Tech Football | 100th Anniversary: The pre-varsity years (1916-21)
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – When the Tennessee Tech football team takes to the field to open the 2022 campaign, it will be the 100th anniversary of the first varsity game played by the Golden Eagles. That’s not to say football didn’t exist in the campus community before then. We begin the look back at Tennessee Tech’s centennial of football with a glimpse of the beginning of the program.
By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – When the Tennessee Tech football team takes to the field to open the 2022 campaign, it will be the 100th anniversary of the first varsity game played by the Golden Eagles.
That's not to say football didn't exist in the campus community before then.
We begin the look back at Tennessee Tech's centennial of football with a glimpse of the beginning of the program.
On March 27, 1915, Tennessee Polytechnic Institute was signed into existence, the descendant of Dixie College. By the next year, TPI had a football coach – C. Donald Russell, a former coach for Dixie College and Putnam County High School, and he was put in charge of football, basketball and baseball.
It started a pattern until P.V. "Putty" Overall took over as head coach in 1923 that a new coach was in place each year with R.V. Kerr succeeding Russell, followed by W. Ellis Simmons, John "Red" Floyd – who MTSU's football stadium is named after; V.T. Ring, W. Ellis Simmons, Joe E. Conry, John C. Clardy, then – in what is recognized as Tech's first varsity season in 1922 – Loyall Duyck.
One of the reasons 1922 is recognized as the start of the program is that the structure of the University at the time was a mixture of high school and college students and many of the student-athletes then were from the high school levels.
With World War I in progress and moving towards its conclusion, numbers were limited. With few nearby colleges to play, many of the games were fielded against nearby high schools. This continued even into the early accepted years of the program as early results show contests against Livingston Academy and Gallatin.
In Russell's season in 1916, it was a struggle to put together equipment, a schedule and – most importantly – a team on the field. No records of that first season exist other than a brief mention in the January 1917 edition of the Tech Dynamo – the precursor to the current Tech Oracle student newspaper – that the team had a successful season. The 1916 team, pictured above, included (from left) Victor McClain, Stanton Rhea, Ira Baker, Wesley Flatt, W.F. Stone, Howell Smith, George Henry Lynch, Ernest Smoot, Henry Grady Wright, Bartlett McCormick, C.C. Cloyd and Mark Lowery.
The long-standing rivalry against Middle Tennessee also began in this era with Austin Wheeler Smith's tome, The Story of Tennessee Tech, citing that "Tech played Murfreesboro the first time and was defeated" in 1917 with no contest against each other again until 1924. Wheeler's book later goes on to say (perhaps in a tongue-in-cheek manner) that "if the 1917 game concerning which there is some uncertainty is counted, Tech won 15, MTSC 11." MTSU's media guide lists the game as a 26-0 victory by the Blue Raiders.
As Tech began in 1915, it was literally from scratch with no teams, equipment, gyms or fields. The initial collegiate enrollment of the school was 19. To quote Smith: "More than half of those were girls and most of the other half not football material," which prompted the recruitment of high school students to fill the roster.
The first Tech catalog stated that students were to compete in "clean and wholesome athletics played by bona fide students doing creditable work," followed in the second edition by 'students shall have made during the year and be making satisfactory grades in all of their studies at the time of their application for a place on any official team of the institution. Each instructor shall furnish WEEKLY Reports of the Student's standing in his classes to the Coach and the Chairman of the Athletic Committee' and prohibited profane language any time anywhere by an athlete."
Letters were awarded to students who participated in at least two games and must have been active in 16 quarter hours of course work. It dropped to 15 by 1919, then 12 in 1925.
During this time, coaches did not know who would even be eligible to play on the team until the Friday before the game – or if it would be affected by other suspendable violations including profane language or smoking – leaving the roster of 11 to 15 players down to even as few as seven.
Historically, the Tech Department of Athletics as far back as the media guides in the mid-1960s noted 1922 as the beginning of its statistical data, though written reports of games played are scarce.
To be sure, it was miles away from the game as we know it today, but for Tech, it had to start somewhere.
Next: The varsity era begins with the 1922 squad.
Sources:
Smith, A.M. (1957). The Story of Tennessee Tech. Nashville: McQuiddy Printing Company
Neufeldt, H.G. and Dickinson, W.C. (1991). The Search for Identity: A History of Tennessee Technological University 1915-1985. Memphis: Memphis State University Press
Johnson, Mancil and Dickinson, W.C. (2002). The College History Series: Tennessee Technological University. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing
Bell, R.R.; Dickinson, W.C.; Elkins, S.A. and Clemons, L. E. (2009). Practical Work: 100 Years of Dixie College and Tennessee Tech University
