Bates football hit rock bottom in 1928. Not only did the Bobcats finish 0–7, they didn’t score a point all season. “It is useless to attempt to offer any alibis,” the Mirror lamented. “The season was the culmination of several disastrous years.” 

But in 1929, Bates hired David Morey to “repair the grid cart,” in the words of the Lewiston Evening Journal, who praised the new Bates coach as possessing the “faculty of revealing himself to his men. He is neither too distant nor too intimate.”

Morey’s name might be somewhat forgotten today, but during his time he was considered one of the finest coaches in America, having led the football programs at both Middlebury and Auburn. Morey played football and baseball at Dartmouth, graduating in 1913. In fact, he scored two touchdowns against Bates as an All-America halfback for the Dartmouth team that beat the Garnet 26–0 in 1912.

The talented two-sport athlete wasn’t exactly Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, but Morey did make a cameo in Major League Baseball in 1913 with the Philadelphia Athletics, pitching four innings and giving up two runs.

In 1929, his first season at Bates, Morey was dubbed “The Wonder Coach” by the local press, as he led the Bobcats to a .500 record overall and their first state championship since 1906. On top of that, it was the first time Bates had beaten Bowdoin, Colby, and the University of Maine in the same season since the undefeated 1898 campaign. (They had tied Maine in 1906.)

In those days, with Maine newspapers giving outsized attention to in-state college sports rivalries, the Maine State Series was the prize to win — and bringing the title back to Lewiston after 23 years was a big deal.

After an exciting 7–6 win for Bates over Colby in Waterville on Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) to clinch the 1929 state championship, the Portland Press Herald wrote: “Going back into early September, there appeared to be an appalling shortage of football material. There were practically no veterans, and the ranks had been tremendously weakened by the keen axe of scholarship committees. It all looked like a hopeless task and everyone conceded that Morey or no Morey, Bates was hopelessly relegated to her position in the football cellar.”

Morey’s quick turnaround of the football program earned him the adulation of the student body. 

A now-thrilled Mirror dedicated the 1930 Athletics section to Morey, proclaiming: “Ability ably demonstrated, energy unlimited, and a personality profound and impressive, Dave Morey brought with him to Bates; his coming and his presence here has marked a recreation of the old Bates spirit in all its fullness, typically Bates.”

Morey’s Bobcats successfully defended their State Series title in 1930, going 5–2 overall and shutting out Maine, Bowdoin, and Colby to conclude the season with a flourish. 

On the field, Ralph “Red” Long ’32 was the biggest star of the 1929 and 1930 state championship teams. The guard was a passionate player who became the first Bobcat to be recognized by a national publication when he earned honorable mention All-America honors in 1930 from the Associated Press. 

As the Mirror put it: “It was the inspired play of Captain “Red” Long that fanned the smoldering fire of combat in his teammates into an irresistible flame of victorious spirit.” 

Off the field, Long was a student activist who ran into trouble when he and others organized a socialist street meeting in downtown Bath on a Saturday night in May 1931. The apparent transgression, in the college’s eyes, wasn’t Long’s left-leaning political beliefs but that he and his fellow Bates students, including two women, “overstayed his leave” from campus.

As punishment, the college declared him ineligible to play his senior season in fall 1931. Nevertheless, Morey and the Bobcats once again finished 5–2. A third straight state title proved to be just out of reach due to a 9–6 loss to Maine, but it marked the first time Bates football had produced back-to-back winning seasons since 1905 and 1906. And Long graduated from Bates on good terms with the college, even getting married at President Clifton Daggett Gray’s house. 

With three straight strong campaigns under their belt, Morey and the Bobcats were about to pull off their biggest trick yet. 

Bates ‘Defeats’ Yale 0–0 in 1932

Bates football first played an Ivy League school in 1895 when they lost 38–0 at Dartmouth. Actually beating an Ivy League team was basically unthinkable. In the early days of college football, the Ivy League, not the SEC, reigned supreme. It was considered a massive accomplishment to even score one touchdown, which Bates did in 1901 when they fell 16–6 to Harvard. Yes, the same Harvard that starred Oliver Cutts and went 12–0, being named the national champion that year by multiple publications.

Bates was one of just three teams to score on the 1901 Crimson, when Harry Blake, Class of 1902, returned a fumble 25 yards for a touchdown. 

The Student rejoiced: “It is beyond words to express the joy which was felt when the news of the Harvard game reached Lewiston. All were confident that Bates would make a good showing, but that she should cross Harvard's goal line, that was not even thought of. But the unexpected happened and October 5th, 1901, will ever go down in the annals of Bates foot-ball as a red-letter day.”

Thirty-one years later, Bates traveled to New Haven, Conn., to take on Yale. 

With the exception of the war year of 1918, Yale had won their season-opener every year since starting the sport in 1872, for a spotless record of 59-0-0. In 1932, Bates came to town for the first time in a decade, surely yet another sacrificial lamb to kick off the season. The previous five times Bates and Yale had squared off on the gridiron, the Garnet had fallen by a combined score of 175–0. 

The proof that a small New England college could hang with an Ivy League power did, in fact, already exist: Morey was Middlebury’s head coach in 1923 when the “Black Panthers,” as Middlebury was then known,“defeated” national powerhouse Harvard, 6–6, before 25,000 fans in Harvard Stadium. Because of that game in 1923, and a close 16-6 loss to Harvard the next year, the Boston press called Morey “Middlebury’s Miracle Mentor,” as recalled by Karl Lindholm.

History has a way of repeating itself, as it did in New Haven in 1932. In as thrilling of a 0–0 game one can imagine, each team made goal-line stands to barely stave off the other from scoring. 

According to the Student: “In the last quarter, the Yale coach in desperation, sent into the fray his lightning-fast pony backfield which succeeded in getting the ball to the Bates 2-yard line through a series of penalties and some brilliant rushing. This thrust, the only one of the game on the part of Yale, was hurled back by the wearied Bates warriors so fiercely that in the last three plays of the game their opponents lost 10 yards.” 

Upon witnessing the stunning tie between Bates and Yale, the Boston Traveler wrote: “Football fans throughout the East were astounded by the result of the game and well they might be for on paper (where football games are never played), Bates had as much chance of beating or tying the Elis as your correspondent has of swimming the Pacific.” 

While he wasn’t a starter on the 1932 Bobcats, a young Milton L. Lindholm ’35, who would go on to become a Bates legend as dean of admissions, played in the game. 

“We arrived in New Haven on Friday morning by Pullman coach,” Lindholm recalled. “Our coach, Dave Morey, was afraid that when we walked into the Yale Bowl on Saturday, it would be an awesome occasion — the Yale Bowl could seat 80,000 people — so after our workout he suggested we go sit in the stands for 15 minutes to get used to it.

“I was next to a substitute fullback, John Dillon. He had this strange expression on his face. Then I heard him say, in sort of a stage whisper, ‘God, there’s nothing like this in Machias.’ That was funny, but he was sincere. You could have put the whole population of Machias into the Yale Bowl 20 times.”

Lindholm would later go on to captain the 1934 team before serving as admissions dean for 32 years. Lindholm and Morey became close friends, staying in touch until the latter died in 1986 at the age of 96.

Despite the tie with Yale, games against Ivy League and other larger schools were becoming a demoralizing grind. After all, the games were always on the road, no Ivy League team ever played Bates in Lewiston. And even though the Bobcats got a nice paycheck to play larger schools, the results were usually not very pretty. 

One Bates fan — a future U.S. senator and secretary of state — was particularly displeased after Bates lost 79–0 to national powerhouse Holy Cross to conclude the 1935 season.

“We do not ask for a consistent winner made up of heavily subsidized athletes,” wrote Edmund Muskie ’36 in a letter to the Student. “We recognize and appreciate the limitations of our financial position. We merely ask — no more than sportsmanship demands — a fighting chance for a fighting team. Surely, no one can ask for less. Defeat under such circumstances can be glorious; but a slaughter such as last Saturday's debacle can be nothing more than pitiful.”

The 1935 schedule was especially punishing, with Morey’s men only getting two home games and being forced to play New York University in Yankee Stadium (during a rare fall that the Bronx Bombers were not playing in the World Series), Dartmouth, and the aforementioned Holy Cross. The Bates administration listened to the protests, and Bates dropped NYU from their schedule in 1936, never to play them again. Holy Cross soon followed, as the Bobcats focused on schools closer to their own size. 

All things considered, the Bobcats’ 3–4–1 record in 1935 was pretty good. Stars like Maine Sports Hall of Famer Bernard "Barney" Marcus ’37 kept the Bobcats going strong, although further state championships eluded them. 

Marcus earned honorable mention All-America honors from Collier’s in his senior year and will forever be listed in the Bates record books for the longest interception return in team history, a remarkable return that started in the University of Maine end zone in 1936 and was estimated at 102 yards. 

In an era when professional football had less allure than it does today, Marcus turned down contract offers to play for the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants in favor of Harvard Dental School. In World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy, providing dentistry aboard ships in the Aleutian Islands, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. After the war, he settled in Auburn and maintained a dental practice. He welcomed Bates football players into his home for meals, entertaining them with stories of his days on the gridiron. 

Raymond ‘Ducky’ Pond

By the 1940s, the Bobcats no longer regularly played Ivy League opponents, and David Morey had stepped down as head coach. After the retirement of athletic director Oliver Cutts in 1938, the Bobcats hired popular alumnus Ernest “Monte” Moore, Class of 1915, as the school’s new athletic director. Morey stuck around for one more year before stepping down in June 1939. 

At the time, there was newspaper speculation that Morey resigned due to not getting tapped as Cutts’ successor. But Bates never commented on the matter, and Morey simply wrote that “in view of the fact the Department of Physical Education for Men is undergoing reorganization and as there does not appear to be a suitable place for me in this particular picture, I am regretfully presenting herewith my resignation.” 

Wendell Mansfield took over as head coach of football for two seasons before departing Bates to run the program at his alma mater, Springfield College. So in 1941, the Bobcats went back to the Ivy League talent pool and hired Raymond “Ducky” Pond. 

Pond had made his name at Yale, both as an All-American halfback in the 1920s and as the program’s head coach from 1934 to 1940, where he coached two Heisman Trophy winners. 

As a player, he earned the nickname “Ducky” during a standout game against Harvard in the pouring rain, when he kept kicking the ball deep into Crimson territory while also returning a fumble for a touchdown. 

As a coach, his 1934 Yale team made history when they stunned Princeton in a game where Yale did not use a single substitute player. All 11 of “Yale’s Ironmen” played the full 60 minutes, a feat never equaled thereafter. Pond also mentored and became good friends with a future U.S. president, Gerald R. Ford, then a young assistant coach at Yale.

At Bates, Pond was “a player’s coach, like an older brother, you called him by his first name,” recalled Ralph Perry ’51 in an oral history interview. “He was a very good defensive coach; the schemes he drew up made it difficult for the opponents to run their offense effectively.” 

Pond had a promising first season with the Bobcats, defeating both Maine and Bowdoin in the State Series, only to lose a 14–7 heartbreaker to Colby.

The Mirror was pleased nonetheless, writing that Pond and his assistant coach, former Yale Ironman Jimmy DeAngelis, “are to be commended for the superior job they did this year in coaching the Bates gridmen. It was largely through their efforts that there was instilled in the team and the student body a fighting spirit and a desire to win that has not been present in the past few seasons.” 

Little did Pond know at the time, but five years would pass until he coached another Bates team. With America entering World War II, Pond was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy’s physical fitness program in Chapel Hill, N.C. In August 1942, his assistant Wade Marlette took over for one season and led Bates to a 3–3 record.

In 1943, 1944, and 1945, Bates did not officially field a football team for the first time since 1918. Although, the “Bates Marriners” did play some games as Bates welcomed the U.S. Navy to campus, in the form of an officer-training program known as V-12. 

In 1946, Pond returned to Bates, and the Bobcats had their greatest season since the invention of the forward pass. 

This is the second 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.