11/12/1910 - Richmond

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Following their win over Richmond, the Farmers faced Richmond College at home; that made this game their fourth consecutive home game, a feat the Farmers had never before accomplished. The Farmers were never terribly worried about their odds in this game: it was scarcely previewed in Raleigh papers, with no preview for the game appearing in News and Observer, and just two previews in The Raleigh Daily Times the two days prior to the game. And in those ads, the main selling point was that it would be A&M's last home game of the season (The Raleigh Daily Times, November 10th, 1910, p. 8). Otherwise, sports writers waxed poetically about the usual grittiness of the underdog.

The Spiders of Richmond began their season on September 19th, when their coach, Harvard and Illinois alum Earnest V. Long, arrived on campus. The Harvard coach didn't have long to get his men in shape, as their first game of the season was on October 1st against Maryland Agricultural; the Red and Blue lost the game, which they wrote off as "a try-out for the players," 0-20. A fan of the new "open" rule changes, Long was further aided by the return of nine of the college's varsity starters, including newly-elected Captain Sadler (The Messenger, Vol. XXXVII No. 1 (October 1910), pp. 34-35).


A photo of Richmond's team from The Spider, Vol. 9 (1911), p. 136.

The Spiders' second game of the season, a non-EVIAA-championship match* against their rival Randolph Macon, was delayed two days due to rain, but was eventually played on the 10th; Richmond won 5-0 in a game where the Yellow Jackets struggled repeatedly with new rule changes related to mass plays. On just four full days of rest, the Richmonders hosted Rock Hill College, of Ellicott City, Maryland, and held them to a scoreless tie. The Virginians naturally felt they should have won, and that luck prevented a Rock Hill loss. Though a game against Gallaudet the following week was canceled, the Red and Blue were still confident in the strength of their team, especially its line (The Messenger, Vol. XXXVII No. 2 (November 1910), pp. 88-89).

The Spiders lost their final two games heading into their Raleigh trip. The first was a 15-21 loss to George Washington in a game they bemoaned should have been a tie due to a touchback mistaken for a touchdown; nonetheless, they claimed football authorities stated it was the best game ever seen in Richmond's Broad Street Park--an impressive, if lionized, feat considering the football Mecca that Richmond was in those days. The next game--the first of their championship series--was a 0-18 loss to Hampden-Sidney that the Spider loyals bemoaned would have been different had Captain Sadler and Duval not been sidelined with injuries (The Messenger, Vol. XXXVII No. 3 (December 1910), pp. 147-148).

As such, Richmond had a 1-3-1 record before heading into Raleigh, but had good reason to believe they were capable of better. As such, there was some validation to the typical lines touting the strong team Richmond had. Despite this, neither school predicted the outcome of the game, belying what each rooter in the city likely new beforehand.

* The Eastern Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Association required that all members of the league play each other in order to determine championship; traditionally, some rival teams would choose to meet an additional time early in the season. Then, each team's final three or four games of the season would be inter-conference games played to determine the champion.


Roster

A&M Richmond
Seifert RE Taylor
Glenn RT Cole
Gattis RG Benton
Bray (Capt.)* C George
Hurtt LG Decker
Floyd LT Durham
Davis LE Gilliam
Stafford QB Southerland
Robertson RHB Crist
Cool LHB Meredith
Von Eberstein FB Martin or Johnson
Sherman SUB

Source

* Acting captain, on account of Hartsell's lingering sickness


Period Time Description NCSU RM
1st Score at End of 1st Period 10 0
2nd Score at End of 2nd Period 20 0
3rd Score at End of 3rd Period 38 0
4th Score near End of 4th Period 44-45 0
4th ~1 NCSU - Stafford - 75 yd Run (Kick status unknown) unk plays, unk yards, TOP unk 50 0

NCSU Opponent
Rushing TDs (Assumed) Cool (5), Bray (1), Robertson (1), Stafford (1), Von Everstein (1) none
Passing TDs (Assumed) none none
Receiving TDs (Assumed) none none
Defensive TDs (Assumed) none none
PATs UNKNOWN (5/9) none
2PT: N/A prior to 1958 N/A prior to 1958
FGs none none
Safety: none none
Game Notes:
Kick Off Time: unknown - 11/12/1910 - Richmond
Length: 36 (10 / 10 / 8 / 8) - Duration: unk
Attendance: unknown
Location: A&M Athletic Field - Raleigh, NC
Temperature: ???
Weather: fair
Wind: ???

Because the game was such a massive blowout, the existing summaries of the game are not very detailed. Additionally, the existing copies of News and Observer do not include the sporting section; as the N&O traditionally carried the most exhaustive summaries of games, even blowouts, this means very little information regarding the game survived.

The game was played in "ideal weather" with 10-minute quarters in the first half and 8-minute quarters in the second. Throughout the game, A&M did not try a single forward pass or trick play; Richmond, on the other hand, attempted several, completing only two. Richmond never once threatened the Aggies' goal line throughout the game, and made only three first downs--two of them on the aforementioned forward passes.

The Farmers scored nine touchdowns and five goals over the course of the game, scoring 10 points in each of the first two quarters, 18 in the third quarter, and 12 in the fourth quarter. Cool, one of A&M's halfbacks, scored five of them, earning himself 25 points in the process. Von Eberstein, Bray, Stafford, and Robertson each also scored a touchdown. Red and White and Charlotte Daily Observer, the only other paper which carried a remotely-acurate breakdown of how many touchdowns each player scored, disagreed slightly about the rest (most papers claimed Gray scored all 9 touchdowns), giving Robertson's score to Von Eberstein, however I have chosen to defer to the school's description of the game. No paper reported who kicked the goals, however it was probably Seifert. One final play of note was Bray's touchdown; here is the description from Red and White: "Bray pulled off a stunt very seldom seen or heard in football. After passing the ball back for a punt he went down on it, secured it and made a touchdown." Later papers noted that Bray ran the ball 20 yards before the score (Charlotte Daily Observer, November 20th, 1910, p. 9).

Despite playing vanilla football, the Farmers had no problem scoring or running the ball. Papers unanimously described the way the Red and White ran at will against the Spiders: Cool, Von Eberstein, and Robertson repeatedly made gains of "20 to 40 yards" throughout the game, while Stafford made a 75-yard dash for a touchdown in "the last minute of play." Additionally, Robertson made two good runs, one for 50 yards and another for 65. "The machine-like precision with which the A. and M. plays were pulled off," raved Richmond's Times-Dispatch, "has not been seen before in Raleigh. The showing made by the backfield to-day proves that A. and M. has the fastest backfield in its history."

Stars of the game for the Aggies were Robertson (who made the best gains), Stafford (for his good judgment), Cool, and Bray. The interference of the Farmers was also praised. For Richmond, their fullback was the star according to A&M students. Though every sports paper gave his name as Martin, the Farmers very specifically lauded a fullback named Johnson for his "exceptionally good game." Other papers wrote that Gilliam, Taylor, and Southerland "did good work" (Charlotte Daily Observer, November 13th, 1910, p. 2; Red and White, Vol. XII No. 3 (November 1910), pp. 155-156; The (Richmond) Times-Dispatch, November 13th, 1910, Sporting Section).

Understandably, the student journal of Richmond had little to say of the game. "When the bunch left the C. and O. station, there were six regulars among them--Capt. Sadler, Duval, Tyler, Johnson and Carter being on the crippled list. Besides this, Fritz Jones, the heady quarter, was taken desperately ill going down on the train and was unable to go in the game. The team played good ball, but they were too light to hold the strong Tarheels. We congratulate ourselves that the score wasn't even greater than 49 to 0" (The Messenger, Vol. XXXVII No. 3 (December 1910), p. 148).

Unfortunatel for the Spiders, their season and bid for the EVIAA followed suit of the A&M game. Richmond lost both their remaining games, losing to William & Mary 6-18 in a game where "fate seemed to be on [William & Mary's] side." Richmond sources claim the Spiders gained three times as many yards as the Williamsburgers but were held where it mattered. Their rematch against Randolph-Macon went about as well, as "Dame Fortune seemed to decree that victory should go against us." However this time some papers (or at least, the Times-Dispatch, agreed, writing that "only the fates were responsible for the scores of the opposition" (The Messenger, Vol. XXXVII No. 4 (January 1911), pp. 204-205). As such, Richmond closed the season with a paltry 1-6-1 record.

Last updated: 7/3/2024