He was named Mr. Football for the state of New Hampshire as a high school senior. But at 5 feet 8 inches tall, he was too short, and his high school was too small to impress most college coaches. UNH was the only Division I school that recruited Mike Boyle '09. Over the past five years, however, the wide receiver has proven himself worthy again and again. His most dramatic demonstration of worthiness may have taken place last November in Maine, when he streaked down the snow-covered sideline and then dived for the pylon with three minutes to go. In one slippery swoop, he clinched the game against the archrival Black Bears—and a playoff berth for the Wildcats.
The UNH football program also clinched its 500th win in November—a historic, albeit inevitable, milestone. But 500 is, after all, just a number—far more important is how the players and coaches achieved those wins. If you buy into the argument that sports furnish us with metaphors for life, then UNH football is the story of underdogs and late-bloomers, the under-sized and under-recruited, coming from behind to win by virtue of hard work. UNH football has often played David to the Goliath of larger schools and even within the university itself tends to be overshadowed by ice hockey.
Boyle is only one of numerous examples of the underappreciated kid making good, including star quarterback Ricky Santos '08 and his talented replacement, Richard "R.J." Toman '10, who were each under-recruited for different reasons. (Santos' school was too small; Toman didn't get to start in high school until senior year.) Both demonstrated their determination to succeed by devoting many hours to lifting weights, running, playing seven-on-seven and watching hours of film. Santos, originally a fourth-string quarterback, acknowledges that he came to UNH—the only school that wanted him—with a chip on his shoulder.
In fact, notes coach Sean McDonnell '78, the Wildcats as a team may have a perennial chip on their shoulder, and he likes it that way. When channeled productively, an I'll-show-you attitude can help build character and confidence. Many former UNH football players have gone on to become leaders in education, business, politics and community affairs. "The underdog theme is the most powerful one in sports and in life. It's why you play the game," says Mark Etro '81, who played football at UNH in the 1970s. As a fan, he knows it's also why you watch the game. "Let's face it—there's something special about winning unexpected games."
On a raw, raining day in November 1893, New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts played its first and only football game of the year, against neighboring Newmarket. Newmarket High School, that is. The high school kids beat the college team 10-0. The college, having just relocated from Hanover with 61 students, also held its first classes in Durham that fall. In the beginning, members of the faculty and staff were drafted to round out the scrimmage team, and over the next two decades the team lost twice as many games as they won.
But what the team lacked in prowess, the student body made up for in pride, as demonstrated in 1904 when news of a 4-0 "Aggie" victory over Tufts College in Medford, Mass., reached campus. Students lined Main Street armed with revolvers, rifles and "other noisemaking instruments," according to The College Monthly. The next day, students met the team with cheers at the train station, seizing each player and bodily conveying him to his room. That evening, in spite of heavy rain, a rally around a big bonfire could be heard "in the farthest corners of the town," and the festivities ended with a nightshirt parade.
In the early years, UNH football was front-page news in The New Hampshire, even if the news wasn't always good. By 1915, however, the news would start to get better with the hiring of a charismatic Kansan by the name of William "Butch" Cowell, who became athletics director and the full-time football coach. "Cowell has been called the father of UNH football for a good reason," says Marty Scarano, UNH athletics director. "He elevated football, but also other sports on campus."
Chin set, head lowered, mouth closed, eyes intense, Cowell always seemed to be wearing his game face. He was also a man of considerable pride. After Tufts skunked UNH 39-0 in 1927, Cowell disinvited the rival coach (a good friend) from a long-planned hunting trip, snapping, "Go shoot your own ducks. And what's more—clean 'em and cook 'em."
But Cowell was an innovator and a winner. In 1917, he led the college to its first winning season—23 years in the waiting. In the early 1920s, he introduced lacrosse to UNH as a means of off-season conditioning for his football players. He got the idea from Penn State's coach, Hugo Bezdeck, and had star players such as Ernie Christensen '23 and Carl Lundholm '21 learn to play so they could teach it to their teammates.
In the 24 years before Cowell retired in 1939, UNH played some of the strongest teams in the country. It was not uncommon to see teams such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Holy Cross and Army land on the UNH schedule. UNH athletics reached another milestone during the Cowell years when it jettisoned the "Aggie" moniker and replaced it with the feisty "Wildcats." Three of an ill-fated string of live bobcats used as mascots at games—Butch I, II and III—were named in honor of the great coach before live mascots were discontinued out of concern for their welfare.
By the 1940s, football players were campus heroes and the games were major weekend events. The Homecoming game of 1940 found UNH trailing archrival Maine 14-0 with eight minutes to go. In the days of grind-it-out football, which featured lots of running and few touchdowns, a 14-0 deficit was not easily made up. The Wildcats' coach was George Sauer, one of the first to have his players study slow-motion film footage of their games, which was shot from a makeshift platform on an old windmill. Winslow MacDonald '42 was on the field that day as quarterback and cornerback.
"Coach Sauer decided that it was time to throw the ball," says MacDonald. "I remember passing the ball more than I had all year and hearing my friends from Kappa Sigma making quite a scene up in the grandstand. We scored 20 points in less than eight minutes. It was the only time I got to be carried off the field by my classmates." The Manchester Union-Leader recorded a scene in which Cowell Stadium "disgorged throngs of jubilant students, alumni, and guests who shouted and whooped their unexpected joy down the tree-shaded streets."
The game brought glamour to the sons of working-class families, many from Massachusetts, who had headed north to play for New Hampshire. But football could be a tough ticket to a college education. Scholarships for college athletes, which came into vogue after World War II, were few and far between at UNH. Instead, recalls MacDonald, "we washed windows, cleaned dorms, or worked in the dining halls for 29 cents an hour."
The games were tougher back then, as well. In a game against Connecticut, MacDonald took one on the schnoz courtesy of a menacing behemoth named Walt Dropo. "I took the ball and ran toward the line. He didn't even try to tackle me," recalls MacDonald. "He just slugged me." The 6-foot, 5-inch Dropo, by the way, went on to become a slugger of a different stripe with the Boston Red Sox. And MacDonald? He graduated with degrees in sociology and psychology and went on to succeed as an estate and trust lawyer with the prestigious Boston firm of Sherburne, Powers, and Needham.
If sports offer metaphors for life, they also offer lessons for life, and no one understood the value of hard work better than Clarence "Chief" Boston, who coached from 1949 to 1960. Nearly 60 years after playing on Boston's 1950 UNH football team, which went untied and undefeated, Dick Dewing '53, still rugged and fit after a life in the military, recalls Boston's practice regimen as though it happened yesterday.
"Some of us had a nickname for the patch of grass out behind Cowell Stadium. We called it 'Pig Alley' on account of how muddy it got," says Dewing with a laugh. "'Death Valley' was another nickname." One year Boston bought some inexpensive lights so the team could practice at night. When the lights came on, it seemed the practices would never end. "Chief would always think that one more drill would spell the margin of victory," says Dewing. Boston may have had a point: that year, the team was undefeated. (There have been four undefeated football teams: 1942, 6-0; 1947, 8-0, and a trip to the Glass Bowl; 1950, 8-0; and 1962, 7-0-1.)
When a former Army private named Ed Fish '58 showed up on campus in 1953, the Harvard-educated Boston made him take an aptitude test. To his own surprise, Fish, who claims to have been a lifelong "D" student, did quite well. He went on to study business and become a two-sport athlete. As soon as football ended in the fall, he laced up his skates to play hockey. In between practices and games, he applied himself well enough in the classroom to graduate magna cum laude in 1958. "Chief taught me that sports and academics are the same," says Fish. "The key to success in both is motivation." The former football player went on to a highly successful career in real estate construction, development and management, and today he is also a philanthropist, most recently having given UNH an artificial playing turf for the stadium.
Many athletes aspire to a career in the pros, and a few UNH grads have been able to parlay their hard work in the Pig Alley of their own era—be it a patch of grass or a room full of sophisticated equipment—into a career in professional football. Bill Bowes—who came to UNH in 1966 as an offensive line coach, became the youngest head football coach in UNH history in 1972 and led the team until 1999—produced more professional players than any other UNH coach. Gifted athletes such as Bruce Huther '76, Dave Rozmek '76, Ilia Jarostchuk '87 and Jerry Azuma '99 all went to the big show after playing for Bowes. Part of the credit for their success goes to good scouting. Just like more recent stars such as Santos and Toman, David Ball '06 and Corey Graham '07, these players were under-recruited as high school players, only to achieve stardom in Durham.
Mark Etro '81 played with current coach Sean McDonnell on the great Bowes teams of the mid-'70s. They were conference champs in 1975 and 1976, and in 1977 were ranked tops in the country for a period of time. Today, Etro owns a construction company in Eliot, Maine, and coaches his son's youth football team. But he and teammates Bill Wharff '80, Bill Burnham '78 and Dave Kahn '76 are among the recent teams' greatest fans. And recent teams have been giving him plenty of the "unexpected joy" he craves. "I made the trip with the team to Georgia Southern four years ago, when nobody gave us a chance against them," says Etro. "By halftime, we were losing and their fans were brutal. Then our kids came back. I was in tears."
That was 2004. After nearly being kicked off the team the previous year, Ricky Santos had spent the summer working out—and watching film, as instructed. He started the season sitting on the bench as a fourth-string quarterback, but time, fortune and an injury to All-American Mike Granieri '04 in the middle of a game against Div. I-A champion Delaware gave Santos his break. En route to rewriting the record books, winning the Walter Payton Award and leading the Wildcats to appearances in two national tournaments, Santos helped put UNH football back on the map.
Santos graduated last spring and now plays with the Montreal Alouettes, leaving all eyes on quarterback R.J. Toman. The Wildcats opened their 2008 season with a victory over Army at West Point, N.Y. Hundreds of UNH alumni and fans attended, including UNH President Mark Huddleston. Toman scrambled quickly out of Santos' monolithic shadow, leading a decisive 66-yard drive in the second half that put the game away. The team won its next three games, beating Rhode Island 51-43, Albany 32-24 and Dartmouth 42-6.
On Oct. 25, UNH notched its 500th victory with a 42-14 drubbing of Towson State. Of these 500 wins, McDonnell has played a part in 142—a relatively obscure statistic revealing an impressive accomplishment. "Having Sean as the head coach ensures a New Hampshire state of mind," says Etro. "Tough, intense, making the most of what he's got."
The resurgence in UNH football has seen attendance at home games double in recent years. On a brisk November afternoon, a hospitality tent in Boulder Field has about 200 people packed beneath it. "We used to get about 20 or 30 people," says Etro, who operates the tent with fellow officers of the UNH Cat Club. "Now we are packed for every home game."
Former middle linebacker Alan Tallman '05, who teaches English and coaches football and lacrosse at Boston College High School, is recounting the good old days, as players and fans alike will do when they get under the big tent. The year was 2003, and the game was against powerhouse Hofstra. "When I came here in 2001," Tallman recalls, "we were 4-7. Coach said that when we won, he would lead us in the fight song in the locker room afterward. Well, we didn't get much opportunity to sing at first. And then we beat Hofstra. Coach Mac burst into the UNH fight song. The marching band joined in and we all sang until we were hoarse. I'll never forget that moment." ~
David Moore works in UNH's Editorial and Creative Services. He lives in Lee, N.H.