Today’s Tidbit... The Towel Scandal of 1915
I couldn’t access my account the last few days. I meant to publish this story yesterday -April Fool’s Day- to show that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but alas.
Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, is one of many excellent liberal arts colleges that dot the Midwest. Still, even the Harvard of South Central Outagamie County was not immune from a 1915 athletic scandal, the likes of which schools have seldom faced in recent years.
Lawrence had claimed Wisconsin’s unofficial small-college football championship four years straight, and while they often stepped up to play Wisconsin, the 1915 team faced Wisconsin and Michigan in back-to-back games four days apart.
On the field, the Badgers whipped the Lawrence Vikings 82-0 by consistently throwing the ball forward and blocking Lawrence punts backward.
Following their dismal showing at Camp Randall, Lawrence traveled to Ann Arbor to take on Michigan at Ferry Field on a Wednesday afternoon. Despite the teams playing 10-minute quarters and Lawrence being allowed to substitute freely against their superior opponent, Michigan’s fans were disappointed in the Wolverines 39-0 win.
Lawrence losing to two Western Conference teams was no surprise, but the team’s scandalous locker-room behavior was another matter entirely. Both host schools provided locker room facilities for the visitors, complete with hot showers and towels. At both locations, the ungrateful Vikings absconded with some of the hosts’ towels: fourteen from Wisconsin and nineteen from Michigan.
The two Western Conference schools likely had their school names painted on the towels, which the Lawrence players saw as mementos of their blowout losses; plain white towels would have held little sentimental value. Whatever the condition of the towels, a number went missing, and the following week, Lawrence received letters from both schools informing them of the missing towels, demanding an apology, and asking them to pay up.
The incidents might not have received publicity if towels had gone missing at only one school. However, one set of missing towels is an aberration, two sets are an abomination, leading to you know what hitting the fan.
Local newspapers, along with a few in other parts of the country, covered the scandal.
Showing there is honor among thieves, the Lawrence football team came clean about the towels, immediately admitting they had swiped the wipes.
Folks were aghast. The faculty representative on the athletic committee, Dr. Mather Lyle Spencer, committed academic hari-kiri by resigning from the committee. His faculty peers rejected the resignation and demanded that each member of the football team sign letters of apology to Wisconsin and Michigan, which they did.
Blaming each team member for the cotton-towel-picking hands of a few did not sit right with coach Mark Catlin. Catlin, who played at Chicago and is best known for tackling a Michigan player for a safety in their 1905 victory over the Wolverines, let the faculty know exactly how he felt during the next weekly chapel.
Despite sullying Lawrence’s otherwise pristine reputation, the towel caper had only a few long-term consequences. Coach Catlin did not throw in the towel. He continued coaching Lawrence until 1918 and took the gig again from 1924 to 1927. Likewise, while Michigan never invited Lawrence back to Ann Arbor, Wisconsin played them in 1916 and three more times down the road, even letting the Vikings score six points in 1930.
However, the Badgers were far more careful after 1915; not only did they ensure that bands of Vikings sailing into town did not loot a dozen or more towels. More broadly, the good citizens of Wisconsin learned not to like or trust any damn Vikings.