UConn football conference championship history

[Adios]

This is for the football historians. Did some research. It seems we may have 26 conference championships throughout our history, 25 at worst. The 1926 season needs to be examined more. Did look at the schedules of other conference members of the New England Conference and before.

http://www.databasefootball.com/College/teams/teampage.htm?TeamID=25

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Huskies_football#Conference_championships

That adds 7 or 8 conference championships to what was common knowledge.

26 conference championships in 113 seasons. Not too bad.

If anyone can add anything, please do so.

 

[Carl Spackler]

This is for the football historians. Did some research. It seems we may have 26 conference championships throughout our history, 25 at worst. The 1926 season needs to be examined more. Did look at the schedules of other conference members of the New England Conference and before.

http://www.databasefootball.com/College/teams/teampage.htm?TeamID=25

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Huskies_football#Conference_championships

That adds 7 or 8 conference championships to what was common knowledge.

26 conference championships in 113 seasons. Not too bad.

If anyone can add anything, please do so.

Best place to start if you want to anything and everything - is the current year media guide. It's right here. All 212 glorious pages.

http://www.uconnhuskies.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/2011-football-media-guide.html

What you're looking at is on page on 120.

It list 18 official conference champion or co-championshi9 seasons in 64 total seasons since 1947. looks to me like you've found some info prior to that. AVerages out to a championship season every 4 years. Most of those came in strings though, first in the 50s, then a couple in the late 60's early 70's (Deleone's years)......and then again in the 80s.

NCAA record keeping prior to World War II is a complete disaster. If you can find, or have found, anything accurate and reliable beyond what's already in the media guide, contact the media department at UConn, through the website above, they'll be happy to hear from you and get it into the media guide in coming years if it's valid.

 

[Carl Spackler]

P.S. Although we've had a football program continuously since 1896, there was no football played officially for two years during world war I, and for one year during world war II. Too many 18-22 year old bodies were out there on the real battlefields.

 

[Adios]

I think someone should contact the AD and tell them they should recognize what the football program did before 1947!

 

[Carl Spackler]

It's all in there in the media guide, all the way back to 1896.

Just not the specifics that you're looking for. You can go to the yearly results section in the media guide, and see every officially recognized game that's ever been playedj. They're all listed, season by season, with the opponents listed, dates, and final score.

I promise you that prior to about 1938, you'll have a very hard time finding anything in college football statistics that is really reliably accurate no matter what program you're looking at across the country and however you look.

You'd have to literally go and do newspaper searches and find each and every box score to get any sort of compilation of numbers put together independantly from an actual university reporting on itself, beyond the names of any two programs that played on a certain date, and the final score.

Even then, reporting on statistics to the papers was not reliable, as certain players and programs always seemed to be really productive on the field in the box scores, no matter what actually happened, because in the absence of television broadcasting, newspapers were the only information source, and the media played a gigantic role in a programs perception, and therefore their post season potential and recognitition as a champion. Way more influence by the print media then, than the television and print media now.

I'm not even sure that official "conference" champions in the NEC were even recognized prior to world war II. As noted, if you've got anything concrete you've found, let em know.

The first time that a true national championship intercollegiate football game is played at the highest level of competition in the US, will be a trully historic day for athletic competition in the modern world.

There is no other sport like college football that has evolved the way it has. It's all due to the lack of way to determine a true champion on the field of play.

The entire globe, and all the countries that are capable of fielding the 'other' kind of football teams were able to figure out away to crown a true global champion.

We haven't done it yet within the united states with american college football, simply - because of greed and selfishness.

The Catholics at Notre Dame should be ashamed of themselves. LOL.

 

[Adios]

Most people probably don't know ND got their name from Fielding Yost at Michigan when he simply referred to ND as the "Irish" after a defeat, commending them. I do know Notre Dame gave out pendants to their players for being "western champions" (something like that) somewhere between 1905 - 1920, before they won their first national title in 1924. Saw one sell on ebay. Wish I kept pictures of it. It might be from 1909 as this article mentions.

http://www.archives.nd.edu/about/news/?p=190

West Virginia used to be in some boondocks conference very early in their history. They also spent a LOT of time as an independent. Many, many national championships going back to the beginning have been retroactively awarded. The media wasn't even thinking of who's the national champion for the first 30+ years of the game. Just win or lose. The first championship ever officially awarded after the season was over was in 1905. Yale was awarded the national title that year by Caspar Whitney. And he only awarded titles from 1905 - 1907. After him, all championships between 1908 - 1925 were also retroactively awarded.

Gridiron football sure did evolve in a very unique way. Funny that the NFL was perceived as a circus circuit in it's first decade or few while college football was taken seriously and no one was officially awarding championships for a while. Somehow when it comes to Connecticut Agricultural College, someone did record-keeping, at least for games played and scores. UMass (also called the Aggies early on, if I am correct) must have records of the same archived somewhere. The Ivy League schools were obviously the first big schools in football. I know for a fact they did write-ups about games going back to the very early 1900s amongst themselves. I mean record-keeping for stats and drives. It doesn't seem the New England Conference had any "official" championships awarded during their existence, but that can be rectified.

 

[mattp]

surprisingly, the 212 page media guide is not the longest thing Carl has linked to this year

 

[Johnbuoy]

Two more football data websites.
http://collegefootball.about.com/gi...t=1&bts=1&zu=http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/

http://collegefootball.about.com/gi...14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http://football.stassen.com/

 

[Palatine]

 

[CTMike]

There was something poetic about this being the Butchy and Carl Lovefest Thread... sorry to interrupt your private moment guys.

 

[Johnbuoy]

Beginning in 1948, UConn played Yale a total of 49 times (not always in consecutive years). In the beginning UConn was obviously Yale's gimme game, because they lost to them 16 times in a row before getitng their first win in 1965. After many more dismal showings in the intervening decade and a half, things finally began looking up for UConn in the 1980s. Starting with 1982 and going through 1998, UConn beat Yale in 15 of their 16 games. The last game between the two teams resulted in UConn's biggest margin of victory of 42 points (63-21). Apparently Yale had had enough, because they haven't been on the schedule since. That's too bad though - a 50th game match-up would be sure to grab some interest and headlines, even if it's only local.
Just imagine it - The battle of the dogs! The Huskies versus The Bulldogs!

 

[Adios]

There was something poetic about this being the Butchy and Carl Lovefest Thread... sorry to interrupt your private moment guys.

Get your mind out of the gutter, boy.

The fact we had a series last that long with Yale is an honor. For those who didn't know, we're 1-1 against the school that pretty much seems to be the first true SEC power and had a direct hand in the formation of the SEC, Vanderbilt. Some people wonder why Vanderbilt is in the SEC. The answer is because it's their baby! (Don't get any wrong ideas, CTMike.)

http://mvictors.com/?tag=vanderbilt

Would have been nice if we went 2-0 against them... It certainly is nice to play historic programs. We need to beat Michigan!