Recently, I was able to talk to one of my friends, Sam Rubin, about his new book titled “Yale Football”. I’ve known Sam since 1995 when I first started working in New Haven with him for the New Haven Ravens Minor League Baseball team. He was the webmaster and ran the scoreboard among many other duties there.
Tell us a little about yourself Sam:
I grew up in New York City but now live and work in New Haven. I have been in New Haven since 1991, my freshman year at Yale. I spent 10 years working for the New Haven Ravens, the local Minor League Baseball team that left town in 2003. I have also worked for the Yale Athletic Department since 1995, mainly covering the football team.
Tell us a little about your book “Yale Football” and what inspired you to write it:
I wrote a book called “Baseball in New Haven” for the same publishing company, Arcadia, in 2003. They have a series of pictorial histories entitled “Images of Sports” that are all the same format: 128 pages of black-and-white photos with detailed captions. The baseball book was very well-received, so Arcadia asked me to write one about Yale football as well.
Can you tell the readers why you decided to use Walter Camp on the cover?:
Walter Camp, an 1880 Yale graduate who was both a player and a coach, was called the “father of American football” by John Heisman. He developed concepts such as downs, play from scrimmage, and keeping score by points instead of goals. He helped turn football from something that resembled soccer and rugby to the game we all know today. He is a Hall of Famer, and there is still an All-America team that bears his name, so he is clearly Yale’s most influential football figure. I was able to get a photo of another famous Yale coach, Carm Cozza, in the background of the cover. Cozza was Yale’s head coach for 32 years and was responsible for 10 of Yale’s 14 Ivy League titles.
How far back were you able to find pictures or documents for the book? Were you able to get all the way back to when Yale Football first started?
I was able to find a poster that promoted the first game Yale ever played — Nov. 16, 1872 (a 3-0 win over Columbia). Back then there were 20 men on a team so the posted referred to “Picked Twenties”. That was the only game Yale played that year so I was not able to find any team photos, but I did find the 1873 Yale team photo. I tried to get an even distribution of photos across Yale’s 130+ years of football, and fortunately the university and the athletic department have very good archives.
Give us a few names of some famous people who played football during the years at Yale :
Some Yale players have gone on to play in the NFL, such as Calvin Hill, Dick Jauron and Eric Johnson. There are also dozens of College Football Hall of Famers from Yale, including two Heisman Trophy winners (Larry Kelley in 1936 and Clint Frank in 1937). There have also been people who have gone on to fame away from the field, such as Stone Phillips and Jack Ford. Additionally, former U.S. President Gerald Ford was an assistant coach at Yale.
Have any of them given you feedback about your book?
I mainly hear from fans, who all enjoy the way books like this bring back memories. People who have followed the team for a while remember players such as Brian Dowling, who inspired the character “B.D.” in Doonesbury — I did write to Garry Trudeau to get permission to use a copy of the comic strip in the book. The baseball book I wrote contained photos of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, who both played for Yale. My father sent a copy to George W. Bush, who wrote a letter from the White House thanking him.
What was your most memorable moment you found during the process of creating the book?
One of Yale’s biggest wins was an upset at Princeton in 1934. The Tigers were 6-0 and had 15 wins in a row overall; one rumor even had them going to the Rose Bowl. Yale beat them 7-0 on a touchdown pass to Larry Kelley, who would win the Heisman Trophy two years later. The same 11 guys played the whole game for Yale, earning them the nickname “Iron Men”. I uncovered a photo I had never seen before of Kelley leaping to make the catch that won the game — a huge play in one of Yale’s greatest wins by one of its greatest players.
Any future works planned?:
I would like to eventually write another book, assuming I can find a subject that is both interesting to me and marketable to the general public. I’ll keep you posted.
I’d like to thank Sam for taking the time to answer a few questions about his book. If you would like to know more about the book, you can head over to Yale’s football site by clicking here. If you are interested in ordering the book, it is available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
Here are some photos of Sam being interviewed by Kandace Krueger during the Yale-Harvard football game this past season.
