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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 338251, member: 289"] between the wars... 1920’s 1920 1-1-1-3-3 = 1.80 (Chick Meehan got his coaching career off to a great start with this group who went 6-2-1- overall and 3-1-1 vs. the bigs. The first three games were all #1 performances, including a tie with unbeaten Pitt. They were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.) 1921- 1-2-9-2-3-2 = 3.16 (The low point was a 0-35 woodshed beating at Pitt. The highpoint was a 7-14 loss in Archbold to a 10-0 Washington and Jefferson team who beat everybody else worse and then went out to tie mighty California and it’s All-American, Brick Muller, in the Rose Bowl. Cal had a 49 game unbeaten string from 1920-25 and only they did better against W&J that year than the Orange did. We were 7-2 overall and 4-2 vs. the bigs and #15 in Howell‘s rankings.) 1922- 3-4-5-1-3 = 3.20 (The only team to beat the For Horseman of Notre Dame in the three years they were together as a unit was Nebraska and they did it twice. Nebraska lost three times in those years- once to Red Grange and Illinois and twice to Syracuse. This year’s Big Red were 7-0 and outscored their opponents 270-19 in their other games but we beat them 9-6 in Archbold. Roy Simmons said the team was told that Nebraska was sightseeing- they would be going to Niagara Falls over the game. That riled up the Orange. We were 6-1-2 overall and 2-1-2 vs. the bigs. Sorenson rated us #6, probably on the strength of the Nebraska game. Yes, there was more than one “Nebraska game”.) 1923- 1-1-4-2-2-4-2 = 2.29 (How would you like to beat Alabama and Nebraska in the same year? The Tide was just about to emerge as a national power when they came to Archbold and got beat 23-0, an afternoon in which Coach Wallace Wade said he learned more football than in all the rest of his career combined. At the end of the season SU traveled to Lincoln and repeated their win of the previous year, 7-0. Overall, we were 8-1 and 6-1 vs. the bigs. The one was an agonizing upset, 7-16, vs. arch-rival Colgate, a harbinger of things to come. Despite that, Howell rated SU his #1 team for 1923, our “other” national champion. Six of the seven big time teams we played had winning records. This team was also invited to the Rose Bowl but the administration again turned the offer down, to much controversy.) 1924 1-1-2-4-4-2-8 = 3.14 (Chick’s last SU team went 8-2-1 overall and 5-1-1 vs. the bigs. They somehow lost 0-3 to West Virginia Weslayan but were 8-1-1 when they got a trip to the west coast to play Southern California, perhaps to make up for the declined Rose Bowl invitation. They had a great time of it. “The Syracuse Football Story” by Ken Rapport shows the team posing on a movie set with the director and star, (unidentified). They did not have as good a time losing to the Trojans 0-16. Still they were ranked as high as #18 by Howell. One of the “small-time“ teams we played was Boston College.) 1925 1-2-4-5-1 = 2.40 (Colgate was unbeaten, including a 6-19 triumph over the Orange that began the “Hoodoo”. We were also unbeaten going into that game. We wound up 8-1-1 overall and 4-1 vs. the big-time schools. Somehow we were tied 3-3 by Ohio Weslayan- we should avoid the Weslayans. Howell and Sorenson had us at #17.) 1926 3-3-3-2= 2.75 (Against a watered-down schedule with only four big-time teams we went 7-2-1 but only 1-2-1 vs. the bigs. Sorenson did rate us #23.) 1927 1-4-4-3-5 = 3.40 (There was some slippage in the program as indicated by an overall record of 5-3-2, with another tie with Ohio Weslayan and a record vs. the bigs of 1-3-1. The highlight was a 19-6 win over Georgetown, then a major college team who beat their eight other opponents by a combined 377-2! But nobody ranked us for the first time in a decade.) 1928 3-6-4-8-3 = 4.80 (The slippage continued punctuated by a 6-30 loss to Colgate, which was becoming a power under Andy Kerr. We actually lost to Ohio Weslayan, 0-6. We were 4-4-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. big time teams.) 1929 7-5-4-3-5 = 4.80 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. the top level teams and unranked. Colgate rolled 0-21.) Summary: 1920 1.80; 1921 3.16; 1922 3.20; 1923 2.29; 1924 3.14; 1925 2.40; 1926 2.75; 1927 3.40; 1928 4.80; 1929 4.80 Average for the decade: 3.17 1930’s 1930 6-4-5-3-3 = 4.20 (We were 5-2-2 overall but only 1-2-2 vs. big time teams, including another whipping at the hands of the Red Raiders, 7-36. ) 1931 4-6-3-3-2 = 3.60 (We stormed into the Colgate game at 7-0 and limped back out, having lost 7-21 and then got held to a 0-0 tie with Columbia to end the season. Nonetheless we were back in the rankings, at least according to Albrecht who ranked us #17.) 1932 11-3-4-2-2 = 4.40 (We were starting to play more intersectional opponents- Florida the previous year and SMU this year. The Mustangs would be real good in a couple of years but they were only a 3-7-2 this year. We still managed to lost to them, 6-16 and only one team did worse, our first “double figure” game since the 1906 Yale debacle. We were also one of the nine teams who failed to score, 0-16, vs. Colgate in their “undefeated, untied, unscored upon and uninvited” year- people thought they should be in the Rose Bowl. We also managed to lose to Ohio Weslayan again, 12-19. We wound up 4-4-1 but only 1-3-1 vs. big time schools) 1933 2-8-2-6-4-6 = 4.67 (We were 4-4 overall but only 2-4 vs. the “bigs”. The fact that we played only two small-time teams is a change. Colgate got us again, 3-13.) 1934 3-3-1-1-3-3 = 2.33 (Our best team of the 1930’s. We won out first 6, including 10-0 over a Michigan State team that was 8-0 vs. everyone else. But then we came a cropper vs. Colgate, 2-13 and Columbia 0-12, both of whom finished 7-1. Albrecht had the highest ranking at #20 but this team was clearly better than the 1931 team, at least by this measure. We were 6-2 and 4-2 vs. the bigs.) 1935 4-6-3-4-4-3 = 4.00 (For the second year in a row we were 6-0 going into the Colgate game. For the 11th year in a row we couldn’t come up with a win, this time getting blown out 0-27. And all these games were played in Archbold Stadium because it was so much bigger than Colgate‘s field. We wound up 6-1-1 and 4-1-1 vs. the bigs. But nobody ranked us and the point differential rankings suggest why: this team wasn’t as strong as the 1935 team, despite the similar record.) 1936 6-8-7-4-7-6 = 6.33 (This year all the air came out of the balloon and we had our worst season since going 0-8-1 in 1892. The record was 0-6 vs. big time teams and 1-1 vs. the smalls, including Baldwin-Wallace who beat us 0-19- yes it was that bad. One thing I will say for this team was that they weren’t the worst team any of their opponents played- 6th of 8 vs. Cornell, 8th of 11 vs. Maryland, 7th of 8 vs. Penn State, 4th of 8 vs. Indiana, 7th of 8 vs. Columbia and 6th of 9 vs. Colgate. We were also 3 of 8 vs. Baldwin-Wallace and beat Clarkson 31-0. But we stunk, no doubt about it, and it cost Vic Hanson his job. ) 1937 2-9-3-6-6 = 5.20 (Ossie Solem produced an improvement to 5-2-1 and 2-2-1 vs. big-time teams. But this was the season of the Wilmuth Sidat-Singh incident at Maryland where he was left in the locker room in deference to the authorities. That’s the “9“ but the point differential ranking indicates that this was just not a very good team. Colgate again beat us 0-7, the least year of the “Hoodoo”, during which we were 0-11-2 and got outscored 50-239 by our arch-rival in our own stadium.) 1938 1-1-5-6-3-9-5 = 4.29 (Not a great team but a memorable season for a number of reasons. The first #1 is a 53-0 win over Maryland in Archbold where Sidat-Singh and his teammates got a devastating revenge against the Terrapins for the situation they’d been put in the year before. Then came what Grantland Rice said was the greatest game he’d ever seen: the 19-17 win over a great Cornell team that wouldn’t lose against or two years in the famous “fifth down” game vs. Dartmouth. Later we finally ended the Hoodoo by beating Colgate 7-0. We also faced another undefeated, untied and unscored upon team, Duke - who did get invited to the Rose Bowl and lost in the final seconds to USC. But that team handled us 0-21 and Penn State beat us 6-33. Overall we were 5-3 an 4-3 vs. Big-time teams. It was a year of ups and downs but the ups sure were great.) 1939 4-1-7-2-7-3-7 = 4.43 (Not as memorable a season but the team wasn’t that much worse. The schedule may have been the toughest we had played to this point. The first four big time opponents, Cornell, Georgetown, Duke and Penn State were a combined 28-2-2. We managed to tie the Hoyas 13-13, who won all their other games.) Summary: 1930 4.20; 1931 3.60; 1932 4.40; 1933 4.67; 1934 2.33; 1935 4.00; 1936 6.33; 1937 5.20; 1938 4.29; 1939 4.43 Average for the decade: 4.35 [/QUOTE]

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