The 1932 Colgate-Brown Thanksgiving Game for the Rose Bowl
The story a few days ago, Today's Tidbit... 100 Years of Football: 1931-1935, mentioned the 1932 Colgate team that was the end cap of a remarkable four-year run during which the boys from the Chenango Valley allowed their opponents to score only 19 points combined in 1929, 27 points in 1930, and 34 points in 1931, all while being a team known for its innovative offense.
The 1932 team began the year rolling over St Lawrence (41-0), Case (27-0), and Niagara (47-0). The competition got a bit stiffer as October continued by the Raiders continued steamrolling everyone that stepped on the same field, including Lafayette (35-0), NYU (14-0), Penn State (31-0). November brought more of the same, with a 32-0 win over Mississippi College and a 16-0 victory over Syracuse. By shutting out all eight opponents, the Raiders set up a massive Thanksgiving Day game against Brown, who was undefeated but had given up 21 points in eight games. Seven of Brown's victories came against undefeated teams at the time, so playing an undefeated team was an old hat for the Bruins.
The teams began their Turkey Day series in 1924, with Brown sandwiching three ties between their two victories before Colgate took the last three contests. Most observers viewed the game as the mythical championship of the East. Still, it took on additional meaning when Colgate's president confirmed the Rose Bowl had contacted them about their interest in playing on New Year's Day in Pasadena they were to receive the invitation. Besides Brown, the only other undefeated major team in the East was the Pitt Panthers, who tied both Nebraska and Ohio State but had beaten solid teams like Army, Notre Dame, and Penn. Pop Warner would return to Pitt on Thanksgiving Saturday with his Stanford team. Observers like Grantland Rice believed a decisive victory by the Panthers would send them to the Rose Bowl over the winner of the Colgate-Brown game. Nevertheless, in the days leading up to the game, newspapers nationwide touted the big game as the nation's top Thanksgiving Day game.
Both teams ran modifications of Pop Warner's double-wing offense. Colgate's Andy Kerr, a Warner assistant at Pitt and Stanford, extended the double wing by integrating sweeps with spins, multiple laterals, and reverses into his. Meanwhile, Brown's Tuss McLaughry ran his unique Triple Wing, which positioned a third back four yards behind and inside either the left or right wing.
Colgate entered the game with the second-highest point total in the country, having put up just over 30 points, and needed 20 points to catch West Liberty, whose season was over. Despite the Raiders' high-octane offense, neither team could move the ball in the first quarter as they punted back and forth in the middle to the field, but things changed following a short Brown punt that gave Colgate the ball inside Brown's 40-yard line and soon Bob Rowe, Colgate’s fullback, found his way into the end zone. The missed kick gave them a 6-0 lead.
Brown had their best drive on the game following the ensuing kick, benefiting from two pass interference calls to drive inside Colgate's 5-yard line before turning the ball over on downs as the half ended.
Neither team looked like the undefeated teams that they were, but it might have been that both defenses had played well. However, things changed in the second half as Colgate dominated play yet made enough mistakes to keep the score close.
Colgate's second score came in the third quarter when they forced Brown to punt from the end zone and blocked it to earn a safety. Later in the third quarter, Colgate was deep in Brown territory when they dropped a pass at the goal line and followed that by fumbling inside the 10-yard line early in the 4th quarter.
Leading 8-0 partway through the fourth quarter, Colgate marched 68 yards to score their second touchdown on a run by Samuel. On their next possession, 'gate tossed a long pass to set up a 3-yard touchdown pass to make it 21-0. Colgate also dropped a pass on the goal line on the game's final play. For the game, Colgate rushed for 232 yards versus Brown's 52, and the Raiders also completed 4 of 9 forward passes for 90 yards while Brown completed 2 of 10 for 40 yards, so Brown gained less than 100 yards in the game.
By winning 21-0, Colgate became the first major school to complete an entire season without giving up a point since Pitt did so in 1910. Undoubtedly, their dominant shutout over an undefeated Brown team would be enough to send Colgate to Pasadena, right?
Over the next week, Colgate became the press favorite to earn the Rose Bowl invitation. Pitt, Auburn, and Michigan were also touted as candidates by the press, but they were not the ones making the invitation. That power belonged to the selected Western team, USC, who could invite the Eastern team of their choice. USC supposedly preferred Michigan if the Wolverines could get the Big Ten Conference to suspend the conference rule prohibiting postseason play. However, the Big Ten did not change its mind, so USC chose Pitt as the team they wanted to beat, which they did one month later, 35-0.
That meant Pitt ended its season 8-1-2 while Colgate finished 9-0. Poor Colgate. In the days after the disappointing news, Andy Kerr suitably described his team as undefeated, untied, unscored upon, and uninvited.
In the 90+ seasons played since then, no major college team has matched Colgate's feat. Duke's 1938 Duke did not give up a score during the regular season, including 7-0 victories over Colgate and Pitt, but they lost to USC in the Rose Bowl, 7-3. Tennessee did the same the following year, holding each regular-season opponent scoreless but losing to USC in the Rose Bowl, 14-0. Had Colgate gone to the 1933 Rose rather than Pitt, perhaps USC would have scored on them, but they didn't, so they remain undefeated, untied, unscored upon, and uninvited to this day.
Special thanks to the Colgate Football Memorabilia Collection for the use of the ticket, program, and game action images seen above.
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Sensational article!
The story of the 1932 Colgate team is one of the great ones I've ever come across.
I was so enamored with the story of the 1932 Colgate team that I wrote 2 posts about it in my Substack, when it was precisely 90 years ago.
Here are the links to those stories, some of my all-time favorites, for anyone who wishes to read more on this subject:
https://lenferman.substack.com/p/unbeaten-untied-unscored-on-and-uninvited
https://lenferman.substack.com/p/the-1933-rose-bowl-and-the-case-for