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TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'
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TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'


Aug 7, 2020, 9:05 AM

LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'

TigerNet will be posting several historic Clemson photos during this difficult time with no Clemson sports. Long-time TigerNet member Mintaka® submitted many of Read Update »


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Re: TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'


Aug 7, 2020, 9:07 AM

(via Mintaka) More of the story about Heisman:

Joe Sherman told this classic Heisman story:

Over two score years ago, fascinated by the reports of this man, I uncovered a story about him that is to me the all-time classic of Clemson football. The story made the Associated Press feature wires and just may have been the first Clemson story to be printed in detail from coast to coast.

The season was 1903 and if you think betting on football is a johnny-come-lately pastime, you're wrong. Heisman was unconcerned with the betting, of course, but he had every intention of winning the upcoming game with Georgia Tech. The betting is a sidelight of the yarn.

Recall, now, that this was the third year of Heisman-coached Clemson powerhouses.

When the Clemson team arrived in Atlanta the afternoon before the game, Tech fans were stunned by the scrawny, any thing-but-tough physical appearances of the Tiger players. Tech supporters were pop-eyed when the Clemson players checked into their rooming houses and immediately started dispersing to all of the Atlanta nightspots for a real country come-to-town festival.

After a while Tech folks began helping the Tigers enjoy the occasion by buying them mugs of beer, providing them with dancing partners and generally helping them make a big evening of it.

Meanwhile, those Tech supporters, positive that nobody could live it up like that and play football the next day, placed bets on Tech as fast as they could find suckers, local or foreign.

I have never read a detailed account of the game, so I know not who did what or how brilliantly. But the score is a matter of record.

It was: Clemson 44, Georgia Tech 5.

The wily Heisman had rounded up a bevy of willing cadets and shipped them into Atlanta to enjoy themselves-"but be sure to enjoy yourself so the Tech team can't help but hear about it."

Meanwhile, he quartered his real Tigers at the railroad stop of Lula, Georgia, a few miles north of Atlanta, and took them into town on game day, as fresh as the dew "where the Blue Ridge yawns its greatness."


Joe's story above has a bit of inconstancy, the 1903 score was 73-0, but be it 1903 or 1902, Heisman clearly impressed the folks in Atlanta. So much so, that they hired him in 1904.

And as Paul Harvey would say...Now you know the rest of the story.

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Re: TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'


Aug 7, 2020, 11:13 PM

John Heisman was a win at all costs coach. The 1899 Sewanee team was Champions of the South after defeating N.C. Team in what was then a bowl game played at Grant Park-about where the Braves field used to be. Sewanee was undefeated and had during one stretch had defeated 5 teams in 6 days-all on the road staring with Texas A&M and Texas. I won't go into all of the details but Google the team. Later in the season they played Auburn in Montgomery and defeated them 11-10(the scores for touchdowns and field goals were were not the same as now) and the 10 points were the only points given up by Sewanee all year. Heisman was so mad about losing that several weeks later at the game for the championship he was on the sideline taking bets against Sewanee. My great great grandfather from Rock Hill was the quarterback of the Sewanee team. He had already graduated from South Carolina where he had played football and was studying law in his father's law office when Luke Lea(later a U.S. Senator from Tennessee and the founder of the Nashville Banner newspaper, visited him in Rock HIll and convinced him to come to Sewanee for graduate studies. Sewanee had just started playing football and Lea( actually a student) was the "manager" not the coach. As manager he put together the schedule and made all financial arrangements. The coach was a former coach at Princeton.

My great-grandfather died when I was 8 so I never got to talk to him about this but my father always told me that he told him that the Auburn game that year was the roughest game they played that year. He suffered and internal injury during the game and suffered with it the rest of his life.

There is a documentary being made on the 1899 Sewanee team and I encourage you to Google it. It is an incredible story.. ESPN also did a story on it for the 150 anniversary of college football.

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Re: TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'


Aug 7, 2020, 10:01 AM

Some of the players on the front row are wearing nose guards around their necks. They were made of hard rubber and was one of the first forms of protection in the pre-helmet era.

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Re: TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'


Aug 7, 2020, 10:46 AM

I like the “CAC” on the uniforms. Remember reading that orange and purple colors would come later, these unis were probably purple and old gold? Thanks for the daily pictures!

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Agree, I love the CAC logo, would love to have a sweatshirt***


Aug 7, 2020, 10:53 AM



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Re: TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team'


Aug 7, 2020, 11:15 AM [ in reply to Re: TNET: LOOK: Clemson Historic photo #128 '1903 Football team' ]

no problem

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