The First Tennessee-Vanderbilt Football Game in 1892

 

The 1892 University of Tennessee Football Team

The First Time Tennessee Played Vanderbilt - 1892

I called Bruce Haney in November 1982, the day after Vanderbilt defeated Tennessee in football 28-21. I wanted to know what my old UT roommate thought because Vanderbilt hadn’t beaten Tennessee since 1959 and usually could be counted on as a reliable win for the Vols. “I knew Vanderbilt would beat us again sometime,” he said. “I just didn’t think it would be in my lifetime.”

Logical thinking from an engineer. In Bruce’s lifetime, between 1947 up until that 1982 defeat, Vanderbilt's football record against Tennessee was 2 wins and 33 losses. Vanderbilt won in 1948 (28-6), when Bruce was one, and 1959 (14−0). 

And then the shocker in ’82.

It wasn’t always that way, as students of Vanderbilt football – if there are any – know. Vanderbilt was once a Southern football power. General Robert Neyland was hired by UT in 1926 to “get Tennessee football up to the level of Vanderbilt.”

With Tennessee and Vanderbilt set to face off this Saturday in a game that actually means something, it might be a good time to look back at the rivalry’s beginnings in 1892. The in-state rivals actually played twice that season, home and away.

It was only Tennessee’s second year of fielding a football team and the first year had not been promising. Tennessee lost its only game.

But 1892’s season got off to a smashing start with Tennessee traveling to nearby Maryville College and prevailing by a score of 25-0, the first win ever for a Tennessee football team. (Not really a big deal since the team had only played that one official game in its inaugural season of 1891.)

Next up were the lads in Nashville and Tennessee fans, what there were of them, were optimistic.

The anonymous scribe of the Knoxville Sentinel noted of UT’s “Crack Football Team:” “The University of Tennessee has the best football eleven this year that the institution has ever been able to boast, and the boys think that last Saturday's victory at Maryville of 25 to 0 in favor of ‘our side’ will be followed by many others. E. A. Cannon, of Harriman, an ex-Yale man, has been engaged to coach the crack eleven and will doubtless bring the team up to its highest possible degree of development.”

Since sideline coaching was banned at the time, coaching essentially meant playing. Cannon (who was actually Princeton ’89, not Yale) would play fullback after that first game with the team. Eligibility was apparently not a thing then.

Scheduling and scoring were quite a bit different in 1892, too.

College football at that time was less a sport and more a polite excuse to legally maim your classmates. The forward pass was still illegal (thus no “Manning” on the UT roster), so the “strategy” mostly involved everyone smashing into everyone else in formations like the famous Flying Wedge - basically a human battering ram that occasionally produced a touchdown and frequently produced concussions. Protective gear was optional, meaning most players suited up in whatever patched-up laundry they owned, plus maybe a leather nose guard if they were feeling daring.

Yale’s legendary coach Walter Camp had started shaping the rules - downs, the line of scrimmage, five-yard grid marks - so sportswriters could call it “scientific” football with a straight face. But most of the game boiled down to 22 guys on a field making it up as they went along. And amazingly, most of them lived to tell the tale.

 

1892 Vanderbilt football team

 The Crack Eleven of UT would take the train (no buses or cars yet) over to play Vanderbilt on Friday Oct. 21^st  - game time was 10:30 a.m. That’s right, in the morning. Then the Crack Eleven would take the train south to play Sewanee College’s Crack Eleven on Saturday morning. Football games on consecutive mornings.

“Foot ball,” as it was spelled then, was such an alien sport that the Knoxville newspaper writer felt compelled to educate his readers:

“So many attempts have been made to explain the American-Rugby game of foot ball to the uninitiated on paper and the result has been always attended with such partial success that it has come to be said of this sort of football as of many other things: ‘IT HAS TO BE SEEN to be fully appreciated or even understood.’

“To the ignorant observer a modern game of foot ball looks very much like a friendly free fight over a brown watermelon and the more you learn about the game the more you are disposed to adhere to this first impression, with a slight correction regarding the watermelon part of it.”

 

Let’s just say the trip west to Nashville and on down to Sewanee didn’t go as the few football followers in Knoxville had hoped. (How few? 200 would attend the Vanderbilt rematch in Knoxville a month later.)

 

The headline in the afternoon Nashville Banner told the story:

After a Hard Fought Battle the Home Boys Win by the Score of 22 to 4.

Yes, Tennessee scored 4 and no, it wasn’t two safeties. Scoring was different in 1892: a touchdown was worth four points, the kick after counted for two points. A field goal was worth 5 points, a nod to the name foot ball. And the game was played in two 45-minute halves.

Here’s sportwriting 1892 style:

“A splendid crowd saw the formal opening of the fall athletics at Vanderbilt University to-day, and cheered and waved hats and fluttered handkerchiefs.

“Vanderbilt opened the game with a poor attempt at a wedge, going ten yards through a hole in the centre. Now well into the fight Vanderbilt picked up and in short rushes beat their opponents back, Allen, Barr, Jones, Fletcher and Craig figuring prominently. Jones fumbled the ball once, but Knoxville kept it but a moment, and when Vanderbilt again got possession of it, Jones broke through in a mighty effort, backed and guarded beautifully by the whole eleven, and scored the first takedown. Time, 5 minutes; score, Vanderbilt 4, Knoxville 0. Throne kicked good, score, Vanderbilt 6, Knoxville 0.”

What followed in the newspaper was a running summation of the scoring. Give the writer a break; he had a deadline to meet. After all the story of the morning game appeared in the afternoon paper!

Here are the highlights of the rest of the game, most of them lowlights for what the Banner called “the Knoxvilles.”

Tennessee scored on a 25-yard scamper by C.D. Brown with 38 minutes left in the first half but the kick by George Marfield failed. Score 6-4.

A series of short rushes lead to a Vanderbilt touchdown, a failed kick, and it was 10-4 at the half.

“The Knoxvilles” wouldn’t score again.

The Banner wrote, “During the intermission the Knoxville sympathizers were sure their men had the best wind, and would outlast the Vanderbilts, and the Vanderbilts were of the same opinion. But the balance of the game showed differently.”

The only excitement came thirteen minutes into the second half.

“When Vanderbilt got possession of the ball they began again their trick of short, hard rushes, and after ten minutes of steady advance, Burch pressed over the goal line. But the ball happened into the air. It was a critical moment. But it is safe for Vanderbilt. Throne reached up, clasps the flying leather and slides over Burch to the third touchdown.”

The score was now 16-4.

“Knoxville seemed to have lost heart. They fumbled the ball, ran heavily and made weak breaks against centre.”

Vanderbilt scored once more and it was over. Had there been a scoreboard it would have read 22-4.

Back in Knoxville the game merited only a single paragraph and that seeming to offer an excuse for the loss:

“NASHVILLE, October 21 -- The foot ball game between the Vanderbilt and University of Tennessee team resulted in defeat of the University of Tennessee team by a score of 22 to 4. Marfield, of the Knoxville team, sprained his ankle.”

And thus began the 133-year history of Tennessee-Vanderbilt football.

It continued in Vanderbilt’s favor until the Knoxvilles hired General Robert Neyland in 1926.

From 1892 till 1926 Vanderbilt won 18, lost 2 and tied 3.

Since Neyland’s arrival the record is 79-14-2 in Tennessee’s favor.

Tennessee has won the last six.

Going into Saturday’s game, Tennessee is ranked 18^th, Vanderbilt is ranked 12^th and vying for a spot in the college playoff. For a change Tennessee is looking to play spoiler.  

Tennessee is a 2.5 point favorite.

The game is at Neyland Stadium, named for the man who turned the rivalry around.

 

The V or Flying Wedge from the 1892 Harvard-Yale game (no photos exist of the 1892 UT-Vanderbilt game)

 

Who was UT’s first football coach?

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, it was J.A. Pierce who was hired in 1899 and guided the team for five years.

The Knoxville Sentinel of 1905 would disagree.

Here’s the proof from an October 11, 1905 story:

COMES BACK TO KNOXVILLE.

E. A. Cannon Will Engage In Business Here, After Absence of Ten Years.

E. A. Cannon, who was the first football coach at the University of Tennessee, being in charge of the team in 1892, is in the city, and will make Knoxville his future home. He has been residing in Syracuse, N.Y., for the past ten years, where he has been very successful in the engraving business.

 

Who was on that 1892 team?

Tennessee took 14 players on its travel team to Nashville. For a frame of reference, the current Tennessee Athletics Department has listed on its staff directory 19 assistant or associate athletic directors.

Here’s how the Knoxville Sentinel described that 1892 squad:

“THE CRACK ELEVEN:

“James Fisher, center rush; ‘Daddy’ Brown, right guard; Lynn White, left guard; Charles Farris, right tackle; Edwin Werts, left tackle; Albert Wegener, right half back; C. D. Brown, left half back; John Cox, right end; George Marfeld, left end; Howard Ijams, quarter back; Charles Moore, full back. Substitutes, C.H. Reed and William Bates.” Plus newly engaged E.A. Cannon.

 

About that very first game a year earlier in 1891….

Here’s how the Knoxville Journal and Tribune described it:

SEWANEE WON.

Our University Boys are Not in it With Them.

Special to the Journal.

CHATTANOOGA, TENN., November 21. — The down train this a. m. brought forty-six Knoxville boys from the University of Tennessee, who came to meet the Sewanee boys and contest for the foot ball championship of the state. The Sewanee team came the night previous. Sewanee wore purple colors, Knoxville the orange and white and the two teams have owned the town. A heavy rain had been falling all day and the boys played in the rain. About one hundred people witnessed the game. Sewanee won easily by a score of 24 to nothing. After the game all of the boys took in the theatre.

 

Theatre!

It wasn’t a Marvel action film. There were no movie houses in 1892.

But Chattanooga did have an Opera House and the boys probably took in the matinee production of the play “From Sire to Son,” starring “distinguished Actor and playwright Milton Nobles with the gifted ingenue Dollie Nobles.”

 

Where did Tennessee play their home rematches with Vanderbilt and Sewanee (both also losses)?

They played on their new home field “purchased by Dr. Dabney [University President] for this purpose in the Riverside addition. This field is situated on a level piece of ground midway between the terminus of the Riverside street car line and the river and is in every way admirably adapted for the purpose.”

It would be a wonderful ending to this story if Riverside Field had grown to become Neyland Stadium. It didn’t. It is now a parking lot on the edge of the Tennessee River, near the east side of the modern-day Neyland.

But there is a bit of a happy ending. The week after the second loss to Sewanee, Tennessee defeated the Chattanooga Athletic Club 16-6 giving Tennessee a 2-5 record in just its second season of football. 

 

 

Turkey Lore

In 1975 I visited a turkey farm in southwest Virginia to write a cover story about turkeys for the Kingsport Times-News’ Weekender magazine. Here is that story.

 Tom Turkey, being held by Lee Akers, was captured on film at the Kyle Akers farm near Gate City by Times-News Chief Photographer Earl Carter.

 Eight-year-old Lee Akers inched forward, picking his steps, gingerly tiptoeing around the fallen cornstalks. Carefully, he stalked his prey.

Closer, then closer, his fingers curled in anticipation.

His steel-blue eyes never flinched. One more step and he’d make his move.

But his prey moved first. Without hesitation, Lee dove, his golden hair falling over his eyes and obscuring his vision.

He’d touched the turkey’s claw but once again the bird had eluded him.

Back up quickly, as if on a bounce, Lee Akers was off and running. But the turkey was too quick. Lee Akers stopped, breathing rapidly. He was overmatched.

And as he slowly moved closer to the westward ridge, the Weekender cover looked more and more in doubt.

Turkey catching was more than a one-boy job.

Lee Akers returned from the barn of his family’s southwest Virginia farm with a fishing net. He drove the eleven turkeys toward the sunlight as the photographer and the writer positioned themselves to cut off any possible line of retreat.

Five of the smaller turkeys hurried by Lee, but he didn’t notice. He was out for bigger game. Tom, the biggest turkey on the Kyle Akers farm. Only thirty pounds, sure, but enough for the three to handle. The photographer remembered two years earlier when a bird twice this size had attacked photographer Charles Dean, ripping his shirt and cutting his lip. The writer remembered the photographer telling him about the severe thrashing the turkey he had given Charles Dean. Neither was ready to give his life for a Weekender cover.

The smaller hens slipped out of the triangular web until only Tom was left in the underbrush. The web tightened slowly, more tightly on the Lee Akers’ side, looser on the writer’s side. The turkey was desperately circling, looking for a hole. Could he possibly sense the weak spot in the web? (The writer.)

Lee lunged with his net, half-trapping the bird.
The turkey flapped his way out of the net and into the waiting arms of 8-year-old, 95-pound Lee Akers. Any of three directions would led to safety — the turkey, as is his custom, chose the only wrong one.

The turkey is a turkey.

Even his rise to most-favored status on the Thanksgiving menu came in a round-about way. When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, they found the turkey being bred in captivity. They exported the bird to Spain and from there to England and France. When the Pilgrims came to America, they brought the bird back with them. The turkey was already a staple for English Christmas feasts — so it was only natural the Pilgrims would use the turkey for the first Thanksgiving.

So let’s talk turkey. And while we’re at it — the origin of the expression “talking turkey.”

Legend has it that an early settler and an Indian were hunting. When it came time to divide up the kill, the settler said:

“You take the buzzard and I will take the turkey.
Or I will take the turkey and you can take the buzzard.”

The Indian replied: “Not once did you talk turkey to me.”

If Benjamin Franklin had had his way, the turkey, not the eagle, would be the national bird.
Franklin reasoned the turkey, by virtue of the fact that it was native to every state in the union, should represent the country on the national seal.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, or that we’d have the Auburn War Turkeys. Advance Boy Scouts would be Turkey Scouts. Philadelphia’s football team would be the Philadelphia Turkeys. Planes would soar like a turkey. And the 101st Airborne Division would be known as the Screaming Turkeys.

Americans consume over two billion pounds of turkey meat each year — more than double from a generation ago. One hundred and thirty-five million turkeys are grown each year in the United States.

Rockingham County, Virginia modestly refers to itself as the Turkey Capital of the world. More turkeys are grown and processed there than any other place in the world. At the county line on U.S. Highway 11, the citizenry have erected a large monument, a bronze turkey on a stone pedestal with the words “Turkey Capital” emblazoned on the stone.

Each year, the Poultry Association sponsors the Friends of Feathers Festival in Harrisonburg. There’s a parade, with turkey-related floats, the International Chicken Breeding Contest, and the crowning achievement of a Rockingham County girl’s life, to be named Poultry Queen.

Rockingham County is the home of a number of major turkey farms — virtual perpetual motion machines. Here turkeys are raised without ever seeing the light of day or touching the earth.

Turkeys are fattened in wire cubicles in giant barns. When grown, they are hung on a conveyor belt and slaughtered, scalded, plucked, processed and frozen. Turkey rendering is extremely efficient with no by-product going unused. Turkey blood is used for fertilizer. And the bones and organs which can’t be sold, are dried and ground and re-processed into turkey meal to feed, what else, other turkeys. If humans could do that, they wouldn’t have to eat turkeys.

No one will claim that the domestic turkey has much intelligence. John Hudson of Harrisonburg, says turkeys on his family’s farm will stick their beaks toward the sky, watching it rain, and will remain in that position until the rain stops or the turkey drowns.

For this reason, many turkeys are now kept indoors.

The turkey will starve to death while surrounded by vast quantities of food, simply because it doesn’t occur to him to eat. On the other hand, some turkeys, when they do decide to eat, will keep right on eating until they founder, strangling to death on their own crops.

Turkeys will run all over each other trying to escape loud noises — often ending up in the same corner of the pen in a pile with their fellow turkeys, smothering the turkeys on the bottom.

When a turkey decides to roost, nothing can change his mind. In the old days when turkeys were driven to market, they could be coaxed onward once they decided to roost. During hurricane Carla in 1961, eleven turkeys tried to roost at their accustomed spot in a tree in the Welder Wildlife Refuge. Eight were blown out.

Thomas Morton, in New English Canaan published in 1637, wrote:

“Turkeys are easily killed at rooste because the one being killed, the others sit fast nevertheless. If the turkey has his head out of sight, he feels safe and will permit a dog to point him.”

The turkey’s digestive system is a marvel. Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany forced turkeys to eat glass balls, hollow lead cubes and wooden pyramids to test the bird’s gizzard. The next day when the experiment was concluded, the turkeys were found to have crushed the glass to a powder, flattened the lead cubes, and worn down the wooden pyramids.

No one knows how the turkey got its name. The name turkey was in use in Europe long before the present bird was found and referred to peafowl. In the sixteenth century the turkey was often confused with guinea fowl and both were referred to as turkey. The early Spanish explorers were no help — at various times, they referred to the crested guan, the horned guan, the curassow and the chachalacas as a turkey.

Columbus was the first European to see a turkey. And also the first to eat one. He was hospitably received by the Honduran natives on August 14, 1492 and treated to a feast of native fowl including the turkey.

Some have suggested that the bird was so named because it was thought to come from Turkey. Others think the name comes from the bird’s call note, which they say sounds like “turk, turk, turk.” Other derivations range from the Hebrew word for peacock — tauas — to the Malayab word — togei. The Indians had over twenty names for the turkey — none of which was turkey.

Wild turkey hunting is permitted in Tennessee during certain weeks of the spring. Limit one gobbler to a person. No hunting after dark.

Eldridge Hawks at City Poultry in Kingsport says he was unloading a truckload of frozen, processed turkeys at a Rogersville market when a flock of turkeys gathered around his truck — to watch.

 

After 36 clicks of the shutter, the Weekender cover session was over. “I don’t know what I’ve got but I’ve got something,” said the photographer. “I hope so,” said the writer, as he backed up in anticipation of a rogue turkey being turned loose. “O.K., Lee, you can put the turkey down now,” the photographer said to Lee Akers.

The turkey’s drumstick barely touched ground before he was off and running. But after ten steps, the bird stopped. He lowered his head and curiously eyed something on the ground. The fish net that had been used to snare him.

 

From the November 1973 issue of Knoxville Magazine (I was the editor and even then fascinated by turkeys)

 

The Eternal Car Pool

 

Cindy Ketron 

1947-2025

Every school day morning my dad and I would head out a couple of minutes after 8. He would head the car up Conway Street hill to pick up Cindy Ketron. As she climbed in the backseat, he would give her his usual cheerful greeting: Good morning, little yellowbird, if she were wearing a yellow dress; good morning, little redbird, if she were in red.

Every school morning for 12 years, Cindy Ketron and I rode to school together. The cars would change over the years as my father traded, the other members of the car pool would grow and shrink as neighbors moved in and out, and the driver would change after I got my license, but there were the two constants: Cindy Ketron and me.

Every school day.

On Sunday I would see her in church.

And many Saturday nights our families would get together with a couple of other families for a dinner party.

I don’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t know Cindy Ketron. She was in my nursery class at Bethel Presbyterian. She was in my catechism class. She was in my high school graduating class.

And then I woke up two days ago to the news that Cindy had died. She was Cindy Mitchell now, had been for 50 years – of course I was at her wedding. (There was this one cute bridesmaid!)

Vince and Cindy Ketron dancing at the neighborhood's first boy-girl party - 1959

Off and on all day yesterday I would be overcome by a memory of Cindy. We had had one date, a seventh-grade cotillion dance, the cap to a six-week ballroom dancing class. One-two-three-slide, one-two-three-slide. We were not supposed to date, never were. We were friends, lifelong friends.

Cindy Ketron as Statue of Liberty in 1955 Johnson school play. Vince is Abe Lincoln. Johnny Murray is George Washington. 

Just when I thought I had shuffled through all the memories, all the reflections, one last one came to me, one that made me laugh out loud.

It was Christmas 1964. We were seniors and we had worked our way up the Bethel Presbyterian Church Christmas Pageant ladder. After stints as a shepherd tending his flock by night, one of the three wise men (as wise acre teenagers we called them the three wise guys), I had ascended to the role of Joseph. Cindy had worked through the Multitude of Heavenly Hosts and she was now the Angel of the Lord, a vision in a white robe, with paper mache wings and a halo of silver tinsel.

We practiced two nights a week for the month before the pageant. Toss twenty teenagers, most of them boys, in a church rec hall and mischief is sure to ensue.

It was always a challenge finding the Baby Jesus. He seemed to disappear at least twice a night. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were often replaced by toilet paper. The shepherds discovered that their rods and their staffs were perfect for sword-fighting. And the narrator seemed to have found a different Bible version every practice, none of them King James.

Joseph had his own contribution to the chaos. When the narrator read, “And, lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them,” Joseph would begin a sound effect. Instead of whistling out, I would whistle in, creating a whizzing vibrating noise that sounded like a flying saucer was descending along with Cindy the Angel of the Lord.

The first time Joseph did this the Angel began laughing hysterically, her shoulders shaking. It was something that was not mentioned in King James.

Joseph knew a good thing when he found it.

Every practice from then on the Angel arrived to the sound of a flying saucer. And every practice it cracked Cindy up. Her shoulders would begin shaking and she would start laughing before I even started my whistle. Soon a couple of shepherds and a wise man or two learned the whistle. So that as the Angel of the Lord descended, it would sound as if the church were about to lift off.

Arrived the big night. Everyone was in costume. Cindy actually looked like an angel. The shepherds were complaining about the scratchy feed bag tunics and bare legs. Joseph had on the robe of a poor carpenter and a twinkle in his eye.

The procession moved through the Nativity without incident. Mary and Joseph were at the manger where, surprise, the Baby Jesus rested peacefully on a bed of straw. As the narrator began to read “And lo the Angel of the Lord…” Mary and Joseph turned their heads upward. There was Cindy. I caught her eye. I smiled. She smiled. Then I quickly averted my eyes to stare prayerfully at the Baby Jesus.

Afterward everyone in the congregation told us they thought it was the best Christmas Pageant that Bethel had ever put on.

I caught Cindy’s eye again. This time she had a full smile. I knew her so well after 12 years of the Eternal Car Pool that I knew exactly what she was thinking: If they only knew….