Completed Event: Football at Fordham on October 18, 2025 , Win , 30, to, 13
Final
Football
at Fordham
30
13
When Dartmouth Declined the Rose Bowl
9/25/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
By Jack DeGange
Seventy years ago the Rose Bowl knocked on Dartmouth's door. President Ernest Martin Hopkins greeted the invitation with a simple, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Today, the Rose Bowl game is part of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and candidates come from football's Division 1-A, now known as the Football Bowl Subdivision. There's occasional conversation today that Dartmouth and its Ivy League companions should be allowed to participate in the Division 1-AA, aka Football Championship Subdivision, post-season playoffs.
Why Dartmouth and other Ivy League teams aren't post-season football combatants is a position that precedes the President's Agreement of 1954, the formative document for the Ivy League. The philosophical roots stem from Mr. Hopkins who affirmed several decades earlier that the College's academic mission, and especially the place of its student-athletes, should hold to a football season that ended before Thanksgiving Day.
In 1937, Dartmouth had one of its best football teams in history. Coached by Earl Blaik and featuring an offense fired by halfback Bob MacLeod (“The Wildfire Scot”), the Green compiled a 7-0-2 record (the ties were with Yale, 9-9, and Cornell, 6-6) and outscored its opponents decisively, 248-33.
Unlike the current scenario that finds the BCS teams determined by polls (and television ratings?), the Rose Bowl selection process 70-plus years ago was fairly simple: The champion of the Pacific Coast Conference, as host for the Pasadena spectacle, picked its opponent.
Teams that now are Ivy League members were hardly foreign commodities in those days: From 1916-34, Brown, Penn, Harvard and Columbia represented the East. For decades, Ivy teams dotted the national rankings.
The genesis of President Hopkins' position on post-season play was cast in 1925, when Dartmouth (8-0-0) was awarded the Rissman Trophy emblematic of the national champion. It was during the latter weeks of this historic season that Dartmouth received an unpublicized inquiry from the University of Washington (10-0-1) to come to the West Coast, a trip that had precedent in 1920 when Dartmouth visited Seattle for the dedication game of Washington's new stadium (Dartmouth won, 27-7).
The remarkable “rest of the story” is that the invitations to Dartmouth, in 1937 as in 1925, remained well-kept secrets until the mid-1970s when copies of President Hopkins' correspondence were uncovered in dusty file cabinets in what is now the equipment room in Davis Varsity House.
Quite literally, the exchange between Hopkins and Robert G. Sproul, president of the University of California, was conducted behind the scenes during the weeks when media speculation about Cal's foe in the Rose Bowl was running rampant.
California, with a record that would reach 9-0-1 (the tie was with Washington), was clearly the champion of the West Coast. On November 20, 1937, President Sproul wrote to President Hopkins, “If our football team does what is expected of it and wins the game this afternoon with Stanford (Cal won, 13-0), it will undoubtedly be chosen to take part in the game on New Year's Day in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
“If it is, we should like to select as its opponent the team of an institution which we feel is of our kind and with which we can play a game, not for money or notoriety, or a national championship, but for fun.
“Won't you let me hear from you soon and favorably.”
Barely two weeks earlier, as Dartmouth's team was bandied in the press along with Alabama, Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Fordham, Hopkins wrote an off-the-record letter to Bill Cunningham, an All-America center at Dartmouth in 1920 and prominent sports columnist for the Boston Post. He said, “...attractive and helpful as the money would be, Dartmouth is not going to the Rose Bowl.”
Hopkins, and members of the Athletic Council, weren't opposed to intersectional games. Dartmouth had played at Washington and, in 1930, at Stanford. In 1938, Dartmouth would again visit Stanford. Nor was he being self-righteous though he did consider the Rose Bowl itself a “cleverly designed and efficiently run publicity stunt for Southern California.”
Hopkins' belief was that the football season should end before Thanksgiving (as it does today). He told Cunningham, “The football player who completes his season at that time has ample time, if of reasonable intelligence, to consolidate his mental resources and to gather up the loose ends of his work, and by the time that examinations begin in the latter part of January to have acquired some understanding of what the courses are all about and what their implications are in the field of knowledge.
“My own theory has always been that if one held to the fundamental philosophy of college men incidentally playing football as against football players incidentally going to college, most of the evils of intercollegiate competition would be avoided.”
This was the foundation upon which Hopkins responded to Sproul on November 23, 1937. He wrote, “...it is the post-season factor that precludes us from being eager to receive the invitation or in a position where we could accept it if it were proffered.”
He continued, “Confidentially, this is not an entirely new situation, and specifically, we had to meet it and define our attitude in 1925, when at least it seemed on the basis of assurances given to us that there was a possibility that an invitation to the Rose Bowl might be available then. We undertook at that time to clarify our own minds...and that is the policy which has held all through succeeding years in regard to all other possibilities which from time to time have seemed to be in the offing.
“I cannot overstate my own satisfaction, however, that there should be a disposition among the University of California authorities and in yourself to consider Dartmouth among the desirable recipients of such an invitation. I can only treasure the spirit among men whom I respect (as) representative of academic standards which I admire which reckons Dartmouth as the desirable associate.”
So it was that Dartmouth's 1937 season concluded with a 27-0 victory over Columbia. Soon after, Pitt (9-0-1) announced it would not accept an invitation for financial reasons.
Cal's opponent on January 1, 1938 was Alabama. The Crimson Tide arrived in Pasadena with a 9-0-0 record — and lost to California, 13-0.
Jack DeGange is a freelance writer and former sports information director at Dartmouth. He and David Shribman '76 discovered President Hopkins' letters (copied to Director of Athletics William McCarter and Coach Earl Blaik). Shribman, now executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, first told this story in 1977.
The 1937 Dartmouth team before the Yale game, on October 30, 1937, that ended in a 9-9 tie. Kneeling, left to right: Capt. Merrill Davis, Francis Schildgen, Robert Campbell, Bob Gibson, Jim Feeley, Loren Dilkes, Charles Miller, Larry Hull. Standing: Bob MacLeod, Harrington Gates, Bill Hutchinson, Fred Hollingsworth.
Seventy years ago the Rose Bowl knocked on Dartmouth's door. President Ernest Martin Hopkins greeted the invitation with a simple, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Today, the Rose Bowl game is part of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and candidates come from football's Division 1-A, now known as the Football Bowl Subdivision. There's occasional conversation today that Dartmouth and its Ivy League companions should be allowed to participate in the Division 1-AA, aka Football Championship Subdivision, post-season playoffs.
Why Dartmouth and other Ivy League teams aren't post-season football combatants is a position that precedes the President's Agreement of 1954, the formative document for the Ivy League. The philosophical roots stem from Mr. Hopkins who affirmed several decades earlier that the College's academic mission, and especially the place of its student-athletes, should hold to a football season that ended before Thanksgiving Day.
In 1937, Dartmouth had one of its best football teams in history. Coached by Earl Blaik and featuring an offense fired by halfback Bob MacLeod (“The Wildfire Scot”), the Green compiled a 7-0-2 record (the ties were with Yale, 9-9, and Cornell, 6-6) and outscored its opponents decisively, 248-33.
Unlike the current scenario that finds the BCS teams determined by polls (and television ratings?), the Rose Bowl selection process 70-plus years ago was fairly simple: The champion of the Pacific Coast Conference, as host for the Pasadena spectacle, picked its opponent.
Teams that now are Ivy League members were hardly foreign commodities in those days: From 1916-34, Brown, Penn, Harvard and Columbia represented the East. For decades, Ivy teams dotted the national rankings.
The genesis of President Hopkins' position on post-season play was cast in 1925, when Dartmouth (8-0-0) was awarded the Rissman Trophy emblematic of the national champion. It was during the latter weeks of this historic season that Dartmouth received an unpublicized inquiry from the University of Washington (10-0-1) to come to the West Coast, a trip that had precedent in 1920 when Dartmouth visited Seattle for the dedication game of Washington's new stadium (Dartmouth won, 27-7).
The remarkable “rest of the story” is that the invitations to Dartmouth, in 1937 as in 1925, remained well-kept secrets until the mid-1970s when copies of President Hopkins' correspondence were uncovered in dusty file cabinets in what is now the equipment room in Davis Varsity House.
Quite literally, the exchange between Hopkins and Robert G. Sproul, president of the University of California, was conducted behind the scenes during the weeks when media speculation about Cal's foe in the Rose Bowl was running rampant.
California, with a record that would reach 9-0-1 (the tie was with Washington), was clearly the champion of the West Coast. On November 20, 1937, President Sproul wrote to President Hopkins, “If our football team does what is expected of it and wins the game this afternoon with Stanford (Cal won, 13-0), it will undoubtedly be chosen to take part in the game on New Year's Day in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
“If it is, we should like to select as its opponent the team of an institution which we feel is of our kind and with which we can play a game, not for money or notoriety, or a national championship, but for fun.
“Won't you let me hear from you soon and favorably.”
Barely two weeks earlier, as Dartmouth's team was bandied in the press along with Alabama, Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Fordham, Hopkins wrote an off-the-record letter to Bill Cunningham, an All-America center at Dartmouth in 1920 and prominent sports columnist for the Boston Post. He said, “...attractive and helpful as the money would be, Dartmouth is not going to the Rose Bowl.”
Hopkins, and members of the Athletic Council, weren't opposed to intersectional games. Dartmouth had played at Washington and, in 1930, at Stanford. In 1938, Dartmouth would again visit Stanford. Nor was he being self-righteous though he did consider the Rose Bowl itself a “cleverly designed and efficiently run publicity stunt for Southern California.”
Hopkins' belief was that the football season should end before Thanksgiving (as it does today). He told Cunningham, “The football player who completes his season at that time has ample time, if of reasonable intelligence, to consolidate his mental resources and to gather up the loose ends of his work, and by the time that examinations begin in the latter part of January to have acquired some understanding of what the courses are all about and what their implications are in the field of knowledge.
“My own theory has always been that if one held to the fundamental philosophy of college men incidentally playing football as against football players incidentally going to college, most of the evils of intercollegiate competition would be avoided.”
This was the foundation upon which Hopkins responded to Sproul on November 23, 1937. He wrote, “...it is the post-season factor that precludes us from being eager to receive the invitation or in a position where we could accept it if it were proffered.”
He continued, “Confidentially, this is not an entirely new situation, and specifically, we had to meet it and define our attitude in 1925, when at least it seemed on the basis of assurances given to us that there was a possibility that an invitation to the Rose Bowl might be available then. We undertook at that time to clarify our own minds...and that is the policy which has held all through succeeding years in regard to all other possibilities which from time to time have seemed to be in the offing.
“I cannot overstate my own satisfaction, however, that there should be a disposition among the University of California authorities and in yourself to consider Dartmouth among the desirable recipients of such an invitation. I can only treasure the spirit among men whom I respect (as) representative of academic standards which I admire which reckons Dartmouth as the desirable associate.”
So it was that Dartmouth's 1937 season concluded with a 27-0 victory over Columbia. Soon after, Pitt (9-0-1) announced it would not accept an invitation for financial reasons.
Cal's opponent on January 1, 1938 was Alabama. The Crimson Tide arrived in Pasadena with a 9-0-0 record — and lost to California, 13-0.
Jack DeGange is a freelance writer and former sports information director at Dartmouth. He and David Shribman '76 discovered President Hopkins' letters (copied to Director of Athletics William McCarter and Coach Earl Blaik). Shribman, now executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, first told this story in 1977.
The 1937 Dartmouth team before the Yale game, on October 30, 1937, that ended in a 9-9 tie. Kneeling, left to right: Capt. Merrill Davis, Francis Schildgen, Robert Campbell, Bob Gibson, Jim Feeley, Loren Dilkes, Charles Miller, Larry Hull. Standing: Bob MacLeod, Harrington Gates, Bill Hutchinson, Fred Hollingsworth.
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