-3 at the Jefferson County Civic Center in Birmingham. And the Quebec Nordiques beat the Indianapolis Racers, 5-0 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

This was also the day of the last concert by The Band, filmed for the documentary The Last Waltz. I have a separate entry for that event.