Blue White Illustrated

PUTTING ON A CLINIC With Engle looking on, Paterno oversees a demonstration during the 1952 Coaches��� Clinic Scrimmage. Photo courtesy of Penn State Athletic Communications edition of The Daily Collegian revealed: ���Penn State Gridders Meet Secret Foe Away Today.��� The game was at the opponent���s home field and closed to the public, but Engle had declined to reveal any more information. ���Both teams agreed to the secret session,��� the story read, ���in order to keep opposing scouts from seeing the two teams play.��� ���Nittany Gridders Fail To Impress At Navy,��� was the headline in the April 17 edition of the Collegian. They didn���t keep score, but Engle told the paper, ���The results were pretty discouraging ��� especially after we found out that Villanova [the Lions��� opponent at Allentown Oct. 6] defeated Navy just last week.��� However, there was an extenuating circumstance. The scrimmage marked the end of Navy���s six-week spring practice, and the Nittany Lions were the third team the Middies had scrimmaged. Two weeks later, there was a different outcome in an open scrimmage at Beaver Field on Saturday, April 28, against Bucknell watched by 200 spectators. Again, no score was kept, but the Collegian���s Ernie Moore reported that the Lions, at times, ���were very impressive on both the offense and defense.��� The fact that the Bucknell scrimmage had spectators was not surprising. Again, it might be unbelievable today, but Penn State���s football practices were almost always open, including scrimmages. In 1949, 2,000 fans watched a scrimmage against Duquesne on a cold, windy Saturday afternoon in midApril, and the following Tuesday after- noon, a few hundred were there for a Bucknell scrimmage. In 1951, the intrasquad game scheduled for Memorial Field in downtown State College had already been set before the scrimmage against Bucknell. The reason the game was at Memorial Field was because new grass had just been planted on Beaver Field. From the beginning, it was referred to as the Blue-White Game by the only two newspapers that covered the game, the Centre Daily Times and The Daily Collegian. In an attempt to add flavor to the game and make it seem more important than it was, the Collegian���s sports staff proposed that a water bucket be presented to the captain of the winning team on the field after the game. For next four years, the newspaper referred to the game officially as the Bucket Bowl, although the Centre Daily Times made no such reference until the second game in 1952 and then never again. ���The Lion gridders have been split into two squads, with one wearing blue jerseys and the other white,��� wrote the sports editor of the Centre Daily Times, Ed Watson. ���This is the reason for the fray being called the Blue-White Game, and it will probably become an annual affair after this.��� A Daily Collegian editorial on game day, entitled ���Blue-White Game Worthy of Support,��� tried to push student attendance: ���The game will be the first of what it is hoped will be an annual series of Blue-White clashes... Student, alumni, and town interest in today���s game will determine whether a BlueWhite clash is to become a permanent feature of the Penn State picture... The cause the game supports is a good one. It deserves student backing.��� The ���cause��� was the Penn State scholarship fund, and the Alumni Association was hoping for a good crowd. ���Blues Rate Tops For Bowl Game,��� read The Daily Collegian���s three-column headline at the top of the front page. ���Head coach Rip Engle yesterday selected the Blues as his choice to win the BlueWhite intrasquad game and capture the ���old water bucket,��� ��� the newspaper reported. ���Next year���s gridiron captains, Art Betts and Len Shephard, will captain

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