The Tartan

A few weeks ago, I heard someone make an offhand remark about our “bad football team.” This is pretty far from the truth. The Tartans are a really good D3 team. Since the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, the Tartans have finished in the top two2 of PAC (the Presidents’ Athletic Conference) every year, and have a cumulative record of 36 wins and five losses. This is obviously really good. And this isn’t just a fluke, as the Tartans have only gone under .500 three times since 1975, and only once since they became a part of PAC. Sure, maybe they’re a big fish in a small pond filled with little nerd fish that go to Thiel College, but that’s got to count for something. And they used to be even better! Slightly famously (or more likely, not famously at all), the Carnegie Tech Tartans beat the undefeated Notre Dame team 19–0 in 1926, and were considered a top college team in the late 1930s, before Doherty basically shut the program down.

But before they were good, and before they were great, the Carnegie Tech Tartans were bad. Well, the entire sport of football was bad back then. The first season of Carnegie Tech football was 1906, which is coincidentally also the first year that the forward pass was permitted! That’s right, before 1906, players could move the ball down the field solely through kicks, rushes, and rugby-style backwards passes. Gridiron traditionalists thought this gave football its rugged charm, but it was also killing tons of players, so Theodore Roosevelt got involved, but this is not what this article is about.

The first season of Carnegie Tech football was not a great one. Even back then, turnout seems to have been an issue. As Fred Foster, captain of the 1906 football team wrote, “It was a shame that our student body did not turn out in larger numbers. If the students wish to have a winning team they simply must turn out and support the team.” Nevertheless, they were pioneers, valiantly putting their bodies on the line week after week against much better programs (and also some high schools).

On Saturday, Oct. 6, 1906, the Carnegie Tech Tartans played the first ever football game of the nascent program, an away game at the California Normal School. After days of cross-continental train travel, the Tartans arrived in California to play the California Normal School. Just kidding! California Normal School, now known as Pennsylvania Western University, California, is located in California, Pennsylvania (just three hours away by train (though, trains being slower back then, it must have been more like seven hours))! What a strange name, huh? Despite the rain and the ankle deep mud, both teams fought valiantly for what the Carnegie Mellon athletics website chronicles as a final score of 0–0. As chronicled in the Oct. 24, 1906 issue of The Tartan:

“Tech’s team is to be congratulated on the brilliant showing made on a field so opposite in condition from the one on which they had been practicing, with a driving rain to add to the general discomfort.[…] By a cleverly arranged series of quarterback kicks the ball was brought down the field until, after but three minutes of play, California kicked across Tech’s goal line and a Normal player fell on it.”

Now, I’m no football expert, but that sure doesn’t sound like 0-0 to me. Points awarded for scoring back then were a bit inconsistent, but my best guess is that California Normal won 3–0.

The second game of the season pitted Carnegie Tech against Kiskiminetas (also known as Kiski). In the words of Captain Foster, “Tech’s sturdy aggregation of football men went down to defeat last Saturday at Kiski […] the boys put up an excellent game and were only defeated by the superior kicking of Kumler, the Kiski fullback.” Actually, the boys don’t seem to have put up a very excellent game, with lowlights including a punt that was “very bad” that only got the Tartans five yards. Final score, Kiski 6, Carnegie Tech 3. Oh, and by the way, Kiski was a high school. Foster placed part of the blame on Coach Frey, who “chang[ed] the men from their positions on the eve of the contest.” They would later rematch against Kiski, confident in victory (because they were playing against children), but this time losing 5–0 as “the inevitable result of their confidence.”

The Tartans were then destroyed by Pitt 31–0, and annihilated by West Virginia University “in a game that the score does not do justice to the efforts of our boys” (West Virginia 51, Carnegie Tech 0), though they at least seem to have beaten Shadyside Academy (also a high school) 10–0 . They then beat Allegheny College 5–0, though the score did “not indicate the character of the fast play by the Carnegie men, and had it been a dry field there is no doubt but that the score would have been trebled.” Finally, to end the season, the Tartans lost 35–0 to Washington & Jefferson in “a great game against heavy odds.”

So, according to The Tartan’s archive that we hold so dear, the record for the 1906 season was 2–6–0. Of course, the actual Carnegie Mellon athletics website claims that the record was 2–3–2, and they may be more trustworthy.

But why should we care about the small details like “who won?” and “by how much did they lose?” At least they tried their best, and none of them even died.