BACK WHEN HARVARD/YALE WAS GANGSTA LIKE THAT

Oh I’m sure ESPN Boston is wishing Harvard Crimson football would resurrect itself and join their spot in arrogance with the rest of the Bean Town Sports scene.

The fullback was equipped with a shotgun holding five shells, a blackjack, and a handful of lye mixed with sand, a concoction referred to as "Tiresias Powder" by the Crimson players on the 1904 squad. By rule, only rock salt was permitted as ammo

So the fullback was basically playing the Nightmare setting on Doom?

We are not familiar enough with the game to give any technical or detailed report of it. It looks to a man up a tree like a rough and tumble Donnybrook fair fight minus the shallalas. Several of the participants were more or less hurt and carried off the field.

http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/laramie2b.html

You mentioned a Confederate general? Cue the Civil War comment war in 5, 4, 3,…

The article mentions TR wanting football cleaned up. That says a lot. Football was too brutal even for his raptor-huntin’, big balls-swingin’ ways.

“THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!”

I’m trying to discern a difference between a Paddy McDuffin fullback and my Borderlands character.

So far, no dice.

InTheBleachers @ 1: It makes me wonder what ESPN would have been like in 1905. Actually, no it doesn’t; it would have been the exact same.

Next up on Collegiate Foot-Ball: Is Harvard or Yale more NOW? Then, Walter Camp will tell us if DA U (The University of Chicago, that is) is back under Amos Alonzo Stagg!

[Begin Scott Joplin music video outro to show how hip and in touch the Family of Networks is with kids these days.]

Why I don’t work at Disney: the new moniker would be “Network Horde.”

@1, what could be more arrogant than turning up your nose and sniffling “No, I won’t join your playoff or championship”. Of course I have noticed that hasn’t stopped them from taking the NCAA tourney money, thank you very much.

hard to believe a guy like TR wanted to outlaw the game if it didn’t clean up.

Did anyone else hear the spoof of the Baseball documentary: Ten Pin Bowling? More appropriate mocking of beantown and excessive reverence in general.

A related note, on what must have been the single most bad assed play to have seen live for the first time: http://www.the-game.org/history-flyingwedge.htm

Actually, TR only got interested when his precious darling little boy got hurt playing the game.

America’s first helicopter parent!

I wonder if Walter Camp went to the WH and told TR: “It’s IVY LEAGUE FOOTBALL! It’s HARVARD v YALE! It ain’t intramurals, brother!”

+4 cocktails (with bathtub gin) to Ancient Chinese Secret, huh?

1. — Scott Joplin, FTW.

Thanks for this, Orson. Now, whenever some panty-waisted bed-wetter tries to bemoan the level of violence in football, I can point to this.

Interestingly, whining about perfectly legal cut blocks dates back only to Sept. 7, 1979, when the first 24-hour sports outlet realized there were only about two hours of watchable sports per day. This led to an explosion in competitive lumberjacking, puns, and butthurt whinging about any form of blocking that involves hitting rather than a loving embrace.

@6 – I’m not sure if the Paddy McDuffin could have caused elemental effects. Perhaps explosive damage. Though it would have been great to watching linebackers have their faces melted and skulls pop off.

/Plays a cowardly, hit-and-run Siren

yale Clown Dept:

I still do not see clearly who the player is on the far right of the Harvard-yale picture. Looks like a clown. Or did he get his nose broken and is wearing a protective leather-nose thang?

Inquiring minds want to know.

4

Mosby was a Major during much of the War of Northern Aggression; I don’t think he was ever a general. “The Gray Ghost” had a 1-2 year run on network TV back in the late 50s, can remember seeing reruns of it back in the 70s from time to time.

with paul johnson’s success running such an “antiquated” offense at a high level, i fully expect to see a modern day patty mcduffin employed somewhere next season. louisville, maybe.

The Patty Mcduffin offense was most recently used by several Tennessee players in an offschedule game against the employees of a 7-11.

@17: Mosby held, temporarily, the rank (but not pay) of a Brigadier General. He was, however, a legitimate Colonel.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Civil War battle re-enactment to attend.

#17, thanks for clearing that up. I did know that he had what amounted to an independant command in the VA mountains, so I assumed he had at least become a Brigadier.

The history of college football is fascinating. A good book to read on the development of the game is John Sayle Watterson’s College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. He is somewhat anti big-time college football as it is today (I disagree with him), but he does a great job with the early history of the game. He gives a great description of the atmosphere of the 1894 Harvard-Yale game with the first Flying Wedge – almost a play-by-play with an intricate description of the fans and general game day environment. It’s remarkable how similar it is to modern college football.

By rule, only rock salt was permitted as ammo, and headshots were frowned upon as "unsporting" and "Mexico-Spaniardlike in their ruthlessness.

Something, something, suspended for a half.

@7

So basically you’re saying it’d be Beano Cook filling the Lee Corso role on gameday and Lou Holtz as the suave Herbstreit character.

@9

Yeah but don’t worry, we don’t play a conference tournament. We just send our regular season champion to be slaughtered so that cool million doesn’t really count.

@ 7, LOL at Da U and Amos Alonzo Stagg. Three weeks ago, a Chicago alumnus co-worker made reference to the upcoming "Penn-Northwestern game." I replied, "Well, the Quakers are a big rival . . . in women’s lacrosse. Do you mean ‘Penn State’?"

And somewhere Robert Maynard Hutchins smiled, but Maroons who matriculated in the pre-Berwanger years (and therefore weren’t total dorks) sadly shook their heads.

That is a leather nose guard, which was a fairly standard piece of gear in the no-facemask, leather helmet days. You didn’t necessarily have to HAVE a broken nose to wear one, just be too big a pussy to risk a broken nose. My old man played small-college ball in the ’50s, and he broke his at least three times in high school and the Navy. By the time he got to college, there was pretty much nothing left to break in there. Then in his senior year, voila! a single-bar face mask.

My granddad played major college ball in the ‘20s and ’30s, and the cool thing to do when you were mad was to rip your helmet it off and throw it to the sidelines, just to show you meant business and didn’t need any sissy hat to get things done. He did that once, and wound up with a concussion.

There’s a pretty good book called “Stagg’s University” that details how the powers at U. Chicago strangled big-time football for fear that it would damage the university’s academic reputation. A little dense at times, but interesting stuff nonetheless.

The flying wedge? OMG, please don’t give Jim Harbaugh any more ideas.

I’ve heard some people talking about how the game should go back to leather helmets. The hard helmets contribute to a lot of injuries, since players feel safer to “buck with the horns.” Equipment trends in rugby (ie, scrum caps, light shoulder pads) lend to this theory.

“You men will come to no Christian end!”

a Rutgers Professor at the Rutgers-Princeton game, 1869

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703932904574511921170497590.html

Ivy League football always reminds me of the Shelbyville Hooters from the Simpsons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1KMOvcIEIY

There was one where these dudes with an antique car and some felt pennants pull up next to Mr. Burns and start hooting at him, but I can’t for the life of me find it, so that link will have to do.

that scene is classic. i shall hoot at every rube i see, today.
/looks in mirror, starts hooting/