SWC75
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1929
The Athletic Governing Board of Syracuse University did not relieve Lew Andreas of his duties-not yet anyway. Meanwhile, Colgate had hired it’s greatest-ever coach.
“The call goes up from the battlefield as the Raider backs swing by.
We know how to dive for a flying leg under an Autumn Sky.
We can beat the shock of the body crash, whenever the crash is due.
Human to human, we fear no foe when our tackling’s sharp and crisp.
But how in the name of the Gods of chance, do you tackle a will-o’-the-wisp?
Give us a runner that we can see-slip us a shot at the ball---
Our feet are fast and our hands are quick, our eyes are young and keen.
But how can we follow a flock of ghosts over the churned-up green? “
The greatest honor an athlete or coach could receive in the 1920’s was to be immortalized in a poem by Grantland Rice, author of the “Galloping Ghost” poem about Red Grange and “The Four Horsemen” for Notre Dame. His true subject is not mentioned in the poem above. Andy Kerr was born October 7, 1878 in Cheyenne, Wyoming of Scots and Irish forebears. His father was a cowboy and his mother the daughter of an Army officer. When he was three the family moved to Carlisle Pennsylvania, where he played with the Indian children at the Carlisle Indian School. But he attended Dickinson, where he was a 130 pound quarterback, baseball outfielder and high jumper. He became a teacher in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where he had his first experience coaching a football team at Johnstown High School. “His squads were so small he often scrimmaged one side of the line against the other and got into the action himself.”
He got a job as a track coach at Pittsburgh in 1914 and became an associate of Pop Warner, who appointed him his assistant the following year. The Panthers won 33 straight games and three national championships until Syracuse beat them, 24-3 in Archbold Stadium in 1919, one of the school’s greatest victories. Kerr learned a lot of football from Warner in those years. “Nobody ever blended deception and power with more precision and effectiveness over a longer haul than Pop Warner…Of all the innovators, it’s safe to say that Pop was topped only Amos Alonzo Stagg. Stagg himself stated that Warner was more responsible than any other man in the enactment of the rules that improved football.” Warner introduced “the single and double wingback formation…the rolling body block, the spiral punt, the blocking dummy, fiber padding and the numbering of players.” That spirit of innovation rubbed off on his pupil, Andy Kerr.
Warner made an unusual deal with Stanford University in 1921. Stanford wanted him to be their coach and establish them as a new power on the west coast. Andy Smith had already brought California, into prominence by beating Ohio State in the Rose Bowl and the Palo Alto school wanted to trump their great rival by hiring the most prominent coach in the land. Warner liked the idea of the challenge but still had two years to go on his contract at Pittsburgh. He was an honorable man, (more so than a lot of his successors in the coaching ranks), and he decided to complete his contract at Pittsburgh. He sent Kerr to become Stanford’s head coach for two years with the understanding that Andy was just “keeping the seat warm” and would step aside when Pop arrived.
“When Kerr went to Stanford in 1922 as Warner’s advance man, he inherited a fun-loving squad that he had to discipline by degrees. On his first visit to the training table, baked apple with whipped cream was the desert. By prearrangement all of the players pushed away the dessert and when Kerr asked them why, he was told to smell his portion to find out. When he lifted the plate, one player hit it from the bottom and another pushed Kerr’s face into it.. Kerr retained his coolness; he wiped away the mess on his face, joined in the laugh on him and commented, ‘And I thought I was from the Big City.’”
“But he soon convinced his players he could not only take it but dish it out. On a Sunday morning after an overnight train ride from a Saturday game in Oregon, Kerr and most of the squad found their pants missing. Finally, a porter located them in the women’s washroom several cars away. The following Monday, Kerr drove his players harder than usual. As they trudged wearily off the field, Kerr ordered three players whom he suspected of the pants theft to stay on for a long series of wind sprints. The starting signal was ‘pants’”.
Andy won only four of eight games his first year as caretaker coach but improved to 7-2 the next year, losing only to Southern California, another rising power, and Smith’s California team. But he helped lay the groundwork for Warner’s teams that went 72-17-8 and to three Rose Bowls. Having had a taste of being a head coach and liking it, Andy went back east in 1926 to become the head coach at Washington and Jefferson where he went undefeated for two years before enduring a rough final season to wind up 16-6-5. In 1929, he was hired to be the new coach at Colgate, where he would remain for 18 years. The era of his greatest successes were the first six, from 1929-34. The Red Raiders, (he changed their uniform colors to bright red and the name “Raiders” seemed to go with that color), had a record of 47-5-1 over that period, the best record in Eastern Football. They never lost more than one game and were not only all conquering in 1932 but were never even scored upon. SU was not exactly a push-over during this period at 30-16-5 but they were no match for Colgate and Andy Kerr.
Kerr’s most famous innovation was actually not an innovation at all, but rather a throw back to the game American football had evolved from, rugby. In rugby, each team gets so many downs to score on a possession but then must give up the ball. There is no such thing as a “first down”, giving a team a new set of plays if they travel a certain distance. It creates a more fluid game, one that is less of a battle for the line of scrimmage than for the whole field. The only rule it that you must toss the ball sideways or laterally, not ahead of you. America had adopted a version of the game played by McGill University in Montreal, which introduced the first down and forced the defense to move up and try to stop the opponents within 10 yards. That created more plays that went nowhere but also more plays that went the length of the field after the defense was broken through. Then the forward pass was legalized, with the restriction that it had to be launched from behind the line of scrimmage. This made for an explosive, exciting game. But Andy Kerr was not satisfied with this. He liked the idea of keeping the defense loose by tossing the ball back and forth, as in rugby, not just in desperation but rather as a proactive measure. In one game against Tulane in 1934, his team lateralled five times in one play. The last one resulted in a fumble but the team was given an ovation by the fans for their efforts to do something different. Andy Kerr’s reaction to the famous “Stanford band” play of 1982, had he been around to see it, would have been surprise at the actions of the band, not the team, and regret that it was California, not Stanford, that pulled it off.
Kerr developed a whole offense around the lateral:
“1) The buck lateral, in which the fullback handed the ball to a pivoting tackle, who flipped it to a back or an end coming around.
2) The forward lateral, or flea-flicker, in which the end or halfback caught the pass and pitched it by prearrangement to another player, (I believe this is the play now called the ‘hook and lateral’).
3) The extemporaneous downfield lateral, in which a runner about to be tackled tossed the ball to another player.
4) The “double spinner”, where the fullback took the ball and pivoted as if to give to the quarterback, who spun toward the fullback. The fullback would either keep the ball, give it to the quarterback or hand it to one of the wingbacks coming around.”
“Colgate reduced the fumble danger of the lateral in long practice sessions driven by Kerr. ‘In the developing of lateral passes, I put great stress on ball-handling. For this phase of the game I received much information from Rugby coaches and players of Stanford University as well as one outstanding Canadian rugby coach. Our ball handling was perfected to the point where the boys could handle multiple passes with accuracy and precision under tremendous pressure in the scoring zone.” A fellow coach said of Kerr, “I have never seen a man who could take an idea and develop it to the extent he could.” Pop Warner himself visited Colgate after his years at Stanford and sat on the bench for a game in which the Red Raiders beat Brown, thanks to several key laterals. “Those touchdowns came hard, Andy. Good thing you had those laterals.” Kerr asked, “I supposed you could have done better with straight power, Pop?”. “No”, Warner replied, “Seriously, Andy, I’m tinkering with this lateral business.”
It was a time for tinkering with things, as well as looking back to what used to be done in a prior age to find ways of achieving goals. On October 24, 1929, the stock market crashed, beginning the era of the Great Depression. The lateral is perhaps a good metaphor for people doing whatever they had to do to survive.
Syracuse looked like a powerhouse winning games, 77-0, 55-0 and 85-6. Unfortunately those wins were against Hobart, (in the first night game played in the northeast- using a white ball), St. Lawrence and John’s Hopkins. A leaky pass defense caused a 6-13 loss to Nebraska and fumbles cost a 4-6 loss to Penn State. The Orange beat Niagara the week before the Colgate game, 20-0 but played so poorly that the Post Standard compared them to “a blind-folded giant that battles with pygmies he cannot see. His weight moved so slowly that his progress was ponderous and his strength was largely wasted in shoving the wrong way. There was nothing in this showing anywhere to inspire hope to the 25,000 rabid rooters who will turn out to cheer for him next Saturday.”
The opponent that Saturday was Andy Kerr’s first team of Red Raiders. They had lost their second game to Wisconsin, 6-13, then ripped off five straight wins, including 31-0 over Michigan State, 21-6 over Indiana and 33-0 over Columbia in New York. Lawrence J. Skiddy reported “It is doubtful that there ever has been a year when public opinion has been so solidly in favor of one team. The advance vote is almost unanimous in the prophesy of a Colgate victory.“ But “Skid” was defiant. “The popular verdict is that is Colgate’s year. This feeling is perhaps Syracuse’ greatest consolation. When machinery seems to be set for smooth operation toward victory in football there is frequently an upset. The picture looks altogether too pretty and those close to the Maroon are decidedly worried because of it.” Besides, “Beating Columbia is one thing but defeating Syracuse is still another.” The ghost of a past victory was summoned. In 1915, Colgate had been similarly favored but the Orange had come through with an amazing 38-0 win. Skid recalled that coach Buck O’Neill had made a side bet with the Colgate coach in which he won “$2000 on a $750 investment”. Those were the days. Maybe that’s why they called him “Buck”.
The Post Standard of Thursday, 11/14/29, featured a shot of a smiling, confident-looking Colgate player named Tommy Dowler. “Here’s Colgate’s speediest back, the greatest Maroon threat to Orange happiness Saturday. He has been a big ground gainer in every Colgate game this season and Andy Kerr is depending much upon him for long ground gains as well as an active part in the forward pass program both as a dispatcher and a receiver of forwards.” The “forward pass program” caused much concern as stopping the passing game had been a problem for SU all year. “The verdict was that Syracuse defensively at least had the better line of the two and except for experience, excels in the ends. The edge in the backfield went to Colgate by a big margin, a count so excessive that it swung the balance of favor.”
Another writer, James Gordon Fraser, put the matter at the doorstep of the coaches. “The fact of the matter is that Lew Andreas’ last team, (he had already announced his resignation at the end of the season to concentrate on coaching the basketball team), playing the kind of football it has played so far this year doesn’t stand an outside chance. But…if Coach Andreas could only get his team playing the kind of football it is capable of playing, it would not only have a chance but would be as hot a favorite to win standing up! There is enough might weight and power and sheer football ability in that Orange squad of 1929 to win any football game, much less a game in which it is pitted against a Colgate team that is after all is said and done, just a fair Colgate team. In the last 15 years, during which the writer has watched them all in action, there have been many better ones, although there probably never was one better coached and which made better use of what natural physical advantages it possessed.“ Fraser praised Kerr for “picking out his backfield at the beginning of the season and sticking with them”. Even then, there was a perennial debate about whether you stick with the players you’ve been playing for continuity’s sake. Of course, when your team is averaging 37 points a game, there is little reason for change.
Besides Dowler, who had the unfortunate nickname of “The Chenango Spook”, Colgate still had Les Hart and Julius Yoblock. Fraser called them “the flashy aces of the Maroon backfield”. Len Macaluso “is a rough, tough, fullback of the sort Colgate has always had…” Syracuse could hardly match that. “The Maroon backfield is a compact, smooth working coordinated ground gaining unit while the Orange backfield, so far in the season at least, is a sort of individual player meeting session with ‘everybody for himself’, the prevailing slogan.”
On Saturday, Skiddy said: “This afternoon some 18 to 20 stalwarts of Syracuse University who have labored diligently for nearly three months with one goal in mind will get their chances for honor and glory in the eyes of their fellow students and alumni.” What I find interesting about that statement is that last year’s SU basketball roster included 16 players, including walk-ons. In 1929, (one platoon), football was played with what amounted to a basketball team. Colgate was described as having a “Herculean” line averaging 194 pounds per man.
Good weather allowed “nearly 40,000 people”, (actually 31,500) to come to the game. Including the ones who watched it from Mt. Olympus, many with field glasses, there may have been 40,000 spectators. An aerial photograph in the Sunday paper showed the stadium filled to capacity. There are no buildings immediately to the north of the stadium yet and that area is used for parking the increasing number of cars people had begun taking to the game. Downtown Syracuse was “filled with traffic curb to curb…all the hotels were filled to capacity and eating places were totally unable to cope with the noonday rush…Both the Colgate and Syracuse bands paraded down the streets and were the excuse for impromptu rallies. Each band gathered supporters when they appeared.” Colgate’s team was secluded at the Lincklaen House in Cazenovia for the night to avoid all the excitement until game time.
“There was a thundering cheer from the Colgate side of the field when the team trotted on to the field in maroon sweaters and white helmets. Syracuse greeted her warriors with another salvo of cheers when the orange and blue eleven made its appearance. A notable feature of the scene this afternoon was the co-ed cheering section in the Syracuse stands. These girls, more than 2,000 of them, added greatly to the afternoon’s enjoyment. Not even the final minutes of play when Syracuse faced a forlorn hope did the Orange helmeted co-eds, (an interesting visual image), lose heart or fail to spur the team home by the snappiest, best conducted cheering this observer has heard at a football game this season. Back and across the stadium the Syracuse cheering sections rival each other. The men begin their short staccato refrain. The girls answer. The men respond. Again the vocal refrain from the higher voices, then together, the deep and high voices merge as they meet in the center of the field. Syracuse hopes dim? Never know it from the way her supporters cheer. The more down on their luck the more backing the team gets from the student body. The stadium is quiet for a moment. The girl cheer leaders galvanize into action and every eye is focused on them. Suddenly a beautiful, corn blue “S” is shown in the center of the orange-hued section as the girls sing their defiance to Colgate….But even this encouragement could not prevail over the power of this great Colgate team this day.”
The game was not only played in Syracuse’s stadium. It was played in Syracuse’s end of the field. Syracuse did not cross midfield until the fourth quarter. In fact, they couldn’t get a first down in that time. They wound up with 4 of them to Colgate’s 16. After SU’s second possession, Colgate’s Mike Stromiello blocked a Warren Stevens punt and the Maroon took over at the SU 28. Six plays later, “the Chenango Spook”, Tommy Dowler, went over from the 4. A photo in the paper showed him evading a Syracuse tackler at the goaline. “No less than six of the Syracuse tacklers got their hands on him but he shook them all off or sifted through the mass with astonishing ease. It was poor tackling but it prepared the crowd for more to come.”
In the second quarter, Harry Haines, “a giant tackle”, got the thrill of his career. Hart dropped back to pass for Colgate from the SU 27. He kept going backwards for 20 yards, avoiding the rush. Then he unleashed a long pass down the sideline for Yablock. Bob Barton of SU tried to intercept but punched the ball into the air. It landed in the belly of Haines, who put his arms around it and advanced forward from the 25. “He wasted no time in indecision but plowed ponderously toward the goal. His mates obligingly cut down Orange tacklers on all sides and he slid over the line with Stevens clinging to his legs.”
All in all, SU’s defense held up pretty well, fending off Colgate the rest of the day, including surviving another blocked punt and an interception with goal line stands. Colgate had several passes that fell incomplete in the SU end zone, which was a touchback in those days. But the offense was so pitiful the outcome was no longer in doubt by the time SU finally dented Colgate territory. Even then, there was failure. The home team penetrated to the visitor’s 21. “But right here the crowd got a look at something that seldom happens in a football game anywhere. Syracuse completed two forward passes in succession for net loss of 5 yards each. The passes traveled 15 and 23 yards but the receiver was unable to even get to the line of scrimmage.” Colgate then drove down the field for the clincher, set up by a 33 yard pass from Hart to Dowler at the SU 12, who then slipped past two defenders to score. The final was Colgate 21, Syracuse 0.
A visiting reporter from the New York Herald, Fred Hawthorne, reported: “Scenes of wild enthusiasm followed the game. Thousands of persons swarmed on to the field headed by the Colgate brass band, and paraded up and down the enclosure. There is no law against the uprooting of goal posts up here and the white uprights were lifted out of their place and carried around the field on the shoulders of victory mad Colgate students.” The Post Standard reported: “As the final whistle blows the crowds rush to the exit except the Colgate body who form themselves into a compact and March out together, led by their band. Through the main entrance gates the crowd streams under the flags of the rival schools touched with a final roseate glow by the sun, now far in the west. They have seen yet another Colgate-Syracuse game, yet another epic college football contest featured by good sportsmanship, good fellowship and loyal support. There was no bad taste, no regrets, the best team won. – But there is another year coming.”
Some people think Andy Kerr’s 1929 team was actually his greatest, even better than the unbeaten 1932 team. Tim Cohane, in “Great College Football Coaches of the Twenties and Thirties”, reports that the ’29 team, Kerr’s first at Colgate, held annual reunions. John Orsi, a guard on that team, said “I think the ’29 group was actually Andy’s finest. It was a group that continuously had reunions with Andy and will continue to have reunions even though Andy has passed on. Our 40th anniversary was held in 1969.” Perhaps they are still having reunions to this day, somewhere.
And the Hoodoo continued…..
The Athletic Governing Board of Syracuse University did not relieve Lew Andreas of his duties-not yet anyway. Meanwhile, Colgate had hired it’s greatest-ever coach.
“The call goes up from the battlefield as the Raider backs swing by.
We know how to dive for a flying leg under an Autumn Sky.
We can beat the shock of the body crash, whenever the crash is due.
Human to human, we fear no foe when our tackling’s sharp and crisp.
But how in the name of the Gods of chance, do you tackle a will-o’-the-wisp?
Give us a runner that we can see-slip us a shot at the ball---
Our feet are fast and our hands are quick, our eyes are young and keen.
But how can we follow a flock of ghosts over the churned-up green? “
The greatest honor an athlete or coach could receive in the 1920’s was to be immortalized in a poem by Grantland Rice, author of the “Galloping Ghost” poem about Red Grange and “The Four Horsemen” for Notre Dame. His true subject is not mentioned in the poem above. Andy Kerr was born October 7, 1878 in Cheyenne, Wyoming of Scots and Irish forebears. His father was a cowboy and his mother the daughter of an Army officer. When he was three the family moved to Carlisle Pennsylvania, where he played with the Indian children at the Carlisle Indian School. But he attended Dickinson, where he was a 130 pound quarterback, baseball outfielder and high jumper. He became a teacher in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where he had his first experience coaching a football team at Johnstown High School. “His squads were so small he often scrimmaged one side of the line against the other and got into the action himself.”
He got a job as a track coach at Pittsburgh in 1914 and became an associate of Pop Warner, who appointed him his assistant the following year. The Panthers won 33 straight games and three national championships until Syracuse beat them, 24-3 in Archbold Stadium in 1919, one of the school’s greatest victories. Kerr learned a lot of football from Warner in those years. “Nobody ever blended deception and power with more precision and effectiveness over a longer haul than Pop Warner…Of all the innovators, it’s safe to say that Pop was topped only Amos Alonzo Stagg. Stagg himself stated that Warner was more responsible than any other man in the enactment of the rules that improved football.” Warner introduced “the single and double wingback formation…the rolling body block, the spiral punt, the blocking dummy, fiber padding and the numbering of players.” That spirit of innovation rubbed off on his pupil, Andy Kerr.
Warner made an unusual deal with Stanford University in 1921. Stanford wanted him to be their coach and establish them as a new power on the west coast. Andy Smith had already brought California, into prominence by beating Ohio State in the Rose Bowl and the Palo Alto school wanted to trump their great rival by hiring the most prominent coach in the land. Warner liked the idea of the challenge but still had two years to go on his contract at Pittsburgh. He was an honorable man, (more so than a lot of his successors in the coaching ranks), and he decided to complete his contract at Pittsburgh. He sent Kerr to become Stanford’s head coach for two years with the understanding that Andy was just “keeping the seat warm” and would step aside when Pop arrived.
“When Kerr went to Stanford in 1922 as Warner’s advance man, he inherited a fun-loving squad that he had to discipline by degrees. On his first visit to the training table, baked apple with whipped cream was the desert. By prearrangement all of the players pushed away the dessert and when Kerr asked them why, he was told to smell his portion to find out. When he lifted the plate, one player hit it from the bottom and another pushed Kerr’s face into it.. Kerr retained his coolness; he wiped away the mess on his face, joined in the laugh on him and commented, ‘And I thought I was from the Big City.’”
“But he soon convinced his players he could not only take it but dish it out. On a Sunday morning after an overnight train ride from a Saturday game in Oregon, Kerr and most of the squad found their pants missing. Finally, a porter located them in the women’s washroom several cars away. The following Monday, Kerr drove his players harder than usual. As they trudged wearily off the field, Kerr ordered three players whom he suspected of the pants theft to stay on for a long series of wind sprints. The starting signal was ‘pants’”.
Andy won only four of eight games his first year as caretaker coach but improved to 7-2 the next year, losing only to Southern California, another rising power, and Smith’s California team. But he helped lay the groundwork for Warner’s teams that went 72-17-8 and to three Rose Bowls. Having had a taste of being a head coach and liking it, Andy went back east in 1926 to become the head coach at Washington and Jefferson where he went undefeated for two years before enduring a rough final season to wind up 16-6-5. In 1929, he was hired to be the new coach at Colgate, where he would remain for 18 years. The era of his greatest successes were the first six, from 1929-34. The Red Raiders, (he changed their uniform colors to bright red and the name “Raiders” seemed to go with that color), had a record of 47-5-1 over that period, the best record in Eastern Football. They never lost more than one game and were not only all conquering in 1932 but were never even scored upon. SU was not exactly a push-over during this period at 30-16-5 but they were no match for Colgate and Andy Kerr.
Kerr’s most famous innovation was actually not an innovation at all, but rather a throw back to the game American football had evolved from, rugby. In rugby, each team gets so many downs to score on a possession but then must give up the ball. There is no such thing as a “first down”, giving a team a new set of plays if they travel a certain distance. It creates a more fluid game, one that is less of a battle for the line of scrimmage than for the whole field. The only rule it that you must toss the ball sideways or laterally, not ahead of you. America had adopted a version of the game played by McGill University in Montreal, which introduced the first down and forced the defense to move up and try to stop the opponents within 10 yards. That created more plays that went nowhere but also more plays that went the length of the field after the defense was broken through. Then the forward pass was legalized, with the restriction that it had to be launched from behind the line of scrimmage. This made for an explosive, exciting game. But Andy Kerr was not satisfied with this. He liked the idea of keeping the defense loose by tossing the ball back and forth, as in rugby, not just in desperation but rather as a proactive measure. In one game against Tulane in 1934, his team lateralled five times in one play. The last one resulted in a fumble but the team was given an ovation by the fans for their efforts to do something different. Andy Kerr’s reaction to the famous “Stanford band” play of 1982, had he been around to see it, would have been surprise at the actions of the band, not the team, and regret that it was California, not Stanford, that pulled it off.
Kerr developed a whole offense around the lateral:
“1) The buck lateral, in which the fullback handed the ball to a pivoting tackle, who flipped it to a back or an end coming around.
2) The forward lateral, or flea-flicker, in which the end or halfback caught the pass and pitched it by prearrangement to another player, (I believe this is the play now called the ‘hook and lateral’).
3) The extemporaneous downfield lateral, in which a runner about to be tackled tossed the ball to another player.
4) The “double spinner”, where the fullback took the ball and pivoted as if to give to the quarterback, who spun toward the fullback. The fullback would either keep the ball, give it to the quarterback or hand it to one of the wingbacks coming around.”
“Colgate reduced the fumble danger of the lateral in long practice sessions driven by Kerr. ‘In the developing of lateral passes, I put great stress on ball-handling. For this phase of the game I received much information from Rugby coaches and players of Stanford University as well as one outstanding Canadian rugby coach. Our ball handling was perfected to the point where the boys could handle multiple passes with accuracy and precision under tremendous pressure in the scoring zone.” A fellow coach said of Kerr, “I have never seen a man who could take an idea and develop it to the extent he could.” Pop Warner himself visited Colgate after his years at Stanford and sat on the bench for a game in which the Red Raiders beat Brown, thanks to several key laterals. “Those touchdowns came hard, Andy. Good thing you had those laterals.” Kerr asked, “I supposed you could have done better with straight power, Pop?”. “No”, Warner replied, “Seriously, Andy, I’m tinkering with this lateral business.”
It was a time for tinkering with things, as well as looking back to what used to be done in a prior age to find ways of achieving goals. On October 24, 1929, the stock market crashed, beginning the era of the Great Depression. The lateral is perhaps a good metaphor for people doing whatever they had to do to survive.
Syracuse looked like a powerhouse winning games, 77-0, 55-0 and 85-6. Unfortunately those wins were against Hobart, (in the first night game played in the northeast- using a white ball), St. Lawrence and John’s Hopkins. A leaky pass defense caused a 6-13 loss to Nebraska and fumbles cost a 4-6 loss to Penn State. The Orange beat Niagara the week before the Colgate game, 20-0 but played so poorly that the Post Standard compared them to “a blind-folded giant that battles with pygmies he cannot see. His weight moved so slowly that his progress was ponderous and his strength was largely wasted in shoving the wrong way. There was nothing in this showing anywhere to inspire hope to the 25,000 rabid rooters who will turn out to cheer for him next Saturday.”
The opponent that Saturday was Andy Kerr’s first team of Red Raiders. They had lost their second game to Wisconsin, 6-13, then ripped off five straight wins, including 31-0 over Michigan State, 21-6 over Indiana and 33-0 over Columbia in New York. Lawrence J. Skiddy reported “It is doubtful that there ever has been a year when public opinion has been so solidly in favor of one team. The advance vote is almost unanimous in the prophesy of a Colgate victory.“ But “Skid” was defiant. “The popular verdict is that is Colgate’s year. This feeling is perhaps Syracuse’ greatest consolation. When machinery seems to be set for smooth operation toward victory in football there is frequently an upset. The picture looks altogether too pretty and those close to the Maroon are decidedly worried because of it.” Besides, “Beating Columbia is one thing but defeating Syracuse is still another.” The ghost of a past victory was summoned. In 1915, Colgate had been similarly favored but the Orange had come through with an amazing 38-0 win. Skid recalled that coach Buck O’Neill had made a side bet with the Colgate coach in which he won “$2000 on a $750 investment”. Those were the days. Maybe that’s why they called him “Buck”.
The Post Standard of Thursday, 11/14/29, featured a shot of a smiling, confident-looking Colgate player named Tommy Dowler. “Here’s Colgate’s speediest back, the greatest Maroon threat to Orange happiness Saturday. He has been a big ground gainer in every Colgate game this season and Andy Kerr is depending much upon him for long ground gains as well as an active part in the forward pass program both as a dispatcher and a receiver of forwards.” The “forward pass program” caused much concern as stopping the passing game had been a problem for SU all year. “The verdict was that Syracuse defensively at least had the better line of the two and except for experience, excels in the ends. The edge in the backfield went to Colgate by a big margin, a count so excessive that it swung the balance of favor.”
Another writer, James Gordon Fraser, put the matter at the doorstep of the coaches. “The fact of the matter is that Lew Andreas’ last team, (he had already announced his resignation at the end of the season to concentrate on coaching the basketball team), playing the kind of football it has played so far this year doesn’t stand an outside chance. But…if Coach Andreas could only get his team playing the kind of football it is capable of playing, it would not only have a chance but would be as hot a favorite to win standing up! There is enough might weight and power and sheer football ability in that Orange squad of 1929 to win any football game, much less a game in which it is pitted against a Colgate team that is after all is said and done, just a fair Colgate team. In the last 15 years, during which the writer has watched them all in action, there have been many better ones, although there probably never was one better coached and which made better use of what natural physical advantages it possessed.“ Fraser praised Kerr for “picking out his backfield at the beginning of the season and sticking with them”. Even then, there was a perennial debate about whether you stick with the players you’ve been playing for continuity’s sake. Of course, when your team is averaging 37 points a game, there is little reason for change.
Besides Dowler, who had the unfortunate nickname of “The Chenango Spook”, Colgate still had Les Hart and Julius Yoblock. Fraser called them “the flashy aces of the Maroon backfield”. Len Macaluso “is a rough, tough, fullback of the sort Colgate has always had…” Syracuse could hardly match that. “The Maroon backfield is a compact, smooth working coordinated ground gaining unit while the Orange backfield, so far in the season at least, is a sort of individual player meeting session with ‘everybody for himself’, the prevailing slogan.”
On Saturday, Skiddy said: “This afternoon some 18 to 20 stalwarts of Syracuse University who have labored diligently for nearly three months with one goal in mind will get their chances for honor and glory in the eyes of their fellow students and alumni.” What I find interesting about that statement is that last year’s SU basketball roster included 16 players, including walk-ons. In 1929, (one platoon), football was played with what amounted to a basketball team. Colgate was described as having a “Herculean” line averaging 194 pounds per man.
Good weather allowed “nearly 40,000 people”, (actually 31,500) to come to the game. Including the ones who watched it from Mt. Olympus, many with field glasses, there may have been 40,000 spectators. An aerial photograph in the Sunday paper showed the stadium filled to capacity. There are no buildings immediately to the north of the stadium yet and that area is used for parking the increasing number of cars people had begun taking to the game. Downtown Syracuse was “filled with traffic curb to curb…all the hotels were filled to capacity and eating places were totally unable to cope with the noonday rush…Both the Colgate and Syracuse bands paraded down the streets and were the excuse for impromptu rallies. Each band gathered supporters when they appeared.” Colgate’s team was secluded at the Lincklaen House in Cazenovia for the night to avoid all the excitement until game time.
“There was a thundering cheer from the Colgate side of the field when the team trotted on to the field in maroon sweaters and white helmets. Syracuse greeted her warriors with another salvo of cheers when the orange and blue eleven made its appearance. A notable feature of the scene this afternoon was the co-ed cheering section in the Syracuse stands. These girls, more than 2,000 of them, added greatly to the afternoon’s enjoyment. Not even the final minutes of play when Syracuse faced a forlorn hope did the Orange helmeted co-eds, (an interesting visual image), lose heart or fail to spur the team home by the snappiest, best conducted cheering this observer has heard at a football game this season. Back and across the stadium the Syracuse cheering sections rival each other. The men begin their short staccato refrain. The girls answer. The men respond. Again the vocal refrain from the higher voices, then together, the deep and high voices merge as they meet in the center of the field. Syracuse hopes dim? Never know it from the way her supporters cheer. The more down on their luck the more backing the team gets from the student body. The stadium is quiet for a moment. The girl cheer leaders galvanize into action and every eye is focused on them. Suddenly a beautiful, corn blue “S” is shown in the center of the orange-hued section as the girls sing their defiance to Colgate….But even this encouragement could not prevail over the power of this great Colgate team this day.”
The game was not only played in Syracuse’s stadium. It was played in Syracuse’s end of the field. Syracuse did not cross midfield until the fourth quarter. In fact, they couldn’t get a first down in that time. They wound up with 4 of them to Colgate’s 16. After SU’s second possession, Colgate’s Mike Stromiello blocked a Warren Stevens punt and the Maroon took over at the SU 28. Six plays later, “the Chenango Spook”, Tommy Dowler, went over from the 4. A photo in the paper showed him evading a Syracuse tackler at the goaline. “No less than six of the Syracuse tacklers got their hands on him but he shook them all off or sifted through the mass with astonishing ease. It was poor tackling but it prepared the crowd for more to come.”
In the second quarter, Harry Haines, “a giant tackle”, got the thrill of his career. Hart dropped back to pass for Colgate from the SU 27. He kept going backwards for 20 yards, avoiding the rush. Then he unleashed a long pass down the sideline for Yablock. Bob Barton of SU tried to intercept but punched the ball into the air. It landed in the belly of Haines, who put his arms around it and advanced forward from the 25. “He wasted no time in indecision but plowed ponderously toward the goal. His mates obligingly cut down Orange tacklers on all sides and he slid over the line with Stevens clinging to his legs.”
All in all, SU’s defense held up pretty well, fending off Colgate the rest of the day, including surviving another blocked punt and an interception with goal line stands. Colgate had several passes that fell incomplete in the SU end zone, which was a touchback in those days. But the offense was so pitiful the outcome was no longer in doubt by the time SU finally dented Colgate territory. Even then, there was failure. The home team penetrated to the visitor’s 21. “But right here the crowd got a look at something that seldom happens in a football game anywhere. Syracuse completed two forward passes in succession for net loss of 5 yards each. The passes traveled 15 and 23 yards but the receiver was unable to even get to the line of scrimmage.” Colgate then drove down the field for the clincher, set up by a 33 yard pass from Hart to Dowler at the SU 12, who then slipped past two defenders to score. The final was Colgate 21, Syracuse 0.
A visiting reporter from the New York Herald, Fred Hawthorne, reported: “Scenes of wild enthusiasm followed the game. Thousands of persons swarmed on to the field headed by the Colgate brass band, and paraded up and down the enclosure. There is no law against the uprooting of goal posts up here and the white uprights were lifted out of their place and carried around the field on the shoulders of victory mad Colgate students.” The Post Standard reported: “As the final whistle blows the crowds rush to the exit except the Colgate body who form themselves into a compact and March out together, led by their band. Through the main entrance gates the crowd streams under the flags of the rival schools touched with a final roseate glow by the sun, now far in the west. They have seen yet another Colgate-Syracuse game, yet another epic college football contest featured by good sportsmanship, good fellowship and loyal support. There was no bad taste, no regrets, the best team won. – But there is another year coming.”
Some people think Andy Kerr’s 1929 team was actually his greatest, even better than the unbeaten 1932 team. Tim Cohane, in “Great College Football Coaches of the Twenties and Thirties”, reports that the ’29 team, Kerr’s first at Colgate, held annual reunions. John Orsi, a guard on that team, said “I think the ’29 group was actually Andy’s finest. It was a group that continuously had reunions with Andy and will continue to have reunions even though Andy has passed on. Our 40th anniversary was held in 1969.” Perhaps they are still having reunions to this day, somewhere.
And the Hoodoo continued…..
