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Centre Daily Times January 24 2005
Looking Back
County's long football tradition goes beyond the Nittany Lions
By Rich Kerstetter; rkerstet@centredaily.com
"As the road to Super Bowl XXXIX wound its way through Pennsylvania on Sunday, it seemed to be a good time to revisit some of the legendary football teams of Centre County's past.
Not all of those teams played at Beaver Stadium -- or even Beaver Field.
The Bellefonte Academy team (pictured at the right) shredded its opponents in the mid-1920s, scoring 1,407 points while allowing only 56, according to information on file along with the team photograph in the Centre County Historical Society collection.
That team played games in Oklahoma and Texas and, according to the historical photo's caption, won a national championship in 1926.
Among the Bellefonte Academy's opponents were the Bellefonte Governors, a semi-pro team that, according to the late Hugh Manchester, "consisted, primarily, of young men who had played football for Bellefonte High School."
The Governors, originally called the Bellefonte Independents, played their home games at Hecla Park and Hughes Athletic Field, Manchester wrote in a 1992 "Big Spring" column for the Centre Daily Times.
Other teams on the Governors' schedule included Portage, South Williamsport, Williamsport, Lock Haven, Emporium, Lewisburg, Osceola Mills, Muncy, Johnstown, Jersey Shore, Lewistown, Altoona and Flemington
Col. William S. Crumlish, U.S. Army retired, formerly of Pleasant Gap and now a Fayetteville, N.C., resident, recalled in a letter to the historical society how the players' fathers would "pass the hat" through the crowd to get gas money to travel to away games.
The Depression-era collections, however, apparently were not enough to sustain the team for long.
Manchester, the eminent local historian, reported that, while as many as 1,500 people attended Governors' games in 1931, a low point for the franchise came on Thanksgiving Day the following year "during a crucial game with Lock Haven."
On that day, "only 300 people from Bellefonte showed up and 50 from Lock Haven," Manchester wrote. "From then on it was financially downhill."
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