1898 Phillips Exeter Football Team

McCornack

Hogan

 I always like these amateur photos of football teams in their element.  This appears to be taken after one of their practices.  The head coach Walter McCornack was a two year captain for Dartmouth and has been highlighted in another post. 

 Pictured is a 21 year old James Hogan.  Hogan later became a star player and All- American for Yale.  I find it interesting the scandal that surrounded him.  

He was 25 years old when he first started playing for Yale so he was a man amongst boys.  Yale had a large fund that they set aside for tutoring of their players.  It was found that Hogan was not paying tuition and was living in a lavish dorm room.  Also, along with some other players had a monopoly on selling baseball score cards at games.  if that wasn't enough, he had sole rights to sell American Tobacco Co. cigarettes on campus earning a commission off of each sale.  This sounds eerily similar to today’s college sports landscape and NIL money. 

1891 Phillips Andover football photo calendar

 Here is an interesting image of the 1891 Phillips Andover football team after their victory over Phillips Exeter.  John Greenway is pictured far to the left who went on to Yale stardom.  Also a nice companion piece given to me by a friend of the program to the game.

1891 Westminster School with William Herbert “Pa Corbin

 Westminster school was started in Dobbs Ferry, NY in 1888 by William Lee Cushing a graduate of Yale.  Following his graduation from Yale, William “Pa” Corbin began teaching at Westminster school from 1889-1892.  I found an article in 1889 in which he actually played on the team in his normal star position of center.  The idea of something like this happening today would be crazy to think about a star college football player going to a high school to teach and competing on the football team.

When I originally saw this photo I had to double take.  Pa Corbin was known for his signature mustache, but here he is with a beard.  I was able to find an article talking about how the 1891 team dominated their opponents, but nothing about Corbin’s role on that team.  

William Coleman 1891 Kansas State University gold football pendant

William Coleman served as a player and the first coach for Kansas State University (later renamed University of Kansas) in their first season of 1890.  They played just 3 games this season going 1-2.  The game against Baker College marked the first college football game played in Kansas.  

The 1891 season was considered KSU’s first official season affiliated with the university.  While Yale was dominating the East, Kansas was proving to be the best team in the Midwest.  They played their first game and had victory over the University of Missouri which would later become a longstanding rivalry.  This year they went undefeated going 7-0-1.  This pendant commemorates their perfect season and is engraved to William Coleman on the back.

Coleman would continue to play for Kansas through the 1894 season starting all 5 years at center.  They were known to run the Flying V with Coleman in the middle.  He would lead the blocking for the ball carrier and took on the brunt of the punishment from the defenders.  The formation proved to be very dangerous and was later outlawed in football. 

After football Coleman spent his life in Kansas and was the superintendent for Haskell Indian University.

Pach Bros Cabinet Photo of John “The Orangeman”

 I have already talked about and shown one of my cabinet photos of John the Orangeman in a previous post, but this image was just too great not to share.  It’s earlier than my previous one most likely late 1880s to early 1890s.  What is interesting about this image to me is it is quite different from any other Pach Brothers images I have seen.   It almost has a noir style about it not seen too often during this period.

1895 Oregon Agricultural College (Oregon State)

 Here is a very clear large cabinet photo of the 1895 OAC (later Oregon State) football team.  As discussed in a previous post about Washington State, what makes this image truly special is the lack of football images from the west.  I am also blown away by the sheer number of players on the squad for such an early team.  The team itself went 0-2-1 with their only tie against Pacific.  An interesting note is that Paul Downing who is pictured top right was the head coach.  He was the captain of the 1894 Stanford team that had Herbert Hoover as their manager.  This was his only year coaching.

Bill Warner c.1900 Cornell Cabinet photo

Bill Warner was the brother of Glenn “Pop” Warner.  He himself had an important football career at Cornell and later coaching.  He played guard for Cornell from 1899-1902 and was captain his last two years.  In 1902 he played and won in the World Series of football and the first indoor football game for the Syracuse Athletic Association.  He was inducted into the college football HOF in 1971.