Timothy P. Brown joins us to discuss a significant historical football game that took place on Thanksgiving in 1932, focusing on the remarkable achievements of Colgate University during that season.

The discussion is based on Tim's Tidbit titled: The 1932 Colgate-Brown Thanksgiving Game for the Rose Bowl

The Greatest Team That Wasn't Invited: Colgate's Unscored-Upon 1932 Season

For many, Thanksgiving means turkey and football. But in 1932, it meant a historic, high-stakes showdown that cemented one team's place in college football lore. This was the scene for the Thanksgiving Day game between the undefeated Colgate Red Raiders and the equally unbeaten Brown Bears, a story recently shared by football historian Timothy P. Brown on the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch podcast.

The game pitted two Eastern powerhouses against each other in a deeply rooted rivalry game. Going into the matchup, Coach Andy Kerr’s Colgate squad boasted an immaculate 8-0 record, having dominated their opponents with a staggering 243-0 cumulative score. Brown was also 8-0, setting the stage for one of the most anticipated East Coast battles of the decade. Kerr, a notable disciple of coaching legend Pop Warner (he was even sent to coach Stanford for two years in Warner's place), employed a highly effective, pass-oriented double-wing offense that consistently produced high scores.

21 Points of Perfection

The national press built the game up as a Rose Bowl elimination contest, with the winner thought to be the most deserving contender. Colgate, fueled by the desire to cap an already legendary season, needed one specific number to secure another national title: the scoring crown. They needed 21 points against Brown to surpass West Liberty and claim the national scoring title.

In a feat of near-perfect offensive execution, Colgate won the game 21-0. The win not only ensured they finished the year a national scoring leader, but more impressively, it completed the most dominant season in modern college football history.

The Uninvited Legend

Colgate’s final record was 9-0, undefeated, untied, and unscored upon. Yet, when the invitations were handed out, the famous line was coined: The 1932 Red Raiders were “undefeated, untied, unscored upon, and uninvited.”

The Pacific Coast Conference ultimately chose Pitt to play in the Rose Bowl, a team that subsequently lost to USC 35-0. While the Rose Bowl passed them over, Colgate secured a far more exclusive and permanent title: they remain the last major college football team to finish a season unscored upon. Coach Andy Kerr’s legacy extends beyond the 1932 team; in a four-year stretch, his teams averaged nearly 33 points a game while only allowing two, an incredible combination that defines one of football’s most enduring mysteries.

Join us at the Pigskin Dispatch website to see even more Positive football news!

Don't forget to check out and subscribe to the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel for additional content and the regular Football History Minute Shorts.

Miss our football by the day of the year podcasts, well don't, because they can still be found at the Pigskin Dispatch website.

Our Thanksgiving week specials continue as we have Timothy P. Brown join us and talk about a very exciting and memorable historic football game for Thanksgiving.

Tim's up in just a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes, is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Before we get into our episode today, let's take the time to drill that football right into the like and subscribe button on your console so you know exactly when the notifications come up of the latest releases of Pixie and Dispatch podcast for some more great football history.

Now, on to our episode.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another edition where we get to visit with Timothy p. Brown of footballarchaeology.com Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey there.

Good to see you again.

And I do not have a dad joke to open this one.

I just feel like we got to get right into it, you know.

Well, I'm very thankful for that.

It's making my holiday season very thankful.

Yeah, sorry.

So I had to come up with a dad joke.

Tim, there is a long title there, a lot of information.

What can you tell us about this story?

Yes, so I guess think just background.

One of the things I've always loved, the fact that Washington Jefferson went to the Rose bowl, you know, and maybe we're in the 22 Rose Bowl.

And it's just, you know, it's just, you know, it's a D3 school now.

So it's just cool that, you know, that they played in the Rose bowl and, and they deserved it, you know, at the time, so.

But Colgate's another one of those.

Somebody should write a book about them sometime.

Yeah, I know, I know.

I've heard.

I've heard some people have expressed interest.

But anyways, I mean, it's just the.

So the Colgate story is really kind of fun too, because there's just a bunch of little dimensions to it.

And it as it worked out.

Like I, at one point, I was a G at Colgate.

My brother was playing for Brown at the time.

So we have always had a little bit of a match on that.

But so anyways, there was a.

And you know, depending on, you know, your interest in football history, you may or may not know of him, but he was a great coach.

And he, he actually started coaching at Pitt as the basketball coach.

So he's head basketball coach there and the assistant football.

And he was there before Pop Warner showed up.

Warner was still at, at Carlisle.

So anyways, Warner comes to pit, and so he's assisting Warner.

But he still had two years left on his pit contract.

So Pitt says you're staying here for two years.

So Warner sent Kerr out to be the coach at Stanford.

You know, his pit assistant went to coach for two years at Stanford, stayed another year or two, and then he, then he left and, and then he took over at Washington Jefferson in 25 and then Colgate in 29.

So he was at least offensively, he was by then a Warner disciple.

So he ran a passing oriented double wing.

And you know, Warner had developed the double wing off of the single wing and, and he developed some great teams.

So his 29.

And let me just say they played at that time, they played probably as strong and eastern schedule as most people.

You know, they had their, they had their puppies that they played at the beginning of the season, but they, each year they played a couple of what are now Big Ten teams.

Penn State, Michigan State, Indiana, you know, whomever.

They always played Syracuse, they always played Brown.

That was their, you know, kind of a rivalry game at the end of the season.

So they played a pretty strong schedule.

And in 29 they went 8 and 1 outscoring their opponents, 315 to 19.

In 31 they went 81 outscoring their opponents, 227 to 24.

So they were.

I don't know, but that, that's pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Especially given, you know, given the schedule that they were playing.

You know, I mean, they weren't playing all puppies.

Right.

So.

So then, you know, by then Colgate and Brown had developed a rivalry that they would play each Thanksgiving, you know, for the, you know, final game of the year.

Colgate's main rival was Syracuse but, you know, the Brown one was pretty big, too.

So they've got this, you know, so Colgate's going into this game undefeated.

Unscored upon.

And then Brown was also undefeated, and they had allowed 19 points to that so far in the season.

They were also eight.

No.

And they had.

They had beaten 70 of the eight teams they beat, were undefeated the day that they beat them.

So, you know, just kind of a.

Just kind of the way the schedule worked out.

So it was built up.

You know, the Rose bowl reached out to Colgate's president about, you know, would they accept blah, blah, blah.

And so it was kind of built up in the national press.

You know, Pitt was still kind of the.

The favorite in, you know, in terms of being thought of as the best team in the east.

But a lot of people were saying, hey, whoever wins this Brown Colgate game should go to the Rose Bowl.

And so.

But, you know, I mean, there were other, you know, talented teams, too.

So.

So anyways, you know, the game, you know, it's this big deal, and it's played in Providence.

So, you know, in the first quarter to score, you know, scoreless first quarter, Colgate, I think, blocks a punt or something in the.

Or, you know, one way or another, short punt.

They score in the.

In the second quarter, then they get a safety off of a.

They block a punt and get a safety, and then in the third or in the fourth quarter, they score two more touchdowns.

Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention.

West.

A school called West Liberty led the nation in scoring that year, and they had 20.

They had scored 20 more points that season than Colgate.

So Colgate needed 21 points in the game, and West Liberty's season was over.

So Colgate needed 21 points against Brown to be the national scoring leader.

So what do they score in the game?

21 points.

So, I mean, it was just one of those.

So Colgate ends up winning, and, you know, they're all just, you know, giddy.

But, you know, at the time, the way the Rose bowl worked is that the.

The.

The Pacific Coast Conference team that.

That won the conference or at least was named to be the.

The Rose bowl nominee.

They got to pick whoever they wanted to play, and they play.

They picked pit.

So who went out there?

USC beat Pit 35.

Nothing.

So, you know, who knows?

That would have been like, Jock Sutherland.

Was he coaching?

Yeah.

Okay.

And, yeah, because Warner was out at, you know, Stanford by then.

So anyways, I mean, it's just like.

So they were famously, you know, the famous line is that they were undefeated, untied, unscored upon and uninvited.

But you know, they're also the last team, the last major college team because they were major college at that point.

The last major college team to go through a season without being scored on.

So you know, maybe if Colgate had gone out to the Rose bowl, you know, maybe they get scored on out there, who knows?

Yeah, and I never do know, but it didn't happen.

So anyway, it's just kind of one of those cool things.

But over that four year stretch, I mean this is, you know, Kerr was a really good coach and over that four year stretch when offenses didn't score all that much, his team averaged almost 33 points a game and gave up two.

So you know, I mean that's just, that's pretty good combination.

So.

Yeah, that'll win you a few ball games, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyways, it's just kind of a, kind of a cool story and.

But yeah, they never went to, never went to a bowl game.

Never.

Never made it though, huh?

No, and that, that is definitely.

That's a really cool story.

You know, especially you're hearing these names.

I think, I think even people in the periphery have probably heard of Andy Kerr, you know, because he did a lot of great things and was a great, great coach.

And just to hear this specific season in this specific game, you know, that's, that's really cool to, to put it in perspective, the.

Yeah, well, he, you know, he coached, he coached the Shrine, the Eastern Shrine bowl team a number of years too.

So you know, he had to be, you know, well regarded within the, within the coaching profession.

But you know, he stayed there till, you know, just after World War II.

So he was, he was coached there for about 20, you know, 27 years.

Something in that range.

Wow.

So Maybe it was 17.

Maybe my math is wrong.

29 to 46.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

Long time.

You know, when you've got decades on your, your coaching resume, that's a pretty good thing.

Especially all the different schools he coached at and had some good success.

Definitely an icon of coaching from, from football history.

And you know, you talk about these people that, you know, maybe that most folks don't hear about or don't appreciate what they provided to the game of football and you preserve them in your tidbits that you write.

Maybe you could share with folks how they can take in some of these tidbits.

Yeah, just go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe.

I'm also just in the process of, you know, starting a YouTube channel.

I'm going to be competing with, with this.

Right.

So big competition.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So anyways, I'm going to try it, you know, see how it works.

You know, maybe I'm better at the written word or.

We'll see, you know.

But yeah, other than that, just, you know, go to the site or just, you know, bookmark it and, you know, if you, if you, if you subscribe on the site, then you'll get, get an email every time that I publish a new article.

All right.

Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing this great piece of football history.

We're, we're a little upset that you're taking away some of our Nielsen readings, but we're preserving football history.

Hey, a man's gotta eat.

A man's got.

I gotcha.

I gotcha.

We welcome you anytime to the arena.

It's great, great thing to have more, more out there.

It lets more people appreciate more things on, you know, great media channels of YouTube and wherever video shown and the written word too.

So we appreciate you coming on here each Tuesday to help us tell the story of football and love to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good.

Look forward to it.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip, Cleetmark's comics, pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the Big Skin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive forces.

Football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe, as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports.

History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear.

Of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.