INSIDE SPORTS: The 100 Year War

Tomorrow, Pennsylvania and Cornell will write a new chapter in their century-old history November 18, 1893 was a typical Philadelphia day. The rain drizzled and the cold could be felt down to one's bones. One would never expect this gloomy day in November would end up to be the first meeting of what would become a long lasting relationship that is still around today. For 100 years ago, at the Manheim Cricket Club in Germantown, in front of 4,000 people, the University of Pennsylvania and the Cornell University football teams battled on the gridiron for the first time. Tomorrow, 100 years and over 3,000 points later, the Quakers and the Big Red will wrap up a century of sports history at Franklin Field. But many aspects of the game have changed over the years. The football is no longer made of pigskin. The first half does not last 45 minutes and the second half 25 minutes. Touchdowns are no longer worth four points and field goals worth five. There are no leather helmets without face masks. The forward pass is now an integral aspect of any team's offense. But, throughout the history of this series, one element of the Penn-Cornell game that has transcended the years of wars and depressions, that has remained even after the formation of the Ivy League, is the spirit of traditional rivalry between these two teams. And, as the players take the field tomorrow, not only will this spirit be evident as the Quakers once again have to overcome the Big Red (the series stands with Penn on top, 55-39-5, yet is tied 37-37-4 since 1914) to record an undefeated season and an Ivy League championship, but the spirit of all of the past Penn-Cornell games, all of the memories and the ghosts of past players who once walked on the field, will also emerge. · It is difficult for today's Penn student to realize the magnanimous role that this University played in the history of football. College football had begun in 1873 with Harvard, Yale and Princeton leading the nation. Penn entered the realm of football three years later. By the time Penn played Cornell for the first time in 1893, the Quakers had established themselves as quite a football powerhouse. Penn took that first game 50-0 and won the next seven of the series until Cornell finally posted its first Quaker defeat in 1901. But the true tradition of the Penn-Cornell game did not come until game three of the series on November 28, 1895. That day the two teams met on what became the traditional yearly game day – Thanksgiving Day. From then on, Cornell came to Franklin Field almost every Thanksgiving until 1965. Yet, this holiday game arrangement was not set in stone. Before 1893, the Quakers had no set Thanksgiving Day opponent. But 1893 was the year of the "graduate dispute." Yale and Princeton had yet to develop professional schools, but Penn, as well as Harvard, began to drift towards the "graduate" ideal in the 1890's. There had not yet been rules set as to how many years a student could play football, so a university such as Penn attracted many players who had already played four years at another school. Princeton and Yale wanted to create regulations on player eligibility – and Penn did not. Thus, between 1895 and 1924, neither Princeton nor Yale could be persuaded to venture to Philadelphia to play the Quakers. In 1905, Harvard also took the same route as Princeton and Yale. Yet Cornell, who was very much interested in creating a graduate program in Ithaca, decided it would be a great idea to play Penn every fourth Thursday in November. Legend has it that this "contract" was never written out, but at the end of each game, each school's athletic directors would simply shake hands and say "see ya next year." And year after year (except for 1918, when Cornell suspended its football program during World War I), history was made. One of the first memorable games occurred in 1898. As usual, the weather that day was not at its best. As Penn's four-time All-American guard T. Truxton Hare once said, "It began to sleet, and finally it snowed. The field was covered with ice and snow. A howling gale was blowing down the field and the temperature fell far below the freezing point." But at halftime, the Quakers, being the home team, had a slight advantage – they could change into dry clothes. Penn triumphed 12-6. In 1902, the Quakers were touted as heavy underdogs, as they had already lost four other games that season. At halftime, Penn trailed by 11 points, but Cornell's team captain made a grave mistake in suggesting that the second half of the game be shortened by 10 minutes to lessen the pain that the Big Red would inflict on the Quakers. Penn not only refused the offer, but they stormed the field holding Cornell to only 15 yards in the second half while scoring two touchdowns to win the game 12-11. In 1938, the game ended in a 0-0 tie in what the Cornell Daily Sun called "the sleet, snow and slush of probably the coldest Thanksgiving Day that Old Philadelphia has ever experienced." From the late 1930's until the inception of the Ivy League in 1956, the Penn-Cornell game was the hottest ticket in town. During the George Munger coaching era, Penn led the nation in attendance in nine of these years, often packing almost 80,000 fans into Franklin Field. Anthony "Skip" Minisi (1944, 1946-7), Penn's two time all-American and Hall of Famer, looks back on his games against Cornell with great fondness. Minisi was the hero of Penn's 21-0 defeat over Cornell in 1947, capping off Penn's undefeated 7-0-1 season. "We were consistently in the top-10 when I played," Minisi said recently. "We played Michigan, Army, Navy, which were in the top five in those years, and we played Virginia, Duke. We played a national schedule. "We had excellent football teams and we were a big attraction in Philadelphia. We used to have 80,000 people in those stands. Then, professional football was really nothing and very few people went to pro-games. We were the only game in town." Penn All-American Bernie Lemonick (1948-50), the Master of Ceremonies for this weekend's festivities, remembers how the Quakers "would run out on the field and everybody would be singing and yelling and you could feel the goose bumps on the back of your neck. "It was a marvelous thing, not only for the University, but for the city. This was a religion for the people who came out and watched. I mean, Saturday was Franklin Field day," he said. Yet Lemonick, like Penn alumnus Francis "Reds" Bagnell, never had the pleasure of defeating the Big Red. "Circumstances are such that you lose games and you win games," Bagnell said. "You always like to [beat] one of your worthy opponents like Cornell. They had a great football team in the days that we played. The games were all close. It's unfortunate. I don't like to talk about it very much." But part of the reason why these players never posted a win over Cornell may have been because of the weather. In 1950, while the rest of the Northeast cancelled or postponed their games because of a baby hurricane, Penn and Cornell played on in 65-mile-an-hour winds. And while 12,000 fans still showed up, Penn faltered 13-6. But even though there was not a victory, Lemonick still remembers the excitement of playing in a nationally-televised game. "We had television that came in from New York," Lemonick said. "We were the only team in the United States that could be piped around the United States as a TV team. So we were known on the West Coast as we were known on the East Coast." "It was not unusual to play California and to walk down the street and be known by the people out there," Lemonick added. "I mean, we were not just locals, we were nationals." In 1956, the era of Penn's national football dominance came to a close with the creation of the Ivy League. But in 1959 came Penn's first Ivy League championship with its victory over Cornell. Penn was tied with Dartmouth for the Ivy title. In the last game of the season, the Quakers were losing 13-0 in the third quarter, but behind the arm of George Koval, Penn prevailed 28-13. "We had to beat Cornell the last game of the year to win the championship," said Koval, who is currently deputy vice provost for University life. "So it was the biggest game of the year at that point and personally, I had a half-decent day." The creation of the Ivy League caused national interest in the Penn-Cornell game to diminish, for better players chose athletic scholarship schools while at the same time professional football became more prominent. But while a televised Thanksgiving Day game became a remembrance of the past, the rivalry between the two teams carried on. Aside from the formation of the Ivies, another hallmark in the history of this great rivalry came in 1964. After playing the game for 71 years in the Quakers' "City of Brotherly Love," the Penn-Cornell game moved to Cornell's Schoellkopf Field. The loss of home field advantage greatly affected Penn, as it fell 33-0. At the same time, the matchup was no longer reserved for the last game of each team's season. Penn would travel to Ithaca in October of every even year, and Cornell would drive to Philadelphia in November of every odd year – an agreement which basically lasted until 1988. Watching a Penn-Cornell game while carving a turkey was a memory of the past. · For the next memorable Penn victory, one must skip quite a few years to 1986. Both teams entered Cornell's Schoellkopf Field for the season's final game tied atop the Ivy League standings with perfect 6-0 Ivy records. Penn fell behind early but captured the lead by the end of the first quarter. At the half, Penn had widened its lead to 17-7 and held on to win the game 31-21. The win gave Penn a 10-0 season, its first undefeated, untied season since 1904. In 1989, the two schools tried to re-create the Thanksgiving Day tradition when ESPN televised the match-up. But aside from the fact that the game had to be played at 10 a.m. so as not to interfere with other more nationally-important games, the Philadelphia weather once again showed its true colors as it snowed – and snowed hard. The game was played before a practically empty Franklin Field. But, tomorrow, the spirit, enthusiasm and atmosphere of the Penn-Cornell rivalry will once again envelope Franklin Field. Tomorrow, Penn will once again have to overcome Cornell to record a 10-0 season. And once again, tomorrow, as the The Franklin Field Illustrated wrote in 1932, "[Tomorrow] we feel that while we are encountering a stern foe on Franklin Field, we are also entertaining one of our best and oldest friends."