Historical View - 1952 William & Mary vs Navy Program

[Gil Dobie]

Great presentation, this person goes thru the program page by page. Thought some William & Mary guys might be interested.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45v7AFh1Fvk

[Tribe4SF]

Thanks for posting! This was just in advance of the academic scandal that devastated W&M Football. Through the 40s and into the 50s W&M was a relevant national program.

[Sitting Bull]

I had to look this up. We lost this game 14-0.

Navy was one of our most played rivalries until the mid 90s. They loved us because we rarely won. Part of that is out of 42 games in the series, EVERY game was played in Annapolis except for 1978 when we played them in the Oyster Bowl in Norfolk.

The series is 35-6-1 for Navy however we won the last two games in the series pretty decisively and have not been scheduled since.

The guy who illustrated these Navy program covers was amazing. I remember they had these illustrations at least through the 60s. They were incredible.

[DFW HOYA]

Thanks for posting! This was just in advance of the academic scandal that devastated W&M Football. Through the 40s and into the 50s W&M was a relevant national program.

Had the ACC gone to 10 schools in 1953, William & Mary and Pennsylvania were the presumptive candidates. Penn backed out, in part, over the ACC's segregation policy and accepted the invitation of the newly forming Ivy League.

[NY Crusader 2010]

I believe William & Mary came very close to joining the ACC again in the early 1970's. Kaplan Arena, formerly William & Mary Hall, was actually built with ACC membership in mind. There was a lot of pushback from faculty and students, which is why the move didn't take place. Not a whole lot different than Holy Cross turning down the Big East invite in 1979 -- except for its first few seasons the Big East was a basketball-only conference - no minor sports until the mid-1980's and no football until 1991 (HC would have never joined the FB league IMO).