Football 1915

Our journey through football history on a year by year basis takes us to the season of 1915. In part 34 of the Football History Rewind we take a closer look at Pop Warner and the best teams in football in 1915.

Welcome back to the series that takes you through the history of the rules of football. The last article, Part 33, of this series left off in the seasons of 1914 and 1915. Logically enough we will pick back up in this edition in the season of 1916.

There are quite of few men from the early era of American Football that had significant contributions to the game and its rules. The list is much shorter though for those men that had added such wide sweeping changes that their names live on a century later. Pop Warner is one of those individuals that really gave this beloved game of ours some really innovative twists.

You may be asking yourselves, “ Didn’t Pop Warner come onto the football scene much earlier than 1916.?” You would be correct, he did make a mark in the game earlier than 1916, but it was in this year Coach Warner himself proclaimed that this was his best team ever. It is for this reason that we have waited until now to give Coach Warner his proper due credit.

The early years of “Pop”

Glenn S. Warner was the God given name to a legend that was more commonly known as “Pop” by those who knew him and the history books. Pop’s association of football spans back to the late 1890's when he coached at Cornell University. In 1899 he left the large New York college to take on the coaching duties at a small Native American school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania which is about 18 miles away from Harrisburg. It was during that head coaching tenure at Carlisle where Coach Warner really made a name for himself.

In a 1931 interview with Collier’s Weekly Magazine, Warner described Carlisle as being, “a small, compact, self-contained school, more like a home than an institution...” Only Native Americans could attend the small school. Pop really made a name for himself when he took this small rag tag bunch of natives, who were looked down upon by those of European heritage, and played with success against schools that were much larger and wealthier with many more men to draw from for their football players. At the turn of the century Carlisle had about 250 college age men attending their institution as opposed to the larger Eastern Schools which had four to five thousand to draw from. To gain some perspective Carlisle under Warner’s coaching career had an average of 3 substitutes for each game!

How did the small school compete with the big schools you may ask?  Carlisle did not sit back on its laurels to note what they did not have. They simply took what they did have and use it too the full potential. Carlisle had a coach that understood the game and could innovate with the best of them. They also had great athletes, does the name Jim Thorpe explain just how good their athletes were? The third advantage Carlisle had over other schools was the desire to win. Warner recognized that it was not just to win but to defeat the “white man” in a place where the battle field was equal. The American Indians had little to boast about in that era, their land had been taken over by the white invaders and along with that much of their culture. The football field provided a place for the down trodden ethnic group to be equal to that of everyone else they were playing. They could not economically or socially compete with the white man at this time but they could defeat them at this athletic enterprise.

Warner in the same 1931 Collier’s interview mentioned earlier referred to the situation this way; “On the athletic field, where the struggle was man to man, they felt the Indian had his first even break, and the record proves they took full advantage of it.”

Win they did

In his first season at Carlisle the only games Warner could schedule for his squad were on the road!  That season they defeated power house schools such as Penn 16-5, Columbia 45-0, an in San Francisco they defeated California 2-0. These were the only points scored on Cal that entire season!

The Columbia win is very significant and a real testament to Warner’s innovation and preparedness. Columbia had a very good halfback named Harold “The Hurdler” Weekes. Weekes made a real name for himself in those days due to a play that Columbia ran in which he would step on the backs of his closely gathered linemen, and then literally hurdled the defensive rushers and landed in full stride on the other side! Warner had his players use a questionable but effective tactic of jamming the heels of their hands into the face and gut of Weekes which understandably slowed him down considerably. They also used a tactic that made its debut in football during that game, the three-point stance. Pop also used a planned offensive shift for the first time in football history during this game. As the score of the game indicated, Columbia did not even know what hit them! They had two of the very staples of the game introduced to the football world at the same time. Warner was a genius.

1915 National Champions

You would think by talking about Pop Warner so much that we would have Carlisle as the best team in the land. Well almost but not quite. After the 1914 season Warner moved to the other side of Pennsylvania and coached at the University of Pittsburgh. The Gazette Times, via Newspapers.com, September 5, 1915 edition had an article called "Gridiron Heroes Will Soon be in Action". In it the legendary Father of Football Walter Camp was interviewed and he stated, 

 "The shift of Coach Warner from the Carlisle Indians to the University of Pittsburgh marks one of the great changes in the status of the game...It should prove a very interesting experiment for Pittsburgh and one with great possibilities."

Camp was prety much right on the money on this prediction. Though the 1915 college football season had no clear-cut champion, the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book list three schools; Cornell, Oklahoma, and Pittsburgh as having been selected national co-champions. 

Pitt was "it" truly in 1915 recording a perfect 8-0 record beating the likes of Warner's former team Carlisle 45-0, stomping Penn State 20-0 and doubling up Penn 14-7. The mixture of talent and great innovative coaching put Pitt on the map that season.

Cornell, interestingly enough a former place that Warner coached at also made some noise in the collegiate football scene also posting a perfect record at 9-0. They defeated Harvard and Penn among others that season.

The third great team of 1915 in the college landscape was Oklahoma. The Sooners went 10-0 overall beating Texas by one 14-13 and a tough Kendall Orange and Black team by the same score. They were 3-0 in the Soutwest Conference, tied with Baylor. Baylor however had an independent loss and finished at 7-1 and the teams did not meet against each other.

The Pro FOotball Hal of Fame states that the Massillon and Canton rivalry was again stirring. It had not really been competitive since the 1906 scandal. The Tigers wer quite the powerhouse and the Bulldogs well they signed a guy named Jim Thorpe to play for $250 a game. The best team in pro football in 1915 was at best a three way tie betwen Canton, Massillon, and the Youngstown Patricians. The Professional Football Researchers Association lists 1915 as "no clear champion" and discounts Youngstown's competition as subpar. Canton and Massillon, the next two contenders, tied at 5-2-2. Canton and Massillon split their head to head matches that season. The records are very incomplete but I think with the recommendation of the PFRA we go with the Tigers and Bulldogs tied for the top spot in 1915.

We must stop here with the story on Pop Warner but the next edition of this series will continue the tale.

The banner photo is of 1896 Georgia Bulldogs football team coached by Pop Warner. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com