1921 Centre vs. Harvard football game

NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader
Name=1921 Centre Praying Colonels vs Harvard Crimson football game
Date=October 29, 1921
Year=1921
Visitor School=Centre College
Visitor Name Short=Centre
Visitor Nickname=Praying Colonels
Visitor Record=4-0
Visitor

Visitor Coach = Charley Moran
Visitor BCS=
Visitor1=0
Visitor2=0
Visitor3=6
Visitor4=0
Visitor Total=6
Home Name Short=Harvard
Home Nickname=Crimson
Home Record=5-0-1
Home

Home Coaches=
Home BCS=
Home Coach=Robert T. Fisher
Home1=0
Home2=0
Home3=0
Home4=0
Home Total=0
Type=Regular season game
Stadium=Harvard Stadium
City=Boston, MassachusettsThe 1921 Centre vs. Harvard football game, played October 29, 1921, was a college football game between Centre College and Harvard University. Centre beat Harvard 6-0 in the game, in what is widely considered one of the greatest upsets in college football history.cite web | url=http://www.amnews.com/public_html/?module=displaystory&story_id=22929&format=html | title= ESPN ranks 1921 Centre-Harvard game among college football's greatest upsets] cite web | url=http://www.centre.edu/web/news/2005/c6h0_05.html | title= C6-H0 plays a prominent part in nation's sports lexicon]

The prequel

The teams first met in 1920, at Harvard Stadium in the Boston neighborhood of Allston, with Harvard coming off a Rose Bowl victory and an undefeated national championship season in 1919 (the school's fourth national championship in the prior ten years). Coming into the Centre game, Harvard was also undefeated and unscored upon in the 1920 season. Meanwhile, Centre College, a tiny school of 300 students in Kentucky, had little history of success in football before their current coach, Charley Moran, and star quarterback, Bo McMillin, arrived on campus in 1917.

The Centre Praying Colonels shocked Harvard in the 1920 game simply by taking a 14-7 halftime lead. But, in the second half, Centre withered before the superior Harvard squad, and Harvard won the game 31-14. Following the game, Harvard's captain offered the game ball to Centre's quarterback Bo McMillin, but McMillin declined the ball and promised "We'll be back next year to take it home with us." [cite book | last = Bernstein | first = Mark | title = Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession | publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press | date = 2001 | isbn = 0-8122-3627-0]

The 1921 game

The teams met for the second straight season in Harvard Stadium, on October 29, 1921, with 45,000 fans packing the stands. Harvard again entered the game undefeated, and had not lost a game since the 1918 season. [ [http://www.jhowell.net/cf/scores/Harvard.htm Harvard Historical Scores] ]

The game was a scoreless tie at halftime. Early in the third quarter, Bo McMillin rushed for the lone touchdown of the game, and the Praying Colonels' defense held off the Crimson's powerful offense from there for a 6-0 victory. Following the game, students from MIT who came to cheer against Harvard carried McMillin off the field and tore down the goalposts. [cite book | last = Goldstein | first = Richard | title = Ivy League Autumns | publisher = St. Martin's Press | date = 1996 | isbn = 0-312-14629-9] The Colonels had shocked mighty Harvard, becoming the first school ever from outside the East to beat one of the Ivy League's "Big Three" of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

Back in Danville, Kentucky, overjoyed students painted the "impossible formula" C6H0 (Centre 6, Harvard 0) on everything in sight (including a few cows). At least one marking still remains, on the side of the Centre post office. The paint was protected from the weather for decades by the roof of a nearby building. That building was torn down in the 1990s, revealing a well preserved C6H0 from 1921.

Aftermath

Immediate impact

The Centre victory was a shock, but perhaps not a fluke; the team would finish the 1921 season 10-1, defeating several of the nation's powerhouses including Virginia Tech, Auburn, Arizona, and Clemson. Up until their final game of the season, a 22-14 loss to powerful Texas A&M in Dallas on January 2, 1922, the Colonels outscored their opponents by a margin of 314 to 6.cite web | url=http://www.centre.edu/web/library/sc/special/C6h0/season.html#1921 | title=1921 Season]

"Greatest Upset"

In 1950, the Associated Press named C6H0 the greatest sports upset of the first half of the 20th century.cite web | url=http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=/che-data/articles.dir/art-43.dir/issue-06.dir/06a04601.htm | title= Centre College Remembers Day When It Was King of the Gridiron] In 2005, the New York Times called it "arguably the upset of the century in college football." In 2006, ESPN named it the third-biggest upset in the 138-year history of college football.

On the 75th anniversary of C6H0, Centre challenged Harvard to a rematch. Harvard declined.

References