While Rutgers’ richest football tradition certainly lies in the exploits of the Big 10 varsity team, that program does not represent the entirety of Scarlet Knights’ football history. Part of the university’s tradition includes the 150/lightweight/sprint football team which thrived for nearly 60 years on the Banks before it was dropped in 1989. The program’s history includes undefeated and championship seasons, games that drew thousands of fans, regular New York Times coverage, all-conference performers, and even a player that earned NFL tryouts.
Rutgers, together with several of the Ivies, was a pioneer of the sport, and one of many major college athletic programs to field a varsity lightweight football team prior to World War II (e.g., Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Illinois, Harvard, William & Mary, Virginia to name a few). The sport traces its beginnings back to the early 1930’s Harvard-Yale football games when the two schools fielded teams of players weighing less than 150 pounds to play in exhibition games before the varsity game kickoff as a form of pre-game entertainment.
The-then weight ceiling was based on the size of the “average” adult male of the time and was set at 150-pound weight limit as a carryover from the sport of rowing which used that pound limit as a line of demarcation between the sport’s lightweight and heavyweight crews. The enthusiastic reception these exhibition games received convinced school officials that this brand of football had its own unique entertainment value as well as provided an opportunity for many average size high school players to play football at the college level long before the advent of Division III and the NAIA. Soon the Harvard and Yale 150’s began to schedule games against nearby prep schools. Rutgers Athletics Director, George Little, introduced the sport on the Banks in 1932, established it as a varsity sport in 1933 and, in 1934, Rutgers became a founding member of the Eastern 150- pound Football League along with Yale, Princeton, Penn, Villanova and Lafayette which was famously lauded as “football for all!” The league later expanded to include Cornell, Columbia, Army, and Navy and still exist to this day as the 9-team Eastern Sprint Football Conference, and the recently established 8-team Midwest Sprint Football Conference.
First Varsity Team (1933)
Lightweight/Sprint Football: 101
For those unfamiliar with the sprint football program, known in its earlier days as 150-pound football, then lightweight football and now known as sprint football, the game is fundamentally identical to that played by its weight limitless counterparts. The sprint brand of football was, and is, 11-on-11, full pads, full-contact varsity football played on a regulation college field, under NCAA rules, fully officiated and with its own conferences. From the 1930’s through its demise in 1989, the Scarlet Knights lightweight program existed in parallel to the heavyweight program. To the distant viewer, the lightweight game looked like any other aspect of Rutgers football; the players suited up in the locker room in the bowels of old Rutgers Stadium, donned the same familiar Rutgers uniform (albeit hand-me-downs from the Big Boys), trotted out for practice to the same side fields, and annually played Princeton in a game that still mattered. Sprint football is fundamentally the same as NCAA football everywhere except for the weight limitation— players’ weight is recorded at weekly weigh-ins prior to each game day (over the decades the weight ceiling has gradually increased from 150lbs at the sport’s founding, to 158lbs, to 165lbs, to the now present-day limit of 178 pounds.)
Because most sprint athletes played skill positions in high school but had to be converted to interior line or linebacker positions, there is a high degree of parity in team speed and athleticism unmatched even at the FBS level that makes the game remarkable for its pace and high-velocity hitting. It is that quirk that gives the sport its signature—”Sprint.” With players at literally every position with 4-something 40-yard speed, and many players that were high school track athletes, the lightweight game is remarkable for its pace. Only in the sprint game will one find defensive tackles that can run-down a halfback, or a tight end returning kicks, or a linebacker covering a slot man-to-man, or a place kicker chasing down a returner. Gene McIntyre, then-head coach at Army, described an in-game adjustment that illustrated the uniqueness of the sprint game. He recounted a situation in a game against Navy in which the free safety was disrupting his team’s option attack. Army was struggling to account for the safety until McIntyre came up with a solution that could only work in sprint football: he used his center to pick up the safety coming over the top; he was able to do it because his center ran a 4.6 forty.
Finally, as for big hits, the ferocity of hitting in lightweight football is unparalleled and unprecedented. Even at the high school level there are always tackling or blocking situations where one player is giving up 40, 50 or more pounds to an opponent. However, in sprint ball, since all players weigh approximately the same weight, the need to go low is not as critical, and every defender feels he can take a ball carrier high and every runner feels push come-to-shove he can run over any tackler 1-on-1. The result is regular occurrences not seen anywhere else in college football or at the pro level—a wideout pancaking a defensive lineman, a QB plowing over a linebacker, a blitzing safety bull rushing a guard. From kickers looking to make touchdown saving tackles, to quarterbacks running in space, to cornerbacks taking on pulling guards, no one backs down from a potential big collision. This is the special and unique brand of fast and ferocious football that the Rutgers lightweight team installed on the Banks at the very dawn of this sport and helped to place it on the New York metro sports scene.
Nattys and Stars
The Rutgers 150-pound team was the sport’s first juggernaut capturing the league’s first two titles (1934 and 1935) and posting a 23-game undefeated streak that spanned 4 seasons including the 1935 season in which it was not only undefeated--but unscored upon! It was not until the 1936 season game against Yale, a 6-0 loss, that the Scarlet Knights suffered its first defeat in the history of the Rutgers 150-pound team. The Yale game was further never-to-be forgotten in lightweight football lore as the game was sponsored by the Rutgers Club of Paterson at Patterson’s Hincliffe Stadium before a crowd of over 10,000. Coached by Harry Rockafeller for most of the 1930’s (before moving on to complete a Rutgers H.O.F. career coaching the heavyweights), he ended his tenure as the lites’ head coach after the 1937 season with a 6- season career record in which his teams lost a mere 3 games. Rocky’s very best teams were led Harry Rockafeller
by true triple threat back John “Pomp” Chandler (’37). A game in 1935 perhaps best illustrated the remarkable versatility of Pomp Chandler who in the Knights’ 21-0 win over Yale that season passed for 2 touchdowns, rushed for 1 touchdown, and kicked the 3 extra points to account for all of Rutgers’ 21 points. Pomp Chandler, whose accomplishment have slipped into obscurity in the Rutgers football annals—and in 1933 was almost certainly one of the first African-Americans to star in football at Rutgers (aside from Paul Robeson of course)—was nationally recognized by Time Magazine as one of the “Immortals” of lightweight football (see article Nifty Fifties, Time Magazine, Dec. 2, 1940). Jack Daut Besides the incomparable Pomp Chandler, other lightweight standouts over the decades include Avery Lyman (’42), a 2X First Team Lightweight All-American, Walt Shallcross (’49) another triple threat, Hammond Reed (‘54) a 60-minute workhorse, halfback Jack Daut (’57) who was also a 2X First Team All-American in lacrosse, Lightweight All-American Howard Cabot (’69) who dropped down from the heavyweights, Gary Way (’80), a 2-way starter and First Team All-American, and Steve Marino (’80), the lanky 2X First Team All-American at wide receiver whose play earned him NFL tryouts with the Kansas City Chief and New York Giants.
Ties That Bind
The connections between the Rutgers varsity heavyweight program and the lightweight program are deep-rooted, myriad, and varied. When the Eastern 150-pound Football League was founded in 1934, the silver trophy given to the league’s champ, the Sullivan Trophy, was donated by National College HOF coach G. Sanford Foster who turned out many of Rutgers nationally recognized teams. Rutgers Hall of Fame coach Harry Rockafeller got his football
Steve Rummel (RC '81) Sacks Princeton Passer coaching start at Rutgers with the 150’s before being called up to the heavyweight program. Heavyweight team stars such as Mike Fisher, ex-captain Art Robinson, and HOF’er Mark Twitty all got their coaching starts on the lightweight coaching staff. In addition to shared coaches, players also jumped between programs. Undersized, and underutilized, heavyweight players sometime opted to drop down and play lightweight where they would be impact players rather than seeing limited duty on the heavyweight squad. Two-time lightweight All-American player Avery Lyman dropped down to the 150-pound team from the heavyweight team. The door also swung the other way. Some of the most talented lightweight players moved up to the heavyweight program such as Roger Vernon. Finally, it was not uncommon for lightweight players to be 1 degree (or less) of separation from their heavyweight brethren. Many a lightweight player had been the high school teammates, or opponents, of Rutgers heavyweight players as in the case of lightweight Gary Way who started alongside heavyweight Ray Moore on the Top-10 Irvington High team that handed heavyweight Tony Tango’s undefeated Newark East Side High team its first loss of the season, while Roger Vernon started out as a lightweight before making the jump to the heavyweights where he rejoined Woodbridge High teammate John Hartmann, and Alton Dixson, a starting defensive end on Weequahic High was the frequent harasser of Scarlet QB Jerry Smith who played opposite as the star QB of Paterson Eastside.
Epitaph
The 1989 season brought the end of the 57-year run of lightweight football on the Banks. In its final season of existence, the sprint team maintained its spirit and tenacity despite the knowledge of its impending demise and capped its final season with a 14-12 home field win over Princeton. And in so doing, the 1989 sprint team likely forever cemented itself in the record books as the last Rutgers football team to beat a Princeton football team and thus ended the 120-year-old series in the way college football started out—with Rutgers over Princeton. Never has the elimination of a sport impacted a larger group of true student-athletes than the disbanding of the lightweight program.57 Years and a Cloud of Dust
Its players were the truest of student-athletes. No student ever came to the Banks to play lightweight (rare was the high schooler who even knew the sport existed), no player was ever recruited, and scholarships were never permitted. Every single player was a walk-on. Unlike other low-profile, non-revenue sports, lightweight football did not even offer the theoretical possibility that the team, if successful, could compete for an NCAA title, or that a stellar individual performer could go on to make a national team in their sport, or even the pros. Those who played lightweight football came to Rutgers solely for the educational opportunity it presented.
As a testament to the perfect balance struck in lightweight football between sports and academics, the single biggest reason for missed practice time was class scheduling conflicts and players’ needing to cram for hourlies. At times, the team’s typically thin ranks were so further depleted by class conflicts that not enough bodies were available to scrimmage. On those days, practices consisted merely of conditioning drills, a pep talk and wind sprints. With the disbanding of the lightweight football program came the end of the purest of collegiate amateur sports— “amateur” in the original meaning of the word which derives from the Latin word “amator” meaning lover, admirer.
Lightweight varsity football offered no external motivation or reward for its participants. Those who played enjoyed no elevated status on campus, received none of the perks of being a varsity athlete, received little or no recognition and, during the most dismal seasons, were lucky to play their home games to a crowd of twenty-five spectators. Those who played lightweight football played simply because they loved the game, sacrificed to do so (often literally starving themselves), balanced sports with academics, graduated on time, and went on to become successful in the world as business executives, engineers, lawyers, doctors, and such.
