American College Football: Winning Ugly
When Winning is All That Counts: Ugly Wins in American College Football
In American college football history, securing that big win was all that mattered - even if that meant playing dirty.
Read the story of college football before the age of instant replays - by sports writer Norman L. Macht.
Syracuse football in the 1960s - when that big win was all that mattered!
In December 1990, before instant replays and officials’ reviews, when Bill McCartney, football coach of No. 1 ranked Colorado, chose to keep the Buffaloes’ 33-31 win over Missouri despite the winning score coming on a gift fifth down, he was merely continuing a long-standing tradition of college football: it mattered not how you won; Ws were all that counted.
That’s why this and similar games won on officials’ mistakes were soon forgotten, while Cornell’s surrender of a W against Dartmouth more than 80 years ago, under similarly eerie circumstances, is still remembered.
Who recalls the two games in October 1940 that were decided by officials’ mistakes? On October 5, defending Western Conference champs Ohio State defeated Purdue, 17-14, when tackle Charley Maag went in and kicked a field goal with 21 seconds to play.
But the limited substitution rules of the time banned a player from reentering the game in the same quarter in which he had been taken out. Maag had gone back in illegally. Everyone admitted it later, but Ohio State made no offer to settle for a tie.
A week later, a powerful George Washington team led Washington & Lee, 20-14. On the last play of the game, W&L apparently pushed over the tying touchdown. The head linesman signaled the score, but referee Dutch Ebert overruled him and spotted the ball a foot short.
The game films later showed clearly that W&L had scored. George Washington kept the win, something their namesake probably would have frowned upon.
Notre Dame has willingly accepted more than one tainted W. On October 22, 1938, a gritty, outmanned Carnegie Tech team held the unbeaten Irish to a scoreless tie for three quarters.
Deep in their own territory, Tech quarterback Friedlander was about to call a fourth-down punt when referee John Getchell called out, “Third down.”
“You mean fourth down,” corrected Friedlander.
The referee assured him it was only third down. So Carnegie ran another play but failed to make the first down. Getchell then informed Friedlander he had been mistaken; it had really been fourth down after all.
He turned the ball over to Notre Dame, which promptly cashed in on its only scoring chance of the day and won, 7-0. They never looked back or said so much as “Thank you.”
On November 18, 1961, Syracuse, playing for the first time in South Bend, led the Irish, 15-14, with three seconds left. Notre Dame’s Joe Perkowski tried a 45-yard field goal.
The Orange line blocked the kick as time ran out. But after the ball was in the air, Syracuse end Walt Sweeney ran into Perkowski and they both fell.
Head linesman F. G. Skibble called a roughing penalty, paced off 15 yards and allowed Perkowski to try again. This time he made it for a 17-15 ND win.
Syracuse coach Ben Schwatzwalder argued that the rules prohibited the extra play after the clock had run out. The next day the Eastern and Big Ten commissioners and the chairman of the NCAA rules committee all agreed that the linesman blew it.
The rule was clear. The ball would have remained in Notre Dame’s possession if the penalty had occurred during the rest of the game, but not on the last play if time had expired. Fair or not, that was the rule.
“But any change in the outcome is up to the schools,’ said ECAC boss Asa Bushnell.
From beneath the Golden Dome came Notre Dame’s reply, “We don’t agree with the rule, so we’re going to keep the W.”
All the more remarkable, then, was the Cornell-Dartmouth game of November 16, 1940, when Silent Carl Snavely, who had built Cornell’s Big Red into the nation’s No. 1 team for two years, voluntarily turned a W into an L and snapped his own 18-game unbeaten streak. (For that story, see The Fifth Down Game: Cornell-Dartmouth November 16, 1940.)
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