I was recently asked what I thought was the stronger Carlisle team, 1911 or 1912. That is a question that has been raised several times. Let’s start by looking at schedules and results first. The 1911 team went 11-1-0, missing an unbeaten season by a single-point loss to what Warner considered an inferior Syracuse team. They beat two of the Big Four, Penn and Harvard, for only the second time in the team’s history. The Indians scored 298 points while giving up 49. Six teams were shut out, including Pitt, Penn, and Lafayette.
For 1912, like Steckbeck before me, I credited Carlisle with a 12-1-1 record. They shut out five teams where the 1911 version blanked six opponents. They only played one of the Big Four, Penn, and lost to the Quakers. For comparison purposes, I would eliminate the 49-1 game with the University of Toronto Old Boys because the opponent was a rugby team whose players had never played American football. Other Carlisle opponents, even the weakest, knew the rules and had played the game for some years. Dropping the Toronto game reduces Carlisle’s 1912 results to 11-1-1. Eliminating points from the Toronto game from Carlisle’s record leaves the 1912 team with 455 points scored and 113 points given up for the season.
Computing the ratio between points scored over points allowed gives the 1912 team 4.03 points scored for each point given up. The 1911 team’s ratio was 6.08 points scored per point allowed. While the 1912 version was a scoring machine, its defense gave up more than twice as many points, 113 as the 1911 squad did, 49.
In the 1912 Spalding’s Guide, George Orton of Penn wrote of the 1911 Indians, “…whatever inferiority they may have shown in defensive work, they more than made up by the much greater brilliancy, variety, and power of their offense.”
When evaluating the 1912 team Orton wrote, “…defensively they were not strictly first class.”
Something to keep in mind when reading about eastern teams in the Spalding’s Guides is that articles discussing those teams were written by representatives of IVY League schools who were biased toward those institutions’ teams. They never considered strength of schedule or the fact Carlisle played all its major games away from home.
The 1912 tie, which 1911 didn’t have, was a scoreless affair with Washington & Jefferson. This would be a mark against the 1912 squad. Now, let’s compare the teams’ losses. Warner, through the school newspaper, blamed the one-point loss to Syracuse on a sloppy field to “Poor generalship, poor kicking, and numerous penalties for offside play and holding” and “Thorpe’s kicking and playing in general was disappointing.” Thorpe missed an extra point that would have tied the game.
The 34-26 1912 loss to Penn was due to “the careless work of Carlisle’s backfield, their mistakes on signals, their fumbles, and their failure to intercept forward passes over the goal line, together with a fumbled punt, practically gave their opponents every score they made and enabled Pennsylvania to score 34 points with very little effort on their part.”
Both losses were bad but the one to Penn was worse. Carlisle couldn’t blame its poor play on a muddy field this time.
While researching this article, I discovered an error in Gridiron Gypsies. The season summary table for 1912 did not include the 33-0 victory over Syracuse. It was covered in the text but not in the table. A correction has been sent to the printer but who knows when corrected books will be printed. The corrected table follows.
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