Vic Gatto was the captain of the Harvard football team that famously “beat” Yale 29-29 (Yale can’t seem to avoid being on the “losing” end of ties) in 1968. In a battle of undefeated teams, Harvard rallied from a 22-0 deficit, scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie the Bulldogs. Gatto scored the final touchdown of that game, and finished his career as the Crimson’s all-time leading rusher and scorer.
He was head football coach for four seasons at Middlesex School in Concord, Mass., and in 1973 Bates surprised a lot of people, including Gatto, by hiring him to lead the football program at just 25 years of age.
“Even in those days, a high school coach getting that kind of elevation (to the college ranks) just didn’t happen,” Gatto recalled in a Bates Bobcast interview. “But I had a lot of people on my side, particularly Carmen Cozza — weirdly, the head football coach at Yale. We had been rivals for four years, but Carm was the one who called me and said he was going to recommend me for the job at Bates.”
Gatto beat out more than 80 candidates for the job, and he credits a scheduling snafu during the interview process for putting him over the top.
“Instead of going to lunch with the hiring committee, which was what I was supposed to do, I got 'stuck' having lunch with Hedley Reynolds, who was the president,” Gatto recalled. “And Hedley and I really hit it off. He was the one who ultimately made the decision to bring me to Bates.”
He became the youngest head coach in college football, and over the course of five seasons Gatto slowly but surely got the Bobcats going in the right direction.
Highlights of his tenure included a 4–4 record in 1974, as Bates captured their first CBB Series title in seven years and the defense held opponents to just 84 rushing yards per game.
Then, during an otherwise down year in 1975, the Bobcats pulled off one of their greatest victories, upsetting C.W. Post, now LIU Post, 25–22 at Garcelon Field in “what may have been the finest football game in Bates College history,” according to the Student’s excited (some might say hyperbolic) lede that compared the win to Don Larson's World Series perfect game, Joe Namath in the 1969 Super Bowl, and Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points.
C.W. Post entered the game undefeated at 5–0 and ranked second in the Lambert Bowl voting for the best Division III team in the East. They were a certified powerhouse, and The Boston Globe declared that “the Maine outfit has gone out of its class.”
On top of that, it was not exactly a soft landing for Bates sophomore Steve Olsen ’78, making his first career start at quarterback. Echoing campus sentiment, the Student said that Olsen “had been offered up as a human sacrifice.”
But Olsen’s performance was stellar. “Not only did Olsen pass for two touchdowns and score one himself, he also kept his cool and brought victory to his team which had trailed 14-0 early in the second quarter,” reported the Student.
Gatto ended his five-year tenure at Bates in 1977 on a high note, as the Bobcats posted their first winning season since the Jim Murphy era, going 4–3–1.
Gatto had recruited a pair of quarterbacks who made a big difference for the Bobcats in the ensuing seasons. Hugo Colasante '78 and Chuck Laurie ’79 were separated by a year, but inseparable on the football field.
“We were very close and worked out together a lot, always rooting each other on,” Colasante said in a Bates Bobcast interview. “We still keep in touch. He was a heck of a quarterback, very strong arm, good athlete. So it was fun playing with him.”
Colasante’s college choices came down to the Black Bears of Maine or the Bobcats.
“A group of us from Boston College High School had gone up to visit UMaine on a recruiting trip for a couple of days,” Colasante recalled. “It was a fun time. On the way back, I remember our coach called from high school. He said, ‘Why don't you stop by Bates? Coach Gatto would like to talk to you.’”
Colasante also spoke to Dean of Admissions Milt Lindholm ’35 and spent a few days on the Bates campus. He truly felt like he belonged, but still didn’t know which school he wanted to attend.
“I was going back and forth. Bates. Maine. Bates. Maine. When I get back to high school, my coach pulls me aside and goes, ‘You'd be an idiot not to go to Bates,’” recalls Colasante. “I go, ‘Well, I guess I'm going to Bates.’”
The chance to play right away at quarterback was appealing as well. Olsen’s performance against C.W. Post in 1975 temporarily made Colasante the second-string QB, as Gatto mixed and matched on offense.
But by 1977, Colasante was once again the starter, and his statistics that season put him in the same breath as “Jim Murphy” in the annals of Bates football history.
During his outstanding senior year, Colasante set Bates records with 1,636 passing yards and an interception percentage of just 3.1 percent. He still ranks third in both categories, and his single-season passing yardage record stood for 44 years.
Like Murphy a decade earlier, Colasante had a pair of excellent pass catchers he could go to with confidence. Tom Burhoe ’78 and the aforementioned Olsen, who was a team captain had switched to wide receiver by that point. They made for a dynamic duo, combining for more than 1,000 yards receiving.
A giant 6-foot-6 tight end, Burhoe was a particularly inviting target. After missing most of his junior year due to injury, his play in 1977 caught the attention of the New England Patriots, who signed him as a free agent after graduation.
The 1977 Bobcats came very close to having a truly historic season. Colasante ranked sixth in NCAA Division III in passing and eighth in total offense. Narrow losses to Trinity early on and Bowdoin later in the year forced them to settle for simply a winning record.
“Unfortunately I remember the losses more than the wins,” Colasante says. “I still have nightmares over the Bowdoin game. We outgained them, time of possession, total yards. Just a couple of mistakes really buried us. That was the game that really hurt.”
Gatto’s coaching success caught the attention of a rival to the south.
Under Gatto, Bates had gone 3–1 against the Tufts University Jumbos, including a 6–0 win in 1973 that marked the first time the Bobcats had beaten Tufts on the gridiron in their last 12 tries. The Bobcats beat the Jumbos once again in the 1977 season finale, and Tufts responded by hiring Gatto away from Bates less than a month before the beginning of the 1978 season.
For Gatto, it was a chance to return to his home state. For Bates, it meant they had very little time to find their next head coach. Luckily, an alum who fit the bill was already on staff.
This is the fourth of a five-part series about the 150-year history of Bates football. A new article will be published the week of every home football game this fall.