This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/Farlander2821 on 2024-06-23 16:16:38+00:00.
About 2 years ago, I made a post that kept track of all games between teams located in Virginia and determine the holder of the “true” Commonwealth Cup. For those interested, I have updated the spreadsheet and JMU is the current holder of the cup.
But that’s not what this is about! As some pointed out on my original post, there are more commonwealths than just Virginia. Our country has 4 states that refer to themselves as Commonwealths. These are Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, so I asked myself, what if I kept track of all of them?
So I set out to do just that. I tracked every game that took place between 2 teams located in one of those 4 states, as well as teams from Canada, which is a member of the British Commonwealth. If this bothers you, you can take comfort in the fact that including Canada had no effect on the results as a Canadian team never won the belt. Another ultimately meaningless decision I made was to count every team that a college played, not just other colleges. In the early days of college football, it was common for colleges to play local high schools and athletic clubs, and I did decide to count those if they were located in a commonwealth. Once again, none of these teams ever won (though 1 college that no longer exists did win!) so the end result is unchanged from this. Starting with the exciting 1-0 match on October 30, 1875 between Harvard and the Canada All-Stars team, I tracked 466 games and the current holder of the Commonwealth Belt is…
Kentucky!
Congratulations to each of the following teams for at one point holding the Commonwealth Belt:
- Harvard
- Penn
- Lafayette
- Lehigh
- Amherst College (not to be confused with UMass Amherst)
- Swarthmore
- Carlisle Indian Industrial School (no longer exists)
- Franklin and Marshall
- Penn State
- Tufts
- Centre College
- Geneva College
- Grove City College
- Duquesne
- Pitt
- Carnegie Mellon
- Temple
- Villanova
- Kentucky
- Virginia Tech
- VMI
- UVA
- Richmond
- William and Mary
- Boston College
- James Madison
- Old Dominion
- Louisville
In terms of ranking each of the 4 commonwealths, the ranking is quite clear. Pennsylvania has seen by far the most representation with long, dominant streaks by both Penn State and Pitt, as well as a myriad of schools from the Keystone State having held the belt. Virginia is in second with a couple long streaks by Virginia Tech and a decent representation of teams, but the Old Dominion was the last commonwealth to get a winner. Massachusetts dominated early on but had a long drought from 1925-1983, with Boston College starting to bring back some representation to the Bay State. The worst by far, despite currently holding the belt, is Kentucky. The Bluegrass State saw multiple long droughts without a winner and is simply absent from much of the spreadsheet. Only 3 KY teams (Louisville, Kentucky, and Centre College) have ever held the belt. Perhaps the new era of Louisville and UK dominance can bring back some respect to the forgotten commonwealth.
This spreadsheet is full of stories, both interesting and annoyingly repetitive. For a long time, the sheet is simply a recount of the Pitt-Penn State rivalry with Boston College hopping in after a while. There is a period in the 2000s where this matches very closely to my Virginia spreadsheet, which lasts all the way up until 2021 when Pitt steals a win from VT before losing to Louisville in 2022 to usher in the Kentucky resurgence. There is also a pretty long period where this tracks the VT-BC rivalry and essentially serves as a who’s who in the Big East and ACC.
Perhaps my favorite story is from a team that held the Belt for only 1 game. On October 7, 1916, Tufts defeated Harvard in a 7-3 upset and grabbed the belt before losing it again to Harvard in their rematch 2 years later. This game is interesting because Tufts was one of the earliest college football teams to integrate black players onto their team. In 1916, Tufts made the bold decision to integrate their team, which led to much controversy when Princeton and Indiana initially refused to play them and would not allow their 2 black players, William Brown and Edward Morrison, into hotels and restaurants. Their coach, Charles Whelan, would not capitulate and defended his players in the face of blatant racism from their opponents. When a hotel in Indiana refused to let Brown and Morrison in, Coach Whelan threatened to leave with the entire team and never play Indiana again. After the hotel allowed the black players to stay, Tufts when on to defeat Indiana 12-10. If there is ever a team deserving on this unlikely championship, it is the 1916 Tufts football team, which endured a level of hatred and discrimination no athlete deserves to face. Edward Morrison went on to become the head coach at Howard University in 1920, where he won 3 Black National Championships in his 5 years of coaching.
There is so much more in this spreadsheet hidden behind the results, and the more I look into the history of college football the more I become fascinated by it. There are also likely mistakes as I hand copied results from some questionable sources to fill it out. If you find any, feel free to let me know! I can’t promise I’ll fix it, especially if its early on and leads to a crazy butterfly effect, but I’m open to give it a shot!