The storied history of Syracuse football began well before its 1889 loss to Rochester

To support student journalism and the content you love, become a member of The Daily Orange today.

John Blake Hillyer walked onto Syracuse University’s campus for the first time nearly 133 years ago. The campus housed only four buildings — the Hall of Languages, Ranke Library, Holden Observatory and Crouse College. There was Mount Olympus for dorms, but no gymnasium or roads to meander through campus. Just $60 per academic year would earn you a degree in the Liberal Arts College, while $100 could be spent on a degree in the Fine Arts and Medical Schools.

Victorian Era morality, one that preached sexual propriety, charity, family, and duty, held a firm grip over an “avowedly conservative town.” Horseplay, akin today to hazing, took place, but often led to the suspension of students. Sophomores would “salt” freshmen by throwing 500 bags and 10 extra baskets of salt at them.

Athletics were seen as a frivolous way to relieve daily stress that administrators and adults found unfavorable. Former Syracuse professor Freeman Galpin called the 1890s an age that not only frowned on “play”, but condemned athletics as dangerous.

This was the state of affairs that greeted Hillyer, Syracuse’s first football captain in 1889. There were whispers of established football games prior to the Orange’s first official game on Nov. 23, 1889. But according to The Pioneer Days, football was not recognized as an official sport until that first game, a 36-0 loss to Rochester. The group that began the then-Syracuse Varsity Eleven team kickstarted a sport that has produced 736 wins, five conference titles and a national championship.

Megan Thompson | Digital Design Director

“Football at Syracuse University didn’t just happen; it grew slowly out of the rich, loamy soil of the school’s beginnings,” author Michael Mullins said in his book, Syracuse University Football: A Centennial Celebration.

Football began in 1876 with a scrimmage between the Colleges of Liberal Arts and the Colleges of Medicine. It more so resembled English rugby and “lacked grace,” according to Mullins. 

A similar game had long been played in a vacant lot on the second block north of University Place, according to Arthur L. Evans in his book “Fifty Years of Football at Syracuse University: 1889-1939.” On that field, students marked off a usual 100-yard field with goal posts and a kickoff spot near the center of the field. Hugh Parker, who graduated in 1884, said football teams were made up of members of each grade.

William H. Shuart, an 1875 graduate, said players began the class matchups by establishing two captains, who then drafted their own teams. Some were given specific positions — like tackle, half-back, three-quarter back — before playing on a field spanning about 50 yards in length. An umpire would be chosen from the crowd. 

“Hence indubitably the official establishment of intercollegiate football in 1889 was but the flowering of a plant of long, slow and sure growth,” Mullins stated.

Frank M. Rooney was one of the first men Hillyer approached with the idea of forming an official Syracuse University team. By then, Chancellor Charles N. Sims wanted Syracuse to be on par with athletic programs at Yale and Harvard. Sims pressed for a more rigorous academic program and a healthier campus in order to do so, but the infrastructure was there for Hillyer to successfully form a team.

So in October 1889, Hillyer established the University Athletic Association, a student-run governing body that handled finances and logistics for each of the sports. On Oct. 17, the Association elected Horace E. Stout as manager of the football team and Rooney, Hillyer and Gordon W. Hoyt directors of football. 

Football at Syracuse was officially recognized, but support was relatively low. So, Rooney organized a “pep fest” and told the crowd that his intention was “to establish a team able to compete with those surrounding colleges.” Rooney told those interested in the game to meet in O.D.A. Park at 3 p.m. on Nov. 2. Five college men agreed to borrow a football from someone in the city for $5 — they ended up being $1.25 short on repaying the ball. 

Five college men found someone in the city to sell them a football to play with. Courtesy of Syracuse University Special Collections

The game was intended to be a practice against Syracuse High School. Fence rails were pulled out of the ground and set up as the boundaries of the field. University students situated themselves on one sideline and representatives of the high school stood on the opposing sideline. 

The Rochester Democrat Chronicle’s coverage read “the result was favorable to the University 28 to 0,” — the first words ever printed regarding a Syracuse varsity football game.

Syracuse victory led to a fundraising effort that brought in $75 for unpadded uniforms. Soon after, “like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky,” Rochester telegraphed a desire to play Syracuse, according to Fanton.

The team accepted, and on a rainy Thursday morning around 7:45 a.m., at least 12 members of the Syracuse football team rolled out of the New York Central Station headed for Rochester. The team was reportedly singing, talking and occasionally discussing strategy and drawing out plays for the upcoming game. 

Syracuse tried to cancel the game earlier in the week — poor weather, sloppy field conditions and a few injuries prevented the team from having a solid week of practice. But Rochester sent someone to convince the team to play. Syracuse players arrived in Rochester around 10 a.m. and were “royally entertained at club houses by the Rochester team.” Then, they changed out of their newly purchased suits at Culver Park and into their new uniforms before the blowout loss.

The Nov. 23 game against Rochester was still raw and featured a great deal of running, fumbling and scrums — the forward pass was still 17 years away from being implemented. Fumbles, according to Evans, were the “bane of the game.”

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle wrote that the teams played the game in the presence of a large crowd, but that Syracuse played with a “deplorable lack of teamwork.”

“The team returned home with Captain Hillyer’s unjointed elbow and a defeat,” said William Fanton, co-captain of the 1889 team. “Yet the players were more than ever determined on the organization of an up-state college football league. The year closed full of hope.”

The team regrouped during the spring and summer, and eventually had a football team on par with Colgate, Rochester, Union and Hamilton. They had 11 scheduled games — three against the Syracuse Athletic Association and two against Rochester, Hamilton, Union and St. John’s Military Academy — instead of one. Since no other school had orange as a school color, according to syracuse.com, Syracuse finally established the school color in 1890, inspired by orange S’s on its blue jerseys. 

Megan Thompson | Digital Design Director

“Since that time, orange has been the color of Syracuse University, and long may she wave — just orange!” Evans stated.

The team added shoes and sweaters to their “skimpy uniforms,” scouted their first game against Hamilton and won their first game against the Syracuse Athletic Association. Robert Winston, with a $35 per month (plus expenses) contract, became the first head coach of Syracuse football. 

Originally from England, Winston previously coached the Blackheath Harriers rugby team and lightened the locker room mood with his “English ways and songs.” He was known as a taskmaster, a fine tactician of the game, which still resembled English rugby in many senses. His training regime routinely consisted of three-mile runs in the rain. 

Syracuse then established a gymnasium in order to be recognized as a program. The fight for a gymnasium long preceded the football team, but it wasn’t until Parker pleaded to the Board of Trustees of the University to build one that it finally happened. 

In the spring of 1885, the university converted a 20-foot by 60-foot old workshop behind the Hall of Languages into a temporary gym. Once a storage room where local students stabled horses, the gym was soon filled with a punching bag, a few baseballs, cricket bats and other materials that belonged to the Athletic Association. 

The gym served its purpose for over a year until a group of freshmen allegedly burned it down on April 12, 1886. The following January, Sims informed the Board of Trustees that it was time for a gymnasium and an athletic instructor. He also announced the immediate plans for improving the track and athletic grounds, which John D. Archbold ended up financing in 1890.

That space would eventually become The Oval from 1895 until 1907, Archbold Stadium from 1907 to 1978 and the Carrier Dome from 1980 to 2022. The new support for the programs led to professor Frank Smalley suggesting that athletics should be an entirely separate department, one that allowed the university to charge spectators and hand out the first iterations of athletic scholarships. 

But all that change wouldn’t have been possible without the initial impetus from Hillyer. Hillyer saw an opportunity, and was “zestful for the game.” He transformed the Hill into a burnt-Orange fire with a storied football history.

“The seasons’ records are marked by notable victories and heartbreaking defeats; by both beneficent and malevolent fortune. Syracuse has often been the beneficiary of ‘the breaks’ and as often the victim; has often ‘upset’ other teams and has often absorbed the same grim medicine,” Evans wrote. “That’s football.”