Jul 12, 2013 4 min read

Homecoming at college campuses typically coincides with an autumnal palette of red, orange and yellow foliage, the wafting scent of a crackling bonfire and the rah-rahs of crowds congregating at a sporting event.

But on Friday, with the leaves still green and the summer air fresh, the cheers from a small gathering were directed at a Columbus, Ohio, resident who donated to his grandfather’s old school a treasure trove of ephemera from Washington & Jefferson College’s glory days as a football powerhouse.

W&J’s most famous contemporary football connection may be as the alma mater of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, but in the early history of the game, the Presidents played the likes of Harvard, Yale and, most famously, the University of California Golden Bears at the 1922 Tournament of Roses game in Pasadena.

The Jan. 2 contest was the only scoreless Rose Bowl game, the first one in that venue to end in a tie, and the first time a team at the Rose Bowl was quarterbacked by a black player, Charles “Pruner” West of W&J. Each 11-man team, both undefeated entering the contest, played the entire game without substitutions.

Neal O’Brien, his wife, Maureen, and their son, Connor, on their way to the 13-year-old’s lacrosse tournament in Hershey, stopped by the U. Grant Miller Library to deliver a scrapbook of programs, photos and newspaper clippings related to their ancestor’s storied football career.

Neal O’Brien is the grandson of Alfred J. Crook, the center for the Presidents.

Enrollment at the time was just 450, so W&J is the smallest school ever to play in the Rose Bowl.

O’Brien, 49, never knew his grandfather, who died in 1958 at age 60.

“We’re glad to bring this over here,” he said. “I think this is the right place for it.”

O’Brien’s family doesn’t know who actually compiled the scrapbook, but assume Crook mailed the clippings home along with programs and photos.

Alexis Rittenberger, director of library services at W&J, commented it’s always been said that “W&J won the game because we were the only team to have crossed the (goal) line. W&J scored a touchdown, but it was called back due to a penalty.” A Jayman, Russell Stein, was the game’s most valuable player.

Crook, who was from Detroit, Mich., was graduated from W&J in 1924. He coached football at The Linsly School in Wheeling, W.Va., and played professional football for the Detroit Panthers in the 1925 and 1926 seasons, opposing on the gridiron George Halas, who played for the Chicago Bears before he owned the team.

Football was not only bone-crunching. For Crook, it was literally back-breaking, and he became an accountant at Wheeling Steel. The family recalls that Crook had an elevator in his home, probably because he had trouble climbing stairs.

Rittenberger was more than happy to receive the collection, as shown by her enthusiastic gratitude, marveling at Crook’s endurance.

“Alumni want to know about the history of the Rose Bowl,” said Anna Mae Moore, college librarian, and W&J doesn’t have an extensive archive of that event.

Fragments of the scrapbook and newspaper clippings flaked off as O’Brien turned the pages and sometimes choked up as he talked, revealing both the fragility of the 90-year old news and its emotional significance. Banner headlines were examples of the colorful story that was W&J football, with a writer noting that a player “doffed his moleskin (helmet).”

A famous quote from the 1922 Rose Bowl has a sportswriter commenting that he never heard of Washington & Jefferson except as “dead presidents.”

Appropriately, looking down on Crook’s collection were the busts of those two founding fathers along with Benjamin Franklin, who, while not a president, was the benefactor of the college’s eponymous literary society.

As any newspaper writer will tell you, sportswriting is literature, too.