The ’41 season at Plainfield Teachers College, when every play was a fake
Questioning the scores
Every Sunday back in 1941, Newburger would pore over the college football scores in small type in the New York papers, and he wondered aloud to Krupnick how these results were gathered. Newburger questioned whether some of the colleges really existed. He was especially suspicious of Slippery Rock Teachers in Pennsylvania.
“What gets me,” Krupnick said to Newburger, according to an article in The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in 1986, “is how all those scores fit exactly into the space. They might even make up names just to fill it out. I’ll bet that if somebody sent in an imaginary score, they’d print it.”
That night, while at dinner with his wife and a few friends, Newburger went to a phone booth and called The Times, The New York Herald Tribune and other papers.
Harold Rosenthal, who worked on the rewrite desk at The Herald Tribune, answered the phone. Newburger told him that Plainfield Teachers College had beaten Winona, 27-3.
“Plainfield Teachers?” Rosenthal said. “That a New Jersey school?”
Newburger said yes. The name had settled in his mind because his secretary was from Plainfield, New Jersey.
Newburger found a newsstand open at 2 o’clock Sunday morning. He bought all the papers — there were about 12 — to see which ones might have the Plainfield score. Then he woke up Krupnick in Brooklyn with a phone call.
“They bought it,” Newburger said. “My score got into the papers.”
Krupnick had to see for himself. He threw on his clothes, and raced down to the newsstand at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn.
Sure enough, in The Times, there was the Plainfield-Winona score, on the first page of the sports section, not far from the detailed accounts of wins by Fordham, Army, Notre Dame and Dartmouth. In alphabetical order, Plainfield-Winona found its place just below Penn State 40, Lehigh 6, and above Potomac State 13, Shepherd Teachers 0.
“It was not uncommon,” Rosenthal said later in an article in The Times, “for the smallest schools to telephone their scores because of the lack of telegraph facilities. Also there were a good many small schools taking up football and dropping it continually.”
The next game
The day after Plainfield’s first score appeared in print, Newburger, at lunch with a Wall Street colleague, began talking as though the college were real, according to an article in The Herald Tribune.
“Who are they playing next?” the other man asked.
“Randolph Tech,” Newburger said, making up another college. “But it’s an away game.”
“I don’t know either team,” his lunchmate said, “but I’ll take Randolph, for five dollars.”
“You’ve got a bet,” Newburger said.
The week passed, and on Saturday, Newburger took a train to Philadelphia to attend the Penn-Navy game at Franklin Field with Dannenbaum. At the Philadelphia train station, after the game, they remembered that the score of the latest Plainfield “game” had not been called in. Newburger began calling — Plainfield 35, Randolph Tech 0 — the New York papers. Dannenbaum called in the score to the Philadelphia papers.
At The Philadelphia Record, a rewrite man asked Dannenbaum if Plainfield was in Delaware. When Dannenbaum said yes, he was asked if Plainfield was in Wilmington.
“Just outside,” Dannenbaum stammered. The Record printed the score.
There was a groundswell of press interest about this small-college football powerhouse. Newburger gave birth to a sports information director for Plainfield Teachers College. His name was Jerry Croyden, fashioned from Newburger’s familiarity with the Croydon Hotel on the Upper East Side. Newburger became Croyden, and was the only one who answered the new, $5-a-month phone line that was installed at the brokerage firm.
Jerry Croyden (Newburger), with Dannenbaum’s help, began producing news releases with a Plainfield Teachers letterhead. The team acquired a nickname (the Lions) and was outfitted in the school colors (mauve and puce). Its coach was Ralph “Hurry Up” Hoblitzel, a former Spearfish Normal star who devised the W-formation, in which both ends faced the backfield. One of the ends was “Boarding House” Smithers.
We were such a trusting people back in the 20th century.
great story
Men - so gullible when it comes to sports. hahaha
Fun!
Jerry Croyden (Newburger), with Dannenbaum’s help, began producing news releases with a Plainfield Teachers letterhead. The team acquired a nickname (the Lions) and was outfitted in the school colors (mauve and puce). Its coach was Ralph “Hurry Up” Hoblitzel, a former Spearfish Normal star who devised the W-formation, in which both ends faced the backfield. One of the ends was “Boarding House” Smithers.
LOL, classic...The W-formation...
Right!?
I got quite a hoot outta trying to visualize the "W" formation, with both ends facing the backfield...hilarious!
:~)))
Only in New York, right??