Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/420483
headed by Howard L. 'Pete' Stuart '22 and Robert Y. Edwards. 'The Monday Morning Quarterbacks' evolved informally for a number of years but organized o:cially in 1941 and met regularly at Wednesday luncheons." The fact that the 1941 varsity and fresh- man teams played a role in transforming the Monday Morning Quarterbacks into a formal organization is historically in- triguing. A;er losing two of its 8rst three games, the '41 Lion varsity team won six in a row, including a 31-7 pounding of bitter rival Pitt and a 19-12 victory over favored South Carolina. The seven victories were the most for Higgins since becoming head coach. There were only four post- season games at the time, and although the Orange and Cotton bowls showed some interest, nothing materialized. As good as the varsity was, the freshman team could hold its own in scrimmages. It is considered the greatest freshman team in Penn State history and included future All-America guard Steve Suhey, end-running back Je9 Durkota and line- man Leo Nobile. Those players would form the foundation of the Lions' best postwar teams, including the outstanding undefeated Cotton Bowl team of 1947. Wednesday, Dec. 17, 1941, may be the day the State College Quarterback Club was born. That day, an article on page 3 of The Daily Collegian referred to "a special meet- ing of the Monday Morning Quarterbacks Club at 11:30 a.m." The reference was buried in the third paragraph of the story about the annual football banquet later that day at 5:45 p.m. at the Nittany Lion Inn. Dick Harlow, then the head coach at Harvard but a standout Penn State lineman in 1910-11, an assistant coach from 1912- 14 and the Lions' head coach from 1915- 1917, was the featured speaker at the ban- quet. "Previous to addressing the 1941 Gridiron Lions," the student newspaper reported, "Harlow will speak at a special meeting of the Monday Morning Quar- terbacks Club at 11:30 a.m." There was no follow-up in the Collegian about that 11:30 meeting, although there was coverage of the banquet that indicated the athletic department paid for the a9air. Furthermore, this writer could not 8nd any other mention in the newspaper's dig- ital archives of either the Monday Morning Quarterbacks Club or its successor. The game 8lm format that began with Higgins lasted until the mid- to late 1970s, but none of the current members remem- ber when the game 8lms stopped. In his book, Bergstein aptly described what went on with the game 8lm every Wednesday at lunch, starting with Higgins: "It was a really interesting way to watch the [game] 8lm if you were a serious foot- ball fan. The coach would stop the projector many times and ask the audience to watch certain things during the upcoming plays, things all of us probably had missed if we watched the game live. He would point out a certain well-executed block or would note when a player totally missed an as- signment and what happened as a result." Higgins also would frequently stop the projector and run it backward and forward FILM STUDY In the early days of the Quarterback Club, Higgins would show film to educate members about the game. Photo courtesy of the Paterno- Pattee Library Archives