Territorial Cup Centennial Review: Tempe Normals struggled through early years
College football was a vastly different landscape at the turn of the 20th Century than it is today. No super conferences, no NIL contracts, even different scoring rules.
12 years after its founding, Tempe Normal School fielded their first varsity football team in 1897 under the leadership of Frederick M. "Cap" Irish. Two years later, the Normals played their first multi-game season, playing games against Phoenix Indian School and Phoenix Union High School, winning both games by 6-0 scores before capping off the season Thanksgiving weekend against the University of Arizona, playing in their first varsity season under head coach Stuart Forbes.
Playing in front of approximately 300 patrons at Carrillo Gardens Field, 2.5 miles from where Arizona Stadium currently stands, Arizona Varsity football hosted the Tempe Normal Varsity team on November 30th, 1899. The teams played scoreless football for the first half until Charles Haigler scored the first points of the rivalry to give the Normals a 5-0 lead (touchdowns at the time were only worth 5 points).
Walter Shute doubled the lead, and the Normals converted the point after touchdown to make the lead 11-0. Arizona Varsity avoided the shutout in the inaugural matchup, recording a safety on a tackle of Jack Stelzriede in the end zone on a kick return for a safety. The final score remained 11-2, completing the 3-0 season for the Normals and securing the 1899 Arizona Football League championship.
The matchup would not be a regular fixture, only played 9 other times intermittently through 1930. Tempe Normal (later Tempe State Teachers College in 1925 and Arizona State Teachers College in 1929) did not field teams from 1907-1913 and 1920-1921, in addition to the two year period of 1917-1918 due to World War I, while Arizona did not have teams in 1906, 1907, or 1918. The occasions where the teams did meet were very one-sided in this era.
In those 9 meetings, the Wildcats (as they became known starting in the 1915 season) outscored the Normals (known interchangeably as the Owls until 1921 before adopting the Bulldogs nickname in 1922) by a score of 231-3, with the only points coming on a drop kick field goal by Johnny Riggs in the 1925 meeting. Two factors can be attributed to the early dominance by Arizona; first being that the first 10 games were all held in Tucson, and second that the player pool for Arizona was much stronger due to the fact that Arizona State was still primarily a teacher's college, and would not gain university status for another few decades (more on that later in this series).
The 1899 win produced a legacy that carried through the early era of Arizona State football. After the opening of Goodwin Stadium 1936 as the third home of the then-Bulldogs football team, a men's dormitory would be added to the east side grandstand, named Haigler Hall in honor of Charles Haigler for his 7 years as a member of the Tempe Normal football team. Haigler would later be honored as a member of the 1978 Sun Devil Hall of Fame class.
Join us next week for the next installment in Territorial Cup history, covering games from 1931 through 1946.
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