Return to the 1904 season page

The A&M team left Raleigh for Charlottesville, Virginia on the 8:40 AM train. Public pre-game expectations for the Farmers were high, with multiple writeups predicting that the Farmers would not cross Virginia's goal, but that the Farmers would have the better team on the field. A second paper went as far as predicting that the Farmers would win by 15 points (The (Raleigh) Morning Post, October 14th, 1904, p. 2; The Winston-Salem Journal, October 14th, 1904, p. 1).

It had been two weeks since A&M's last game. Though early versions of A&M's schedule printed in the Red and White had called for a game in Charlotte against Davidson roughly a week after their game at VMI, the game was never played. Instead of facing A&M, the Red and Black of Davidson faced off against Chapel Hill in Charlotte instead. Davidson likely picked the matchup against UNC over the match against A&M because UNC was generally considered a stronger and more prestigious football team at that time. The game ended in a 0-0 tie.

Virginia, for their part, expected to win, as did most out-of-state football fans. Though recently the Old Dominion team had been going through "a most depressing period" following her 0-24 loss at Pennsylvania. This was exacerbated due to Crawford, a halfback and end player, who broke his ankle during a practice the day before the A&M game. Crawford was a kicker "of the highest order" whose loss would be "keenly felt." The Virginians planned to replaced Crawford with Purcell and Springer, though much of her line was different from how it appeared in previous matchups.

Despite the loss of Crawford and the big loss against Penn, the feeling of depression soon came to pass, as the team trained harder and doubled down on fixing weak spots during the weeks before their game against A&M. Their loss to Penn was Virginia's biggest since 1902, so the shock the students felt was understandable: The Orange and Blue had been dominating Southern football for years, and even A&M's big in-state rival UNC constantly fell to the Old Dominion boys. Beating Virginia would be a huge step in the growth of the Aggiest as a team (College Topics, Vol. XVI No. 6 (October 12th, 1904), p. 1; College Topics, Vol. XVI No. 7 (October 15th, 1904), p. 1).

Most reports of the game agree that A&M's offense was underwhelming, but that her defense was stout. Reports could not even agree which team was the heaviest: While reports from Virginia said that the Raleigh team was heavier than Virginia's by about twenty pounds per man, a letter in The Morning Post from an A&M student said that Virginia in fact had the heavier team by eight to ten pounds. Several papers reported news from Virginia that no man was injured during the game, while the same student who wrote that the Virginia team was the heavier one added that Arthur Wilson was hurt two minutes into the game. Some facts that we know for certain, though, are that the game was played in two 20 minute halves, that the game started at 3:30 PM promptly, and that the game witnessed by "an unusually large crowd."

Virginia got the ball first from and A&M kick, sending the ball to Virginia's 15 yard line; H. Johnson returned the kick about 15 yards before being downed. After five carries by E. H. Johnson, Bosher, and Cooke for a total of 13 yards (bringing the ball to roughly Virginia's own 45 yard line), a play "goes wrong" for Virginia, resulting in Pollard holding the ball and losing several yards. Council kicked the ball 40 yards, to about A&M's 25, where Sadler, who fielded the kick, was hit so hard by the Virginians' end players that he lost the ball, which was recovered by Springer, who advanced the ball another 15 yards, to A&M's 13 yard line. Here, the Red and White line "takes a brace" and forced a turnover on downs. Once the Red and White got the ball, Arthur "Babe" Wilson gained 15 yards--a distance which, according to the Daily Progress, accounted for almost half of the Farmers' total yardage on the day--by running a fake kick. After another 5 yards of gain, the Farmers were unable to convert the down and kicked the ball about 20 yards away, placing the ball at the 55 yard line, or midfield. The kick landed out of bounds, making the Old Dominion boys unable to return it.

UVA proved absolutely unable to advance the ball at the start of this drive. After two runs from Bosher for 2 yards, Council sent the ball 35 yards into Farmer territory, to roughly the Red and White's 20. After that, Wilson ran the ball twice for 9 total yards (once for 1 yard and once for 8 yards). After that, however, the Virginians held firm and prevented the Farmers from earning a new set of downs.

Though not mentioned in any of the Virginian papers (including the otherwise-thorough summary from College Topics), "Babe" Wilson was injured around this point in the game, a fact which can be corroborated later in the year, before the South Carolina game, when Arthur Wilson was reported as healthy, despite sitting out against South Carolina. "A. & M. was on her way to victory when suddenly her star man, ["Babe"] Wilson, sprained an ankle and had to leave the game.... [Wilson] was substituted by a new light man, who had never played the position before." The writeup drove home the devastating loss of "Babe" by adding that Wilson's exit made the game "doubly worth time and money to the spectators" due to the increase in competition after Wilson's departure from the game. No source named "Babe's" replacement, but Darden would have been the most logical replacement; Darden normally played fullback, but had the most experience of the subs on the team, with neither Hardie or Bell having ever been recorded as playing in a formal game for the Aggies (The (Raleigh) Morning Post, October 18th, 1904, p. 5).

After Wilson's injury, "the Virginia players took a decided brace and by rapid play simply ran their heavy antagonists off their feet." After being stopped at their own 25, Darden punted the ball away for the Farmers, sending the kick 40 yards, to Virginia's 45 yard line. Virginia's drive started off quickly with two runs for 18 yards by Purcell, followed by a 17 yard dash by I. Johnson. After a plunge for no gain and a 9 yard run by E. H. Johnson, the ball was at the Farmer's 20 yard line. From there, Council carried the ball the remainder of the distance over the course of 6 carries, getting pushed the final 3 yards to the goal line by his teammates after 13 minutes of playing time. Unfortunately for the Charlottesville boys, Springer missed "a difficult" try for goal, causing the Orange and Blue to earn only 5 points for their work.

The Aggies kicked off the ball after being scored upon, sending the ball to Virginia's 25 yard line, where it was advanced 5 yards by Pollard. After a short gain of 3 yards by Pollard, Council kicked the ball away, sending the ball an impressive 50 yards away, to the Farmer 35 yard line, where it was caught and returned 15 yards by the Farmers. At this point in the game, Springer was called out and replaced with Yancey. After making about 20 yards in seven plays, the Farmers kicked the ball to Virginia's 5 yard line, where it was caught by Pollard, who ran it back to the 10. Purcell then made a 15 yard run, but after I. Johnson was unable to advance the ball further, Council kicked the ball 35 yards. After Council's kick, time was called and the first half ended.

The second half proved to be a struggle for both teams. Richmond's Times-Dispatch (which seems to be the paper from which most North Carolina articles got their sources) said that the play was "almost entirely in North Carolina's territory." Most other sources did agree that the Virginians were within scoring range several times during the second half. Both the Daily Progress and Virginia's student paper, College Topics (reprinted in Red and White) said that the Virginians would have almost certainly scored had their play-calling been varied, especially by exploiting A&M's weak ends. Instead, Council was repeatedly called upon to attempt plunges through the Farmers' stout line.

From the reports of varied papers, UVA had at least three chances to score in the second half, with the Virginians each time coming close to the Red and White goal line before losing the ball; the Farmers would immediately punt the ball away, often without attempting to gain at all. According to the Daily Progress, the Virginians lost the ball once at the Aggies' 4 yard line on a bad pass, and once one foot from the goal line by downs; the stop at the one foot line was reportedly led by Gardner (College Topics, Vol. XVI No. 8 (October 19th, 1904), pp. 1, 4; Beezley, p. 14). The Times-Dispatch says that the Orange and Blue corroborated the loss of possession due to a bad pass thrown by Beckett, while also adding that the ball was lost two times on downs within 5 yards of the goal line (The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress, October 17th, 1904, p. 1; The (Richmond) Times-Dispatch, October 16th, 1904, p. 7B).

Despite this loss, the game was still considered successful for the Farmers. Virginia was consistently one of the top programs in the South at the time, and the fact that the Virginians themselves called the Farmers' defense "a stumbling block to the Old Dominion lads." They added that "At times the play was as smooth and well rounded as could be expected on Thanksgiving Day," a mighty compliment at that time, as Thanksgiving Day was traditionally reserved for marquee matchups. Another paper added that Virginia won by her team's intelligence rather than her brute strength, despite the fact that the Orange and Blue repeatedly attempted to force Council through on rote line plunges.

The win had an equal and opposite effect on Virginia fans, who were disappointed by the closeness of the game. One local paper wrote that, owing to the closeness of the game, "the bare victory of the University of Virginia against the North Carolina 'Aggies' shows that Virginia is not as strong as her admirers had believed," going on to explain this logic by way of the Red and White's close win over VMI, a team whom the Virginians normally decimated. A report from one A&M student to The Morning Post wrote that the Virginians had expected to win by a score of 30 to 0 instead of the narrow margin experienced (The (Richmond) Times-Dispatch, October 16th, 1904, p. 7B; The (Raleigh) Morning Post, October 18th, 1904, p. 5).

For Virginia, the star men on were estimated to be Council, Purcell, Yancey, Beckett, Johnson, and Kite, while for the Farmers, the leaders were Gardner, Hadley, and the Wilson brothers (The (Richmond) Daily Times, October 16th, 1904, p. 7B; Red and White, Vol. VI No. 2 (October 1904), pp. 101-102; The (Raleigh) Morning Post, October 16th, 1904, p. 18).

Virginia's season would continue to not go as planned. Following their game against the Mechanics, UVA's Carter Hall "broke several ligaments in his knee" during practice, further handicapping the Orange and Blue. The Virginians would go on to win three of their next five games, earning a 6-3 overall record, defeating VMI 17-0, Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) 5-0, and UNC 12-11, but losing to the Carlisle Indians 6-14 and the Navy 0-5.