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Midwestern Club Football Conference

 

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Marquette University Football History

 

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The Marquette University Club Football team is a student run organization at Marquette University.  We play Division III schools from around the Midwest area as well as other Club programs and Junior Colleges.  Anyone attending, working, or associated with Marquette can play on the team.  If you are interested in playing on the team, click on the "Want to Play" link on the homepage.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL CLUB

In 1964 a new brand of college was born when New York University played the City College of New York in the first organized Club Football game. The National Collegiate Football Association was later established to be the overseer of this new brand of football. Over the years upwards of 97 different colleges and universities were NCFA members, with an estimated 40,000 players having participated.
In 1965 a group of "agitators" formed to bring football back to Marquette, and in 1967 the Marquette University Football Club was born. Classified as a student organization and coached by volunteers, the Football Club was allotted $10,000 by the university and played its first game at the old Marquette Stadium before a crowd of 9,340 against the University of Detroit Football Club -- a 22-6 loss.
The losing ways would continue for seven years: the club wouldn't wins its first game until the opening of the 1974 season when it defeated a team of local high school all-stars coached by former Green Bay Packer defensive end Lionel Aldridge. The club would not even have its first winning season until 1989 when it finished 4-3.
Over the years the club's reputation and very existence at Marquette has been tenuous. During the 1974 season the team traveled out east to play Westchester College in New York. However, the club's treasurer spent the money raised for traveling expenses on equipment and then left school after that semester, leaving an unpaid airfare bill of $4,600. The university paid the bill, but was then intent on terminating the club. It was only an appeal to (then) MU Athletic Director Al McGuire that could save the club.
The years following were still difficult. As a result of the 1974 debacle the university would no longer offer funding for the club (although MU Student Government stepped in with financial support). Marquette Stadium had been torn down and the club had to be content with playing games in local parks and high school fields. Nonetheless, it was during this time that the club benefited from the tutelage and efforts of an individual who (arguably) has done more for the club in its 35-year history than anyone else.
It was in 1977 that a Marquette graduate student named Charlie Potts took over as Head Coach of the MU Football Club. His tenure lasted through 1985, and although he never had a winning season (his best years were back-to-back 4-4 seasons in 1982 and 1983) he is nonetheless the club's most successful coach. That assertion is warranted because "success" for a club sport cannot simply be measured in terms of wins versus losses. It was Coach Potts' tireless devotion and contribution to the club on all levels -- coaching, recruiting, fundraising, promotion, and that indefinable thing called "leadership" -- that has earned him a place of honor in the club's history.
After Coach Potts finished his graduate studies and left Marquette the club continued, and even enjoyed two winning seasons in 1989 and 1993. Even better, the club was able to play its games on its own "home field" when the university opened the Valley Fields facility in 1994. nonetheless, the club's reputation and existence remained tenuous, and another crisis erupted during the 1997 season.
For many years Marquette has had the following arrangement with the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design: students enrolled at MU can take art classes at MIAD, and students at MIAD can take academic courses at MU. As a result of this arrangement students at MIAD are eligible to participate in intramural and club sports at MU. However, entrance and enrollment requirements at MIAD are not the same as they are at MU, and thus the 1996 club team consisted mainly of "ringers" who had registered for classes at MIAD (which they made no sincere effort to even attend) but were really only on hand to play football. When the administration at MU caught wind of this the club was suspended for the remainder of the season and indefinitely.
Fortunately, the club was reinstated the following season, and it is in this phase of the club's existence that we now find ourselves. The NCFA has long since ceased to exist, and nearly all the colleges and universities that were once its members have given up football as a club sport. Marquette remains one of only a handful of schools in the U.S. that continue to do so, and at 35-years MU's club is the oldest currently in existence. What does the future hold for the Marquette University Football Club? Only time will tell.

Preface

The early records for Marquette’s football teams have been poorly kept. Media guides from the 40s identify "M. Erickson" as the first head coach in 1902, succeeded by Jerry Riordan in 1903. However, archival material in Scrapbook #15 has revealed that Jerry Riordan was Marquette’s first "professional" coach in 1901. Riordan did not return the following year, and was succeeded by Oscar Erickson (ibid). According to the Marquette College Journal from 1905 Tom Skelly became head coach in 1904, and was succeeded by John Ford in 1905 (pp. 26-27). That leaves all but the 1903 season unaccounted for. Johnston lists Marquette's early coaches as Riordan, Erickson, Skelly, and Ford, and Hamilton agrees, but only because he plagiarizes Johnston’s account on this matter. However, the Marquette College Journal lists Riordan, Erickson, and Karel as the coaches preceding Skelly (ibid). So, either Erickson or Karel would have been the coach in 1903.

Appendix VI of Hamilton also omits a game played against St. Louis University in the 1935 season, the score of which is included below.

Then there is the issue of the "missing" season of 1899. According to media guides and game programs from the 40s there was no football team in 1899. However, Scrapbook #14, p. 52, contains a clipping of a newspaper article from 1900 that reads "only three of last year’s players have not put in an appearance, and with such a surplus of veterans the eleven will be the strongest in the history of the college." So, there was most likely a football team in 1899 — we just don't have a record of its schedule.

Scrapbook #15, p. 89, also contains a press clipping that makes reference to an upcoming game against the "Milwaukee Medics" (probably Milwaukee Medical College) in the 1896 season. The result of this game does not appear in the records below (said records being based on Appendix VI of Hamilton, which in turn is based on old media guides and game programs).

So, what have previously passed as the ‘official’ records of Marquette football from 1892-1904 must be taken with a grain of salt. There’s still considerable research to be done in this area.

Colin Oakes
February, 2001

 

Marquette Coaches and their respective records

*Member of the College Football Hall of Fame
**Member of both the College and the Pro Hall of Fame (as player)

 

IN MEMORIAM

December 8th, 1960. A date which will live in infamy.

No, the Japanese didn't launch an attack on Pearl Harbor again, nor did the United States drop an atom bomb on Japan, but to college football fans in Milwaukee, as well as around the country, it was just as bad. It was on this day that the Very Rev. Edward J. O'Donnell, S. J., President of the largest Catholic university in the United States, dropped a bomb by announcing that Marquette was abolishing it's varsity football program. Games already scheduled for the 1961 season had to be cancelled. Players attending the university on scholarships would have those scholarships no more. The rationale cited was that the program had been accumulating budget deficits throughout the decade of the 1950s, and the university could not afford to keep the program going while attempting to raise $30 million for a planned ten-year expansion.

3,000 students spontaneously walked out of their classes and marched in protest down Wisconsin Avenue shouting "we want football; we want justice." They lit a bon fire on the (then) tennis courts at the corner of N. 15th St. and W. Clybourne, tied up traffic for blocks on end, and pelted the squad cars and patrol wagons of the policemen who had been called in to quell them.

John Sisk, a former all-American at Marquette during the glory days of the 1930s, said "the bomb which hit Hiroshima shocked the world. This one was a bomb which shocked alumni and thousands of friends of Marquette." He attempted to organize a fund drive among alumni and local businessmen to underwrite the football program and cover any budget deficits it would incur.

But it was all for naught. Varsity football was dead and buried at Marquette, and would never be resurrected.

In the fall of 1961 Marquette Stadium fell silent for the first time since its opening in 1924, and would fall into such a state of disrepair that it had to be torn down in the 1970s. To this day there is no historical marker or monument at the site of the old stadium to even acknowledge its existence, let alone its history.

Nor, for that matter, is there any marker or monument on the Marquette campus to acknowledge the existence and glory of the old varsity football program. It lives on only in the memories of alumni and friends of the university who are themselves diminishing in number as time goes on. Soon it will be remembered by no one. It is then with irony and sadness we read the words of John F. McCormick, S.J., when he celebrated Marquette’s golden anniversary in 1929:

But who will say how much of the repute the colleges hold with the public, or how much of the loyalty students and alumni feel for them is due to the records of their athletic teams? The football team is a rallying point for the sentiment that centers around any college. Its contests are dramatic; student loyalty is fired by them; the alumnus feels the thrill of their success, and the public is aroused, as no mere academic achievement could arouse it, to the importance of the institutions participating in them. Certainly the name of Marquette is more widely known than otherwise it would be because of the glory that has come to it on the football field from the victories of the "Golden Avalanche."

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