Today's Tidbit: The University of Mexico Football and International Play

Cinco de Mayo is more widely celebrated in the U.S. than in Mexico, so it seems like a good day to discuss the history of football at the University of Mexico. The University of Mexico's football team, hereafter referred to as UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), began playing in the 1920s. It sometimes dominated Mexican collegiate football, dropped the game at others, and now plays in the Organización Nacional Estudiantil de Fútbol Americano, last winning the national title in 2017.

I previously wrote about the first American football games played in Mexico when Missouri and Texas played south of the border in 1896, so it is appropriate that some of UNAM's games occurred north of the border, including an appearance in one of America’s oldest bowl games. Rather than recite the history of UNAM football, we'll pick our spots by discussing their history with two pre-WWII examples and two that occurred during the war.

The Mexican playing of American football began after a pair of brothers returned from school in the U.S. having become Notre Dame fans. They started an informal team and adopted Notre Dame's color, a tradition that continues at UNAM today. Things really got moving when the National Football Coaches Association sent Michael Bennett, the AD and football coach at Sewanee, to Mexico to encourage them to play American football. After meeting with UNAM's president and the president of Mexico, both of whom agreed to promote the game, he returned to the States and got things moving.

The coaches' association helped fund efforts in Mexico, including sending Reginald Root, a former Yale player and assistant coach, to Mexico City to coach UNAM for the 1929 season, and he stuck around for a few years. From the beginning, UNAM played other Mexican universities and semi-regular games with American schools such as Louisiana College (now Louisiana Christian), Mississippi College, and Occidental. The 1929 games versus American schools set the pattern that continued through the next 40 years when UNAM lost to Louisiana College 59-0 and Mississippi College 28-0. However, UNAM completed 23 of 28 pass attempts in the Mississippi College loss. Both games occurred in Mexico City, though the teams played home and away in the future.

('Mexico Welcomes Choctaws,' Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), November 26, 1929.)