Today's Tidbit... The Carlisle Globetrotters

College football remains a predominantly regional game despite the geographic barriers breaking down in recent years. The major conferences have geographic cores; with limited exceptions, teams at lower levels play in conferences covering one or a few bordering states. Travel time and costs have driven the game's geographical orientation since the beginning and continue to do so today.

Those teams that traveled outside their region in football's early days typically made one trip every few years, often playing more than one game on a trip or taking the trip over the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's holidays. Trains were slow compared to jets, so cross-country trips from east of the Mississippi to California generally took five to six days. Many top teams in or near major cities saw limited their travel for regular-season games because they could attract a bigger gate at home than when playing away. One example of such scheduling is Michigan regularly playing at Chicago in the 1890s and early 1900s.

The limited travel by most teams before the 1930s made the globetrotting habits of the Carlisle Indians all the more remarkable. They traveled at an unmatched pace, playing anybody anywhere, mainly because they earned purses far above anything they received at home in eastern Pennsylvania. So let's look at their travels outside the Northeast, which the U.S. Census defines as Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. That definition does not include Maryland, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., each closer to Carlisle than some Northeastern states.

In the beginning, Carlisle had a light travel schedule. They fielded their first team in 1893, playing three local teams. The following two years, under former Yale All-American Vance McCormick, they played numerous top Eastern teams, stepping outside their home region to play at Navy.

• 1893 (2-1): Local games only

• 1894 (1-6-2): Navy

• 1895 (4-4): Navy