Who Knew the HooDoo? (1937) | Syracusefan.com

Who Knew the HooDoo? (1937)

SWC75

Bored Historian
Joined
Aug 26, 2011
Messages
32,278
Like
62,396
1937

The new coach was Ossie Solem, who had come here from the University of Iowa. Solem had a long and mostly successful coaching career- he coached for 37 years with a record of 162 wins 117 losses and 20 ties at five different schools, Luther, Drake, Iowa, Syracuse and Springfield. Iowa and Syracuse were his biggest jobs but much of his reputation comes from his tenure at Drake, where he was both athletic director and football coach and brought the Drake Relays into national prominence. It was his experience in both positions that made him attractive to Syracuse, which now had both positions open, although the athletic directorship finally went to Lew Andreas.

He put together what, in retrospect, was one of the greatest coaching staffs in history. Solem was a graduate of the University of Minnesota, (1915) and brought in two fellow Minnesota grads, Clarence “Biggie” Munn, (1932) and Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who had just graduated after playing for three consecutive national championship teams under Bernie Bierman. Munn later became head coach at SU replacing Solem and then left for Michigan State, where he created the second most successful college football program of the 1950’s. Wilkinson ran the most successful program of that era at Oklahoma. Retained from the old regime was Roy Simmons, long time Syracuse coaching legend in a number of sports and Reeves Baysinger, who would eventually coach SU a decade later.

There was also a wave of young talent that would immediately return the program to respectability. One of them, Hugh “Duffy” Daugherty, would become a famous coach in his own right, following Munn to Michigan State and taking over that program when his mentor retired. Then there was Phil Allen, a resourceful player who would steal a famous game from Cornell, and Harold Ruth, inevitably called “The Babe”, who was a talented runner and pass catcher. But the lasting fame went to Marty Glickman, an Olympic sprinter who went on to found the SU broadcasting dynasty and Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, a forgotten hero who deserves to be remembered.

Sidat Singh was born in Washington DC in 1917 to Elias and Pauline Webb. Elias was a pharmacist and died when Wilmeth was young. Pauline married a local Doctor, Samuel Sidat Singh, who adopted him and gave him his name. The family moved to New York, where Wilmeth grew up playing with Duke Ellington’s son, Mercer. 6-0, 190 pounds, he had speed and a great first step, which helped him to become a basketball star at Dewitt Clinton High School. He excelled in every sport and could throw a football 60 yards. Syracuse gave him a basketball scholarship and Roy Simmons saw him playing intramural football and convinced him to come out for the varsity. The University, noting his last name, advertised him as a Hindu, from India who had come to the United States and learned the game. It was a good story and created publicity. It also hid the fact that he was an American Negro, such status being problematic when SU played southern teams. But the black community knew he was one of their own. Some of them felt he should be proud enough to tell the world he was one of them and that if he did, it would help the cause of black acceptance by whites.

Glickman was the outstanding high school sprinter of his class, running a 9.75 hundred yard dash. He was also born in 1917 and was the youngest sprinter in the 1936 Olympics. At the Olympic trials for the 100 meters, Glickman ran against Jessie Owens of Ohio State, Ralph Metcalfe of Marquette, Sam Stoller of Michigan, Edgar Mason of Pittsburgh, Mack Robinson, (Jackie’s brother), of California and Frank Wycoff and Foy Draper of Southern California. To that time it had been traditional that the top three finishers in the 100 trials would compete as individuals in that race at the Olympics and the next four finishers would then form the team for the 400 meter relay race. They would practice running as a team, including the all-important baton passing, while the top three would go for individual honors. This approach was endorsed by the head of the US Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, who was fond of making speeches that participating was more important than winning and who supposedly wanted as many athletes as possible to compete for the USA.

Owens and Metcalfe were the fastest runners in the race and finished 1-2. Glickman finished about even with Wycoff and at least a foot ahead of Draper. Stoller and Robinson finished behind them. The race was judged manually by a series of judges sitting in tiers at the finishing line. There was no photo finish, although Olympic chronicler Bud Greenspan found a newsreel of the event taken from a camera located about 10 feet off the finish line. It was his judgment that Marty finished third. That was also the determination made by the judges at the time. Famed broadcaster Ted Husing interviewed the top three finishers. After he finished with Owens and Metcalfe he announced to his audience, “Now here’s Marty Glickman, the kid from Brooklyn, who finished third….wait a minute, they’ve placed Wycoff third”.

The two Olympic coaches were Lawson Robertson of Pennsylvania and Dean Cromwell of USC. Robertson was the head coach but he also was an elderly man who seemed to let the more aggressive Cromwell run things and now Cromwell was all over the judges, insisting that both Wycoff and Draper had finished ahead of Glickman. The squeaking wheel got the grease and Marty was placed fifth.

That still should have guaranteed Glickman a spot on the relay team and he worked out with his teammates, practicing the all-important baton passing and the turns. He was happy to be going to the Olympics at the age of 18. A picture in his book, “The Fastest Kid on the Block” shows Marty celebrating the victories of Owens in the long jump and 100 meters and of Cornelius Johnson in the high jump. He has a huge smile on his face. Two days before the 400 relay final. Robertson was asked if he would add Owens to the team. He said “Owens has had enough glory. We want to give the other boys a chance to participate in the Olympics.”

The morning of the 400 meter relay final, Robertson and Cromwell called the team’s seven sprinters in for a meeting. They announced that Germany was “hiding” their best sprinters, saving them for the 400 meters to try to upset the American team and that to combat this, Marty and Sam Stoller were being removed from the team and being replaced by Owens and Metcalfe. Marty protested that this was absurd. You don’t become a world class sprinter without competing against world class sprinters. The best German sprinter, Erich Borchmeyer, was slower than any of the Americans. The only way the Americans could lose was to drop the baton and that was most likely if a last minute change was made on the team. Besides, he said, “Sam and I are the only Jews on the track team. If we don’t run, there’s bound to be a lot of criticism back home.”

Jesse Owens spoke up and said “Coach, let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it. I’ve already won three gold medals. I’m tired. They haven’t had the chance to run. Let them run. They deserve it.” Cromwell waggled his finger at Jesse and said “You’ll do as you’re told.” Glickman was in awe of Owens. He writes that after one race he went to look at the spike marks in the track. All the other runners had torn the (clay) track up with their spikes. Jesse was so smooth that all there were where he ran was the little holes his spikes had made in the otherwise smooth track. But Owens was not regarded as a fast starter. He would be the best one to finish the race. Yet Robertson/Cromwell had him start the race and hand off to Metcalfe. Draper and Wykoff, the USC guys, would finish the race and, perhaps not coincidentally, appear on the newsreels which tended to show only the end of the race.

The Dutch team was disqualified for running past the end line while passing the baton and it nearly happened to the US team as Metcalfe and Draper nearly fouled it up. But the US did not get called for this and the team went on to set a world’s record that lasted for 20 years, (39.8 seconds), winning by 15 yards. The Germans finished a distant third. There was no one on their team who was a mystery to anybody. Brundage later said the success of the team was justification for the removal of Glickman and Stoller, insisting that their status as Jews had nothing to do with their exclusion.

Glickman, in his book, doesn’t accept this explanation at all, pointing out that it was contrary to Brundage’s insistence that the Olympics was about participating, not about winning or setting records. He points out that Brundage was “a founder, organizer and officer of the America First Committee, which held rallies and meetings espousing the German cause before the war. Among their members were supporters of the Nazi movement. I understand Cromwell belonged to America First as well.” Brundage was also chairman of the “Citizens to Keep America out of the War Committee”. He’d taken a pre-Olympic tour of Germany in 1935. “He was dazzled by the relative order and prosperity. He was always chaperoned when he talked to Jewish Leaders and seemingly made no great effort to find out what limitations were placed on Jewish athletes’ attempts to train and make the Olympic team. At the end of his trip he concluded that the Germans were observing the letter and the spirit of the Olympics.” When Brundage was asked about German anti-Semitism, he said “Frankly I don’t think we have any business to meddle in the question. We are a sport group pledged to promote clean competition and sportsmanship. When we let politics, racial questions, religious or social distinctions creep into our actions, we are in trouble.” In 1971, he pronounced the Berlin games “the finest in modern history. I will accept no dispute over that fact”. Glickman called him a “Holier-than-thou disciple of high ideals”.

Marty must have seen something of Brundage and Cromwell in the people running things at Syracuse. “Andreas was a bigot. On a few occasions, he commented to me that “jigs”, (African Americans), didn’t’ have any guts when the chips were down. Syracuse had a bad reputation among blacks for many years-Jim Brown almost left school during his freshman year because of the attitudes he ran into- and I think much of it stemmed from Andreas and the tone he set. I believe Syracuse didn’t truly blossom as a national power in football and basketball until Andreas left as athletic director and basketball coach.” Marty himself had come to Syracuse by arrangement with a group of Jewish alumni who paid his tuition for the first year because they felt a successful Jewish athlete at the school might cause the school to relax an informal quota system on Jewish students that had been in place for years. (Marty reports he turned down an offer of $175.00/mth to go to West Virginia.)

“We didn’t have a particular regard for the football coach, either. Solem was a holier-than-thou noncurser, nonsmoker, nondrinker who talked down to people. (Marty had had enough of those). He could punish players. He’d scrimmage guys who didn’t play on Saturday, he’d put him in the Monday scrimmage. My roommate, Al Handler, who was a starting guard, suffered that punishment on occasion. We played for ourselves, for our teammates, for the feeling we had for the school. We didn’t play for Ossie Solem.”

Solem’s tenure at Iowa had not been that successful. His record was 15-21-4 in five years, with only one winning record. His big star had been a Negro player, “Oze” Simmons, whose nickname was “The Ebony Eel”. Simmons had hopped a train from Texas to play for Iowa because he’d “heard they let Negroes play there”. Northwestern coach Dick Hanley called Simmons “absolutely the best I’ve ever seen”, and Hanley had coached against Red Grange. But Simmons was not popular with his teammates, who were said to resent the publicity he was being given. He was the logical choice to be named team captain his senior year but the team instead decided not to elect a captain that year to avoid choosing him. Some of them even refused to block for him.

Simmons twice got into arguments with Solem, the last when the coach accused him of “laying down” in a 0-52 loss to Minnesota, even though Simmons played the game with an injured leg. Simmons left the team saying “I’ve taken too much abuse this season because of Iowa’s poor showing. I’ve taken more punishment than I did in my sophomore year and Solem has been screaming at me. He doesn’t scream at the other players, just me.” Solem replied “Other players on the team were berated for their play in the Minnesota game but they took it without a word. I made one criticism of Simmons and he couldn’t take it.” The chairman of Iowa’s Board of Athletics called the two men in and after the meeting Simmons announced he was coming back to the Iowa team. “I know we’ll get along fine now. Everything is settled satisfactorily”. Solem was asked if this was true. “Evidently”, he said.

Simmons was reinstated for the team’s final game against Temple and ran for a 72 yard score to lead the team to a 25-0 upset. But it wasn’t enough to save Solem’s job there and he wound up being hired at Syracuse.

At Syracuse, the “New Deal” got off to a good start. Beating Clarkson 26-6 was routine: in fact, it was a lesser margin that Hanson’s last team had had in their only 1936 win. The 40-0 win over St. Lawrence did little more than ensure that this year’s record would be numerically superior to the previous year’s.

Then came the Cornell game. It made Marty Glickman a star. He was the fastest man in college football, being the only member of the Olympic sprint team to play NCAA football. Marty had beaten the Cornell frosh his freshman year with a 90 yard interception return. As a sub in 1936, he had made a long run to the one yard line to set up SU’s only touchdown. In the 1937 game he opened the scoring with a 55 yard punt return for a touchdown. He then intercepted a pass to stop a Cornell drive. He scored on a short run to make it 14-0 in the third quarter. It was 14-6 late in the fourth quarter when All-American Brud Holland broke away on a long run and Marty managed to catch him and knock him out of bounds on the three yard line. Holland was 6-2 200 and Marty 5-9, 155 but he managed to knock the bigger man off his feet. In his book he calls this “the best play I ever made in football”. SU held the Big Red out of the end zone and won by the 14-6 score.

“With the game in hand, our coach, Ossie Solem, subbed for me in the last minute. I took my helmet off and ran toward the sidelines. He waved me off to go to the locker room. I sprinted in front of the stands and the crowd stood up and cheered like crazy. I’ll never forget that joy. My feet didn’t touch the ground while I ran, I felt so good.”

It was a “New Deal” for Cornell, too, with Carl Snavely having taken over a winless team and leading them to become one of the most dominant teams of the late 30’s. From 1937-40 the Big Red had a stretch where they lost only three times in 29 games. Two of those losses were to Syracuse. Both teams had been undefeated going into the 1937 game and Syracuse now went down to play Maryland in Baltimore as a favorite. It was quite a change from the gloom and doom of the previous year’s disaster.

The Herald Journal article on the Terrapin’s 0-13 upset win ascribes it to the muddy field, which reduced the Orange’s advantage in speed, and to Syracuse being hurt and exhausted after their titanic struggle with Cornell. It was a natural let down. Or so they said.

Solem had announced his line-up the day before the game: “Allen and Rekstis at ends, Webster and Heater at tackles, Hopper and Daugherty, guards, Swarr at center, Hoffman at quarterback, Glickman and Sidat-Singh at halfback and Blaylock at fullback.” The Monday edition mentioned several injured players: Blaylock, Webster, back-ups Jack Hinkle and Curley Thomas. It added “Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, another stellar passer, will be in shape for Penn State, after being unable to play in Baltimore.” Later in the week it was reported that Solem was “taking it easy” on his injured players, playing “Wilmeth Sidat-Singh at right halfback for the ailing Jack Hinkle.” In other words, Sidat Singh wasn’t among the injured.

What had happened is described in Marty Glickman’s book. “Saturday morning, we were getting dressed for the game. Wil and I had adjoining lockers, and we were sitting on a bench thigh by thigh, wearing jockstraps, T-shirts and football pants when the Director of Athletics, Lew Andreas and Coach Ossie Solem walked into the room. Andreas called for our attention and we stopped dressing. He said ‘Fellows, I’ve got some bad news. A Baltimore newspaper broke the story that Sidat-Singh is not an Indian but a black man. We were told by authorities that it was dangerous to go out on the field. So Singh will not play.’

“There was a shocked silence. I sat there alongside Wil and said to myself, ‘If Wil doesn’t play, I don’t play. Get up and say it. You’re the star of the club, one of the leaders. If Wil doesn’t play, I won’t play. Say it.’ But then I thought, ‘Dammit, they’ll say, ‘It’s that kid Glickman again. You were the kid who didn’t run in the Olympics because you’re Jewish. You caused a ruckus then and now you’ll be causing trouble by walking out of this football game and causing the whole team not to play. Maybe I better keep still.’ I sat there alongside Wil, torn within myself. Ultimately I kept still. I sat next to Wil and never said a word.”

Maybe the mud was a factor. Maybe the team was a little beat up after the Cornell game. But you have to wonder if Sidat Singh might have made a difference on the field. More than that, football is a team sport. These players must have left that locker room wondering if they were really a team. That may have made the most difference of all.

The next week, the funk the team was in continued as Penn State took a 0-13 halftime lead. Then Sidat Singh took over the game. A 20 yard pass to Harold “Babe” Ruth, a 21 yard run and a 30 yard interception return set up or scored all of SU’s touchdowns in a big second half comeback to a 19-13 Orange win. “It was fitting that Sidat Singh should carry the ball over the line for the TD that won the game. He was the spark plug for the uphill fight that brought SU home a winner.”

Syracuse then came home a winner against Western Reserve, 27-6, before slogging to a 6-6 tie in another mud bowl game against Columbia. The Lions star was Sid Luckman, a high school rival of Marty Glickman whose older brother had gone to Syracuse and who initially wanted to come here as well. Glickman always regretted not getting to play with Luckman, (“Glick”, by the way, means “luck” in Yiddish), as he felt they would have made a fine passing combination with Sid’s arm and Marty’s speed.

Syracuse now sailed into the Colgate game with a 5-1-1 record and were favored to end the Hoodoo against the Red Raiders who had struggled to a 2-5 record, their only wins over St. Lawrence and St. Bonaventure. Saints seem to be better at basketball than football. Against non-canonized opponents, the Maroon had been crushed by SU victim Cornell, 7-40, and lost to Tulane, Duke, NYU and Holy Cross as well. The golden years were a memory. Solem, Munn and Wilkinson knew nothing about any Hoodoo. Surely that brain trust could end this thing, especially with a better team.

Andy Kerr, however, was hopeful: “We are better than we look on our record for the season and we are due to play a real football game one of these days. The Syracuse game may be the one.” Whit Jaeger, Colgate’s star had been laid up most of the year with a leg injury. He was said now to be “pretty much his old self”. They also had a kicker named Wally Davids who had been training with Arthur Mills, “the best of America’s kicking coaches”. Davids would use the old-fashioned drop kick on kickoffs and yet consistently booted the ball through the back of the end zone for touchbacks.

There was a cartoon showing Ossie Solem riding a horse called the “Orange Machine” over various barriers named for each SU opponent. The next hurdle was a fence with twelve planks on it. Each plank had the score of each SU-Colgate game since the Hoodoo began in 1925. An accompanying article declared that SU’s season so far was “One of the finest in all its history, a season which has been one of the most enjoyable surprises Bill Orange has ever known…If Colgate had the Tryons and Welchs, (stars of past teams), it wouldn’t be coming to Syracuse with a team that has been beaten 5 times in 7 tries. If Syracuse had the McBrides, the Albaneses and Hansons it wouldn’t show a loss to Maryland.” Actually, if they’d used what they had they might not have had that loss to Maryland.

Skiddy interviewed Dick Fishel, who had scored the last SU touchdown in the series - in fact he had scored the last two SU touchdowns in the series- getting the only score in both 1930 and 1931. Fishel had preceded even Marty Glickman into broadcasting in New York, becoming part of the first ever broadcasting team for both the New York football Giants and the Rangers, (Glickman started out as Fishel’s assistant). Fishel made the prediction that this was the year SU would finally break through against Colgate. In fact, he predicted the Orange would score a touchdown for every consecutive year that they hadn’t- five!

Reeves Baysinger, SU’s freshman coach was also optimistic. His unbeaten freshman had beaten the Red Raiders for the first time since 1929 and felt he pendulum was swinging toward Syracuse. Both freshman teams were unbeaten, untied and unscored upon until they met each other in the final game, which SU won, 7-0, a score that would be seen again- and again- and again in this series.

Solem took a page from Andy Kerr’s book and took the team off campus for the night before the game, putting all his players on buses after Friday’s practice and shipping them off to an undisclosed location. Both teams arrived for the game just as the first fans showed up- at about noon on Saturday.

Sidat Singh was just getting over a bout with tonsillitis but was declared fit to play. So was Whit Jaeger, Colgate’s star, who had sustained a leg injury in Colgate’s 7-40 disaster vs. Cornell. The paper noted Yeager was a noted trackman in his own right but had always been hobbled by injuries- until the week of the Syracuse game when he always seemed to recover just in time to plague the Orange.

The front page of Saturday’s newspaper showed a picture of Marty Glickman in a running pose, looking confident while Sidat Singh, with a ball of his own, was getting set to pass. Was this the year?

“Syracuse had two chances, both of them in the first quarter. Neither time was it equal to the occasion and therein lies the story of the entire contest. Opportunity rapped once at the Colgate’s door and Jaeger was on the job to answer and cash in for his team.”

“Whitney Jaeger, Colgate senior who tearfully nursed bruised and battered legs on the Red Raider bench for five weeks as he watched his team suffer one defeat after another, came back to the football wars Saturday afternoon…eluding trainers and physicians who had kept him inactive until the climax game of the season, Jaeger took the field to be the spearhead of the Colgate attack that brought his team home a 7-0 victory over its traditional rival, Syracuse.”

Syracuse kicked off and forced Colgate to punt. Harold “Babe” Ruth, on a fake reverse, ran 32 yards to the Colgate 24. But SU could gain only 5 yards in three plays and Jim Bruett missed a field goal. Colgate was forced to punt again and the Orange penetrated to the Colgate 18 but Sidat Singh was sacked on fourth down.

After a series of punts, the Red Raiders had the ball on their own 29 early in the second quarter. Fullback Eddie Lalor “broke loose on a spinner play and crashed through the center of the Syracuse line for 14 yards to reach his 43 yard stripe. On the next play, Jaeger took the ball, swung deep as though to make a forward pass and then ‘took his cut’ and made it up the sidelines in a spirited dash, knees traveling high, (he’d been a hurdler), advancing 35 yards past the line of scrimmage until he was forced out of bounds on the Syracuse 22 yard stripe. Tasting blood in Syracuse territory for the first time in the contest, Colgate once more called on Jaeger to go to town, tossing him a forward pass as he ran out into the flat on the southwest side of the field. He caught the pass and whirled on, until driven out of bounds seven yards from the goal line.“ It was the only completed pass Colgate had in the entire game.

Two runs by Lalor gained nothing. Then Andy Kerr went to one of his favorite plays, the double reverse, Lalor to Davids, (the left wingback in the double wing) to Jaeger, who circled wide who almost got tackled by Les Balmer, the only Syracuse player who had correctly diagnosed the play, back at the 15 yard line. But a straight arm freed the supposedly gimpy Jaeger who made it all the way to the goal line before anyone else laid a hand on him. There he was hit again but carried a couple of defenders into the end zone for what would prove to be the only score on the game.

The Red Raiders were ahead 7-0 and it had begun to snow. Neither team mounted another serious threat until the fourth quarter, when a Colgate runner broke through the Syracuse line and into the open flled. Fortunately for the home team, it wasn’t Jaeger but the slower Lalor, who got run down by Marty Glickman before he reached the goal.

Still down only by that one score, SU made one more effort at scoring. Sidat Singh spotted Adam Markowski downfield and hit him right in the fingers with a beautiful pass. But Markowski knew he had the “fastest man in football” Marty Glickman, trailing him and got the idea of lateralling the ball to him. It would be the irony of ironies for Colgate’s string of victories to end on a lateral! But it wasn’t to be. Markowski was already planning his pass to Glickman when the ball got there and the ball bounced harmlessly off his hands. On the last play Glickman burst through for 19 yards and “eluded all of Colgate’s players, save two, but they were too alert and closed in on him. As he went down, there crashed with him Syracuse’s last faint hope of equaling the score.” It was Colgate’s 10th straight victory over Syracuse, who hadn’t beaten them in 13 games.

“Colgate came to Syracuse to make good on its boast that no matter what it does against others it will still defeat the Orange.” Syracuse outpassed Colgate 34-13 but the visitors outrushed them, 102-208. Each team had 3 turnovers. Colgate had the edge in first downs, 6-8.

A series of pictures was taken of Ossie Solem and his top assistant, “Biggie” Munn, one in each quarter. They had titles like “Orange attacks”, Colgate scores”, “Soft footing stops Orange”, etc., with facial expressions to match. At the end, Solem realized he had joined his three predecessors in being unable to beat Colgate. Nonetheless, Solem announced that the Orange had had a “splendid season” and would be improved the next year. “All in all it was a happy season for Syracuse and I believe we are started toward fairly happy days on the gridiron.” I’m not sure how happy SU fans were following a 10th straight loss- all at home- to their arch rivals. I’m also not sure how happy Sidat Singh and his teammates were with how they were treated by Ossie Solem.

After the season, Marty Glickman was invited by a friend to work out with him at the New York Athletic Club. When he got there, he was denied entrance because he was Jewish. It was long ride back to Brooklyn on the subway. Later, when he became famous and knew some of the members, he was invited several times to join the NYAC but turned them down every time. Finally, in the late 1980’s he was asked to be the guest of honor at their annual sports dinner. He was assured that the NYAC had changed and long since accepted Jews. In fact, also being honored that night was Fred Lebow, who ran the New York Marathon and was also Jewish. Marty agreed to come. The dinner was held in the room Glickman wanted to run in when he was denied entrance 50 years before. As he was being introduced, he wondered if he should say something. He remembered when he had sat next to Sidat Singh and said nothing and how he had felt. “I’ve got to say it. I’ve always been sorry for the things I didn’t do in my life, not the things I’ve done.”

He got up and announced, “This has been a very emotional night for me” and told the story of his being barred from that room. “I was refused because I was a Jew.” Marty writes “The crowd was hushed. There wasn’t a murmur. Even the waiters were still. And then I said ‘I want to congratulate you, the New York AC, for having changed through the years so that you can now honor two Jews.’ I said I felt I was among friends. Then I stopped. They got up and cheered. It was wonderful. I hadn’t known until I got here what I would say but once I spoke, it came out beautifully. I have spoken to audiences many times in my life. This was the most heartfelt address I’ve ever given.”

At least that HooDoo was over. In 1937 it seemed as if Colgate’s HooDoo over Syracuse would go on forever…
 
SWC has graciously allowed me to add some photos from the 37 and 38 seasons. I hope you all can make out the pics ok. The top pic is of the only score of the game as 'W
Screenshot_20200917-202130_Gallery.jpg
hit' Jaeger makes it to the end zone after a double reverse. The lower pic is of Sidat-Singh completing a pass to Harold 'Babe' Ruth for a 10 yard gain.
Screenshot_20200917-202130_Gallery.jpg
 
Screenshot_20200917-211538_Camera.jpg

Notice the arrow pointing to the ball in mid air. The world before high definition.
 
Screenshot_20200917-212800_Camera.jpg

For the younger crowd, Martha Raye was a female comedian whose nickname was 'The Big Mouth'. The upper pic is of the starters that year. My Grandfather is 3rd from the left next to Singh.
 
Thanks those old shots are great. You can also get them on: The Post-Standard – NewspaperARCHIVE.com but you have to join up and pay a fee.

I love the shots with the dotted lines and arrows showing where the ball went. i grew up fascinated by those. How many newspaper shots do you see these days diagraming the entire play?
 
Last edited:
I like Colgate’s uniforms which seem to have a stripe across the belly in front but not in back
 

Forum statistics

Threads
167,146
Messages
4,683,136
Members
5,901
Latest member
CarlsbergMD

Online statistics

Members online
298
Guests online
1,432
Total visitors
1,730


Top Bottom