Clemson beat Alabama on Monday to win the NCAA national championship in football. In addition to the title, the Tigers became the first national champions in 122 years to notch 15 victories. 15-0! The last team to do that at the D1 FBS level was Earle Hager’s Quakers of Penn back in 1897. Penn earned that perfect 1897 season at Franklin Field, the same field used by the Quakers today. Dating back to 1895, Franklin Field is the oldest stadium still in use in America. You may have heard the 1897 Penn Quakers mentioned during Monday’s nationally televised game.
In 2018, Kangaroo James Kowalewski visited Franklin Field on a trip to Philly. He challenged me to find a Roo link. There’s always a Roo link. Gene Babb, who passed away last year, suited up at Franklin field in 1958 when his San Francisco 49ers visited the Philadelphia Eagles. Ray Morrison scrimmaged with Penn every spring at Franklin Field when he was the Head Coach at nearby Temple. Morrison left Temple in 1948………for Austin College. He had received the Head Coaching position at Yale, but his assistant coach was in Sherman and his wife longed for Texas. Yale had to find somebody else.
According to some writers, the 1897 Penn Quakers were the greatest team ever for their time. They outscored their opponents 463-20, beating nearly all of the top teams in the country at a time when football was almost exclusively an elite Northeast game. With a record of 14-0, Penn prepared for their final game of the season at Franklin field on Thanksgiving Day, 1897. They’d take on Cornell.
Cornell was Penn’s stiffest competition, and the Big Red kept the game scoreless until late in the fourth quarter. Finally, with perfection still in doubt, the Quakers mounted one last drive. Led by All-American tackle John H. Outland, Penn successfully crossed the goal line just before the final whistle. The 1897 Quaker season was perfect with the 4-0 victory (touchdowns were changed to 5 points in 1898 and 6 points in 1912). The Outland trophy is named in honor of the 1897 Quaker who sparked the drive, and is awarded to the top lineman in college football. Luke Joeckel, a Texas Aggie, was the 2012 recipient.
Football in Texas had barely gotten off the ground in 1897, but they were playing that Thanksgiving Day in the Lone Star state. All three of the colleges which participated in the sport saw action. In Austin, the Longhorns of UT defeated a Fort Worth football club at Clark Field by a score of 38-0. The other Thanksgiving Day game took place in Sherman, TX.
Texas A&M had traveled to Austin College in 1896; the Aggies earned a victory in the first official football game ever played by the Kangaroos. In 1897, Texas A&M was back in Grayson County and looking for a repeat at Batsell’s Park (just south of downtown). The game made the papers.
The Texas A&M student newspaper is known as the Battalion (or the “Batt”). It’s been around since 1893 and is still in publication today. The Battalion wrote about the 1897 contest and the trip to Sherman, at that time known as the “Athens” of the Lone Star state:
“At last arrangements were made, all contracts closed, and we were ready once again for the trip to ‘the Athens of Texas,’ to meet the wide reputed A.C. boys. Many were the fears that again a defeat was to be recorded against the old A&M eleven.”
“At 10 p.m. we reached Sherman where we were greeted with a miscellaneous lot of yelling, singing and beating of tom-toms ending with a selection entitled “There will be a touch down” (and there was). We took a long and delightful moonlight stroll in the rain through Broomweed Park towards out quarters, which were at a very comfortable boarding house, where we found lots of good hot biscuits and nice warm beds.”
“After [lunch the next day] we hurried to get into our canvas jackets, when all hands boarded [the train], those whose feet were too large to get inside riding on top, and were off for the gridiron. The grand stand was mostly full when we arrived at the park, and at 3:15 another battle for the honor of Crimson [Maroon] and White began.”
“The kick off was made by the Sherman side, but it was a poor one, not going 15 yards, and was downed. A&M ball first down five yards to gain [10 yards for a first down did not arrive until 1912]. The five yards was not gained, but the Austin College boys met a similar fate and the ball seemed to be fastened near the middle of the field. For fifteen or twenty minutes this state of affairs continued, the ball occasionally changing sides.”
The whistle blew for halftime with the score tied 0-0.
“After eating lemons a while and cracking a few jokes with our enemies, [A&M Coach] Taylor told us ‘you’ve got them.’ And when play was called the A&M boys began to play ball with a vim that soon began to tell the number of the A.C. boys that had to ‘take out’ for wind. After some severe bucking and manly efforts on the part of the A.C. team, the ball came over to what now began to show up decidedly as the winning side. [A&M player] Astin went through the line as did Brazos for five and ten yards till Sternes’ turn came, when the touchdown was made.”
“The second half was nearing a close, but quick hard playing was done on both sides up to the last. The Sherman team got the ball once more and came uncomfortably close to scoring, but lost the ball on downs within fifteen yards of the goal. The two [teams} were rapidly approaching another A&M count [for a final play] when the game was called up – a victory with a score of 4 to 0 for the A&M College. This was immediately announced by the old yell:”
Hi-ki! Hi-ki! Listen to our noise! We’re the A&M Football boys!
College! College! Is our Cry! V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!
“After a stubborn fight the Crimson and Old Gold banner of Austin College was furled in defeat and the A&M Crimson [Maroon] and White unrolled victoriously once more in the ‘City of Schools.’ On arrival at our stopping place [in Sherman] we found a messenger waiting to summon us, victor and vanquished to spend the evening. A program was rendered which would have been a treat rare to the most fastidious of lovers of music. After the music, new acquaintances and pleasant chats. The end of the most pleasant hour ever spent by the A&M eleven [arrived]. And we dare say the same for our friends the A.C. boys.”
Clemson’s toughest 2018 test was a road victory against Texas A&M at Kyle Field. The Aggies fell by 2 when a 2-point conversion with under a minute came up short. A controversial fumble-out-of-the-end-zone call that went against the Aggies might have yielded a different outcome, leaving Earle’s 1897 Quakers alone at 15-0. Given the outstanding performance of Clemson on Monday, that 28-26 loss to the Aggies looks even more impressive today.
Like Clemson in 2018, the Kangaroos traveled to College Station in 1898 one year after the loss in Sherman. It was the first game ever for the Aggies in Brazos County against a collegiate opponent. The game was played at an athletic field near the A&M Academic Building, as Kyle Field was still five years away. In addition to the Battalion, the contest was reported in AC’s school newspaper, the Reveille. Austin College, like Texas A&M, was an all-male military school in 1898.
2018 Clemson now sits alongside 1897 Penn as the only D1 FBS schools to go 15-0. That 15th Penn victory was achieved at the same hour on the same day as the Aggie victory over Austin College in Sherman, and both games ended with late touchdowns and 4-0 final scores. The 1897 Penn Quakers may have been the first D1 FBS school to go a perfect 15-0. But what about the first D2 school to do so? That honor goes to a team that suited up 101 years later: the 1998 national champion Northwest Missouri State Bearcats, coached by former Austin College Kangaroo coach Mel Tjeerdsma.
The Battalion, the student newspaper of Texas A&M, has been around since 1893. How do I know this? The Parrish family has a copy of “The Batt” hanging in our house, and it says “since 1893” right below the headline. No, our copy is not the 1897 edition mentioning the AC-A&M football game. Ours is from a bit later. We’ve got a copy of the July 5th, 2005 edition of The Batt. The front page mentions a College Station July 4th parade and features a pic of a cute little baby in diapers decked out in red, white, and blue.
Our son, Mr. A.
Roos who like Texas A&M: Larry Shillings, Michael Deen, Craig Roberts, Mark Mandl, Brad Bates, Connie Dees, Chuck Mattingly, Kyle Mucerino, Joe Jaska, Richard Walden, Matthew Spencer, Tom Boyd, Tim Newsom, Benjamin Moran, Sallye Fogarty Norris, Melissa Hannah Murnane, Ruth Nuckols Cox Williamson, Luis Acosta, Jarrod Foerster, Jeff Duffey
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