The Fifth Down Game: Cornell-Dartmouth November 16, 1940
The infamous Cornell-Dartmouth college football game
In ancient times, like the mid-twentieth century, before there were instant replay and officials’ sideline reviews, college football games were sometimes decided by game officials’ mistakes and the results accepted by the winners, however undeserved. With one exception.
This is the story of that one exception: the “fifth down game” between Dartmouth and Cornell on a cold snowy Saturday afternoon, November 16, 1940. - Norman L.Macht
It was a day that Cornell’s Big Red team would become immortalized for a game they lost, not for the unbeaten string of 18 games and the number 1 national ranking they took into the game.
For the 15 Dartmouth players who saw action that day – prohibitive underdogs with a 3-4 record, it proved to be the game of a lifetime, not because they pulled the biggest upset since Yale’s 11 Iron Men had upended mighty Princeton in 1934, but because they had to win the game twice, once on the field and two days later in the office of the Cornell president in Ithaca, New York.
For Dartmouth coach Earl “Red” Blaik, it propelled him back to West Point, where he would create the Army powerhouses of the 1940s.
For college football, it marked the highest level of honor and sportsmanship the game has ever reached, a level seldom matched in the years before or since.
“Never within memory had there been such an act of good sportsmanship,” wrote Allison Danzig, dean of football writers, in 1961, “nor has there been any comparable incident since.”
There were several things different about this game even before the teams took the field in Hanover, New Hampshire, to renew one of college football’s oldest and most intense rivalries.
Blaik, an All-American and then assistant coach at West Point, had been frustrated by his inability to stop the Big Red Machine in 1938 and ’39.
“This game was a real vendetta for Mr. Blaik,” recalled Dartmouth tackle Monty Winship. “”The year before, at Ithaca, he thought Cornell coach Carl Snavely had gotten away with some stuff.
Snavely had players on the sidelines sending signals to the team on the field – against the rules.
“Blaik relied on his scouts in the press box to help him spot the offensive and defensive patterns of the other team.
No matter what we did during the first half, during the break he’d give us all the answers, the keys to adjusting in the second half. That day in Ithaca the phone lines were cut. We got beat, 35 to 6.
“After the game he said to us, ‘Next year there’s only one game on our schedule – Cornell.’
That whole fall of 1940 we practiced for Cornell. We’d spend half of practice getting ready for our next game, and the other half getting ready for Cornell.”
On the Monday before the game, Blaik unveiled a new defensive plan.
“It may well have been as complicated as any developed until then,” Blaik wrote in his book, You Have to Pay the Price. “We played our ends normally on the line, but posted our guards and tackles a yard and a half off the ball. The linebackers, playing shallow, approximated the same depth as the guards and tackles.
The plan was for these six men to sit there, forego early commitment, angle off in the direction of the ball and by quick reaction and pursuit give up the short gain and no more.”
The idea was not to use it on every play, but often enough to confuse Cornell’s offense. It was up to Dartmouth’s captain Lou Young Jr. to call the defensive signals.
All week they worked on it in secret sessions. They had started out with little confidence in their chances. Gradually their hopes rose on the strength of the new strategy.
But with heightened hopes came heightened tension. It was house party weekend at Hanover. To separate his team from the social distractions, Blaik took them to a nearby resort, Bonnie Oaks, on Lake Fairless in Vermont.
After breakfast on Saturday morning, Blaik sent for Lou Young.
“When Lou arrived,” he wrote, “I tried not to look as white as the bedsheets.”
He asked Young, “How do you think the players feel?”
“I think they’re really ready.”
“Are you sure you fully understand the defensive plan?”
“Yes, I’ve got it down.”
“Well, Lou,” said Blaik, sitting with his feet up, pulling at his left ear lobe, “I think the team is wound up a little too tight. I want them to relax. We’re really a much better team than Cornell expects to meet, and we’re ready to take them. Here’s what I want you to do.”
There was an audio system that carried throughout the hotel. Blaik told Young to play some jazz records on the phonograph so everybody could hear them until it was time to leave.
“Blaik was different from his usual stiff, austere self that morning,” Young recalled. “He was a little looser. We were such underdogs, he was going to do everything different from normal to get us into a looser frame of mind.”
The right front seat on the team bus was always reserved for the coach. Blaik normally sat quietly.
On the ride to Hanover that morning the tall, commanding, regimented, precise, detailed, no-nonsense Colonel Blaik strode up and down the aisle joking with his young players.
“People who knew Blaik might not believe that, but it’s true,” said Young. “He wasn’t exactly clowning, but he was definitely looser than usual.”
Though the New York Times called it “. . . one of the most thrilling gridiron encounters ever waged,” that description was apt for perhaps the last two minutes.
For the rest, it was mostly a defensive battle with occasional threats for the 8,000 rooters in the tiny Memorial Stadium on the Dartmouth campus.
The opening kickoff was the high point of the scoreless first half. Dartmouth’s Ray Wolfe ran it back from his 10 across midfield.
Following a Dartmouth 50-yard punt return by 150-pound Joe Arico, a 26-yard field goal attempt by Bob Krieger was wide. In the second quarter, a Dartmouth drive was stopped when Cornell held at their 6.
With Lou Young calling the defensive signals superbly, Cornell never moved the ball past their own 33 during the entire half.
Dartmouth kept to the ground – they threw only one pass all day – nibbling off enough bits of yardage to enable Ray Hall’s punting to keep the Big Red pinned back.
Earl Blaik was not an emotional halftime locker room orator, but he wouldn’t hold back if he thought somebody wasn’t doing his job. He told them what was expected of them, what they were doing right or wrong.
Cornell coach Carl Snavely, the first to use films of practice sessions to help him plan for an upcoming game, was a taciturn, scholarly tactician. In the Cornell locker room, he was making some adjustments. It was time to take to the air.
If they could achieve any kind of decent field position, they would pull out their two most effective plays: a fake run to the strong side with a back-diagonal pass to halfback Mort Landsberg, their fastest runner; and number 119, a pass-option with several receivers out. Both plays were run by back Walter Scholl.
Cornell had relied on those two plays so often that Dartmouth scouts had prepared the team to be on the lookout for them.
Linebacker Bob Crego had been instructed to cover Landsberg whenever it looked like the fake run play was developing.
In the second half Cornell came out throwing and quickly moved to the Dartmouth 17. On third down Ray Wolfe intercepted a pass in the end zone to thwart the threat.
Toward the end of the third quarter, Dartmouth began to grind out yardage. With Hall, Kast and Arico carrying, and an occasional end-around by Krieger (in those days several players carried the ball and more than one passed) they reached the Red 15 soon after the fourth quarter began. On fourth and 4 at the 9, Krieger kicked one through the uprights.
Dartmouth 3 Cornell 0
Another Cornell attack was stopped after they had moved from their 23, when Kast intercepted a pass on the Dartmouth 8. Following a punt, Cornell roared back.
Into Dartmouth territory they charged as time wound down. Every play was a gainer. It was then that a penultimate mistake set up the final, unforgettable one.
Eddie Chamberlain, Blaik’s chief scout, was in the press box. Here’s how he recalled the play 25 years later:
“I spotted that fake run, back-diagonal pass play developing. I watched Mort Landsberg cutting on his run, then noticed with horror that Bob Crego, who was supposed to stick with him, had failed to spot him. I stood up yelling like he might hear me, and I saw Crego stop and look around.
He knew he’d missed the play, so he just turned and ran as hard and fast as he could. He never looked to see if Scholl had passed, but tackled Landsberg just as the pass was being thrown. Of course they called pass interference at the 18.”
Although the Times said, “Cornell finally won out . . . thanks largely to the interference penalty,” Earl Blaik called it the decisive factor of the game for Dartmouth.
“It was quick thinking,” he wrote. “In light of what followed, it probably saved the game.”
“What followed” was another completed pass to the 6; first and goal with less than two minutes remaining.
For a fleeting instant a hint of “here we go again” flashed in some Dartmouth minds: they had lost three games that year in the closing minutes or seconds.
Everybody in the stadium was standing, hoarse throats straining out their last full measure of exhortation for Dartmouth to hold on.
Landsberg plowed into the line for a three-yard gain.
Pandemonium shrieked into hysteria as Scholl was stopped at the two.
Cornell coach Carl Snavely called time out and sent halfback Bill Murphy into the game. Referee Red Friesell said to linesman Joe McKenney, “Go tell Snavely he’s had his three times out. That’s all he gets.”
As McKenney went to the Cornell bench, he moved the elastic band on his left hand over three fingers. It was his way of keeping track of the downs – third down coming up.
The ball went to Landsberg again. He ran into guard Dan Dacey at the goal line. The Cornell players thought he’d crossed the line, but the ball was spotted a foot short.
With the clock showing six seconds, the Cornell captain, Walt Matuszak, called a time out. It stopped the clock, but cost them a five-yard penalty.
Lou Young went up to Friesell. “How does that affect the down?”
“It doesn’t,” the ref said.
McKenney looped his elastic around four fingers.
Hundreds of spectators had leaped out of the stands and were surging on and over the sidelines. Among them was the local resident who operated the scoreboard, changing the downs and yards to go by hand.
Swept along in the excitement, he had left his cramped coop inside the scoreboard and was on the sideline, whooping and jumping and never looking back at the 3 down and 6 yards to go he had left hanging.
There was no doubt in Walt Scholl’s mind: it was time for old reliable number 119. He took the snap from center, ran to his right, jumped up to elude a tackler and aimed for the halfback Murphy in the end zone.
Dartmouth defender Don Norton reached out and knocked the ball away. It bounced off Joe McKenney’s chest and landed at his feet.
The rule at the time was this: a fourth down incomplete pass in the end zone was a touchback; the ball went over to the other team at the 20 yard line.
The clock stopped with three seconds to play.
What happened next takes longer to tell than it took to occur. McKenney picked up the ball and started for the 20 yard line. The sideline mob pushed onto the field. “What is it?” field judge Hinky Haines asked. “Incomplete pass in the end zone,” McKenney yelled back. “Touchback.”
He had just crossed the 15 when Red Friesell caught up with him.
“What happened?”
“Touchback. Dartmouth’s ball on the 20.”
“It’s no touchback on third down,” Friesell said.
“But it was fourth down.” McKenney held up his hand with the elastic circling four fingers.
“Take a look up there,” Friesell said, pointing to the scoreboard.
McKenney looked. “It says third and 6.”
“Okay,” Friesell said. “Now it’s fourth and 6, Cornell’s ball.”
“Regardless, that was a fourth down pass,” McKenney argued.
“Joe, I’ve got to overrule you,” the head referee said. “It’s fourth down coming up.”
Friesell took the ball from him and brought it back to the 6. “Fourth down,” he called out.
The other officials were busy pushing the crowd off the field. The Dartmouth players had followed McKenney to the 20, feeling the game was all but over.
When they saw the ball brought back to the 6, their elation over an apparent victory was swamped by confusion and disbelief. Instinctively, they set up defensively again, all but Lou Young.
“That was fourth down,” Young said to Friesell. “We’ve been counting the downs. Check with the Cornell sidelines. Check with either side.”
There was no reply.
“If you don’t take the time to check with the sidelines, I’ll take my team off the field.”
Friesell, a 5-8, hot-tempered redhead, wasn’t about to do what the player suggested. Young had no intention of abandoning the field and risking a forfeit.
He looked toward the sidelines, but there was so much confusion and so many people in the way, he knew Red Blaik couldn’t see what was happening. If there was going to be another play, they better get ready.
“Come on,” Young told his team. “Let’s stop them one more time.”
The Cornell players later agreed they’d been more concerned with getting their plays run with time running out than keeping track of the downs.
“We know Young was arguing with the ref, but we didn’t pay any attention to it. It all happened so fast, it was not in our minds that that was our last play. When you’re in the middle of a game, you’re more aware of downs.
It affects what play you’re going to call. But it’s not the same with time running out and you’re near the goal line and hurrying to get a play off and waiting for the defense to line up. All teams look to the referee to announce what down it is loud and clear. So when Friesell said ‘fourth down’ we didn’t question it.”
Now, in the huddle, Bill Murphy was telling Scholl he could get open. They would go with 119 again.
Scholl took the snap, ran to his right, jumped and threw in midair. The ball went over Norton’s head. Murphy caught it just in bounds and immediately stepped over the sideline.
“It was very, very close,” Joe McKenney later said. “But I was right there and it was clearly a touchdown, so I threw up my arms to indicate it.”
Nick Drahos, Cornell’s All-American tackle, kicked the extra point.
In the press box, the writers rewrote their leads for Cornell’s last-second win. But questions lingered: maybe there had been an extra down . . . maybe there had been a play nullified by a double offside.
Whatever had happened, the game was over and the score was Cornell 7 Dartmouth 3, and nobody had ever heard of a score being changed after the teams left the field, no matter how many unanswered questions remained.
While the crowd milled about, arguing and trying to understand what had taken place, the Dartmouth photographer, Adrian Bouchard, was busy packing up the game films to get them on the next train to New York, where, as usual, they’d be developed in a lab and returned on the Sunday night train to Hanover.
The only thing on his mind was how the film would look to coach Blaik; there’d been so little light on the dark, overcast day.
There was no big celebration in the Cornell locker room. They knew they’d been in a tough battle and had barely escaped defeat.
Some of them realized they’d had an extra down to do it, but thought there must have been a penalty in there somewhere and they were entitled to it. Besides, hadn’t the referee said, “Fourth down?”
Walt Scholl recalled, “In the locker room, coach Snavely, a very unemotional student of the game, came up to me and gave me a kiss. That shocked me out of my shoes.”
Bill Murphy said, “After the game a friend of mine from Dartmouth said we won on a fifth down. I laughed at him, thought it was a joke.
Then, when we were on the train at the station, some students came marching around, shouting, ‘five downs’ and throwing things at the windows.”
The Dartmouth locker room was quiet, too. There was a feeling that they had been robbed. They’d played the game of their lives, and had it taken away from them. But they were too exhausted to discuss it.
“We beat them, we beat them,” Lou Young muttered.
Earl Blaik went around the room, stopped and spoke to each of the 15 who had played. That, too, was different.
Not everybody remained calm. Sports publicity director Whitey Fuller led a column of reporters into Blaik’s office, hollering, “We’ve been jobbed.”
Line coach Harry Ellinger kicked a locker in rage; assistants Andy Gustafson and Jack Crowley punched out their frustration against the wall.
Down the hall an irate Big Green fan, a former Princeton tackle named Stan Keck, was trying to destroy the door that separated him from the officials. Hearing the racket, Ellinger hurried out and tried to restrain him.
In his office, Red Blaik sat, outwardly unperturbed, peppered with questions from all directions. The Dartmouth president, Ernest Hopkins, was there.
“I have every confidence in referee Friesell,” Blaik said. “I have no way of knowing whether there were four or five downs and no comment.”
He refused to say if he intended to protest the game, but left open the possibility. Hopkins said, “Whatever is done will be done with dignity.”
Cornell’s president, Edmund E. Day, a Dartmouth alumnus, was also at the game. When interviewed, he did not hesitate to state that they did not want the victory if it had not been legitimately won. If.
Irving “Snuffy” Smith was the Dartmouth team manager. One of his duties was to pay the officials. Friesell was a friend of his family in Pittsburgh.
Smith walked with the referee from Davis Fieldhouse through the powerhouse to the Hanover Inn, but they didn’t talk about the game.
While the team was eating dinner in the old Ski Hut in back of the Inn, a spontaneous student rally began outside. “Coach Blaik and some of the players went out to talk to them,” Smith said, “There was some hope that something might change.”
President Hopkins and Blaik drove Friesell and McKenney to the train station at White River Junction. On the way, Friesell admitted that he might have made a mistake.
On the train to New York – McKenney was going home to Boston, Friesell to Washington to work a Sunday pro game – the referee’s doubts increased: “If I gave them a fifth down, we’ll be in an awful pickle,” he told McKenney.
Using stationery from the Hanover Inn, they wrote their separate reports to Asa Bushnell, commissioner of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Association, who assigned the game officials. The next day, at his home in Allston, Massachusetts, McKenney typed out a note to Bushnell:
“Until the pictures of the game can be seen, both sides can maintain they are right.
“I feel I embarrassed Red Friesell by bringing the ball to the twenty yard line after the incomplete pass which I felt was made on fourth down.
I might have been wrong in doing what I did but I assure you it was a natural reaction to the situation that I thought existed at the time.
“If I was wrong in my decision, the situation would be just as tense, since I would have been depriving Cornell of a down . . .
“I sincerely hope that I was wrong and Red is right. I will sink or swim with him. He is a great referee and a real sportsman.”
On Monday morning the game films were delivered to both schools. It wasn’t instant, but it was a chance to view the replay.
Carl Snavely and Cornell assistant athletic director Bob Kane put the reel on the projector. They watched the final series of downs once, twice, again and again.
As slowly, earnestly, doggedly as he coached to win, Snavely concluded there was no question: there had been a fifth down.
He notified President Day, who called Bushnell, who notified Red Friesell.
At 1:06 p.m., from his home in Pittsburgh, Friesell sent this telegram to Dartmouth captain Lou Young:
“I want to be the first to admit my very grave error on the extra down as proven by the motion pictures of both colleges. I want to apologize to you, your players, coach Blaik, all assistant coaches, and Mr. McCarter [athletic director]. I assume full responsibility.
I want to thank you all for the very fair treatment accorded me after the game. Lou I am so sorry for you were such a grand captain and leader. Give my regards to President Hopkins.”
It was signed “Wm. H. Friesell Jr Referee.”
The telegram was delivered to Young at his dorm about two p.m. Fifty years later he still treasured it.
But Asa Bushnell said no official had the right to change the outcome of a game, no matter what mistakes he may have made. And his office could do nothing about it, either. Any action would have to come from the schools involved.
Coach Snavely told his team, “We scored on a fifth down and on a play when we should not have had the ball in our possession.”
President Day told them the only thing to do was to concede the game.
“No – no – no!” some of the players hollered. “There must be some mistake.”
“But,” the president added confidently, “surely Dartmouth will not accept it.”
Lou Buffalino nudged Mort Landsberg. “Bull.”
Landsberg nodded. They knew how intense Dartmouth was about its football team.
Walt Matuszak spoke up in support of Dr. Day. They didn’t feel like they were doing anything noble, and it didn’t make them feel good or proud about it, but it was the only thing to do.
“We have done the right thing,” said Day, “the clean thing, and this will live with us. We shall not have to spend the rest of our lives apologizing for a tarnished victory.”
The Cornell athletic director sent this wire to Dartmouth: “In view of the conclusion reached by the officials that the Cornell touchdown was scored on a fifth down, Cornell relinquishes claim to the victory and extends congratulations to Dartmouth.”
As Lou Bufalino had predicted, Dartmouth accepted:
“Thank you for your wire. Dartmouth accepts the victory and your congratulations and salutes the Cornell team, the honorable and honored opponent of her longest unbroken football rivalry. William H. McCarter”
From Carl Snavely to Earl Blaik:” I accept the final conclusions of the officials and without reservation concede the victory to Dartmouth with hearty congratulations to you and the gallant Dartmouth team.”
Blaik replied: “I appreciate your telegram of congratulations. However, I must admit a feeling of regret over the disappointment which you and the great Cornell team must have experienced.”
Not everybody was satisfied with the outcome. There were reports that bookies were refusing to pay off on the revised score.
Cornell had been anywhere from 4-to-1 to 15-to-1 favorites (there were no point spreads in those days). They had won on Saturday, the bookies claimed, and that was that.
The Dartmouth, the oldest college newspaper in the country, put out an extra.
Students followed the marching band and danced in the streets of Hanover. It proved to be a well-deserved moment of celebration for Dartmouth, and a lifetime of honor for Cornell.
Red Friesell officiated in 575 college and professional football games over 22 years. Red Friesell continued his long career officiating college and NFL games. He enjoyed the publicity from the fifth down game and never minded the kidding he took.
A year later he was officiating an NFL game in which he suffered a broken leg when a Philadelphia Eagles punter collided with him.
While he was in the hospital, he received a telegram from Asa Bushnell: “Don’t let it get you down down down down down.”
Before and after that game, there were similar disputed victories, including two more in 1940. Regrets were sometimes expressed, but none of the “winners” followed Cornell’s example. Here are a few of them.
Six weeks before the Cornell-Dartmouth dispute, Ohio State had beaten Purdue, 17-14, on a field goal kicked by a player who had been sent in to attempt it after he had already been in and out of the game as many times as the rules then permitted.
Ohio State made no apologies after the game films proved it.
On the following Saturday, George Washington had won a disputed 20-14 victory over Washington & Lee. With less than a minute to play, W&L appeared to have scored a tying touchdown.
One official called it, but the referee overruled him and placed the ball a foot short of the goal line.
On Monday the game film showed clearly that W&L had scored. But the replay wasn’t instant enough, and GW kept the W.
Notre Dame benefitted by two tainted wins. On October 22, 1938, a gritty Carnegie Mellon (now Carnegie Tech) eleven was fighting the unbeaten Irish to a standstill.
In the second half, as the Carnegie quarterback was about to call a fourth-down punt, the referee called, “Third down.”
“Fourth down,” corrected the Carnegie quarterback.
The official assured him it was only third down. So Carnegie ran another play. The referee then informed them that he had been mistaken and turned the ball over to the Irish.
Handed the ball deep in Carnegie territory, the Irish promptly scored the only touchdown of the day for the 7-0 win. They never looked back.
Notre Dame unwrapped another gift on November 18, 1961, beating Syracuse, 17-15, on a 41-yard field goal after playing time had expired.
A roughing penalty against Syracuse on the previous try that had failed gave ND another chance. Syracuse protested that game officials had erred in allowing the second attempt.
Big 10 and Eastern Conference commissioners and a special committee all agreed that, under the rules, the officials on the field had made a mistake in allowing the second kick after time had run out.
But they were powerless to change the final score, and Notre Dame refused to follow Cornell’s 1940 example.
On October 14, 1972, Miami defeated Tulane, 24-21, on a fifth-down play. It was Miami’s first victory after three losses and the school elected to keep it.
