CHAMPIONSHIP FEVER
In its next contest, Harvard took on Vanderbilt, and its coaches, The Crimson noted, made sure not to underrate “this championship team of the South, and consequently [prepared] for a fast, light team with a versatile attack similar to that of Princeton.” It was the Commodores’ first trip to Harvard Stadium, and the paper, noting the economic and logistical difficulty of playing teams from outside the northeast, pointed out that “this intersectional rivalry cannot but result, in some degree, at least, in an increase of friendship and understanding.”
The Commodores had outscored their opponents 342-3 to that point, and seats were in high demand at $1.50 each between the twenty-yard lines and $1.00 outside them. When game day finally arrived, the home fans—except for the 205 students who couldn’t attend because they had resold tickets to previous games and were thus on the “Football Black List”—were rewarded with a 9-3 victory, despite the fact that the Crimson chose to play all of its reserves. It would be the Commodores’ only loss of the season, and they suffered a number of prominent injuries during it.
In its penultimate game on Nov. 16, Harvard faced a Dartmouth team that according to The Crimson arrived in Cambridge “full of confidence and determined to win.” The paper noted that “as this is the final game of the season for the Green, every energy has been utilized to build up a fast and aggressive team.... The Dartmouth eleven will put forth every effort and use every style of play it has mastered in order to gain the victory.”
But despite its will, the Big Green could not score against the vaulted Crimson defense, which helped Harvard earn a 3-0 win. The Crimson alternated simple line plunges and end runs throughout—also trying one of Vanderbilt’s passing plays from the week before—and the lone score came on a Brickley seven-yard drop-kick in the third quarter. Though Brickley missed his other three field-goal attempts, he made up for that by rushing for 68 of Harvard’s 190 yards on the ground.
In its final game of the season, Harvard, 8-0 to that point, traveled to New Haven to face a 7-0-1 Yale team. Despite the lack of losses on both sides, Harvard was considered a heavy favorite. Of the over 33,000 people who attended the game, 16,000 supported Harvard while 17,000 rooted for the Bulldogs, according to The Crimson. But Yale’s fans could not spur its team to victory, as Harvard capped a perfect season with a 20-0 win.
Storer scored the Crimson’s opening touchdown, the school’s first against the Bulldogs in over a decade. Brickley added a pair of field goals—the second set up by his own 40-yard run—and following a forced fumble by Hardwick, the sophomore added his ninth score of the year in the third quarter.
The Crimson capped the championship-clinching win with the “snake dance,” a victory celebration in which the Harvard fans joined hands and zig-zagged toward the goal post, over which they tossed their hats.
A WIDE-RANGING LEGACY
Following an undefeated season in which Harvard had outscored its opponents, 176-22, despite a challenging schedule, the championship team was honored at the Copley-Plaza Hotel with what The Crimson called the “largest Harvard dinner ever held in Boston.” Approximately 600 alumni were in attendance, including nearly the entire 1890 championship team as well as President Lowell.
At the year’s conclusion, Felton, Storer, Pennock, Gardner, Brickley, Wendell, and Hardwick all earned All-America honors and went on to a wide array of futures.
After graduating from Harvard, Felton declined a three-year offer to play professional baseball for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics valued at $15,000 per year with the option of unconditional release—then the largest ever offer to a collegiate athlete. He did so despite the fact that the normally-conservative Mack tried “as he has never before done” to sign Felton because Mack felt Felton could have been “one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game,” according to the Washington Post. The star athlete, from a wealthy family, instead returned to his home in Haverford, Penn., to pursue a career in business.
Storer, a Boston native, served as captain of another undefeated and untied Harvard football team in 1913—the last such squad until 2001. He would go on to fight in World War I, serving as a major and commander of Battery E of the 305th Field Artillery. In September 1918, he was noted for his bravery in saving a French officer while on a reconnaissance mission.
Storer’s fellow interior lineman, Pennock, was once again named an All-American the following two seasons. After graduating, he partnered with a pair of classmates and opened a chemistry laboratory, but he was killed in an gasoline-induced explosion at a chemical plant in New Jersey in 1916. At his funeral, six of his Harvard teammates, including his former roommate Brickley, carried his body to his grave in Syracuse. He was posthumously elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.
Brickley—from a family of athletes—is still tied for the Harvard record for field goals made in a season with the 13 he scored in 1912. His 94 points that year and 215 during the course of his career were school records that stood for 92 years, and his five field goals in the following year’s matchup with Yale clinched another national title for the Crimson. The kicker later became a coach, and after turning down offers from NYU and Penn State accepted the head coaching job at Johns Hopkins in 1915. He next became the head coach at Boston College and Fordham, but after ample legal trouble stemming from poor investments and illegal financial practices, he died of heart disease in 1949. Hours before his death, the former Crimson star, disappointed at his alma mater’s recent struggles, allegedly told a reporter that “what Harvard needs is a czar of football to get the game on a sound basis.” Numerous obituaries noted that Brickley “found the game of football easier than the game of life.”
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