1969 Birth of a Championship Streak
11/9/2009 10:00:00 AM | Athletics
By Jack DeGange
Dartmouth's 1969 football season began with one incentive and finished with another.
The driving motivation for Coach Bob Blackman's 15th Dartmouth team was to erase the frustration of the 1968 season in which the Green, struck with an inordinate number of injuries, struggled to a 4-5 record. It was the first losing season for Dartmouth since 1955, Blackman's first year in Hanover.
It was a year of celebration and turmoil. The celebrations involved the bicentennial of Dartmouth, founded in 1769, and the centennial of college football, dating from the Rutgers-Princeton contest in 1869. The turmoil: the nation, especially on college campuses, was dealing with the evolving debate over involvement in the Vietnam War.
For seven Ivy League teams, there was another cause for celebration - Yale, with the graduation of Brian Dowling and Calvin Hill, had dominated the league for two years until Harvard, on the final day of the 1968 season in a duel of unbeaten teams, "beat" Yale with its great comeback that created the historic 29-29 standoff.
"I've never looked forward to a season more," said Blackman as he prepared his 1969 team for battle. "We were a better team than our record in 1968."
That injury-riddled season had provided playing opportunity for sophomores who would make their mark on Dartmouth football history over the next two years as Dartmouth won 17 of 18 games.
How good the 1969 team would be was written each week as the Green took eight perfect steps, including wins over Harvard and Yale, the defending co-champions, before faltering at Princeton.
That misstep left Dartmouth with an 8-1 record and a share of the Ivy title with Yale (the Elis beat Princeton) and the Tigers. It marked the fifth time in the decade of the 1960s that Dartmouth had stood atop the league, joining the undefeated teams in 1962 and 1965 and the co-champ teams in 1963 and 1966. It was also the first of what would become an unmatched string of five straight Ivy titles that would continue through the 1973 season.
The irony of the numbing 35-7 loss in the finale at Princeton is that the principal culprit for the Tigers was a sophomore tailback, Hank Bjorklund, whose father was a Dartmouth alumnus. Bjorklund scored three touchdowns and Princeton had a 28-0 lead before the Green scored in front of a crowd of 35,000 and an ABC-TV regional audience.
That loss dampened what Blackman had identified as a comeback season for a team with high expectations. There were 29 returning letterwinners led by the co-captains, defensive end Ernie Babcock and offensive tackle John Ritchie. All told, 10 members of the team earned All-Ivy first-team honors in the balloting by the Ivy coaches, Associated Press or United Press International.
Six players made the Coaches' All-Ivy: Ritchie and kicker Pete Donovan, quarterback Jim Chasey and halfback John Short, plus two defensive backs named Adams (unrelated). Joe Adams, from a hometown (Muleshoe, Texas) that defined the reach of Blackman's unrivaled recruiting efforts in the 1960s, and Russ Adams combined for seven of the Green's 19 pass interceptions.
Joe Adams and another senior, guard Dave Mills, were All-East first team selections. And, while he didn't make the Coaches' All-Ivy, rover back Murry Bowden was tabbed by the AP and UPI as a junior, a prelude to the All-America season he would have in 1970 en route to the College Football Hall of Fame (where he is joined by Blackman and 11 other Dartmouth football immortals). Like Bowden, Joe Adams brought a contagious ferocity to the defense.
The individual honors were incidental to an overall team effort that saw the Green rank no lower than fourth in any category of offensive or defensive statistics in the Ivy League and among the national leaders in six departments.
Short was the team's rushing leader with 707 yards and a 6.1-yard average, but there was no more exciting runner on this team than senior halfback Tommy Quinn who delivered numerous big plays.
Quinn averaged 6.3 yards per carry and had his finest day at Yale when he threw an option pass for a touchdown and returned a punt for another TD (the second of three straight weeks when Quinn took a punt to the end zone). Quinn was the spark as Dartmouth's 42-21 win before nearly 50,000 fans at Yale Bowl ended Yale's string of 17 Ivy games without a loss.
This team's potential was revealed in a preseason scrimmage with Boston College. Rated New England's top team, the Eagles were stunned, 42-6, unveiling a combination of explosive offensive and grudging defense that Blackman conceded, "... was beyond my wildest expectations."
The season began with a 31-0 win at New Hampshire (how times have changed in this rivalry), a performance triggered by senior halfback Clark Beier's 53-yard scoring run.
A week later, Beier was lost with a dislocated elbow as Dartmouth buried Holy Cross, 38-6. The Crusaders, decimated by a hepatitis outbreak that infected 75 players, canceled the remainder of their season.
Beier's loss opened the door for Short, Bob Mlakar and Quinn to power a ground game that crushed Penn at Memorial Field, 41-0. The Green netted 509 yards rushing and 614 yards of total offense. Also in the backfield was sophomore fullback Stuart Simms who would be a bruising mainstay for three seasons.
At Brown, the first of four straight road games, Short took the opening kickoff 97 yards. Mlakar scored three times and Quinn had an 83-yard scoring run. Dartmouth cruised, 38-13.
Before a crowd of 39,000 at Harvard Stadium, Quinn took a punt 62 yards to score, safety Willie Bogan picked off a pass to set up Chasey's scoring plunge and Russ Adams had a 28-yard interception return for a TD. Add in Donovan's 42-yard field goal and the Green had a 24-10 halftime lead that stayed that way through a scoreless second half.
At Yale, the Elis had a 14-7 lead after one period, but four interceptions (two by Joe Adams) and two fumble recoveries by Dartmouth blunted the Bulldogs as the Green avenged losses to the Dowling-Hill teams in 1967 and 1968.
The Green's record moved to 7-0 with a 37-7 win at Columbia. The Lions were no match for Dartmouth's 508 yards of offense and Quinn's 68-yard punt return.
Cornell's sophomore tailback Ed Marinaro was the nation's rushing leader (he had racked up 281 yards and five TDs at Harvard alone), but Dartmouth held him to 122 yards while Chasey threw three TD passes (two to tight end Darrel Gavle). Dartmouth won, 24-7, in the home finale.
In 1965, Blackman took an undefeated Green team to Princeton after a Friday workout at Yankee Stadium. That Dartmouth team was remarkably loose and went on to a 28-14 win at Palmer Stadium, clinching the Lambert Trophy as the East's outstanding team.
The 1969 team's Friday walk-through at Yankee Stadium lacked the energy and spark that Blackman was seeking. A dull edge persisted at Princeton the next day as, unlike in 1962 and 1965, a perfect season went down the drain.
"It was a great season with a terrible finish," said Blackman. "Everyone has one of those days when everything (two pass interceptions, a lost fumble and a hasty quick kick led to three Princeton scores) goes wrong."
It was still a championship season, albeit one the Green had to share. But that frightful afternoon at Princeton provided another incentive, one that would drive Dartmouth to perfection in 1970.
Jack DeGange, a freelance writer, was Dartmouth's sports information director from 1968-77.
The 1969 Season (8-1, 6-1)
Date Site Opponent DC Opp
9/27 A New Hampshire 31 0 W
10/4 H Holy Cross 38 6 W
10/11 H Penn* 41 0 W
10/18 A Brown* 38 13 W
10/25 A Harvard* 24 10 W
11/1 A Yale* 42 21 W
11/8 A Columbia* 37 7 W
11/15 H Cornell* 24 7 W
11/22 A Princeton* 7 35 L
*Ivy League contest
