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IVY LEAGUE FOOTBALL
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Rah, Rah & Another Rah
For College Grid Tradition
of TheColumnists.com
I love tradition. That is why I like Ivy League football games--and small college rivalries such as Amherst-Williams and Lafayette-Lehigh among others. Big-time, semi-pro stuff like Ohio State-Michigan or Alabama-Auburn leaves me cold because if I want to see the pros, I’ll watch the National Football League games on television.
Ivy League football is looked on with condescension as quaint by the college power centers. This was brought home to me anew recently when I made radio guest bookings around the nation to talk about my book “Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World.” It featured epic sports events I covered in my career.
I included the celebrated tie between Harvard and Yale, both unbeaten in 1968. This was notable for Harvard’s late-game heroics which made the tie seem like a victory for Harvard. It inspired the classic Harvard Crimson headline: Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29..
A few of the radio sports guys in big time football precincts were surprised. “Why did you include Harvard and Yale, they asked. I explained that it was a tumultuous game and that Harvard-Yale was a rich rivalry tracing back to the beginning of college football in this country. I don’t think they were persuaded that any Ivy League game merited such exalted treatment.
No point telling them about Harvard-Yale legends.
In 1908 legendary Harvard coach Percy Haughton called his minions together and strangled the Yale mascot, a live bulldog, to inspire them to go out and whip the Elis. They did. (It was revealed later that he had throttled a fake bulldog.)
In 1923 T.A.D. Jones told his squad before the game, “Gentlemen, you are about to play football for Yale against Harvard. Never again in your lives will you do anything so important.” (Yale won, 13-0).
The 29-29 tie in 1968 was a battle of unbeatens. And on a recent Saturday I showed up at Franklin Field in Philadelphia for another game between Ivy unbeatens, Brown at Penn, both 3-0 in a battle for first place in the league.
Tradition guy that I am, I was quick to spot an intriguing item in the pre-game notes distributed by Brown’s Chris Humm, senior public relations guy in the Ivy League. It informed that wide receiver Buddy Farnham wore No. 46 as part of a Farnham family dynasty at Brown. His father Mark, Brown ’80 wore it, as did his uncles, Bob ’77 and Paul ’83.
Farnham, a six-foot junior from Andover, Mass. sparkled with two touchdown catches as Brown won, 34-27. The largest Franklin Field crowd of the season, 15,056, was a far cry from the days when Penn was the Nebraska or Penn State of its day and drew crowds of 78,000. But the game had its thrills and chills as the score see-sawed through most of the game into the final moments.
Aside from the action on the field there were the Ivy League touches. The stadium was rung by flags of the various classes reaching back to the late 1800s. The flag of the class of 1948 was given a place over the 50-yard line because a devoted Penn football presence, class of ’48, had died recently.
I noted in the program that several Penn alumni, faculty members and trustees signed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution; John B. Taylor, 1907, was the first black athlete to win a gold medal for the U.S. (track at the 1908 Olympics); and that ENIAC, the first all-purpose digital computer was developed at Penn in 1946.
And I love the Penn “toast’ tradition. Stemming from the line in the school song, “Here’s a toast to dear old Penn,” at the end of the third quarter a cascade of toast is flung out of the Penn stands onto the track ringing the field. It being the upscale Ivy League, there are food purveyors selling toast outside the stadium.
The old press box high above the field once upon a time was filled for big Penn-Cornell showdowns and Philadelphia Eagles game. My press box neighbor, Dave Coulson, who does good work chronicling small-college football for The Sports Network, reminisced that some of the biggest names in sports writing may have sat in these very seats. I suggested that he was sitting in a seat once occupied by Grantland Rice.
To my delight Buddy (No. 46) Farnham was involved in the two biggest plays that won the game for Brown. With less than a minute remaining in the first half--when the momentum of the game had swung in Penn’s favor and Penn took a 10-7 lead, Farnham streaked down the right sideline, gathered in a pass from quarterback Michael Dougherty and raced to the end zone for a 57-yard touchdown. It gave Brown a 14-10 lead that coach Phil Estes said “was as big a play as we had. We felt better about ourselves in the locker room.”
Brown seemed in good shape leading, 34-20, with less than two minutes to play, but then suffered the jitters when a blocked punt led to a Penn touchdown, cutting the lead, to 34-27. Everybody in the stadium knew an onside kick from Penn was coming, and it did.
The kick sputtered in the air and was grabbed and held on to by none other than Buddy (No. 46) Farnham.
Afterward, when I asked Farnham if he had requested the No. 46, the coach, Estes, interrupted to say, “He’d get it whether he wanted it or not.” Farnham agreed that he did want it. He said he was a commerce manager, that his folks had not missed any game he had played, that his father was a financial adviser after running a sporting goods store. He said he had a cousin who was also at Brown, but on the hockey team and that he wore No. 10, not 46. He said there were more cousins coming along who were at Andover Prep and could be future candidates for Brown’s 46.
Tradition demands it.
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Nov. 10, 2008.
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