Memorable Moments: When Freshmen Could Not Play

Football, like all sports, evolves throughout time and what was once common eventually fades away into obscurity. More than 50 years ago, it was common for NCAA football players to only play three years of their four years of eligibility, with their first year spent on a freshman football team.

Many Ram legends prior to 1972 were only allowed to play three years of varsity football, rendering what could have been a longer career shorter than today's players. The great Lawrence McCutcheon, who still ranks sixth all-time in career rushing yards at CSU more than 50 years after he went on to the Los Angeles Rams, only played a trio seasons for the CSU Rams. Imagine if his average of 972 yards per season had been four years? McCutcheon would rank second in career rushing yards today with over 3,800 yards.

The earliest known freshman team at CSU dates to 1900, when coach George Toomey headed up the varsity and Clarence Griffith headed up the freshman. At that time, a freshman team existed to teach men who had never played the sport in high school so they could become varsity players in their upperclassmen years.

By 1909, when the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference was founded, a rule was made that no freshman student could play on a varsity team. This rule was established mainly because there was belief that a freshman was not ready for college football and needed that year to learn. Today, the redshirt freshman rule can allow a player to ease his way into the football program, though usually it is used to sit a player out for other reasons.

With the freshman rule, it made the freshman football team important for two reasons. The first was to be a practice squad for the varsity. This was the case until the early 1970s when freshman teams ended. Legendary halfback and CSU Hall of Fame inductee Gary Glick said in a 2007 interview, "I wasted a year of my college life on the freshman team in 1952. Here I had been an All-American playing for the US Navy, but I couldn't play varsity football as a freshman at Colorado A&M. All we did every week was to be the tackling dummies for the varsity team."

The second thing a freshman team did was to play freshman teams from other colleges in the state as practice against other schools. Rarely did a freshman team play out of state, so it was common for the Aggies or Rams freshman to play CU, DU or Colorado College's freshman teams, but unless another school's freshman team traveled to Fort Collins, they did not play schools like Utah, Utah State or New Mexico.

The freshman team was also a way for coaches to see what kind of talent they had for the next season, but it was not glamorous in any way. Frank Faucett stated in a 2008 interview, "We wore three different types of jerseys, helmets and pants from varsity teams over the past several seasons. We didn't match on the field and the uniforms were ripped apart and sewn back together."

This is one reason few, if any, jerseys survived to modern times since freshman football ended. The uniforms were worn to the point they were thrown in the trash.

In 1945 and 1946, freshman football was suspended when the men returned to the campus following WWII to allow coach Hans Wagner to rebuild his team. This is how Fum McGraw and a select few men were able to play four seasons for the Aggies. However, during WWI, Harry Hughes asked the conference schools to suspend the freshman rule due to so many of his men being called away to war. Hughes was voted down, presumably because his teams had won the 1915 and 1916 championships without losing a game and other schools wanted a chance to beat the Aggies again.

Freshman football returned to the campus in 1947 and continued to be an important part of Aggies and Rams football into the early 1970s. It is not uncommon for families to be confused about their fathers and grandfathers playing football at CSU, only to learn the men had only played one year of freshman football. Not all freshman players went on to play varsity football, many discovered they did not want to continue the sport in college.

On January 8, 1972, the NCAA voted to allow freshmen to play football and basketball, ending the need for a freshman team. While CSU tried to continue with a junior varsity team in 1972, coach Sark Arslanian stopped JV football altogether. This bygone era in football has been but a memory to the men who played. Few, if any, photos and records exist about freshman football, only left to yearbook articles and occasional snapshots found in the attic.

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