College Football Then And Now

Let’s sort the 12 team ‘off both next week and two weeks hence when the field is made official.

At this point, 3 Big Ten’ers (Oregon, Ohio State and Penn State) and now SEC, Texas are the top 4.

Due to the history involved, the fact that after 3 “antis,” they loom, as at this point, a likely 5 seed, which if they are (5-8) would yield a ratings bonanza, Notre Dame at home in a college ‘offs tilt, I cite them.

Never one to deny great history, yesterday’s rout win vs now (9-1) Army at Yankee Stadium (the Army vs Tulane December 5th tilt is for the AAC crown), occurred 100 plus years after the famed Notre Dame win vs Army at the Polo Grounds, which yielded writer Grantland Rice’s generally regarded, sports’ greatest “lead.”

Also in the New York metropolitan area yesterday, a team mucho closer to my heart, Columbia won and ended the 2024 season in a 3 way tie with Dartmouth, which won yesterday and Harvard which these “exact” 56 years after tying/beating Yale (29-29), lost to them.

It is the first time Columbia has won or shared the “Ivy” crown since 1961, 63 years ago, it manifesting a day after the 61st anniversary of an event in Dallas, Texas and at a time the juxtaposition of “fate’s choice” surely is ?’d by me.

If only I could approach Mr. Rice’s prose, the great, great “lead” written over 100 years ago, shown below.

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.^[3]

— Grantland Rice, October 18, 1924^[3]