Given my natural desire to learn stoked by four years in Collegeville, it is appropriate that I take on the assignment of examining historical times, persons, and facilities that helped shape St. John’s football in the present. I will begin by discussing the origins of football in Collegeville.
While it seems that the words “St. John’s” and “football” are synonymous, it wasn’t always the case. While schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Michigan were playing each other in the 1880s, and even the University of Minnesota had a team in the early 1890s, St. John’s was relatively late to the football party. The Johnnies fielded their first team in 1900, and they played only one game that year-a 5-0 shutout by St. Cloud High School. In fairness to that first team, they were placed together without a single one of them ever having even seen a football game on all of ten days’ notice before playing against the St. Cloud team that had practiced together for weeks and had regularly played other high schools in the area.
The following year was different, however, and led the visions of success we know today to be typical of St. John’s football, as the 1901 team went an undefeated 4-0, defeating St. Cloud High School twice, St. Cloud Normal School (now SCSU), and St. Thomas. The St. Thomas game was particularly sweet, as the Jays ripped the Twin Cities champions 16-0. One of the key players in that game—which was effectively the beginning of the storied rivalry—was Ignatius O’Shaughnessy. Later that year, O’Shaughnessy was expelled from St. John’s for drinking on campus, and before he reached home, the then President of St. John’s had called his contemporary at St. Thomas and asked him to allow Mr. O’Shaughnessy to continue his education there. Years later, O’Shaughnessy had not forgotten this act of forgiveness on the part of the Benedictines and the Catholics as he donated millions back to Catholic education, leading to his name adorning several buildings at the corner of Summit and Cretin in St. Paul. There is Collegeville legend that he also offered to donate funds to CSB and SJU in the 1960s, including to build the Benedicta Arts Center, but he had a stipulation on his money: that his name be on the buildings. The Abbot and Prioress at the time both declined to allow the self-gratification of this pledge believing it to be un-Benedictine, and turned down his offer. We can think about that now every time we walk into the Petters Auditorium at the BAC!
From 1902-1910, St. John’s struggled in football. They struggled to get games and competition, they struggled to keep players. Without a standard conference, there was no set schedule and no certain opponents to schedule, so teams were at the mercy of their athletic director’s phone books. Furthermore, given St. John’s status and location, students typically remained at St. John’s for two years, then transferred to larger universities for more focused studies. The ones that remained at St. John’s tended toward religious vocations, and the Benedictine order prohibited athletics for its novitiates. So most of the athletes at St. John’s up until the late 1920s were primarily freshman and sophomore students as there were no juniors or seniors!
One game they did find was in 1905 against St. Cloud Normal School (again, still known as SCSU). This game was declared forfeited to St. John’s by the referee who called an offsides penalty against the Normals. The offsides penalty caused an on-field dispute between the umpire, who was from St. Cloud, and the referee, and led to the St. Cloud players refusing to play. The referee declared the game forfeited to St. John’s, which led to massive uproar between the two schools and the St. Cloud paper, in which President Shoemaker of the Normal School said they would never play St. John’s again without a clearly neutral referee. After 100 years, some things do not change!
In 1906, the St. Thomas team refused to take a challenge from St. John’s. From The Record that year, “the managements of both schools could come to no satisfactory agreement and hence all prospects for the game were shattered. It is sincerely hoped that St. John’s and St. Thomas may come into closer relations and that no difficulty may ever arise to destroy those relations.” How time has passed!
But by 1910, the dangerous reputation of college football, combined with the lack of standards for sportsmanship in intercollegiate athletics, had taken its toll in Minnesota. As early as 1907 The Record had run editorials advocating the dropping of intercollegiate sports in favor of an intramural program only, and in 1910 the St. John’s administration, led by Fr. Alcuin Deutsch OSB (who would later be elected Abbot), changed athletic policy on campus allowing only intercollegiate contests in baseball and basketball only. St. John’s wasn’t alone—Macalester, Gustavus, Concordia and St. Olaf had all dropped some or all of their athletics programs, including football, at or about that time. For the next ten years, St. John’s would not field a football team, and intramurals would be all that existed on campus. But football would return, along with the formation of the MIAC, in 1920. That will be a topic for another installment.
Information compiled from Scoreboard: A History of Athletics at St. John’s University, by Dunstan Tucker OSB and Martin Schirber, OSB, St. John’s University Press, 1979.
