Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I've come across magazine and newspaper documentation (more mention and photos than any real game description, although the captions do mention Kansas winning) of a CFB exhibition game played at Chambrun Park, Nice, France between Kansas and Minnesota football teams some time very late January, 1909. The magazine is dated January 30 and the news piece, which I found in the British News Archive, is dated February 3, 1909.

This is the British news article (my translation in bold):

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The Rival Teams, from the "Minnesota" and "Kansas," ey.ter the Field a! Pare Chambrun, Nice. “Pour exciter les joueurs on bat du Tambour!" (To excite players we beat Drum!)

The Beginning of the Match, for which the Fete Committee at Nice gave a Cup One of t e chief recent events on the Riviera was the feting of the American Fleet, which was anchored off Villefranche on the return from its W u 1d^ While invitations were crowded upon the officers of the Fleet from every side, the chief diversion for the men was the football match at 'T.arc Chambrun, Nice, when a team from the Kansas played a team from the Minnesota for a cup presented by the Fetes Committee. The populace showed the liveliest interest in this genuine example of American football, seen for the first time in the South of France.
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I've had little luck on the Kansas front but Minnesota was a talented team, with 5 players making the 1908 All-Western Team. I've yet to actually find any pictures of any players from either team but I'm hoping to make headway on the large picture of the Minnesota captain. Of the 5 AWT players, I've found two that have mentions of serving as a captain on the team. Earle T. Pickering was the Minnesota captain for the 1911 team.

John McGovern (1908 AWT, 1909 consensus All-American, CFBHOF) was a "junior captain." I don't know if that means he was a captain in his junior year or if he served as a captain in a lesser role. It seems 1910 was his last season for Minnesota.

Either way, based on the fact that I've found so little in terms of images, I felt I should share these with you guys. Hopefully something here helps someone at some point. Obviously, if anyone has any input that would shed some light on any of these players that would be enormously appreciated.

I can't seem to post large, clear photos here, not sure why. They work on every other board but here they either get clipped off or I have to resize them to the point that they're so small the images get pixelated. At least the captain photos work because they're so narrow.



Kansas Captain


Minnesota Captain


Arthur

Great detail on these photos in regards to the uniforms and equipment. Thanks for sharing!

Interesting find. The crews of the two battleships, USS Kansas and USS MInnesota. were part of the 16-ship "Great White Fleet" that Teddy Roosevelt sent around the world for more than a year to demonstrate the U.S. Navy's power.

Mark L. Ford wrote:Interesting find. The crews of the two battleships, USS Kansas and USS MInnesota. were part of the 16-ship "Great White Fleet" that Teddy Roosevelt sent around the world for more than a year to demonstrate the U.S. Navy's power.

Thank you. That certainly makes more sense than two college squads traveling to France for an exhibition. Although, if I'm not mistaken, those are actual Minnesota uniforms. Perhaps they borrowed the unis for the sailors?

I can tell you that France was IN LOVE with American football since ~1898, which is the first reference I can find. They made sure to have articles and photos in numerous French periodicals just about every year and for the most part multiple times a year. They sent reporters to America to cover it and hired Americans to cover it for them. In just about every piece I've seen they've made sure to mention how brutal the sport is. Some things never change.

Arthur

You're welcome, XN... I hadn't known about this particular game (could be that the Gophers loaned the jerseys). PFRA member Massimo Foglio wrote a book about football in Europe, and I read of one played by ship crews who had stopped at England before the war. During the period right after the Armistice 100 years ago today, there were hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who had to remain in France for months until they could all be shipped home. To ease the wait, the U.S. Army organized a huge playoff tournament of teams that took place in the spring of 1919, finishing with what was the first football championship involving non-college teams.

There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but that's the gist of it. I can't help but wonder if the media interest "over here" about the tournament "Over There" was a factor in the pro team owners and college grads deciding that a national pro league could make a go of it.

Interesting. Oddly enough, I haven't come across any references to that tournament yet. I'm sure I will though. I'll know what I'm looking at when I do, thanks to you.

It's also weird that they would bother taking individual photographs of the two teams' captains, as well. I've got tons of photographs from these French pieces but it's a rare occurrence in any of them to see either individual photographs or individuals pointed out in a larger group photo. I wonder if there were actual past Kansas/Minnesota players that were currently serving in the military at the time and therefore were named the captains of the two teams. I think it's destined to be a set of questions that will never be answered, especially with so little photographic material to cross-reference from the schools' programs during that period. I suppose locating the Cup that was awarded to the victor would go a long way in answering some questions.

Arthur

The 1909 game is something we added to the second editon of the book "Touchdown in Europe".
I had found the same article you posted, but no other info was available, so i only added a few lines documenting the game.
I believe there's a ton of info yet to be discovered about football in the early years of last century in Europe, but most of that info are well hidden somewhere.

I've got numerous French articles but the prospect of sitting down and spending countless hours inputting them word-by-word into Google translate isn't something that fires me up. I'm not a researcher, I'm a collector that just happens to recognize that some of this information might be useful to others so I want to be helpful. If someone else wants to do the translating I'll be happy to share the articles.

Arthur

Arthur, i can happily do the translation, if you can send me the reference to the articles. I know french well enough not to need Google Translator

Massimo