Jackie Robinson was one of the greatest baseball players ever. His number, 42, has been retired in perpetuity by every team in Major League Baseball. He won the Rookie of the Year award in 1947 when he started playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would go on to become a six-time all star and was MVP in 1949. And, his most significant accomplishment is that he broke the color barrier becoming the first black Major Leaguer.
Jackie went to U.C.L.A. prior to his baseball career and played a variety of sports while there including football. He is featured in some U.C.L.A. football program from the time, most notably this 1940 program.
He is listed in the program as a 22 year old Jack Robinson from Pasadena. In a small bio included in the program that state that he was a letterman in football, baseball, basketball, and track and led the nation’s gainers last year in his position at halfback with an impressive average of 12.24 yard per play. Below is Robinson pictured in the program. Ironically baseball was Robinson’s worst sport at U.C.L.A., he hit only .097 during his only year playing.
The words of Douglas MacArthur, “Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that, upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory,” are etched on the walls of the gymnasium at West Point.
It was a cadet (Dennis Mahan Michie, a graduate of 1892), who proposed that the Army team play a game against the Naval Academy in 1890. West Point’s field is named after Michie. Omar Bradley (USMA class if 1915) played on the army team during has time at the military academy. His commander in World War II, Dwight Eisenhower also played on the Black Knights and was a starter at linebacker and running back in 1912.
Other famous players for the military academy include Doc Blanchard who was the first junior to win the Heisman Trophy.
The 1979 Army-Navy program shows off the cadet and midshipmen’s flags
The U.S. Naval Academy has just a rich a history, with Roger Staubach leading the way in terms of players who would go on have successful careers in the sport.
While future astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Michael Collins didn’t play football at the Naval Academy, the 1965 program features them:
When Playboy printed its magazine they did a series of issues dedicated to the “Women of the Ivy League.” This is not our subject today, but instead it is early imagery of young collegiate age females from the turn of the 20th century.
This beautiful set of images below is from 1903 and they are “premium” cards. A common practice at the time was to give out various “cards” or little gifts to entice people to buy your product. Tobacco companies were famous for giving out miniature rugs or little “silks”. Joseph Tetlow was a Philadelphia based manufacturer of perfumes and toilet powders. Their most famous products were the Gossamer and Swan Down powders. These cards were given out as premiums with a Gossmer purchase.
The use of color and the imagery in the cards is spectacular. A full set of the cards issued (there were only four) are seen framed below. Each card measures 6 inches by 4 inches. The Harvard “girls” are about to go out on the lake in a row boat, the Penn girls are playing the newly imported game of golf, the Yale girls look like they just finished a bout of fencing and the Princeton girls are playing basketball.
Original Tetlow cards are difficult to find although sometimes we have reproduction cards. Collectors can tell the original cards from the reproductions because the originals have “Copyright, 1903, Joseph Tetlow” on the bottom left and the reproductions do not.
The maker of the throw pillow seen below is unknown, but it carries on the theme of early collegiate women and is copyrighted from 1905:
Harvard and Penn have more progressive histories regarding female students, whereas Princeton and Yale didn’t admit women until 1969 so the women depicted certainly aren’t students, but idealized Victorian era fans.
The granddaddy of early collegiate illustrators was F. Earl Christy who trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts. His images are iconic, like the Yale women seen below:
We just acquired a lot of old Stanford street signs and became interested in the origin of many of the names. Stanford’s campus took its street names from a variety of sources including early Spanish and Mexican explorers of California, places affiliated with the Gold Rush and from Spanish names.
An invaluable resource in our research was the 2005 work produced by Richard W. Cottle’s in 2005 and published by the university called: Stanford Street Names.
Palo Road took its name from the Spanish for “stick.” It is not far from the famous redwood tree, El Palo Alto, that inspired the name of Leland Stanford’s Palo Alto Farm, and later, of the city of Palo Alto.
Lathrop Drive in the Pine Hill residential area, honors university co-founder Jane Lathrop Stanford, Leland Stanford’s wife, and her brothers.
Many of the street names were given by David Starr Jordan, the founding president of Stanford, who was fond of naming streets after missionaries. Lasuen Street commemorates Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, who left Spain in 1759 and served at various Franciscan missions in Mexico.
Raimundo Way refers to Rancho Canada de Raymundo, a large Mexican land grant situated in today’s San Mateo County.
One of the main roads on campus, Serra Street, was named for Father Junipero Serra, the Franciscan missionary and founder of the first nine missions in Alta California. The name was chosen by David Starr Jordan, Stanford’s first president because he was impressed by Serra’s passion, energy, and vision.
Some of the interesting geographic names were based on associations with the Gold Rush, namely Panama Street and Valparaiso. Panama Street first appeared in Stanford maps around 1915, a year after the Panama Canal opened. The name highlights the important role play by the Isthmus of Panama in the history of Gold Rush California as a popular shortcut bypassing Cape Horn.
Valparaiso was one of the original streets in the first residential area on campus. It was named for the seaport in Chile by the same name through which many gold rush hopefuls passes en route to California.
Vintage College Football Programs & Collectibles 
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