One week after its only loss of the 1936 football season against Holy Cross, Dartmouth started what would be a 22-game unbeaten streak with a 34-0 win over Brown on Memorial Field. The football action starts at the 4-minute mark of this newly posted video (LINK):
. . . (U)ntil 1984, Alabama proudly recognized six national championship teams, all under the leadership of legendary coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant. Those title squads are 1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978 and 1979. Five of those are championships awarded by the AP and one, 1973, is a recognized UPI coaches poll title, in the last season either of the two polls crowned its champion before the bowls.
And now for a little revisionist history out of Tuscaloosa:
For the record, after winning the College Football Playoff in January, Alabama claims 18 national titles — more than it should, according to exasperated critics, and less than it could, according to the NCAA’s FBS record book, where listed historical selectors credit UA with as many as 22 possible claims.
The first national championship Alabama now claims was from 1925 when the Crimson Tide went 10-0 with a 20-19 win over Washington in the Rose Bowl. Want to guess who also claims that year's title?
That would be Dartmouth, which went 8-0, outscoring its opponents 340-29, and winning a battle of undefeated teams against Cornell, 62-13, behind six Swede Oberlander touchdown passes and his 50-yard run for a score.
So who's right? Both. Or maybe neither.
A Wikipedia entry notes that, "At the close of the season, noted sports writer Billy Evans described the championship contest as "a dead heat" among Dartmouth, Tulane, Michigan, Washington, and Alabama."
The Athletic story quotes Evans:
“The best football team in the country? I beg to pass on that one. The best football team is largely a matter of where you happen to reside. It’s a question to start an argument. For the first time in years, the sectional supremacy in football is well defined. Only in the South is there a real dispute. The East is overwhelmingly for Dartmouth, while the West favors Michigan. Washington holds the coast honors, while Alabama and Tulane are the choice of the South. Alabama was voted the Pickens trophy by a committee of southern newspaper men. That award is equivalent to being named the champion.”
There clearly were a lot of national championship claims in the past. Here is a list of all of the championships claimed by Ivy League teams:
Princeton (28): 1869, 1870, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1889, 1893, 1894, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1906, 1911, 1920, 1922, 1933, 1935, 1950
Yale (27): 1872, 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1897, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1909, 1927
Harvard (12): 1874, 1875, 1890, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913, 1919, 1920
Penn (7): 1894, 1895, 1897, 1904, 1907, 1908, 1924
Columbia (2): 1875, 1933
Cornell (5): 1915, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1939
Dartmouth (1): 1925
Brown: (0)
Of course, before you swallow those championships whole, consider that . . .
Princeton claims the 1869 championship after splitting the only two football games anyone played that year with Rutgers. Penn claims the 1907 title which it, "self-declared." Columbia named itself 1933 national champion and Cornell was named the 1923 champion by Jeff Sagarin, who wouldn't be born for another quarter century.
With that, let's go to the record book:
The Official NCAA list of National Champions (LINK):
Yale 18
Princeton 15
Harvard 8
Penn 4
Cornell 3
Dartmouth 0
Brown 0
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EXTRA POINT
Before the world turned upside down Mrs. BGA and I rarely went out to eat anywhere other than a pizza place or burger joint, and vacations were often spent camping, albeit occasionally on a cliff over the Pacific Ocean. Mrs. BGA drove her last car until it had more than 225,000 miles on it and mine gave up the ghost right around 200,000 miles.
Our one "extravagance" was going to the movies a few times a month. And as you might expect, we haven't been to a movie in more than a year and miss it.
In these pandemic times movies are opening on HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu and the like but we don't subscribe to any paid services (remember the aversion to extravagances), which is probably ridiculous when you think about it. One month of any of those services is less than the price of two tickets to a single movie at the theater. But it's just not the same.
Some people say it is the "shared experience" that makes going to the movies special, but truth be told, Mrs. BGA and I went to a lot of movies over in Lebanon when there weren't more than two or three other people in the theater, and we still enjoyed it. More than once we were the only people in the entire theater.
Nor was it the hot buttered popcorn, Raisinets or overpriced Cokes. We never bought popcorn or candy (sometimes smuggling M&M in from the nearby Dollar Store in Leb) and the Coke we would get at the Nugget in Hanover was in 25-year-old, anniversary-issues mugs we always tried to remember because they entitled us to $1 fill-ups. "Soda jerks" at the theater were usually younger than the mugs but we'd bring 'em along because it sure beat $2.50 for the same soft drink!
As I said before, we don't subscribe to any dedicated movie channels, but we do have Amazon Prime – for the free deliveries and other benefits, rather than movies. Last week, for the first time, we rented The Thomas Crown Affair, the flashy 1999 Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway vehicle. We enjoyed it but here's the thing. While I would gladly have bought a couple of tickets to catch it at the Nugget, paying $3.99 to watch it in our living room gnawed at me.
Yeah, you probably can tell we can't wait to be able to go to the movies again. Unfortunately, that's still going to be a while. In the meantime, anyone know when the drive-in is going to open for the spring?