Today's Tidbit... The Unlikely 1910 Carlisle-Harvard Law School Game
Football history is always surprising. You think you have heard every odd story and then come across a new one. This one is about a legendary coach of a Top 25 team being challenged to a game by a bunch of law school students. He, Pop Warner, accepted the challenge and lost the game, to Harvard Law School.
Carlisle once competed with the top football schools in the nation. Based in the small town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, they played anywhere and everywhere. They took on anyone who would have them, so Virginia was the southernmost team they played, but they played several top Eastern teams every year, and were solid with or without Jim Thorpe, who did not play for Carlisle in 1910.
Like most teams, Carlisle started the 1910 season playing six gimmes, outscoring them 151-3. Their next eight games were different. While they beat Virginia, they lost to Syracuse, Princeton, Penn, and Navy, setting up a November 13 game with Harvard Law. Not Harvard, but Harvard Law.
Carlisle, the federally funded Indian school coached by Pop Warner. Always looking for a payday for his school or himself, Warner received the challenge from current law student and two-time All-American tackle, Hamilton Fish, so he took the deal.
Before 1910, it was not unusual for medical, dental, and law schools to have football teams, even schools with varsity undergraduate teams. But few of the professional schools were good, at least relative to the nation's best, so this was an unusual matchup, even in 1910.
Harvard Law did not normally have a football team, but Fish noticed his fellow law students included enought former players to field a competitive team. Fish found those interested in playing and arranged a practice game with Harvard's varsity. Played in Harvard Stadium, the October game proved close, with the varsity kicking two field goals to win 6-0.
While the law schoolers knew they had a talented bunch, after faring well against Harvard's varsity, they challenged Yale's varsity to a game. When Yale refused, Fish reached out to the more mercenary Pop Warner. Warner was nursing a beat-up Carlisle team at the time, causing him to wait several seconds before accepting the challenge. Nowadays, you can't just accept a challenge and insert a mid-week game into your November schedule, by Pop did.
There doesn't appear to be a record of who played for the Law School in the practice game, but the lineup against Carlisle included players from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Holy Cross, Michigan, and Nebraska, leading some to refer to them as the Harvard All-Stars.
Among the Harvard players was Paul Withington, who attended Harvard Medical School rather than Law School.
The Law School team had half a dozen, first, second, or third-team All-Americans and others who had won honors. The lawyers-to-be practiced regularly and got themselves into trim, so they were ready for Carlisle. Meanwhile, Carlisle adding the Harvard Law game meant Carlisle would play five games in 22 days, losing to Penn on October 28, beating Virginia on November 5, losing to Navy on the 12th, and then playing Harvard Law on Wednesday the 16th before facing Johns Hopkins on the 19th. Each game was on the road.
Carlisle's starting lineup against Harvard Law was the same as for the Navy game, except Carlisle's top player and All-American quarterback Pete Hauser did not play against Harvard.
Former Yale halfback Stephen Philbin proved to be the star of the game. Taking direct snaps and running around either end, his rushing helped the law students dominate. While Carlisle never penetrated the Law School's 30-yard line, the lawyers were inside Carlisle's 10-yard line twice and inside the 25-yard line on five occasions, with Philbin connecting for a first-quarter field goal and missing one in the second stanza. Those were the game's only points, giving Harvard Law the 3-0 victory.
After the game, Carlisle returned home for a day before beating Johns Hopkins on Saturday in Baltimore and losing to Brown on Thanksgiving Day.
Hamilton Fish still had the playing itch one more, so arranged for a trip south over the holidays with games against a hybrid Vanderbilt-Sewanee-Michigan team coached by Dan McGugin and Fielding Yost in Nashville. They also faced an all-star team in Memphis and an LSU-led crew in Baton Rouge. Playing three games in four days, the lawyers were exhausted, scoring only five points in three games, though their opponents never scored, leaving them with a 1-0-2 record on the trip. Of note is that Fish had his nose broken in Nashville, and the trip's finances proved a disaster, with players having to wire their parents for money to get home.
There was talk about getting the band back together in the fall of 1911, but it didn't happen, so the Harvard Law School or All-Star football team was no more and would never be seen again.
Jim Thorpe returned to Carlisle for the 1911 and 1912 seasons, starring before and after winning Olympic gold. Warner stayed at Carlisle through the 1914 season. The Carlisle football team struggled the next few years before the government shuttered the school in 1918 for use as a rehabilitation hospital for soldiers.
For a similar story that occurred 14 year earlier:
Click here for options on how to support this site beyond a free subscription.
Moral of this story: Never take on a bunch of Harvard lawyers.
The name Hamilton Fish rang a bell. His grandfather must've popped up in a PBS documentary or two.