FROM THE COLLEGE’S ARCHIVES
Whatever Happened to … Jasper Football?
I
t’s that time of year again, when we break open the bag of chips, fire up the flat screen and settle in for a vigorous game of armchair quarterback. It’s football season. And while we celebrate or lament our favorite professional and collegiate teams, we remember a time in the recent past when our energies were spent on Jasper gridiron glory. Jasper football dates back to the late 19th century and the early days of the College, when it was located at 131st Street and Broadway, and home games, versus powerhouses such as Rutgers and Seton Hall, were played on Jasper Oval. While baseball was the strongest feature of the athletics program, football managed to achieve a varsity team by the 1890s. Despite the volunteer coaching assistance of a local physician, the game proved to be too hazardous, with heavy mass plays and brutal tackles regularly ending in broken bones and worse. With the close of the 1904 season, football was discontinued because of its inherent roughness. In the fall of 1924, a year after the College relocated to Riverdale, varsity football resumed and, throughout the 1920s-1930s, expanded. In its heyday, football schedules and game attendance increased, as big-time coaches played competitive teams in equally big-time venues, such as Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. In 1932, the College acquired coach John “Chick” Meehan, a tough showman, who regularly helped to draw overflow crowds of 70,000 to see his teams play. In six years under Meehan, the Manhattan teams and attendance rose rapidly to a point where Manhattan gained a measure of national distinction and ranked among the important football-playing colleges of the East. In January 1933, Manhattan
The Jaspers get down and dirty on storied Ebbets Field in 1937.
College competed in Miami’s inaugural Festival of the Palms, later renamed the Orange Bowl. Despite a 7-0 loss to the University of Miami, the Jasper team was still celebrated as a nationally established gridiron power. Bigtime football, however, necessitated a significant financial commitment, and there were several setbacks as expenses mounted and season records proved disappointing. The program never generated enough revenue to offset equipment expenditures and gate guarantees, especially as losing seasons continued. In 1943, World War II effectively halted football along with all athletic programs at the College. After the war, almost immediately, a vociferous student body and strident alumni clamored for a return to bigtime football, but it was not meant to be. The expense of such an endeavor coupled with difficulties in scouting and securing players posed serious roadblocks. Throughout the 1950-1960s, the back-to-football chorus among alumni and students remained boisterous.
In 1965, after a 23-year absence, football did return to Manhattan, thanks to the motivated spirit of the student body, which raised the necessary funds to furnish and administer a club team. The Jasper football club played its first game on Saturday, Oct. 16, 1965, homecoming day, in Gaelic Park, to an enthusiastic audience of about 600 alumni and students. The club made its debut with a 20-14 win over NYU. Throughout the 1960s-1980s, led by dedicated coaches Larry Kelly, Bob Baker and Bob Annuziata, respectively, the team experienced the highs and lows of many grueling seasons often on a shoestring budget and without the benefit of a home field. After years of playing for homecoming crowds or facing Division III squads while regularly teetering on the brink of financial demise, the football program eventually folded at the end of the 1987 season. Although Manhattan is no longer represented on the gridiron, football remains a valuable legacy of the Jasper athletic program. MANHATTAN.EDU N 47