November 7, 1925: Rutgers College, the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based "colonial college," whose teams
had previously been called the Queensmen, after their school's original
1766-1825 name, Queen's College, takes on a new name: The Chanticleers. A
chanticleer is a fighting rooster, roughly equivalent to the University of
South Carolina's Gamecocks. Another school in South Carolina, Coastal Carolina University, a former junior college founded in 1954, uses "Chanticleers."
The change didn't work: They traveled to March Field in Easton, Pennsylvania, where
Lafayette College was also introducing a new mascot, the Leopards, and
Lafayette won, 34-0.
In 1946, a New Brunswick radio station was founded, at 1450 on the AM dial, and
committed to broadcasting Rutgers games. It took its call letters from "Chanticleer": WCTC.
In 1955, the mascot was changed to the Scarlet Knights, after a campus-wide election. Head football coach Harvey Harman supported the change, saying, "You can call it the Chanticleer, you can call it a fighting cock, you can call it any damn thing you want. But everybody knows it's a chicken."
In Middlesex, north of London, fans of the soccer team Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, whose symbol was a cockerel, were unaware of the change, and had no comment.
In 2021, WCTC was bought by Fox, and is now "Fox Sports New
Jersey," but it kept the call letters, a vestige of the Chanticleer name.
*
November 7, 1925 was a Saturday. Among the other noteworthy college football games that day were these:
* Army beat Davis & Elkins, 14-6 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York.
* Fordham beat Holy Cross, 17-0 at the Polo Grounds.
* Columbia and New York University (NYU) played to a tie, 6-6 at Columbia's Baker Field in Upper Manhattan.
* City College of New York beat Manhattan College, 13-10 at CCNY's Lewisohn Stadium in Upper Manhattan.
* Princeton beat Harvard, 36-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.
* Navy beat Western Maryland, 27-0 at Farragut Field in Annapolis, Maryland.
* Alabama beat Kentucky, 31-0 at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. 'Bama won the Southern Conference, a precursor to the Southeastern Conference, and finished the season undefeated.
* Texas Christian University beat Texas A&M, 3-0 at Clark Field in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU won the Southwest Conference.
* Notre Dame and Penn State played to a tie, 0-0 at New Beaver Field in State College, Pennsylvania.
* Northwestern upset Michigan, 3-2 at Municipal Grant Park Stadium in Chicago, the building that would soon be renamed Soldier Field. This was the only game Michigan lost all season, and they still won the Big Ten Conference title, and were recognized by one of the determining bodies as the National Champions.
* In what then amounted to a rivalry game, the University of Illinois beat the University of Chicago, 13-6 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois.
* Missouri beat Washington University, 14-0 at Francis Field in St. Louis. Mizzou won the Missouri Valley Conference, a precursor to the league eventually known as the Big Eight Conference.
* The University of Washington beat Stanford, 13-0 at University of Washington Stadium, later renamed Husky Stadium, in Seattle. Washington won the Pacific Coast Conference, a precursor to the league eventually known as the Pacific-12 Conference. They were invited to the Rose Bowl, where they were beaten by Alabama, which led to most organizations that chose the National Champion to recognize 'Bama as such.
One game was played in the NFL, due to Pennsylvania's ban on playing professional sports on Sundays, which remained in effect until 1933: The Frankford Yellow Jackets beat the Akron Pros, 17-7 at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia.
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