SWC75
Bored Historian
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(Let us return for a few moments, to a happier time...)
1938
Syracuse opened the season with its annual tune-up against Clarkson, this time by 27-0. Then Maryland, the team that in 1937 had shut out the previously unbeaten Orange, 0-13, in the absence of Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, came to town. In fact, Syracuse hadn’t scored on the Terps in their last three meetings, one of which was a scoreless tie. The visitors never knew what hit them.
Syracuse swamped Maryland with 8 touchdowns. The Orange rushed for 563 yards, far more than the “official” SU rushing record in the SU media guide of 511 yards vs. Colgate in 1956, (the “official” records are for the post-war period). Ossie Solem used a then incredible 52 players, five of whom scored, including three long runs by Marty Glickman, one of 80 yards. The final score was Syracuse 53 Maryland 0. Marty wrote in his book, “We got even, but it wasn’t really getting even. That was not like standing up and saying “If Wil doesn’t play, I don’t play.”
In most seasons, such a game would be the highlight. 1938 was not most seasons. Carl Snavely was turning Cornell into a national power. They came into Syracuse unbeaten and favored. Through most of the game this prediction held true. The Big Red led 0-10 going into the fourth quarter, perhaps the wildest fourth quarter in Syracuse football history.
“A new forward passing football hero stepped into the great white spotlight of fame Saturday in Archbold Stadium with a daring exhibition of skill as Syracuse launched a three touchdown fourth period attack that electrified 25,000 spectators and defeated Cornell, 19-17. The phenomenon of the rifle shot surpassed even Sid Luckman and Sammy Baugh at their best. His name is Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, a Negro boy from Harlem wearing an East Indian name who has the deadly aim of Davy Crockett and Kit Carson.”
After not completing a pass in the first three quarters. Singh completed 7 of 8 passes for 187 yards and three touchdowns to pull off the upset over a team that wouldn’t lose again for two years, when Dartmouth would beat them in the famous “fifth down” game of 1940, (when Cornell conceded the game after films showed they had taken five downs to score the winning touchdown). Grantland Rice witnessed the game and called it “the most spectacular finish since Notre Dame’s last minute win over Ohio State in 1935.” Rice stated before his death that the 1938 Syracuse-Cornell game was the best college football game he had ever seen.
It started when Singh found halfback Harold “Babe” Ruth for a 35 yard touchdown pass with about 8 minutes left. Cornell was concentrating on SU’s ends and Ruth drifted out of the backfield, uncovered. The extra point was missed but it was now 6-10.
Kenny Brown of Cornell caught the kickoff at his 6 yard line, ran right up the middle, breaking through the first wave of defenders, then cut to the left sideline, “leaving two SU tacklers grasping air.” He took it all the way and Cornell did not miss the extra point. It was 6-17.
Sidat-Singh almost returned the favor, taking the kick-off back to midfield. He then found Ruth running downfield all alone again and hit him for a 38 yard gain. At the 12, Singh again retreated to pass. Again Ruth was open and again the pass went right into his hands in the end zone. Again the extra point was missed. It was 12-17.
There was no sudden reversal of fortune on the kick-off and the Big Red set about trying to run the clock out. They appeared to be doing it successfully when the ball was handed off to Vinnie Eichler, the fullback near midfield. Eichler broke through the Syracuse line and apparently had visions of taking it all the way for a clinching score. The defense closed in and Eicheler heard a voice say “Here, Vinnie”. Taking a page form Andy Kerr’s book, he scooped a lateral in the direction of the voice. Unfortunately, the source had been Phil Allen, Syracuse’s end. Allen gratefully accepted the ball and ran to the Cornell 25 where Eicheler’s shocked teammates finally caught up with him.
With seconds left, Singh again dropped back. This time the Big Red had “Babe” Ruth covered like a blanket. But Allen had slipped by his man and run to the left corner of the goal line. Singh’s pass fell into Allen’s hands just as he crossed the goal line. The extra point was good this time and Syracuse won, 19-17. Lawrence Skiddy called it “The greatest exhibition of courage and skill that any Syracuse team has ever shown.”
In any other year that would have been regarded as the most memorable game. But here was unfinished business yet to come. Unfortunately, the Cornell game exhausted SU’s cache of miracles for the moment. The next week, Michigan State’s All-American John Pingel outdueled Sidat Singh by scoring twice and throwing for a TD to Singh’s two TD passes in a 12-19 Spartan win at East Lansing. Then came a total collapse against Syracuse’s traditional patsy, Penn State.
“Penn State University’s football team ran wild on the gridiron here this afternoon and defeated Syracuse 33-6 in the most amazing exhibition of speed, power and deception, mixed in the most masterful fashion that has ever been shown in the 17 year old series between the two teams. Syracuse met a Penn State team the like of which it has never seen.” The game was seen by a crowd of 10,000 people, about 10% of the present capacity of Beaver Stadium which opened in 1960 and has bene built up into one of the largest stadiums in the country. I have a 1954 NCAA football guide that has a picture of, its predecessor, Beaver Field, (both named after a former Governor of Pennsylvania who was president of the Board of Trustees when Beaver Field was built in 1909), with a single deck of stands around 80% of the field, with an open “horseshoe” at one end. There’s a baseball diamond located next to it. The capacity at that time was 30,000 and the enrollment at the school was listed as 12,753 students. Archbold Stadium in Syracuse had 40,000 seats in 1954 and the school’s enrollment was 9,086. Today, (I wrote this in 2003), the Carrier Dome has 49,500 seats and Syracuse has an enrollment of 12,447. Penn State now enrolls 83,038 students and Beaver Stadium holds 105,000 spectators. That’s why Penn State has long since ceased to be anybody’s patsy. Ironically, Penn State had a losing record in 1938, (they never won another game after beating SU). It was their last losing record for 50 years.
Lawrence Skiddy suggested that SU’s problem against Penn State in 1938 was that they were “playing two opponents at once”, since the Colgate game was to be played the next week. SU came out flat. Charlie Peters ran 80 yards to score on the second play of the game. Then SU fumbled on their own 25 to set up a second score. Syracuse only showed life in its next possession. The well-named Dick Banger returned the kickoff to the 25. Fullback Bill Hoffman bolted through the line for 22 yards and lateralled to Singh for another 16. Singh than ran the other 38 yards on a sweep to make it 6-14. That was the halftime score. But both teams remembered the previous year when Sidat Singh led a comeback from a 0-13 deficit at the half to win the game in Syracuse.
It didn’t happen this time. Penn State got the ball on the SU 34 after a bad punt and drove into score. Singh drove the team to the Penn State 21 but SU gave up the ball on downs. The Lions then put the game away with a punishing 79 yard drive, keyed by a 40 yard burst by White. An interception on SU’s 27 set up the final score and both coaches sent in the reserves to play out the string.
The euphoria of the Cornell game was little more than an echo. Colgate’s Red Raiders were coming to town again and it now seemed the hoodoo would last forever. But Colgate had been looking ahead, too. They looked little better than SU in losing 0-21 to Holy Cross. The Maroon were 2-3 against a tough schedule. They had lost to Cornell and Duke’s unbeaten, untied and unscored upon team to open the season. They had rallied to beat Columbia and Nile Kinnick’s Iowa team before the Holy Cross disaster. Even the Crusaders would lose only one game that year, so Colgate, despite their record, was still pretty formidable.
Meanwhile, SU was pretty beaten up. “Syracuse goes into the game with just about the most badly battered remnant of a football squad that has ever taken the field in an Orange uniform.” Sidat Singh, “Babe” Ruth and lineman Bill Eschenfelder were hurt but expected to play. Marty Glickman was not nor was starting end Chuck Heer or center Carl Johnson. Guard Duffy Daugherty was definitely out and line coach Bud Wilkinson “was ready for a heroic effort to restore the SU line to its efficiency of the Cornell and Michigan State games instead of being the paper mache wall that crumbled against Penn State”.
Lawrence J. Skiddy interviewed the “Old Insider” again- this year he was just “The Old Timer”. The Old Timer thought the game about even, although he found a strange sort of “advantage” for the home team. “Syracuse, in his opinion, has one advantage. It has proved that it can, as a squad, get heated up over a ballgame and go on the field and play ‘over its head’. He calls it a team of moods, one that can go high or drop low…He calls Colgate a solid team that runs true to form- beating teams it was supposed to beat, losing to teams it was supposed to lose to.”
The campus was decked out in its usual finery for the big game, including a prize among fraternities and sororities for the best sign. The winner was one that said “Hoodoo they think they are? They haven’t a ghost of a chance!” A left over Halloween ghost decoration was in the middle. Another simply had a piece of cardboard reading “Who stole our sign?” They didn’t win anything.
There were rumors that the Syracuse team was wracked with dissension, with players “riding” each other for their play. Skiddy dismissed this, saying any “snarling” has only “put the squad in a high spirit, determined to make the greatest fight of the year….Syracuse’s squad is determined to win this game!”
The hurting Syracuse players could perhaps take heart from an event that happened the Tuesday before the game. “No one knows what Seabiscuit will do. That is, no one save his stable. The chances are, however, that he will try to match strides with his rival from the start and see how he reacts when he is unable to put any daylight between himself and a challenger. Seabiscuit is normally a slow starter, reserving his move for late in the race but hanging back is considered fatal in a two horse race.”
“In War Admiral he faced a ‘scat’ starter: a horse that fairly bullets from the barrier, takes the lead and keeps dust in the eyes of his challenger- usually. But the Admiral had never stood side by side at the barrier with “the biscuit”. And to everybody’s surprise it was Seabiscuit who broke first broke like a frightened thing, ringing away with a burst of speed that put him in front by a length before the 3/16 pole was reached. He never was behind although he did not lead all the way. For half a mile- from a point in the back stretch to the top of the stretch- War Admiral looked him in the eye and ran as close to him as the minute hand to the hour hand at 12 noon. It was in this run, side by side, that Seabiscuit proved his superiority over the Admiral. Because when the two horses came out of their gripping drive at the top of the stretch and leveled off for a time, Seabiscuit had enough left to carry on to barrel it down to the wire. War Admiral didn’t. Spent and disheartened by his inability to shake off the chunky little son of Man O’War faded and was unable to lift himself for a final charge despite a terrific whipping from the bat of Charles Kurtsinger.” (The movie Seabiscuit was in the theaters when I wrote this in 2003.)
Syracuse had hung back too often in their two horse race with Colgate. They hadn’t scored against their rival since a 1934 safety, hadn’t scored on offence since a 1933 field goal, hadn’t scored a touchdown since 1931, and, of course, hadn’t won since 1924. “The Orange team hasn’t scored a touchdown against a major foe in two seasons unless Sidat Singh is on the field of play. He scored or made the pass to the score in a great majority of the touchdowns.” This would be his last stab at beating Colgate and breaking the Hoodoo.
Would Syracuse be able to stay with Colgate and then “have enough left to carry on to barrel it down to the wire”? For a long time, it appeared not. Neither team scored in the first half but Syracuse seemed to be constantly on the ropes. The Orange fumbled on their own 31 but all the Red Raiders got was three incomplete passes and a missed field goal. Twice Colgate drove to the Syracuse 15 but lost the ball on downs when a trick play failed and then fumbled on the second occasion. Meanwhile, Colgate’s Joe Hoague kept pinning SU against its own goal line, depositing his punts on the 8 yard line, the 1 yard line and the 1 foot line. In fact, for the game, Syracuse only had 64 yards total offense with no completed passes. The visitors ran for 97 yards and passed for 110 more with 10 completions in 24 attempts. But the Orange defense kept them out of the end zone.
Late in the second period, Syracuse almost got the big break they needed when a snap went over the head of Wally Davids, Colgate’s punter, (who was their long distance specialist). He had to run from his own 30 to the 8 to retrieve the ball, then elude the rushers. He managed to get off a punt and Syracuse wound up with the ball on the Colgate 38. Syracuse couldn’t move the ball and Dick Banger (an ideal name for a punter), tried to “coffin corner” the punt, as Hoague had done to Syracuse. But “Pappy” Herman caught the ball and “high stepped down the sidelines past midfield where Banger “banged” him out of bounds.” With that, the half ended.
Nothing much happened in the third period until the last play. Colgate was punting from deep in its territory. Kerr replaced Davids with Hoague who drilled the ball from his won 10 to SU’s 25, a stunning 65 yard boot. But he’d outkicked his coverage. “Banger waited, deep in his own territory until satisfied he had established the arc of the ball for himself and then, traveling at full speed he came up to take the ball out of the air in full stride. Bill Hoffman, who had retreated halfway back with Banger, put on the block that sent the first Colgate tackler out of Banger’s way. Under full headway, Banger came up for 30 yards before he slackened speed at all. Then he started cutting, picking out blockers and followed then nicely until he had traveled 31 more yards to reach Colgate’s 14 yard mark.”
“One line thrust gained nothing. Then the Orange came up with one of the oldest plays in football history, the end around. Bill Hoffman, Syracuse fullback, standing almost directly behind the center, took the pass from the snap-back and made a half spin. Banger, from a wing position, swung back and to his left as though to take the ball. Two linemen and Jack Taylor, Syracuse quarterback, pulled in ahead of Banger, apparently running interference for him. Hoffman merely faked to Banger, who sped on as though he had the ball. Meanwhile, Phil Allen, running to the opposite direction, had crossed behind Banger. It was to him that Hoffman gave the ball and the big end wheeled around the right side of his line. Colgate’s entire team had swung out of position in a bid to stop Banger. As Allen leaped into the clear, a shout warned Colgate of its danger but the call came too late. Out of position and in motion in the wrong way, Colgate could not stop the play. Four Red Raiders made a desperate dash after the speeding Allen but he had crossed the goal line and was already slowing up before he was caught. “
“The 35,000 yelling enthusiasts sent up a volume of sound that must have carried even to the Vale of the Chenango and revealed to the home town supporters that all was not well with the Red Raiders.” Allen’s run was virtually identical to Whit Jaeger’s touchdown off a reverse that had given Colgate the victory the year before. But he had graduated, as had Johnny Ritchko, Marty McDonough, Johnny Orsi, Len Macaluso and Bill Timm and all the other Colgate heroes who had tortured the Orange over the years.
Colgate tried three long passes after that, completing one to Don Wemple, “a diving play that was one of the most remarkable catches ever made on the stadium gridiron.” But it wasn’t enough. Syracuse players and fans could look at the scoreboard and see something they hadn’t seen since the players were toddlers: SYRACUSE 7 COLGATE 0 ….0:10…0:09…0:08…0:07...0:06…0:05…0:04…0:03…0:02…0:01…
The Hoodoo was over.
“No sooner had the big electric clock in Archbold Stadium ticked off the final second in an epochal football game in which a gallant Syracuse team broke a 14 year old hoodoo at the expense of an equal gallant Colgate squad than the emotions of Syracuse partisans burst out in a frenzy of joy at the Orange’s 7-0 triumph. The gray concrete walls of the ancient bowl, which had echoed for two hours with the yells of 35,000 supporters of the traditional rivals then witnessed such a scene as not even the dramatic last minute victory over Cornell had produced. Old Syracuse grads embraced. Thousands of undergraduates and the more active old grads swarmed to the gridiron….Syracuse had been prepared to surrender its goal posts to Colgate students and supporters if Colgate had won the game. Colgate didn’t win but the destruction of the goal posts was accomplished in record time by Orange followers who made the uprights and the crossbars mere splinters of wood, about the size of toothpicks, in their rush for souvenirs…..Some carried the tired but happy Saltine Warriors to their dressing room on their shoulders….the chimes of Crouse College, silent after Colgate games since 1924, rang out…..The Colgate undergraduates never gave up. Even after the game was over they gave an outstanding demonstration of sportsmanship and evidence that they ‘could take it’ by remaining in their section and cheering continuously for their beaten team for ten more minutes.”
Non-students had their way in downtown Syracuse. A crowd of about 3,000 decided they were going to overturn a trolley car at the corner of Salina and Jefferson Streets. They failed but created a traffic jam of a dozen trolleys behind them. Police routed automobile traffic away from the central portion of town. A group of youths took to jumping up and down on the running boards of stalled cars, terrifying the passengers inside. When one man was being arrested and placed in a police car, his buddies snuck around and let the air out of the car’s rear tires. They were shortly sitting next to him in the car. Messenger boys reported that their bicycles were being “borrowed” for 10-15 joyrides by revelers.
The Hotels Syracuse and Onondaga were packed. The Onondaga estimated that 4500 people were in their 500 rooms. In the lobby of the Hotel Syracuse, fans snake danced around the lobby for hours, shouting “QUIET!…QUIET!” in mockery of Hotel employees who vainly pleaded for same. Pedestrians avoided the sidewalks under the hotels where they risked being hit by a barrage of water, pillows, bed clothes, lemons and bad eggs. At midnight, someone set firecrackers off in the lobby of the Onondaga and the crowd took to tearing telephones out of booths and setting off fire alarms on every floor of the place.
Not one person was arrested who was actually attending either school. Parties and dances were held on campus to keep the students there, including a dance in Archbold Gym that drew 5,000 people. Coeds, in particular, were ordered not to venture off campus. Fraternities and Sororities held parties where a popular song included the lyrics “The Hoodoo is gone…the Jinx is broken!”
There had been a meteor with an Orange hew that had flashed across the Syracuse skies on Friday night. As night approached on Saturday, “the Sun, hidden all afternoon behind rain dripping clouds, broke out in a glorious Orange Sunset, the rays of the setting sun shining through the raindrops and bathing the sides of Mt. Olympus with a beautiful rainbow, a rainbow whose pot of gold Coach Ossie Solem’s victorious youngsters already had found.”
And somewhere, “Dink” Tisdale was smiling….
1938
Syracuse opened the season with its annual tune-up against Clarkson, this time by 27-0. Then Maryland, the team that in 1937 had shut out the previously unbeaten Orange, 0-13, in the absence of Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, came to town. In fact, Syracuse hadn’t scored on the Terps in their last three meetings, one of which was a scoreless tie. The visitors never knew what hit them.
Syracuse swamped Maryland with 8 touchdowns. The Orange rushed for 563 yards, far more than the “official” SU rushing record in the SU media guide of 511 yards vs. Colgate in 1956, (the “official” records are for the post-war period). Ossie Solem used a then incredible 52 players, five of whom scored, including three long runs by Marty Glickman, one of 80 yards. The final score was Syracuse 53 Maryland 0. Marty wrote in his book, “We got even, but it wasn’t really getting even. That was not like standing up and saying “If Wil doesn’t play, I don’t play.”
In most seasons, such a game would be the highlight. 1938 was not most seasons. Carl Snavely was turning Cornell into a national power. They came into Syracuse unbeaten and favored. Through most of the game this prediction held true. The Big Red led 0-10 going into the fourth quarter, perhaps the wildest fourth quarter in Syracuse football history.
“A new forward passing football hero stepped into the great white spotlight of fame Saturday in Archbold Stadium with a daring exhibition of skill as Syracuse launched a three touchdown fourth period attack that electrified 25,000 spectators and defeated Cornell, 19-17. The phenomenon of the rifle shot surpassed even Sid Luckman and Sammy Baugh at their best. His name is Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, a Negro boy from Harlem wearing an East Indian name who has the deadly aim of Davy Crockett and Kit Carson.”
After not completing a pass in the first three quarters. Singh completed 7 of 8 passes for 187 yards and three touchdowns to pull off the upset over a team that wouldn’t lose again for two years, when Dartmouth would beat them in the famous “fifth down” game of 1940, (when Cornell conceded the game after films showed they had taken five downs to score the winning touchdown). Grantland Rice witnessed the game and called it “the most spectacular finish since Notre Dame’s last minute win over Ohio State in 1935.” Rice stated before his death that the 1938 Syracuse-Cornell game was the best college football game he had ever seen.
It started when Singh found halfback Harold “Babe” Ruth for a 35 yard touchdown pass with about 8 minutes left. Cornell was concentrating on SU’s ends and Ruth drifted out of the backfield, uncovered. The extra point was missed but it was now 6-10.
Kenny Brown of Cornell caught the kickoff at his 6 yard line, ran right up the middle, breaking through the first wave of defenders, then cut to the left sideline, “leaving two SU tacklers grasping air.” He took it all the way and Cornell did not miss the extra point. It was 6-17.
Sidat-Singh almost returned the favor, taking the kick-off back to midfield. He then found Ruth running downfield all alone again and hit him for a 38 yard gain. At the 12, Singh again retreated to pass. Again Ruth was open and again the pass went right into his hands in the end zone. Again the extra point was missed. It was 12-17.
There was no sudden reversal of fortune on the kick-off and the Big Red set about trying to run the clock out. They appeared to be doing it successfully when the ball was handed off to Vinnie Eichler, the fullback near midfield. Eichler broke through the Syracuse line and apparently had visions of taking it all the way for a clinching score. The defense closed in and Eicheler heard a voice say “Here, Vinnie”. Taking a page form Andy Kerr’s book, he scooped a lateral in the direction of the voice. Unfortunately, the source had been Phil Allen, Syracuse’s end. Allen gratefully accepted the ball and ran to the Cornell 25 where Eicheler’s shocked teammates finally caught up with him.
With seconds left, Singh again dropped back. This time the Big Red had “Babe” Ruth covered like a blanket. But Allen had slipped by his man and run to the left corner of the goal line. Singh’s pass fell into Allen’s hands just as he crossed the goal line. The extra point was good this time and Syracuse won, 19-17. Lawrence Skiddy called it “The greatest exhibition of courage and skill that any Syracuse team has ever shown.”
In any other year that would have been regarded as the most memorable game. But here was unfinished business yet to come. Unfortunately, the Cornell game exhausted SU’s cache of miracles for the moment. The next week, Michigan State’s All-American John Pingel outdueled Sidat Singh by scoring twice and throwing for a TD to Singh’s two TD passes in a 12-19 Spartan win at East Lansing. Then came a total collapse against Syracuse’s traditional patsy, Penn State.
“Penn State University’s football team ran wild on the gridiron here this afternoon and defeated Syracuse 33-6 in the most amazing exhibition of speed, power and deception, mixed in the most masterful fashion that has ever been shown in the 17 year old series between the two teams. Syracuse met a Penn State team the like of which it has never seen.” The game was seen by a crowd of 10,000 people, about 10% of the present capacity of Beaver Stadium which opened in 1960 and has bene built up into one of the largest stadiums in the country. I have a 1954 NCAA football guide that has a picture of, its predecessor, Beaver Field, (both named after a former Governor of Pennsylvania who was president of the Board of Trustees when Beaver Field was built in 1909), with a single deck of stands around 80% of the field, with an open “horseshoe” at one end. There’s a baseball diamond located next to it. The capacity at that time was 30,000 and the enrollment at the school was listed as 12,753 students. Archbold Stadium in Syracuse had 40,000 seats in 1954 and the school’s enrollment was 9,086. Today, (I wrote this in 2003), the Carrier Dome has 49,500 seats and Syracuse has an enrollment of 12,447. Penn State now enrolls 83,038 students and Beaver Stadium holds 105,000 spectators. That’s why Penn State has long since ceased to be anybody’s patsy. Ironically, Penn State had a losing record in 1938, (they never won another game after beating SU). It was their last losing record for 50 years.
Lawrence Skiddy suggested that SU’s problem against Penn State in 1938 was that they were “playing two opponents at once”, since the Colgate game was to be played the next week. SU came out flat. Charlie Peters ran 80 yards to score on the second play of the game. Then SU fumbled on their own 25 to set up a second score. Syracuse only showed life in its next possession. The well-named Dick Banger returned the kickoff to the 25. Fullback Bill Hoffman bolted through the line for 22 yards and lateralled to Singh for another 16. Singh than ran the other 38 yards on a sweep to make it 6-14. That was the halftime score. But both teams remembered the previous year when Sidat Singh led a comeback from a 0-13 deficit at the half to win the game in Syracuse.
It didn’t happen this time. Penn State got the ball on the SU 34 after a bad punt and drove into score. Singh drove the team to the Penn State 21 but SU gave up the ball on downs. The Lions then put the game away with a punishing 79 yard drive, keyed by a 40 yard burst by White. An interception on SU’s 27 set up the final score and both coaches sent in the reserves to play out the string.
The euphoria of the Cornell game was little more than an echo. Colgate’s Red Raiders were coming to town again and it now seemed the hoodoo would last forever. But Colgate had been looking ahead, too. They looked little better than SU in losing 0-21 to Holy Cross. The Maroon were 2-3 against a tough schedule. They had lost to Cornell and Duke’s unbeaten, untied and unscored upon team to open the season. They had rallied to beat Columbia and Nile Kinnick’s Iowa team before the Holy Cross disaster. Even the Crusaders would lose only one game that year, so Colgate, despite their record, was still pretty formidable.
Meanwhile, SU was pretty beaten up. “Syracuse goes into the game with just about the most badly battered remnant of a football squad that has ever taken the field in an Orange uniform.” Sidat Singh, “Babe” Ruth and lineman Bill Eschenfelder were hurt but expected to play. Marty Glickman was not nor was starting end Chuck Heer or center Carl Johnson. Guard Duffy Daugherty was definitely out and line coach Bud Wilkinson “was ready for a heroic effort to restore the SU line to its efficiency of the Cornell and Michigan State games instead of being the paper mache wall that crumbled against Penn State”.
Lawrence J. Skiddy interviewed the “Old Insider” again- this year he was just “The Old Timer”. The Old Timer thought the game about even, although he found a strange sort of “advantage” for the home team. “Syracuse, in his opinion, has one advantage. It has proved that it can, as a squad, get heated up over a ballgame and go on the field and play ‘over its head’. He calls it a team of moods, one that can go high or drop low…He calls Colgate a solid team that runs true to form- beating teams it was supposed to beat, losing to teams it was supposed to lose to.”
The campus was decked out in its usual finery for the big game, including a prize among fraternities and sororities for the best sign. The winner was one that said “Hoodoo they think they are? They haven’t a ghost of a chance!” A left over Halloween ghost decoration was in the middle. Another simply had a piece of cardboard reading “Who stole our sign?” They didn’t win anything.
There were rumors that the Syracuse team was wracked with dissension, with players “riding” each other for their play. Skiddy dismissed this, saying any “snarling” has only “put the squad in a high spirit, determined to make the greatest fight of the year….Syracuse’s squad is determined to win this game!”
The hurting Syracuse players could perhaps take heart from an event that happened the Tuesday before the game. “No one knows what Seabiscuit will do. That is, no one save his stable. The chances are, however, that he will try to match strides with his rival from the start and see how he reacts when he is unable to put any daylight between himself and a challenger. Seabiscuit is normally a slow starter, reserving his move for late in the race but hanging back is considered fatal in a two horse race.”
“In War Admiral he faced a ‘scat’ starter: a horse that fairly bullets from the barrier, takes the lead and keeps dust in the eyes of his challenger- usually. But the Admiral had never stood side by side at the barrier with “the biscuit”. And to everybody’s surprise it was Seabiscuit who broke first broke like a frightened thing, ringing away with a burst of speed that put him in front by a length before the 3/16 pole was reached. He never was behind although he did not lead all the way. For half a mile- from a point in the back stretch to the top of the stretch- War Admiral looked him in the eye and ran as close to him as the minute hand to the hour hand at 12 noon. It was in this run, side by side, that Seabiscuit proved his superiority over the Admiral. Because when the two horses came out of their gripping drive at the top of the stretch and leveled off for a time, Seabiscuit had enough left to carry on to barrel it down to the wire. War Admiral didn’t. Spent and disheartened by his inability to shake off the chunky little son of Man O’War faded and was unable to lift himself for a final charge despite a terrific whipping from the bat of Charles Kurtsinger.” (The movie Seabiscuit was in the theaters when I wrote this in 2003.)
Syracuse had hung back too often in their two horse race with Colgate. They hadn’t scored against their rival since a 1934 safety, hadn’t scored on offence since a 1933 field goal, hadn’t scored a touchdown since 1931, and, of course, hadn’t won since 1924. “The Orange team hasn’t scored a touchdown against a major foe in two seasons unless Sidat Singh is on the field of play. He scored or made the pass to the score in a great majority of the touchdowns.” This would be his last stab at beating Colgate and breaking the Hoodoo.
Would Syracuse be able to stay with Colgate and then “have enough left to carry on to barrel it down to the wire”? For a long time, it appeared not. Neither team scored in the first half but Syracuse seemed to be constantly on the ropes. The Orange fumbled on their own 31 but all the Red Raiders got was three incomplete passes and a missed field goal. Twice Colgate drove to the Syracuse 15 but lost the ball on downs when a trick play failed and then fumbled on the second occasion. Meanwhile, Colgate’s Joe Hoague kept pinning SU against its own goal line, depositing his punts on the 8 yard line, the 1 yard line and the 1 foot line. In fact, for the game, Syracuse only had 64 yards total offense with no completed passes. The visitors ran for 97 yards and passed for 110 more with 10 completions in 24 attempts. But the Orange defense kept them out of the end zone.
Late in the second period, Syracuse almost got the big break they needed when a snap went over the head of Wally Davids, Colgate’s punter, (who was their long distance specialist). He had to run from his own 30 to the 8 to retrieve the ball, then elude the rushers. He managed to get off a punt and Syracuse wound up with the ball on the Colgate 38. Syracuse couldn’t move the ball and Dick Banger (an ideal name for a punter), tried to “coffin corner” the punt, as Hoague had done to Syracuse. But “Pappy” Herman caught the ball and “high stepped down the sidelines past midfield where Banger “banged” him out of bounds.” With that, the half ended.
Nothing much happened in the third period until the last play. Colgate was punting from deep in its territory. Kerr replaced Davids with Hoague who drilled the ball from his won 10 to SU’s 25, a stunning 65 yard boot. But he’d outkicked his coverage. “Banger waited, deep in his own territory until satisfied he had established the arc of the ball for himself and then, traveling at full speed he came up to take the ball out of the air in full stride. Bill Hoffman, who had retreated halfway back with Banger, put on the block that sent the first Colgate tackler out of Banger’s way. Under full headway, Banger came up for 30 yards before he slackened speed at all. Then he started cutting, picking out blockers and followed then nicely until he had traveled 31 more yards to reach Colgate’s 14 yard mark.”
“One line thrust gained nothing. Then the Orange came up with one of the oldest plays in football history, the end around. Bill Hoffman, Syracuse fullback, standing almost directly behind the center, took the pass from the snap-back and made a half spin. Banger, from a wing position, swung back and to his left as though to take the ball. Two linemen and Jack Taylor, Syracuse quarterback, pulled in ahead of Banger, apparently running interference for him. Hoffman merely faked to Banger, who sped on as though he had the ball. Meanwhile, Phil Allen, running to the opposite direction, had crossed behind Banger. It was to him that Hoffman gave the ball and the big end wheeled around the right side of his line. Colgate’s entire team had swung out of position in a bid to stop Banger. As Allen leaped into the clear, a shout warned Colgate of its danger but the call came too late. Out of position and in motion in the wrong way, Colgate could not stop the play. Four Red Raiders made a desperate dash after the speeding Allen but he had crossed the goal line and was already slowing up before he was caught. “
“The 35,000 yelling enthusiasts sent up a volume of sound that must have carried even to the Vale of the Chenango and revealed to the home town supporters that all was not well with the Red Raiders.” Allen’s run was virtually identical to Whit Jaeger’s touchdown off a reverse that had given Colgate the victory the year before. But he had graduated, as had Johnny Ritchko, Marty McDonough, Johnny Orsi, Len Macaluso and Bill Timm and all the other Colgate heroes who had tortured the Orange over the years.
Colgate tried three long passes after that, completing one to Don Wemple, “a diving play that was one of the most remarkable catches ever made on the stadium gridiron.” But it wasn’t enough. Syracuse players and fans could look at the scoreboard and see something they hadn’t seen since the players were toddlers: SYRACUSE 7 COLGATE 0 ….0:10…0:09…0:08…0:07...0:06…0:05…0:04…0:03…0:02…0:01…
The Hoodoo was over.
“No sooner had the big electric clock in Archbold Stadium ticked off the final second in an epochal football game in which a gallant Syracuse team broke a 14 year old hoodoo at the expense of an equal gallant Colgate squad than the emotions of Syracuse partisans burst out in a frenzy of joy at the Orange’s 7-0 triumph. The gray concrete walls of the ancient bowl, which had echoed for two hours with the yells of 35,000 supporters of the traditional rivals then witnessed such a scene as not even the dramatic last minute victory over Cornell had produced. Old Syracuse grads embraced. Thousands of undergraduates and the more active old grads swarmed to the gridiron….Syracuse had been prepared to surrender its goal posts to Colgate students and supporters if Colgate had won the game. Colgate didn’t win but the destruction of the goal posts was accomplished in record time by Orange followers who made the uprights and the crossbars mere splinters of wood, about the size of toothpicks, in their rush for souvenirs…..Some carried the tired but happy Saltine Warriors to their dressing room on their shoulders….the chimes of Crouse College, silent after Colgate games since 1924, rang out…..The Colgate undergraduates never gave up. Even after the game was over they gave an outstanding demonstration of sportsmanship and evidence that they ‘could take it’ by remaining in their section and cheering continuously for their beaten team for ten more minutes.”
Non-students had their way in downtown Syracuse. A crowd of about 3,000 decided they were going to overturn a trolley car at the corner of Salina and Jefferson Streets. They failed but created a traffic jam of a dozen trolleys behind them. Police routed automobile traffic away from the central portion of town. A group of youths took to jumping up and down on the running boards of stalled cars, terrifying the passengers inside. When one man was being arrested and placed in a police car, his buddies snuck around and let the air out of the car’s rear tires. They were shortly sitting next to him in the car. Messenger boys reported that their bicycles were being “borrowed” for 10-15 joyrides by revelers.
The Hotels Syracuse and Onondaga were packed. The Onondaga estimated that 4500 people were in their 500 rooms. In the lobby of the Hotel Syracuse, fans snake danced around the lobby for hours, shouting “QUIET!…QUIET!” in mockery of Hotel employees who vainly pleaded for same. Pedestrians avoided the sidewalks under the hotels where they risked being hit by a barrage of water, pillows, bed clothes, lemons and bad eggs. At midnight, someone set firecrackers off in the lobby of the Onondaga and the crowd took to tearing telephones out of booths and setting off fire alarms on every floor of the place.
Not one person was arrested who was actually attending either school. Parties and dances were held on campus to keep the students there, including a dance in Archbold Gym that drew 5,000 people. Coeds, in particular, were ordered not to venture off campus. Fraternities and Sororities held parties where a popular song included the lyrics “The Hoodoo is gone…the Jinx is broken!”
There had been a meteor with an Orange hew that had flashed across the Syracuse skies on Friday night. As night approached on Saturday, “the Sun, hidden all afternoon behind rain dripping clouds, broke out in a glorious Orange Sunset, the rays of the setting sun shining through the raindrops and bathing the sides of Mt. Olympus with a beautiful rainbow, a rainbow whose pot of gold Coach Ossie Solem’s victorious youngsters already had found.”
And somewhere, “Dink” Tisdale was smiling….
