1905/6 Eddie Collins Pre Rookie Columbia Team Imperial Cabinet

[earlybball]

Hi Guys, just had this piece delivered and could not contain my excitement after doing a little research this morning. When I purchased it, the scans were fuzzy and I could not be sure Collins was featured until it arrived.

It is an imperial cabinet featuring the 1905/6 Columbia University football team featuring their stand-out starting quarterback Eddie Collins (top row, third from right) just before he embarked on his HOF baseball career. Given that there are not many early images of Collins known, I thought you guys might like to see young “Cocky” before his 25 years of service wore him down.

In addition to picturing baseballs all-time greatest 2nd baseman, the cabinet is interesting on another level. Columbia’s 1905/6 season also played a major part in football’s reform, helping make it the sport it is today.

In 1905, President Roosevelt, a keen football fan dating back to his time as a tough tackler for the 1880 Columbia team, called a meeting with college officials at the Whitehouse to try and curb unsportsmanlike behavior in football. The president had become increasingly concerned over the number of severe injuries and a spate of deaths attributed to the full blooded sport over the previous few years.

Roosevelt’s’ ultimatum was to either clean up the sport or ban it. In 1906 Columbia University was one of a handful who chose the latter and cancelled its football program making this the last image of a Columbia football team for some years to come.

It turns out in fact that football across the entire country came within 2 association votes of being eradicated (Yale lead the contingent in support of the continuation of football as a sport while Columbia lead the eradication campaign). Fortunately though, rather than being permanently banned, the reform movement won-out which ultimately lead to the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA.)

[novakjr]

Very nice...I'm kinda chuckling a little about the guy in the upper left corner though...Is that picture attached to the team photo?

[Baseball Rarities]

I knew that Collins played for Columbia, but I would have never been able to identify him in that photo.

[earlybball]

Yeah, it is attached to the cabinet photo. They guy must also have been a player and was probably away when the rest of the team were snapped. As an after thought, he was tagged on later. Either that or he was a disgruntled waterboy who felt he belonged!

[novakjr]

That's still an awesome photo...Attachment or not...I think the attachment's kinda cool, it would be neat to figure who it is. Guessing from the suit and his apparent age, I'm wondering if maybe he were the school president. Maybe it was his copy of the photo? It's a reasonable explanation for the attachment. Or it may have been attached to all photos. If so, how many remaining have the attachment? A lot of fun research to be had with that photo. Great find.

A little research probably shows why Columbia was one of the schools who cancelled the game, and why Yale wanted to lead the reform....Yale beat Columbia 53-0 in 1905.

[rdixon1208]

Very cool....congratulations.

[novakjr]

A little research also leads me to believe that the attached photo is definitely not the president of Columbia, since in every photo of Nicholas Murray Butler I could find he had a mustache.

[HRBAKER]

It sure was a short trip from semi-handsome to homely for Eddie I must say.

[oldjudge]

Interesting, argueably the greatest first baseman ever and the greatest second baseman ever both played football at Columbia.

[uffda51]

Great item. Congrats!

[baseballart]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

It sure was a short trip from semi-handsome to homely for Eddie I must say.

Jeff

My thoughts exactly. My recurring image of Eddie is from that Mossi-esque Exhibit card. However, the cabinet is a very cool photo.

[bcbgcbrcb]

I guess maybe I'm the only one that has any doubts, the facial attributes all seem to match up to Eddie (Eyebrows, nose, mouth, kind of the ears) but somehow I am not 100% sure that it is Collins. I also have a 1906 Columbia baseball team photo picturing Collins but the scan that I have is not clear enough to identify his facial features really well.

[prewarsports]

I agree with Phil. I have an original photo of Eddie Collins as a Football player for Columbia here at the house somewhere (came with the Baseball photo Phil has) and I am positive that is not him in your photo. Columbia was a major university but it was also the name of many towns in America. I think what you have is a City of Columbia (unknown state) City champions team from 1905. I will try and find my Eddie Collins Columbia Football photo this week to scan it.

[Jacklitsch]

The football has "City Champions 1906" written on it. Does that dispell the fact that it is Collins?

[prewarsports]

I am positive that while that IS a beautiful photo, it is not Columbia University and as such does not picture Eddie Collins. Yes teh City Champions would make it an amatuer team or a High School team from a city Called "Columbia", the University trophy balls almost always had scores from the key game on it or just "Champions 1905".

[novakjr]

I totally neglected the City Champs thing because I was distracted by the attached photo. I think I have to agree that this is probably a HS or YMCA team.

Also, upon further study. Collins played in September of 1906 for the A's under the name Sullivan in order to fool the people at Columbia and retain his amateur status...They didn't quite fall for it. He was ruled ineligible for all sports, but was allowed to continue coaching while he finished school. I'm not sure at what point they ruled him ineligible though, and I'm not sure if he coached football there...So even if this were Columbia University, he might not be in the 1906 photo. Also given the fact that this is a Championship photo, that would mean it was taken at the end of the season, at which point, if he were ruled ineligible probably wouldn't have been allowed by the school to be in the photo(of course unless he was also a coach).

If anyone has any more info about when exactly he was ruled ineligible, and what sports he coached, it would be great to have.

[4815162342]

How embarrassing.

[bmarlowe1]

Rhett is right as usual. If you just compare the angle that the right ear makes with the head of Collins (below left) to that seem in the photo of the young football player (below right) - it's not even close.

Also Collins has a much wider and deeper upper lip cupids bow.

[Al C.risafulli]

I have a cabinet photo of Collins from Columbia, circa 1905/06, and I have been desperately looking for a scan of it all day so that I could post it to this thread. The best one I could come up with is this weak one from my SGC registry:



Clearly Eddie Collins. And I was also trying to find a way to diplomatically and politely disagree that the football photo was Eddie, so I'm glad someone else discovered it.

So sorry that it didn't work out, I hate doing research into something and then hitting a dead end.

-Al

[novakjr]

I think I finally recognize who that is....

[Bicem]

Originally Posted by 4815162342

How embarrassing.

simple mistake anyone (other than Mark) could have made.

[earlybball]

Sorry I could not respond last night but I live in England so the time difference makes things difficult.

Apologies too for making things sound like absolute fact when I should be asking the knowledgeable board members for their opinions first (I was a bit excited).

That said, I still believe this to be of Columbia University and of Collins. I am more than happy to hear other opinions and enjoy discussing the pros and cons.

I did consider all the excellent points made already by the board and after further thought and research came to the following possibilities:

1) I did see the “City Champs” on the ball which had me thinking initially. Further research shows that Columbia was the NY city football champs for the 1905/1906 season.

They played a small series of games at the beginning of the season against Union College and Seaton Hall (although NJ competed in the NY circuit) and later defeated Cornell. Since they were less successful against their bigger out of state rivals they preferred to highlight what small successes were available.

Columbia’s 1905/06 Schedule and Results:

G Date Day School Opponent Pts Opp
1 Sep 30, 1905 Sat Columbia Union (NY) Win 23 0
2 Oct 4, 1905 Wed Columbia Seton Hall (NJ) Win 21 0
3 Oct 7, 1905 Sat Columbia Wesleyan (CT) T 0 0
4 Oct 14, 1905 Sat Columbia Williams W 11 5
5 Oct 21, 1905 Sat Columbia Amherst T 10 10
6 Oct 28, 1905 Sat Columbia Princeton L 0 12
7 Nov 4, 1905 Sat Columbia Yale L 0 53
8 Nov 18, 1905 Sat Columbia Cornell (NY) Win 12 6
9 Nov 25, 1905 Sat Columbia Pennsylvania L 0 23

2) Are they a high School or College Team? Well, I arrived very quickly at the latter.

A) First, they are just too old for high school students:

B) They look very professional in nature with equipment and pennant on display.

C) Most lower level high school team shots were done on a smaller cabinet size while the larger Ivy League colleges opted for the imperial cabinet size such the Columbia example. and most importantly

D) The cabinet was taken by the Betty Photographic Studio (photo attached) who were a contemporary of the Pach Bros. Both these studios were contracted at the time by the large Ivy League colleges to take team shots of their athletics programs. High school institutions rarely went to this much trouble or had the cash to contract of the preeminent studios.

3) Does he look like Collins?

A) Very few images of Collins are available from his college days. People’s features when they are younger are often smoother and not as hard and I believe the person in question displays all the facial attributes that Collins was known to have.

One of the best ways to match people’s faces is to look at the ears or so a forensics pal of mine told me. They are a bit like finger prints – everyone’s are slightly different. If you look at the inner ear, the size and the slant on both the Columbia cabinet and Al’s SGC photo, they are identical. This is just one of his facial similarities.

The only other photo (attached) I could compare it with during this period (Collins own copy of the 1905 Columbia Baseball Team) makes a compelling match.

B) If this is a photo of Columbia University’s football team, which I believe the above leads us to believe it is, then Collins should be on it.

Anyway, these are only my observations. What does everyone else think given the thoughts above?

[bcbgcbrcb]

Rhys indicated that he has a photo of the same Columbia football team, once he posts his, let's see if the uniforms match. That will still not prove that Collins is in the photo but at least we know if the correct team is being identified.

Also, from the 1905/06 game scores that were provided, that team went 4-3-2, I highly doubt that record would be good enough for city champs, not sure who the competition was though (not their game opponents but to be considered for city champs).

The photo of Collins added alongside is definitely him but not the player pictured in the team photo.


Here is a clip from an online baseball biography website:

After his junior year, Collins played briefly for the Philadelphia Athletics, using the name "Sullivan" to avoid losing his college eligibility. But, when he returned to school in the fall of 1906, he found that he had been ruled ineligible for playing as a semi-professional. Unable to play, he coached the Columbia baseball team during his senior year.

[earlybball]

Hi Phil, thanks for the reply. It will be interesting to see Rhys' scan which should put it to bed one way or another.

Until then I would like to make a few more observations.

On whether they were good enough to be NY's best football team, they were. All but one of Columbia's wins were against NY opposition (going 3-0 against their immediate rivals). Their losses were mainly against the big Ivy League teams like Yale, Princeton and Amherst (see the results schedule in my 2nd e-mail).

On his eligibility, Collins was banned from the 1906/07 season (Graduated in 1907 before returning to the A's). I believe the Columbia photo was taken at the end of the academic school year of 1905/06 (I.E. January 06).

[bcbgcbrcb]

I'm not sure where the split date of 1905/06 is coming from. The photo shows a 1906 date and your 1905 schedule provided includes all games from 1905, none in 1906. I believe that if the photo pictured the 1905 squad as you seem to think then the date on the ball would say 1905. I believe that this team was the 1906 squad, likely playing from September - November, 1906, when Collins was not eligible.

[barrysloate]

Hi Jason- hope you are well. I didn't want to be the only one to disagree, since you were getting congratulations from everyone. But my first reaction was that doesn't even look close to Eddie Collins, save the fact that the player in your picture has big ears. I'll have to go with the opinion that it is not him. And I did no research on the team, I simply made an observation.

[VintageBall]

Here's the same photo that Al has, only this one is trimmed and is dated 1908 on the reverse:

[bcbgcbrcb]

As Mark said, the lips are a dead giveaway, you cannot see one of Eddie's ears in the cabinet card due to the angle of his head so you cannot make a good determination based on comparing the ears to that photo.

[HTBB]

The attached photo clip is from Rick Huhn's wonderful book "Eddie Collins" (page 24) published by McFarland. Please note the caption. I am an avid Collins collector and, although that is a neat cabinet, I do not feel that is Collins in the original posted cabinet photo.

Mike
collins football.jpg

[vintagesportscollector]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

I'm not sure where the split date of 1905/06 is coming from. The photo shows a 1906 date and your 1905 schedule provided includes all games from 1905, none in 1906. I believe that if the photo pictured the 1905 squad as you seem to think then the date on the ball would say 1905. I believe that this team was the 1906 squad, likely playing from September - November, 1906, when Collins was not eligible.

As much as I'd like this to be the Columbia U team and Collins too, I'd have to agree with others that I don't think it is. The key point will be seeing if the uniforms match, but the point above about the year of the ball is the most compelling argument against. I am not sure either why a split date is even being used. The record is from 1905 and didn't split across two years - I can't see why there would be any reason the ball would say 1906 if it was for the 1905 seaon. I am afraid your are seeing what you want to see and fitting this data in the conclusion you would like, but it just doesn’t fit. Columbia didn't play football in 1906. "City Champions" also doesn't seem very logical since none of their opponents in 1905 were even in NYC. Maybe the picture from Rhys will show otherwise, but not much here yet to conclude this is Columbia U.