Football records, Drexel University Archives and Special Collections

The football team had its unofficial beginning at the Drexel Institute in 1892 as a student-organized sport and was discontinued by Drexel's Board of Trustees in 1973. Records consist of game programs, newspaper clippings, administrative files, rosters, score sheets, and press material. The bulk is from 1950 to 1973; materials prior to 1950 consists mainly of game programs. Administrative files include a brief history of the football program up to the 1930s.

Administrative History

The first football team at Drexel was formed in the fall of 1892 by a group of students. Like all athletic teams affiliated with Drexel during the early years, the football team was not officially sanctioned by the school. They competed against other local colleges and club teams. In 1895, after several years of competing by either accepting challenges from or issuing challenges to other schools and clubs, the team played its first ever scheduled season. Records indicate that most games took place in Fairmount Park, and the official history of the school claims that the Drexel football team had a good reputation among city clubs, enjoying a number of winning seasons.

In 1907, interscholastic sports were sanctioned by the school for the first time, but in 1909 the school discontinued football for lack of a proper playing field. Student interest had also waned in the early 1900s. In 1911, Anthony J. Drexel's estate in Runnymede, Delaware County, was used as athletic grounds with a field laid out for football. The early 1910s witnessed the rebirth of the student-driven football program.

Prior to 1914, the administration's position on athletic teams was "inconsistent, impecunious and loosely directed." The onus for organizing, funding, and scheduling for teams fell on the students. In 1914, Drexel President Hollis Godfrey did "athletics a great service" by encouraging competition with only fellow college teams, eliminating competition from loosely affiliated "club teams." He established student athletic fees that would be used to pay for professional coaching staff and declared school holidays that would be spent at Runnymede with the hope of inspiring an increased interest in sports.

In 1920, W.J. McAvoy was appointed coach of major sports, including football, making him the first paid, full-time football coach. The ensuing years for Drexel football were rather gloomy. The difficulty of recruiting players from a pool of academically dedicated engineering students made the task of fielding a good team difficult. In 1924, Drexel began a pre-season training camp at A.J. Drexel Paul's estate in Wayne, PA. In 1927, Drexel hired W.H. Halas as the full-time coach in charge of coaching football, basketball, and baseball. Halas was a pupil of University of Illinois coach R.C. Zuppke and had been a backfield coach under Knute Rockne and George Gipp at Notre Dame. His younger brother was the Hall of Fame coach and founder of the Chicago Bears George Halas. In Halas's second year as coach in 1928, the team won eight out of nine games. In 1930, A.J. Drexel Paul made his estate available for pre-season training quarters. With increased enrollment, funding, and interest in the sport, the team remained successful into the 1930s. In 1937, they won the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference championship by defeating Franklin and Marshall.

The 1940s brought a downturn at Drexel with a wartime enrollment drop and a significant decrease in revenue. Wartime brought about a suspension of the sport in 1943. The football team, like Drexel as a whole, emerged successfully out of the difficult days of the war. During the postwar years, Drexel witnessed a significant increase in football attendance. In 1955 the team completed its first and only undefeated season.

Since 1925, attendance for games had averaged anywhere from two thousand to five thousand people. In 1967, the number had dipped below two thousand for the first time since the war. By 1971 the disproportionate amount of funding necessary to field a football team became an issue with the administration and the board of trustees. In 1973, after the team completed a 4-4 season, the board issued a statement that read, in part: "In view of the recommendations of the Faculty Student Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics…we reluctantly move to discontinue football at the end of the 1973 season and to redistribute the present funds among the other intercollegiate sports and intramural programs."

Scope and content note

The collection is divided into six series:

Administrative files
Rosters/Score sheets
Game programs
Newspaper clippings
Press material
Photographs

The bulk of the material dates from 1951 to 1973, the final year football was played at Drexel. The most complete series of material is the collection of game programs, rosters, and press material from the 1960s and 1970s. The only materials dated prior to 1950 are game programs from the 1930s and 1940s.

Administrative information

Restrictions

Restrictions on use:

Consult archivist regarding copyright restrictions.

Restrictions on access:

The collection is open for research use.

Provenance

Artificial collection created from the records of the Drexel University Dept. of Athletics.

Preferred citation

Football Records, Drexel University Archives.

Additional information

Bibliography

McDonald, Edward, and Edward M. Hinton, Drexel Institute of Technology, 1891-1941: A Memorial History. Philadelphia: Drexel Institute of Technology, 1941.

"Football at Drexel [circa 1936]." Football Records, Drexel University Archives

Newspaper clippings, Football Records, Drexel University Archives