Harvard Yale Football Program 1926 - The Great Gatsby?

The Harvard-Yale Football program of 1926 captures the mood of its era better than any other college football program we have ever seen. The game was played shortly after F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925.

 

The program is chocked full of ads showing the latest fashions, particularly for women of the 20s.

 

 

 

What better captures the spirit of the Jazz Age than these fabulous pictures?

 

A Pierce Arrow ‘36 series, anyone?

I’m headed out to Eastern Long Island now!

Oh yea, and the program also does some perfunctory coverage of the game itself, including the dashing captain P.W. Bunnell on the Yale Fence.

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The Yale Fence

Yale football teams have a tradition of photographing the captain of their football teams sitting on the Yale fence. This tradition dates back to the late 19th century. Some highlights taken from Yale football programs are seen below:

The father of American Football, Walter Camp, at the Yale fence:

 

 

Francis Gordon Brown, Captain of the Yale Eleven, from the 1900 Yale Harvard Program

 

 

The New Yale Fence above from Harvard-Yale 1900 program 

 

 

Levy Jackson, Yale captain from 1949:

We particularly like the crew cut and the all-white outfit on Henry Higdon, Yale captain in 1961, taken from the Harvard-Yale program of the same year.

You will probably recognized the future ‘41′, below, Yale Captain in 1948:

 

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Famous Ivy League Footballers

Ivy League Football Programs sometimes contain people who are recognizable beyond the world of sport. This 1984 Pennsylvania v. Cornell program features a picture of the late Christopher Reeves (Cornell ‘74) as Superman.

Edgar Allan Poe 1891 was the quarterback and captain in his junior and senior years at Princeton. He was named All-American in 1889. We’re not sure he was pictured in any late nineteenth century programs, but we’re always on the lookout.

Ted Kennedy is pictured in some of the Harvard  Programs of 1954 and 1955. Bobby is pictured in Harvard programs from 1946 and 1947

 

 

President Gerald Ford, was a Coach of Yale from 1935-1940 and is pictured periodically in those programs.

John Heisman was the coach of Penn 1920 to 1922 and also attended Brown for two years 1891-1892 then he attended Penn.

Glenn (Pop) Warner was a Cornell Guard of the 1890s and would go on to become coach. A good program for the serious collector is the 1921 Penn v. Pittsburgh which has Heisman v. Warner as coaches facing off against each other.

Dartmouth v. Stanford - The Battle of the Indians

This interesting 1939 matchup between two teams with Indian mascots caught our interest recently.

 

This historic game was played at the Polo Grounds in New York City, former home of the New York Yankees.

 

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Football Shaped College Football Programs

Late 19th and early 20th century Ivy League Football programs were often in the shape of footballs as see in the Harvard-Yale 1913 program above, played at Soldiers Field.

 

 

The programs were often held together by twine or strong and end up being very fragile. The Princeton-Harvard 1895 program above is a rare example of a program found with the original string attached.

A more practical approach to a “football” on the cover is the Yale-Harvard program from 1897 above, which give the illusion of a football, but is in fact a conventional program.

The Penn-Cornell 1902 program is a rare football shaped program with a ‘portrait’ orientation.

Generally, football shaped programs sell for several hundred dollars and often more if the original string binding is still attached and the program is in excellent condition.

 

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The Twelfth Man Incident - Princeton v. Dartmouth 1935

During the 1935 Princeton-Dartmouth game with 52,000 fans braving a blinding snowstorm in Palmer Stadium. A fan ran from the field and played in Dartmouth’s line giving them a “twelfth man” on the field.

In the fourth quarter a George Larsen ran onto the field and yelled “Kill them Princeton bastards”. He was later quoted in the papers as saying that he rushed onto the field because, “Dartmouth was taking it on the chin and I always feel sorry for the underdog.”

 

Princeton had been marching downfield and was at the Dartmouth two-yard line. When the ball was snapped, he rushed into a gap and threw himself in front of the Princeton ball carrier, who was brought down short of the end zone. He was grabbed by police and escorted out of the stadium.

Dave Camerer, a Dartmouth player in the game recounts the incident in the 1939 Dartmouth v. Princeton program, “That little, mouse-haired man, with the grey windbreaker and Barbara Frietchie stare. He rushed in from some un-charted snowdrift, pushed me aside and took a four-point tackle stance. He beat the gun, beat the ball and beat the ‘could be’ ball toter full on the chest, shouting and muttering fragments of syllables. It was almost inspiring while it lasted. I remember how Weller and mates promptly seized the poor little devil by the scruff of the neck and attempted to boot him for a field goal until a cop rescued him and started him on his forced march to the exit gate.”

The picture associated with this post is from the Dartmouth v. Princeton 1939 program and is a photo montage of the incident. The circle in the middle shows the crazed fan being escorted off the field.

Excerpts taken from Football. The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession by Mark F. Bernstein

The Indian on Dartmouth Football Programs

 

For a long time, Native American’s were depicted on the covers of Ivy League football program when teams played against Dartmouth. The illustration above is from a Princeton-Dartmouth game in 1949. The program below is from a Columbia-Dartmouth game in 1949. Although most are funny and were meant to poke fun at the Dartmouth fans, we can see where Native Americans can take offense to the poor depictions of Indians.

 

The following was taken from Dartmouth’s website:

The nickname for Dartmouth’s athletics teams is “The Big Green,” but the College has never had an official mascot. Contrary to what some believe, the Indian was never Dartmouth’s official mascot. The use of the Indian, in conjunction with Dartmouth’s athletic teams, dated back to the 1920s. It is difficult to determine exactly why, but some Boston sportswriters and cartoonists began to refer to Dartmouth’s teams as the Indians prior to the 1922 football game with Harvard. The use of the “Indian” nickname remained in use informally and unofficially until the early 1970s. In 1974, Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees issued a statement calling for an end to the use of the Indian as a mascot.”

 Our friend Ben Franklin hits the Dartmouth Indian in the derriere with an arrow in this 1961 program:

Harvard-Dartmouth 1942:

Even into the late 60s, the Indian was a continued motif on Dartmouth programs. The one below is a Dartmouth program and not one published by a rival team. This makes the University’s assertion that it didn’t endorse the use of the Indian a bit disingenuous.

 

Editorials in The Dartmouth Review have argued the opposite, that the school should not have abandoned the Indian as its mascot - since it  was part of its history: “Our Indian representations have not been cartoonish slurs but serious, noble portraits of serious, noble warriors. Our connection with the Indian has not been arbitrary stereotype but a reference to an important historical fact — Dartmouth, of course, was originally conceived as a school for educating American Indians”.

In 1984 The Dartmouth Review asked more than 200 chiefs of Indian tribes across the country whether or not they thought the Indian symbol offensive. By a margin of more than 10-to-1, these chiefs said that Dartmouth’s Indian symbol did not offend them; many said it was a symbol of Indian pride.

We’re not going to take sides in the debate, simply, we point out that some of the Dartmouth covers are the most interesting and original of all the Ivy League football programs.

The Terrible 60s and 70s

One of our passions is collecting vintage ivy league programs. There are so many exciting programs to collecting. The early programs, rich with history. The Victorian era programs inspire us with their beautiful image. The funny cover illustrations of the 40s, 50s and 60s showing humorous cartoons and team mascots. The super art deco period, where some of the cover illustrations are works of art.

One period that falls flat on its face are  programs from the 1960s and 1970s.The images on the programs during this period tend toward realism. Gone is any sense of history, any sense of the rich tradition that precided them. Not only do we dislike the programs, we intensely dislike them.

Perhaps they weren’t thinking here?

Gee, it might be attractive to show someone’s back through a chain-link fence? Delightful idea.

 Hello? Not only does he need a haircut, it looks like this was published when they were on a trip?

Ben Franklin - Penn Football Programs

It would be difficult for a college in the United States to have a better pedigree than Penn. The University of Pennsylvania was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1740. Franklin was frequently used by illustrators on Penn programs. His depiction varied greatly depending upon whether the game was held at Franklin Field or away. Franklin in depicted in an unflattering manner on this 1942 program for that year’s game played at Harvard:

The mascot of the University of Pennsylvania is The Quaker, used from time to time to adorn covers of their football programs, as in this 1958 home game against Harvard:

Ben’s a lot happier here, shown after capturing Handsome Dan, Yale’s mascot on this wonderful 1968 program:

Although, he looks a bit quisical here, looking for the Brown Bear depicted in the sky in this 1966 home game program:

Penn has a rich history in Ivy League football. It’s first Ivy League opponent was Princeton, who beat them 6-0 on November 11, 1876. He also is credited with inventing the forward pass and center snap.

John Heisman was a graduate of Penn (1892) and served as their football coach from 1920-1922.

Penn’s website has a nice history of nineteenth century football played at this historic university.

Harvard Yale Football Program 1900

Harvard and Yale faced each other at the turn of the century on Saturday, November 24, 1900 at Yale Field in New Haven.

Yale’s captain, Francis Gordon Brown, sitting on the Yale Fence. For his era, Brown was a large player at six foot, four inches tall and 202 pounds. During this era, most players were five foot 10″ or 11″ and 160-170 pounds.

Yale’s trophy room:

Harvard’s 1900 football team:

Yale’s 1900 football team:

Harvard’s turn of the century captain, Charles Dudley Daly ‘01 was 5 feet 9 1/2 inches tall and weighed 151 pounds:

Harvard v. Yale Football Program 1900