Today's Tidbit... The Big Butte Turnaround of 1907

The Tidbit from a few days ago told the story of the Carlinville-Taylorville scandal of 1921 in which towns teams in Central Illinois engaged players from Notre Dame and Illinois to play for their team to bring glory and winning bets to the respective towns. In short, the Carlinville-Taylorville scandal is another in a long line of tales of how far people will degrade themselves to win a football game.

Here's another one.

A season-ending game occurred between Spokane High School of Washington and Butte High School of Montana back in nineteen and seven. Both schools had solid football reputations and had gone through the season, winning every game against high school teams. Butte was unscored upon and the Montana state champion, while Spokane had beaten Seattle and other high schools while tying the University of Idaho 0-0 and losing to Whitman 28-0.

Scheduled to determine the Champion of the Northwest, the intrigue surrounding the highly-touted game was heightened by the presence of Spokane's principal, Mr. Hart, who had been the principal at Butte the year before, and acknowledged he had received Butte’s signals (play calls made at the line of scrimmage) from an anonymous Butte student, though he did not pass them on to the team.