SWC75
Bored Historian
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CousCuse suggested I write something about the old Syracuse Colgate rivalry. I'd already done so a dozen years ago. I thought it might be fun to re-post it. I wish we'd kept the Colgate game on the schedule this year instead of playing Liberty. Actually, i'd like to open each season in the Dome vs. Colgate, then had a home and home vs. Army, then play a Group of Five team, then a team form another power conference, then the ACC schedule. But nobody's ever asked me. But CousCuse did ask me about SU-Colgate so here we go, for the first time since I first posted it in 2008 with "Who Knew the Hoodoo? (I'll post the intro today and an article on each year and game from 1925 when it started to 1938 when we finally beat 'em.)
Who Knew the Hoodoo?
Many of us remember the “bad old days” of the 1970’s and 80’s when our arch-rival, Penn State, beat us into the turf for 16 straight years before we finally beat them on that glorious October afternoon in 1987. Some have been told about a previous period where the Orange got humiliated by their biggest rival. It was the period of the “Hoodoo”, a supposed curse put on the Syracuse program by their then arch-rival, the Colgate Red Raiders from 1925-37, who used to shout “Hoodoo” during the games for some reason I haven’t been able to uncover. One can imagine that it must have given SU players and fans the willies to hear that cry over and over again for 13 straight years without ever being able to silence it with a victory.
My parents remember the Hoodoo and maybe you know someone who does, as well. They were students at Syracuse University in the late 1930’s. Mom remembers making a bet with her then boyfriend, (she hadn’t met Dad yet), who was -shockingly- a Colgate student, over the 1938 game. She bet that Colgate would win. It was not that she was disloyal but this was the depression and she had learned to be careful with her money and there was no surer bet in 1938 than that Colgate would defeat Syracuse. Unfortunately she picked the wrong year and had to pay for dinner at the Hotel Onondaga, (which must have been a wild scene). Years later, Dad took my older brother to the 1956 Colgate game, the one in which Jim Brown scored 43 points. He remembers hearing some old grads, seated at the top of the stadium, demanding more and more scores, even though SU was leading 61-7, crying that the “Hoodoo” was sooooo longgg….
I decided to do some research on this period, including going to the county library and looking at the microfilmed copies of the Syracuse newspapers of the era. (Those articles can now be found in the Post Standard achives but you have to create an account there: The Post-Standard – NewspaperARCHIVE.com
I also used Ken Rappoport’s “The Syracuse Football Story”, (1975), Michael Mullin’s “Syracuse University Football: A Centennial Celebration”, (1989), Bob Snyder’s “Orange Handbook”, the SU Media Guide and the NCAA Football Guide. I also referenced such sources as Tim Cohane’s “Great Football Coaches of the Twenties and Thirties”, ”Heroes of the Game: A History of the Grey Cup” by Stephen Thiele, “The Fastest Kid on the Block” by Marty Glickman and Dick Schaap’s “An Illustrated History of the Olympics”. As often happens when you research a previous period of history, you find out as many similarities as differences to our times and find both of them as interesting.
A comparison of that era with an apparently similar recent period is revealing. From 1971-86, Syracuse and Penn State played 16 games and the Nittany Lions won all 16. This was hardly surprising because this was a nadir for the Syracuse program and a glory era for the Lions. Two platoon football had more than doubled the expense and recruiting requirements of big time college football and Syracuse, a medium-sized private school with a crumbling stadium and inadequate facilities, was having trouble competing. Penn State, a large state university with a stadium that eventually was expanded to seat 100,000+, was one of several such schools that took advantage of the situation to dominate its traditional rivals. Their combined record going into those 16 games was 65-16-0, (.802), an average of 4 wins and one loss. SU was a cumulative 33-50-2, (.398), an average of 2 wins and 3 losses going into the Penn State game. The cumulative score was 138-481, an average of 9-30. The seven games played in Syracuse went 79-212 (11-30). The eight games played at Beaver stadium were 52-224, (7-28). The Lions won the one game played on a neutral field, 7-35 at the Meadowlands in 1979, played there because the Carrier Dome was under construction.
The “hoodoo” match was between two private schools in upstate New York. It was one platoon football- with the same players playing offense and defense, as well as doing the kicking. Far fewer players had to be recruited to put together a good team in those days and more schools were able to play big-time ball. We were much the larger of the two schools and had much the larger stadium, (according to the 1951 NCAA guide, Colgate then had 1,200 students and a field- built in 1939- that had 18,500 seats while SU had 11,000 students and Archbold had a 40,000 capacity), such that every one of the Syracuse-Colgate games was played in Syracuse. To my surprise, having read about the success Colgate had in that era under their Hall-of Fame coach, Andy Kerr, Syracuse actually had a better record going into these games, 60-17-6 (.779- almost as good as Penn State in 1971-86), an average of 5 wins and 1 loss, (the games were typically played late in the year). Colgate was 56-23-1, (.708), and average of 4 wins and 2 losses going into the Syracuse game. A possible explanation for this is that Syracuse in those days often began the season playing 2-3 games against small college teams, (such as Hobart, Clarkson and St. Lawrence), before they eased into a major college schedule. Using the designations issued by the following website:
Historical Scores - Alphabetically by Team
for which teams were major college and which were considered small colleges at the time, SU’s actual record vs. major college teams going into the Colgate game from 1925-37 was 23-17-4, (.575). But Syracuse was not the only school that did this. Colgate’s record vs. major college teams going into the SU game in this period was only 18-20-0, (.474). So Syracuse actually was a little better than Colgate in this period- when they were playing other teams. But against the Red Raiders, they were 0-11-2 and got outscored 54-239, (an average of 4-18). And every game was in our own stadium!
This was a different era, one where people viewed college football as a kind of ritualistic festival and an excuse for various types of celebrations. And, (fortunately for SU), the spirit remained strong, win or lose. The term “hoodoo” comes from a chant that Colgate rooters used through the games. Per Jim Decker, later a Syracuse Athletic Director, “One time Colgate hired a plane and came over the Syracuse campus and dropped printed matter and they had these pamphlets that said “Hoodoo is coming.” SU retaliated by flying over a Lake Moraine near the Colgate Campus and dropping Orange dye into it. “We used to raid each other’s campus”, said Decker, “and if anyone got caught he got kept as a prisoner there right up until game time. It was really something when Colgate used to play in Syracuse. The Colgate students used to take over one of the downtown hotels, about a thousand of them. Then, on the morning of the game, they’d assemble in front of the hotel and they’d march together about three miles up to the stadium. There was a great build-up for these games. It didn’t matter what the records of the teams were.” (We have different types of marches these days.)
A newspaper article after one of the games of that period reported: “While bands played, bells rang, colors flew and students cheered and sang themselves hoarse, thirty thousand football fans banked themselves in the great, gray Archbold Stadium in colorful tiers that thrilled to every move of the game. As early as 10:30 o’clock in the forenoon, hordes of the Orange and Maroon supporters began to swarm up the hill and take seats in the big bowl. Many of them carried blankets to protect themselves from the cold and falling snow- the first of the season in Syracuse. Both student sections were blotched with masses of color and waving banners and flags. Every Syracuse co-ed as far as the eye could see wore a big orange chrysanthemum and orange armbands. Most of them carried fluttering handkerchiefs of a brilliant orange hue and other had pennants and cushions and even rugs that could be waved in lieu of any other material. The Colgate students, five hundred in number, sat en masse in the eastern portion of the grandstand. They marched up the hill and paraded to the old Oval, headed by the Third Regiment band at one o’clock, and entered the bowl through the south gates. Eight maroon cheerleaders led the Colgate students in cheers and songs that made the grandstand roof sing with echoes. Contesting the strength of their voices against the Maroon, the Orange supporters sang and cheered so loud they could be heard for many blocks around.” (Now we just file to our seats and wait for something to cheer about.)
One of the traditions began in 1915 when “a fan heaved an orange horseshoe tied with an orange ribbon onto the playing field before the kickoff. A newspaper reporter picked up the horseshoe and tossed it through the goalposts. As the Orange whomped the ‘Gate on that afternoon, (38-0), the horseshoe toss became a fixture before all subsequent Colgate games. Perhaps the strangest tradition was “The Pajama Parade”. A group of SU students would march from the University downtown clad in their pajamas to commune with fans downtown. This must have been a cold routine, as all of the games took place in November.
What is interesting is that the attendance figures for this period, according to the SU Media Guide, are rather paltry compared to modern numbers. Today, we complain if we don’t get crowds of 40,000 at the Dome and would consider a crowd of 30,000 a disaster that would require the Athletic Department to completely rethink their market strategy. From 1925-1938, the average attendance for a game in Archbold Stadium was only 16,000 fans. Part of this may have been due to due to the depression in later years but the average attendance from 1925-28 was only 15,400. It’s obvious that playing several small college teams a year would affect attendance. The forty home games against such teams in 1925-37 averaged 11,400. The games against big time teams, (as they would have been called then), except Colgate averaged 16,300. The 13 games against Colgate were clearly the big ticket games of the era. They averaged 30,100. The only game not against Colgate to reach the 30,000 market was a 1928 game against Columbia that drew 35,000, the same as the Colgate game that year. Those were the largest crowds of the era and that seems to have been the capacity of the stadium at that time. Mullin’s book says that when Archbold opened in 1908 it “could seat up to 30,000 although the comfortable level was closer to 20,000”. I don’t know if the other 10,000 were SRO. The old pictures in the book don’t show any of the wooden bleachers that were later erected down below or above the oval on either side of the field that I remember and can see in later pictures of the stadium for the 50’s and 60’s. The 1951 NCAA guide lists the stadium’s capacity as 40,000. The 1925-37 listings in the Media guide do not list any crowds of over 35,000 and three of the four such crowds were for Colgate games, so I assume that was capacity during this period. That means that the arena was only filled to capacity four times in 71 home games during the period and was on the average less than half full. Even the Colgate games failed to produce a capacity crowd 9 times in 13 games and averaged almost 5,000 short of capacity.
The impression I get from this is that college sports were mostly a campus-oriented event, not something that included the rest of the community to the extent is does today. Even the student didn’t get into it that much except for the “big game” against the top rival, which would provide an excuse to blow off some steam and have some wild, good times, even if we didn’t win the game, as SU failed to do for 13 straight years. When the students and other fans did get excited, they were much more into high jinks and traditions than we are today, probably because of the youth of the fans. Now it’s mostly old grads and area sports fans who are older and go to the games as a sort of cultural experience rather than a social event. I think there is more a feeling that the team represents the entire community rather than just the school these days and a greater feeling that the games must contribute something economic to the community and the school, in addition to their entertainment value. At the same time, I sense a greater tendency to root “at” the team as if they, the coaches and school owed us something for the money and emotional investment we contribute to it rather than to root “for” the kids to obtain their dreams and, by extension, our own.
I also think the whole season came down to that single game that everyone cared about more so than now. There were no conference titles, national rankings, national championships and only one bowl game in those days, one that was 3,000 miles away (both schools were considered, especially SU in 1915 and 1923 and Colgate in 1932 but never went for several reasons, including the expense and academic opposition). Thus, winning the “Big Game” was virtually everything. And SU failed to win that big game for 13 agonizing years in a row, even with each game being played in our own place.
Who Knew the Hoodoo?
Many of us remember the “bad old days” of the 1970’s and 80’s when our arch-rival, Penn State, beat us into the turf for 16 straight years before we finally beat them on that glorious October afternoon in 1987. Some have been told about a previous period where the Orange got humiliated by their biggest rival. It was the period of the “Hoodoo”, a supposed curse put on the Syracuse program by their then arch-rival, the Colgate Red Raiders from 1925-37, who used to shout “Hoodoo” during the games for some reason I haven’t been able to uncover. One can imagine that it must have given SU players and fans the willies to hear that cry over and over again for 13 straight years without ever being able to silence it with a victory.
My parents remember the Hoodoo and maybe you know someone who does, as well. They were students at Syracuse University in the late 1930’s. Mom remembers making a bet with her then boyfriend, (she hadn’t met Dad yet), who was -shockingly- a Colgate student, over the 1938 game. She bet that Colgate would win. It was not that she was disloyal but this was the depression and she had learned to be careful with her money and there was no surer bet in 1938 than that Colgate would defeat Syracuse. Unfortunately she picked the wrong year and had to pay for dinner at the Hotel Onondaga, (which must have been a wild scene). Years later, Dad took my older brother to the 1956 Colgate game, the one in which Jim Brown scored 43 points. He remembers hearing some old grads, seated at the top of the stadium, demanding more and more scores, even though SU was leading 61-7, crying that the “Hoodoo” was sooooo longgg….
I decided to do some research on this period, including going to the county library and looking at the microfilmed copies of the Syracuse newspapers of the era. (Those articles can now be found in the Post Standard achives but you have to create an account there: The Post-Standard – NewspaperARCHIVE.com
I also used Ken Rappoport’s “The Syracuse Football Story”, (1975), Michael Mullin’s “Syracuse University Football: A Centennial Celebration”, (1989), Bob Snyder’s “Orange Handbook”, the SU Media Guide and the NCAA Football Guide. I also referenced such sources as Tim Cohane’s “Great Football Coaches of the Twenties and Thirties”, ”Heroes of the Game: A History of the Grey Cup” by Stephen Thiele, “The Fastest Kid on the Block” by Marty Glickman and Dick Schaap’s “An Illustrated History of the Olympics”. As often happens when you research a previous period of history, you find out as many similarities as differences to our times and find both of them as interesting.
A comparison of that era with an apparently similar recent period is revealing. From 1971-86, Syracuse and Penn State played 16 games and the Nittany Lions won all 16. This was hardly surprising because this was a nadir for the Syracuse program and a glory era for the Lions. Two platoon football had more than doubled the expense and recruiting requirements of big time college football and Syracuse, a medium-sized private school with a crumbling stadium and inadequate facilities, was having trouble competing. Penn State, a large state university with a stadium that eventually was expanded to seat 100,000+, was one of several such schools that took advantage of the situation to dominate its traditional rivals. Their combined record going into those 16 games was 65-16-0, (.802), an average of 4 wins and one loss. SU was a cumulative 33-50-2, (.398), an average of 2 wins and 3 losses going into the Penn State game. The cumulative score was 138-481, an average of 9-30. The seven games played in Syracuse went 79-212 (11-30). The eight games played at Beaver stadium were 52-224, (7-28). The Lions won the one game played on a neutral field, 7-35 at the Meadowlands in 1979, played there because the Carrier Dome was under construction.
The “hoodoo” match was between two private schools in upstate New York. It was one platoon football- with the same players playing offense and defense, as well as doing the kicking. Far fewer players had to be recruited to put together a good team in those days and more schools were able to play big-time ball. We were much the larger of the two schools and had much the larger stadium, (according to the 1951 NCAA guide, Colgate then had 1,200 students and a field- built in 1939- that had 18,500 seats while SU had 11,000 students and Archbold had a 40,000 capacity), such that every one of the Syracuse-Colgate games was played in Syracuse. To my surprise, having read about the success Colgate had in that era under their Hall-of Fame coach, Andy Kerr, Syracuse actually had a better record going into these games, 60-17-6 (.779- almost as good as Penn State in 1971-86), an average of 5 wins and 1 loss, (the games were typically played late in the year). Colgate was 56-23-1, (.708), and average of 4 wins and 2 losses going into the Syracuse game. A possible explanation for this is that Syracuse in those days often began the season playing 2-3 games against small college teams, (such as Hobart, Clarkson and St. Lawrence), before they eased into a major college schedule. Using the designations issued by the following website:
Historical Scores - Alphabetically by Team
for which teams were major college and which were considered small colleges at the time, SU’s actual record vs. major college teams going into the Colgate game from 1925-37 was 23-17-4, (.575). But Syracuse was not the only school that did this. Colgate’s record vs. major college teams going into the SU game in this period was only 18-20-0, (.474). So Syracuse actually was a little better than Colgate in this period- when they were playing other teams. But against the Red Raiders, they were 0-11-2 and got outscored 54-239, (an average of 4-18). And every game was in our own stadium!
This was a different era, one where people viewed college football as a kind of ritualistic festival and an excuse for various types of celebrations. And, (fortunately for SU), the spirit remained strong, win or lose. The term “hoodoo” comes from a chant that Colgate rooters used through the games. Per Jim Decker, later a Syracuse Athletic Director, “One time Colgate hired a plane and came over the Syracuse campus and dropped printed matter and they had these pamphlets that said “Hoodoo is coming.” SU retaliated by flying over a Lake Moraine near the Colgate Campus and dropping Orange dye into it. “We used to raid each other’s campus”, said Decker, “and if anyone got caught he got kept as a prisoner there right up until game time. It was really something when Colgate used to play in Syracuse. The Colgate students used to take over one of the downtown hotels, about a thousand of them. Then, on the morning of the game, they’d assemble in front of the hotel and they’d march together about three miles up to the stadium. There was a great build-up for these games. It didn’t matter what the records of the teams were.” (We have different types of marches these days.)
A newspaper article after one of the games of that period reported: “While bands played, bells rang, colors flew and students cheered and sang themselves hoarse, thirty thousand football fans banked themselves in the great, gray Archbold Stadium in colorful tiers that thrilled to every move of the game. As early as 10:30 o’clock in the forenoon, hordes of the Orange and Maroon supporters began to swarm up the hill and take seats in the big bowl. Many of them carried blankets to protect themselves from the cold and falling snow- the first of the season in Syracuse. Both student sections were blotched with masses of color and waving banners and flags. Every Syracuse co-ed as far as the eye could see wore a big orange chrysanthemum and orange armbands. Most of them carried fluttering handkerchiefs of a brilliant orange hue and other had pennants and cushions and even rugs that could be waved in lieu of any other material. The Colgate students, five hundred in number, sat en masse in the eastern portion of the grandstand. They marched up the hill and paraded to the old Oval, headed by the Third Regiment band at one o’clock, and entered the bowl through the south gates. Eight maroon cheerleaders led the Colgate students in cheers and songs that made the grandstand roof sing with echoes. Contesting the strength of their voices against the Maroon, the Orange supporters sang and cheered so loud they could be heard for many blocks around.” (Now we just file to our seats and wait for something to cheer about.)
One of the traditions began in 1915 when “a fan heaved an orange horseshoe tied with an orange ribbon onto the playing field before the kickoff. A newspaper reporter picked up the horseshoe and tossed it through the goalposts. As the Orange whomped the ‘Gate on that afternoon, (38-0), the horseshoe toss became a fixture before all subsequent Colgate games. Perhaps the strangest tradition was “The Pajama Parade”. A group of SU students would march from the University downtown clad in their pajamas to commune with fans downtown. This must have been a cold routine, as all of the games took place in November.
What is interesting is that the attendance figures for this period, according to the SU Media Guide, are rather paltry compared to modern numbers. Today, we complain if we don’t get crowds of 40,000 at the Dome and would consider a crowd of 30,000 a disaster that would require the Athletic Department to completely rethink their market strategy. From 1925-1938, the average attendance for a game in Archbold Stadium was only 16,000 fans. Part of this may have been due to due to the depression in later years but the average attendance from 1925-28 was only 15,400. It’s obvious that playing several small college teams a year would affect attendance. The forty home games against such teams in 1925-37 averaged 11,400. The games against big time teams, (as they would have been called then), except Colgate averaged 16,300. The 13 games against Colgate were clearly the big ticket games of the era. They averaged 30,100. The only game not against Colgate to reach the 30,000 market was a 1928 game against Columbia that drew 35,000, the same as the Colgate game that year. Those were the largest crowds of the era and that seems to have been the capacity of the stadium at that time. Mullin’s book says that when Archbold opened in 1908 it “could seat up to 30,000 although the comfortable level was closer to 20,000”. I don’t know if the other 10,000 were SRO. The old pictures in the book don’t show any of the wooden bleachers that were later erected down below or above the oval on either side of the field that I remember and can see in later pictures of the stadium for the 50’s and 60’s. The 1951 NCAA guide lists the stadium’s capacity as 40,000. The 1925-37 listings in the Media guide do not list any crowds of over 35,000 and three of the four such crowds were for Colgate games, so I assume that was capacity during this period. That means that the arena was only filled to capacity four times in 71 home games during the period and was on the average less than half full. Even the Colgate games failed to produce a capacity crowd 9 times in 13 games and averaged almost 5,000 short of capacity.
The impression I get from this is that college sports were mostly a campus-oriented event, not something that included the rest of the community to the extent is does today. Even the student didn’t get into it that much except for the “big game” against the top rival, which would provide an excuse to blow off some steam and have some wild, good times, even if we didn’t win the game, as SU failed to do for 13 straight years. When the students and other fans did get excited, they were much more into high jinks and traditions than we are today, probably because of the youth of the fans. Now it’s mostly old grads and area sports fans who are older and go to the games as a sort of cultural experience rather than a social event. I think there is more a feeling that the team represents the entire community rather than just the school these days and a greater feeling that the games must contribute something economic to the community and the school, in addition to their entertainment value. At the same time, I sense a greater tendency to root “at” the team as if they, the coaches and school owed us something for the money and emotional investment we contribute to it rather than to root “for” the kids to obtain their dreams and, by extension, our own.
I also think the whole season came down to that single game that everyone cared about more so than now. There were no conference titles, national rankings, national championships and only one bowl game in those days, one that was 3,000 miles away (both schools were considered, especially SU in 1915 and 1923 and Colgate in 1932 but never went for several reasons, including the expense and academic opposition). Thus, winning the “Big Game” was virtually everything. And SU failed to win that big game for 13 agonizing years in a row, even with each game being played in our own place.
