Debora Cheney
Larry and Ellen Foster Communications
Librarian and head,
News and Microforms Library
Years Ago... The Historical Digital Collegian Database
Years Ago… The Historical Digital Collegian Database, now covering 100 years (1887-1987) allows us to re-visit and re-remember Penn State history through the eyes of the student newspaper.
Football Memories
Football has always been an important part of the fall season at Old State. The rivalries have changed, the traditions have grown, and almost from the beginning, the campus newspaper provided play-by-play coverage. Dear Old State has always loved football and has developed strong football traditions.
Football: An Inter-Class Rivalry
“The teams were very evenly matched, and the most desperate playing and hardest fought game ever witnessed here, began to be of interest, when the opposing teams had measured and fully comprehended the strength of their antagonists.” —(“Athletics,” The Free Lance, Dec. 1, 1888, p. 14)
The fall issues of The Free Lance—Penn State’s first campus newspaper—always carried extensive play-by-play reports of Penn State football games and rivalries. From its earliest days, Penn State football consisted of two different types of games: Inter-class and Inter-college games. The Inter-Class Football Class Championship was played each year by the freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior classes, who fought for their class “honor.”
By 1905, these Inter-Class rivalries had become more informal. The “Toothpicks vs. Tumblers” played at Beaver Field on a Saturday afternoon in November. An “aggregation of tall lean upper classmen met a similar team of short stubby students” for a game on the “college gridiron.” The “Toothpicks, composed of elongated students who lack in avoirdupois, will play a game of football with the Tumblers, a conglomeration of short runts whose vertical and horizontal dimensions more nearly approach equality. It is not necessary to say that the game will be a laughable comedy not to be missed.” This game was played for the benefit of the campus newspaper: The State Collegian and the results were reported just below the score of the Anapolis 11, State 5 game. (“Toothpicks vs. Tumblers,” The State Collegian, Nov. 9, 1905, p. 5)
But there is no doubt that “foot ball” was also considered a rough and tumble sport. In the class championship game of November 1888 “considerable slugging went on, but as rough playing seemed to be in order, neither side heeded it much.” The Junior class defeated the Freshmen by a score of 6-0. The play-by-play account includes familiar names—“a fumble by Atherton” and “McLean kicked a goal.”--“Rah! Rah! Rah! Ra! Ra!Ra!” (“Athletics,” The Free Lance, Dec. 1, 1888, p. 14)
Love Among the Football Fields
Football clearly had a reputation for being a dirty and brutish sport. While some girls found “football men” heroes they treated with “awe and veneration,” other girls were more hard-won. In H.M. Andrew’s short story, “A Football Victory” (The Free Lance, Jan. 1, 1896, pp. 143-151), Miss Elizabeth Graham, a “strong minded girl with advanced ideas” eventually gives way to the handsome football player, Tom Armstrong, “with his “tousled mop of tawny yellow hair.”
“…that big brute half back and captain of the University football team, the lion of the hours, is to be here to-night, and he is going to introduce me first thing. Lion—forsooth, I think it is ridiculous the way people are raving over football. It is a brutal game, fit only for savages and barbarians…”
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“Miss Elizabeth was dazed. Was this tall, handsome fellow the same as that dirt besmeared warrior who had torn and struggled and battered that November afternoon, and was his that that soft cultured and well modulated voice.”
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“All the aversion she had expected to fear had changed to attraction. He was a perfect gentleman, she told herself, in spite of his football playing, and his talk and manner were those of an intelligent, thoughtful young fellow.”
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“Football had won, and the girl with a career to live had commenced that career.”
Football: Inter-Campus Rivalries
“… State finished the most glorious week of foot-ball achievements ever made by a team representing her.”—(“Athletic Department,” Nov. 1, 1898, p. 186)
Old State took on its share of significant opponents. Rivalries with Pitt, Bucknell, Penn, Susquehanna, Annapolis, Princeton, and Army were fiercely fought and often hard won (and lost) over many years. Lesser-known opponents, by today’s standards, were significant at the time:
- The D.C. & A.C. team (Duquesne)----“one of the strongest foot ball teams now on any grid-iron, a team composed of eleven such star players as are seldom found on a single team, but, although defeat was anticipated, our boys entered the game with some determination and courage.” (“The D.C & A.C.-State Game: D.C and A.C. 18; State 5,” The Free Lance, Nov. 1, 1898, p. 190)
- Bucknell (1898)—“state’s most ancient rival” since 1889, included Christy Mathewson, who demonstrated his re-known kicking skill against Penn State (“Bucknell’s only strength lay in Mathewson’s fine punting”). (“The Bucknell—State Game, Bucknell 0; State 16,” The Free Lance, Nov. 1, 1898, p. 191)
- The Carlisle Indians—in an editorial dated Oct. 10, 1907—“Saturday’s game, if judged from the score alone,… was a decided victory for the Indians. Such judgment, however, would be decidedly unfair to our team. First of all, the Carlisle Indians are to all intents and purposes a professional football team. They do not play under a four-year rule,… Some of the man who played in Saturday’s game have been members of the team for six or seven years…. (State Collegian Oct. 10, 1907, p. 6)
- Pittsburgh (or Pittsburg, as it was often spelled)--“Since the annual State-Pitt game has become a classic in Thanksgiving Day football [begun in 1903], …it is interesting to look back…. and call to memory again the gritty men who have fought for the Blue and White and the Blue and Gold for seven years back.” (“State –Pitt History: Five Games out of Seven Have Been Blue and White Victories,” The State Collegian, Nov. 17, 1910, p. 1)
Early Sports Journalism—a Record for All Time
Early news stories (could be more accurately described as, game summaries, since they often were published as much as a week or month after the game was played) typically describe the game, play-by-play. These descriptions of gridiron victories (and losses) provide an historical account of how football was played by men in leather helmets, wool pants and shirts. It was a grittier game with more mud and less physical size and strength (one account summarizes the average weight of the players for both teams Bucknell: 164 pounds, State: 172 pounds) (“The Bucknell—State Game, Bucknell 0; State 16,” The Free Lance, Nov. 1, 1898, p. 194.).
Overall, these news stories provide details and commentary we might now rely upon game announcers to provide for today’s game. The 1911 Penn State v. Pennsylvania game marked a watershed event: “Penn State Beats Penn 22 to 6”—screamed the headline--“Quakers Overwhelmed by Superior Play of Blue and White—Miller Star of Game—Captain Very, Harlow, Engle, and Mauthe Play Great Ball.” The story went on:
“The third period ended with the ball in Penn’s possession on her own three yard line. Standing behind the goal line Mercer, who was rushed in to the kick ball out of danger failed. The tearing, lunging State forwards were through Penn’s line and on top of Mercer almost at the instant the ball reached his hands.
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Captain Very played a remarkable game. He was all over the field, down like a shot under the kicks and rarely missed a tackle. By his generalship the Blue and White won her first victory over Pennsylvania.”
Also available for the Pennsylvania-Penn State game were “Graphs of Game”…” mounted on white cardboard suitable for framing” which could be purchased for 15 cents--From Bowman and Shields. These graphs detail the game’s runs, kicks, passes, fumbles, out of bounds, and blocked kicks. 
Our Yankee Stadium connection via “telephone communication”: In 1929, Penn State played New York University in Yankee Stadium. The game was announced “play-by-play” via “telephone communication” to Recreation Hall. The telephone, according to the news story, would be connected to a loud speaker and the “diagramatic field with the name and number of each player will also be used to follow the progress of the games. Scores of the other major games through the East will be received regularly by arrangement with Western Union.” The game was announced by Charles A. Wakeman, formerly chief announcer and studio manager at radio station WCAE in Pittsburgh. Admission charged: 50 cents. (“Telephone Communication Will Relay Play-by-play Account of N.Y.U. Battle,” Penn State Collegian, Oct. 18, 1929, p. 1)
School Spirit: Advertisements, Bowl Bids, Tailgates and Bonfires
Issues of our campus newspaper over the years reflect college life in State College during fall football season--advertisments to send weekly laundry home by “handy Rail Way Express;” for Parker Fountain Pens, for Arrow Shirts, and for train schedules. Penn State football was included in the “1938 Football Schedules” in the “Pigskin Preview of 1938 by Francis Wallace”—a special issue of The Saturday Evening Post (Cost: 5 cents). [How Will Penn State Finish? --A Football Expert Tells You in This Week’s Post—Penn State Collegian, September 20, 1938 p. 3.]
Front page stories include hopes for an Orange Bowl Bid gone awry (“Hopes Fade for Orange Bowl Bid, The Daily Collegian, Dec. 3, 1940, p. 1), and reports of the annual Gridiron Ball, bonfire and “parade” to the Lion Shrine for songs and cheers--all grace the pages of State’s campus newspaper. [‘Gridiron Ball, Climaxes Big Weekend; Bonfire, Rally, Football Game Slated” The Collegian, Sept. 29, 1944, p. 1.] (for stories about this tradition see: “Bonfires, Riots, Panty Raids: Part of Penn State’s Past—..third in a series of articles by the Daily Collegian concerning student activism at Penn State” by John Bronson, Daily Collegian, May 22, 1968, p. 1)
Even “Penn State’s Football Plight, Well Mom, It’s this Way”—an editorial “letter home to Mom” (Penn State Collegian, Nov. 28, 1939, p. 1) reminds us that the seasons of football wins and loses, come and go:
“The smoke from the many “victory” bonfires is still hiding us in a hazy Nittany Valley… It took 20 years, but oh my, how that triumph did climax the most successful Lion football season in many years.”
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“Many are of the opinion that the football situation was unjustly attacked in a much too bombastic, outspoken and “half-cocked” manner. Adverse comment and ill feeling are the only tangible things created, some claim.”
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You will agree with me Mom, if you won’t, Dad probably will, that whether the tactics used in the opening blast were ethical; whether the time to strike was psychological set or whether the immediate outcome would be good or bad—all are matters of fervent debate.”
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“We are all human beings—yes, even in the newspaper business.The content of Between the Lions [a regular column in the Collegian]was not released as a spur-of-the moment personal affront. What was said was directed at a machine—a machine which merely did not fail to produce in a single attempt, but had sputtered periodically over a span of nine years.”
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Now the best Penn State season in years has been completed. If you want to check the record with Dad, it will show State has five victories, two ties, and one defeat—and that we didn’t lose a game following the initial Collegian bombshell.
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“Your loving Son, Bill”
[Penn State Collegian, Nov. 28, 1939, p. 1]