Georgetown University Archives/The Hoya Old Hilltop Field – now the site of Copley Lawn and White Gravenor – witnessed one of the greatest games in Hoya football history on Nov. 17, 1901. Georgetown defeated Virginia on a last-second play.
Before Hoya fans hated the Orangemen, they abhorred the Cavaliers.
It was Virginia with whom Georgetown developed a heated rivalry in the early days of its football program – a rivalry so bitter that all future athletic competitions were called off in 1913.
Though the annual tradition came to end, it was just the beginning of one of the most successful eras in Hoya sports history. Georgetown football would go on to its days of glory, traveling to the Orange Bowl in 1941 and the Sun Bowl in 1950. But the Hoyas would never find a fiercer rival in its 73 full seasons than it had in the days before the First World War.
As with any bitter relationship, both the beginning and the end of the Georgetown-Virginia struggle have become shrouded in mystery.
Georgetown agreed to play Virginia for the first time in 1889 – the Hoyas’ earliest intercollegiate contest. Records conflict as to what the result of this game really was. Georgetown holds that it was a 34-0 victory; Virginia maintains that it routed the Blue and Gray, 32-0. No prominent media covered the event, so there is no hope for verifying how the series began.
The teams did not meet during the next two seasons. In 1892, a 4-4 tie was the result of the second meeting ever. The following year, the Hoyas took their first legitimate victory from the Cavaliers, 28-24. But several weeks later, a rematch ended with an entirely different result: Virginia silenced its opponent, 58-0. Though Georgetown had received some press coverage in previous seasons and in earlier matches of 1893, the media had little to say about this rout – the most lopsided defeat suffered by either team in the series’ 17 meetings.
The rivalry was put on hold for four seasons. The first season, the teams simply did not schedule a meeting. The other three, Georgetown played no football in response to a different subplot in Hoya history.
While the Hoyas and the Cavaliers only met three times between 1890 and 1894, Georgetown and the Columbia Athletic Club faced off twice that often – two times in 1890 and once every year after that. But this rivalry which, in its day, was comparable to that between Georgetown and Virginia, quickly soured into a bitter grudge match. Come 1894, bettors wagered on who would be knocked out first.
Two athletes, one from each team, were rendered unconscious in the first half. Hoya captain George “Shorty” Bahen sustained a fatal injury and died of complications four months later.
In response, Georgetown issued this statement:
“The president and directors of Georgetown College issued a regulation, adopted in faculty meeting, prohibiting their students from playing football with teams, whether collegiate or other from outside the college, until the character and rules of the game shall have been radically modified so as to preclude with reasonable certainty all danger of serious casualties.”
If not for the morose circumstances of 1894, a Georgetown-Columbia A.C. rivalry may have had a longer tenure.
As new classes came to the Hilltop and forgot about the horror that beset Bahen, a push to reinstate football grew. In 1897, it returned in intramural form. A year later, with the support of newly-arrived President John D. Whitney, S.J., – a staunch supporter of athletics – intercollegiate matches resumed, as did the enduring rivalry with Virginia.
The Hoya-Cavalier competition eventually came to dominate the District sports scene, capturing weekly headlines in the Washington Post. One article, detailing Georgetown’s Nov. 1901 epic battle against Virginia, gave a dramatic account of the game’s final seconds:
“Once, twice, thrice the Georgetown backs plunged into the Virginia line, only to be thrown back with little or no gain. Fifteen seconds to go and the game hinged on the next play. Quarterback [Martin “Rat”] Sullivan [C 1901] gave the signal. The Virginia line braced.”
The Hoyas outsmarted the Cavalier defense, sending freshman running back James “Hub” Hart (C 1904) around the left side and into the end zone for the score. Georgetown won, 17-16, and the match, played on Old Hilltop Field – the current site of Copley and White Gravenor – went down in history as one of the greatest games ever to occur inside the gates.
After Georgetown’s last-second victory the teams did not see each other on the gridiron until 1906, when they began their longest streak of annual competitions. Virginia took four straight contests and the Hoyas won the last three.
The circumstances surrounding the conclusion of Georgetown’s most crucial series are cloudy. The final game, a November 1913 match, occurred after the Hoyas sustained a brutal 34-0 beating at the hands of the Carlisle Redskins. Georgetown’s staff doubted that they would be lucky enough to win, so famous coach Pop Warner sent his assistant coach, Albert Exendine, to aid a friend on the Hoya coaching staff.
The team trained extensively in the week leading up to the game. The student body held a rally around a huge bonfire on the school lawn. During the festivities, one professor addressed the crowd:
“That old never-say-die spirit will win this game – and Georgetown is known for that spirit.”
Despite being 5-1 underdogs, that Saturday the Hoyas held the Cavaliers to seven points while Virginia allowed six. When it seemed as though there would be no repeat of 1901, Georgetown’s defense stepped up, moving the Cavaliers further and further backward toward the Virginia goal line.
With 30 seconds remaining, the Cavaliers were left with no choice but to punt from deep in their own end zone. The Hoyas seized their final opportunity as William “Reds” Cusack (C ’16) blazed across the line and met the punter head on. Georgetown earned two points and got the last word in the series, which the Hoyas have led 9-6-2 ever since.
Months later, a Hoya transfer to a college in Virginia boasted that he had been “the highest paid player on the Georgetown team.” These allegations infuriated Virginia officials, who were still bitter over the close loss. The Cavaliers seized the opportunity to cut all athletic ties, insisting that the Hoyas had unfairly taken an edge in the all-time series. The claims were never proven, but the damage was done: the greatest rivalry in Georgetown football was terminated nearly a quarter century after it had begun.
Ninety years later, the only competition that comes anywhere close to replicating the spirit of those early days is that with the Fordham Rams. A rivalry that began in 1890, it has continued to the present, as both teams are members of the Patriot League. At the 1965 Fordham game – the Hoyas’ third contest after resuming its football program – 9,002 spectators witnessed the game Kehoe Field.
As the team moves into the future, the addition of Ivy League opponents to the schedule aims to restore the Hilltop to some of its roots. Of the Ancient Eight teams, Georgetown will face Brown, Cornell, Pennsylvania and Yale in the next four seasons. Penn was the first Ivy the Hoyas ever faced; the result was a 12-0 loss in 1893.
Georgetown faces its first Ivy League opponent since 1937 Saturday, when they visit Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y.
