The Stanford-California “Big Game” in 1895 was played to a 6-6 tie and was played in San Francisco’s Central Park. on Thanksgiving Day. The hand-tied program features a colorful and interesting cover.

As described in The Games of California and Stanford published in 1900 the weather was “Rainy and Misty.” The father of American football, Walter Camp served as Stanford’s head coach.

With ninety second left to play, the California Captain Sherman, who played half-back. California had posession on the twenty-yard line. In two attempts of ten yards each Sherman, “had flung his 145 pounds of muscle, backed by grit, over the line for a touchdown, directly under the goal bar.” At that time, a touchdown was worth four points. Two more points were added when the field goal was kicked, a last minute come from behind for California.

We have a nice selection of Big Game programs on our website:

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Carter Hoffman mascots are listed for sale inside the front cover of this 1954 Ivy League football program.

Hoffman was a well-known artist from Los Angeles who made these hand carved mascots for various Ivy League and other colleges in the 1950s. Hoffman also did some mascots for professional sports teams and even some lesser know and more obscure schools. Sold under the name “Carter Hoffman Artcraft” they have become highly collectible. A brochure from the 1950s lists over 120 different schools that they made mascots for.

The mascots are also featured on this Yale-Uconn 1952 program cover

The rare Princeton tiger mascot seen above

The now defunct Dartmouth Indian mascot from the 1950s

The company also made bottle pour spouts which replace a cork that has been pulled. The bottle pour stops contain the school mascot on the top.

The John Harvard bottle pour stop mascot.

Carter Hoffman items are sought after by collectors and are difficult to find. There is an active market for them. We occasionally have some in inventory on our website:

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Credit to insidetheparkcollectibles on the history of these rare collectibles.

The 1974 Disney themed poster

The first poster produced was for the inagural carnival in 1911. It pictures an abstract picture of a skier in flight. There was then a long hiatis on the production of posters to accompany the event. Between 1912 and 1934 there were no posters produced. When they resumed in the 1930s and 40s they were in primarly an “art moderne” style. The 50s saw the posters go through phases of Bauhaus Constructivism and Kitsch.

The 1994 poster with a Roaring ’20s theme

There is an annual Winter Carnival Poster contest and until 1942 the poster contest was open to design students (from the Pratt Institute) and to Dartmouth students. After 1946 it was open only to students. The judges are a board of “men” from the Dartmouth Carnival Council and the faculty of the College. This description was taken from a 1963 memo outlining the contest.

The 2004 poster, the second with a Dr. Seuss theme

The carnival has a different theme every year and among our favorites are those pictured here.  Original posters are quite collectible. Some years there were slight variations to posters produced, which are an even rarer breed.

We have a nice selection of real, vintage carnival posters on our website:

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Reference material: Winter Carnival : A Century of Dartmouth Posters

The 1970 Columbia Cornell program features Little on its cover

The two biggest wins of Little’s career were the victory over Stanford in the 1934 Rose Bowl and when Columbia beat Army in 1947 snapping a 23-game undefeated streak for West Point.

Little was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1960. He also authored a book titled Lou Little’s Football, published in 1934, which describes his football philosophy. We have many nice Columbia programs that have articles about or by Lou Little at our website:

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The program cover of the 1922 program is a classic:

Apparently, they had problems in 1929, perhaps due to the onset of the Stock Market crash a month earlier. As you can see, they repeated the 1922 cover again in 1929, the only modification being the background color has changed from black to white.

No bother, it’s a great cover.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Please visit our website for a nice collection of Cornell v. Penn programs, one of the oldest and most traditional rivalries in college football:

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Not only did Touchdown bring excitement to the spectators by climbing the goal posts at the start of each game, he also brought good luck to the team. The Big Red was unbeaten during the entire year of his debut. But it was the first and last season.

Unhappily, Touchdown’s expensive taste for honey, combined with a penchant for running amuck in hotel dining rooms and elevators (Detroit), capped by a final wild escapade through a saltwater taffy shop and into the ocean (Atlantic City) proved too much for his “manager” guardian. Alas, he was unceremoniously given away to a nearby zoo.

His successor the following year apparently became a dropout in an ever shorter length of time. Reportedly, yet another bear cub was seen staked out on Schoellkopf Field in early Fall 1919, but he mysteriously vanished before the first game of the season. Although there have been no more live bears at Schoellkopf since — as every Cornellian knows the very last one disappeared in Beebee Lake — the Cornell Bear is ubiquitous on campus.

The mascot adorns the head of the University Mace. Moreover, the multiplicity of other Bear decorations redound to his immense popularity. loftily perched, he graces the archway of Willard Straight Hall poring over a book on one side, which cradling the inevitable pigskin on the other.

The above was taken from a Columbia-Cornell Football program published in 1968 which recounted the history of Ivy League Mascots.

We have a nice selection of Cornell football programs and memorabilia for sale on our website:

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It is recorded that the Class of 1869 adopted orange as the class colors in honor of William of Orange, prince of the House of Nassau, for whom the first college building, Nassau Hall, was named. At the inauguration of Dr. James McCosh as the president of the college, the Class of 1869 wore ribbons with “Princeton” emblazoned in black letters. At the Saratoga Regatta in 1874, Princeton Crews wore orange and black; since that year, they have been the recognized colors of Princeton.

In the 1876 football game against Yale, the Princeton team appeared for the first time in uniforms wearing black jerseys and tights with an orange “P” on the breast. by 1880, after a variety of combinations, they had substituted a jersey with alternating orange and black strips in the present pattern.

Early association with the Tiger is evidenced in the origin of the “Tiger Cheer.” Later known as the “Locomotive – Princeton” since its cadence resembles that of a steam locomotive starting to move, the cheer was reportedly picked up by the Princeton students from a Civil War regiment which passed through the town.

Claim is also made to the adoption of the beast around 1882, since a campus humor magazine, The Tiger, was established that year. It is believed, however, that the Princeton students drifted into the use of the tiger as a mascot about this time through the influence of newspapermen covering athletic events at Princeton, New York and New Haven. A newspaper account credited the men from Nassau Hall with fighting like tigers.

In the 1920′s some undergraduates brought a live Tiger to Princeton and exhibited the real thing at football games. The innovation was short-lived, however, when the students realized the cost of the beast’s upkeep.

It was just after World War II when a student dressed in a rented costume first performed the now famous tumbling act.

The above was excerpted from a Columbia Cornell Football Program in 1968 which outlines the history of Ivy League mascots.

We have many Princeton football programs for sale:

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In 1924 the Lion received formal recognition when a 14-ton bronze statue of the legendary monarch was presented as a gift of the Class of 1899 on the occasion of the dedication of Baker Field. The statue stood on a hillside overlooking the “upper” or practice field, but was moved in 1962 and is now gazing over Baker Field from in front of the Chrystie Field House.

Columbia has received numerous offers of live lion cubs to serve as rallying points at football games, but they have mostly been declined. Usually, a cheerleader dressed in lion finery serves this function. However, on several occasions live lions have been rented for Homecoming; the most recent appearances of lions, caged beneath the scoreboard, were in 1963 and 1967.

The above was Taken from Columbia v. Cornell Football Program 1968, pictured below.

We have a nice selection of Columbia University Football Programs on our website:

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Turner participated in the Brown Yacht Club and gravitated toward Classics while at Brown. When he informed his father that he was taking up Classics as a Major he received a stern letter from home which began, “I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted Classics as a Major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on the way home today…I am a practical man, and for the life of me I cannot possibly understand why you should wish to speak Greek. With whom will you communicate in Greek?”

It gets better. The letter ends with “I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass, and the sooner you get out of that filthy atmosphere, the better it will suit me. Devotedly, Dad.”

It’s too bad we don’t write letters anymore. They forced the writer to think before writing, as opposed to the electronic age we live in today, where more is written but its quality is greatly diminished. Anyhow, we digress.

Turner’s time at Brown was the first time he was not under the stern watch of his father or at a military academy. Apparently Turner wanted to go to the Naval Academy, partially out of his love of ships, but his father objected.

Turner’s other famous quote about his time at Brown, “I learned mainly about drinking and sex, and I could have gotten that for less than $3,000 a year.”

While at Brown Turner and a group of friends got drunk and ended up at a nearby women’s college, and Ted was suspended from Brown as a result. After a tour of duty in the Coast Guard, Turner returned to Brown and took up classics.

To take the story full circle, Turner wasn’t happy in his frat house, “It was one of those houses taken over by goodies who worried a lot about your grades. They gave me a lot of talks, suggested I go to study hall and stuff like that. One homecoming weekend I burned down their display and that was it. Kicked right out.”

Excerpted from Brown Alumni Monthly September 1975 written by Roger Vaughan, who knew Turner while at Brown.

We have lots of nice Brown memorabilia on our website:

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Some people contend the game is not  in the record books, but I have seen it listed often in official game programs as a real contest between the teams. Wikipedia states that the 1918 game was an “unofficial” football game played by Student Army Training Corps (SATC) teams  and should not be included in series record.

The 32 page program is shaped like a football, which is rare for Big Game Programs (1920 was football shaped also). One thing that is indisputable is that the 1918 program is indeed on the of the rarer Stanford-California programs to find and that very few college football programs from any team were produced in 1918.

We have a nice selection of Stanford v. California Big Game Programs at our website:

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