In the 1980s and early 90s, one of the few power programs in NCAA basketball was Georgetown. The Hoyas were usually loaded, year-after-year, under coach John Thompson.

Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, and Allen Iverson became superstars and eventual Hall of Famers in the pros. Dikembe Mutombo won the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year award 4 times and has his number 55 retired by 2 of the 6 franchises he played with.

So, it's natural that we tend to think of Georgetown University as a "basketball school," even though its success in the last quarter century has been spotty at best, terrible at worst. Several generations ago, however, Georgetown was a football school, coached by College Football Hall of Famer, Lou Little.

Coach Little was born Luigi Piccirilli in the Boston area in 1891. As a high schooler in 1910, as captain of the football team, he led Leominster High in central Massachusetts to its first undefeated season. Little was an All-American tackle at the University of Pennsylvania, served with distinction in World War I, played professionally for a few years after the war, and then started coaching in college.

Little's first coaching job was at Georgetown where he was the head coach for the "Blue and Gray" from 1924-1927 and the "Hoyas" in the 1928 and 1929 seasons.

Prior to Little's arrival in the nation's capital, athletics were arranged more like a club. The students ran the teams. Coaches were part-time. Student managers set schedules, balanced the books, and reported to the school's administration about the success or failure of the teams.

Not much had changed at Georgetown in over 4 decades of extracurriculars. With Little, it was different. He became the head coach of the gridiron squad and was hired as the athletic director—in charge of the 7 intercollegiate teams at Georgetown.

Georgetown played an independent football schedule in those days—no conference affiliation to speak of. The 1924 squad finished 4-4. This would be the only season that Little did not finish with an above .500 record at Georgetown.

Little started recruiting. He sought out players from the Midwest, particularly Chicago and Detroit. His talent level began to rival or exceed the traditional "Eastern" football powers.

After 1924, Georgetown won 32 of its next 38 games. Yet, the Hoyas still couldn't get fellow Catholic school, Notre Dame, on the schedule. Coach Knute Rockne was not interested in promoting rivalries with other Catholic schools for fear that the other programs would be elevated in stature, thus reducing, and perhaps eliminating, the Irish's grip on Catholic football fans.

Well, Rockne's strategy still pays off in South Bend today. Most American Catholics are fans of the Fightin' Irish without having any association with the school whatsoever.

Instead of booking Georgetown, Boston College, Holy Cross, Saint Louis U, or any other Catholic school, Rockne decided to begin intersectional series with Navy and Southern Cal instead, rivalries that exist to this day.

Some schools in the late-19tha and early part of the 20th century even shared head coaches. Since coaches weren't allowed to do any coaching from the sidelines during gameplay, they acted more like teachers of the game.

Pop Warner, for instance, simultaneously coached Georgia and Iowa State for 2 seasons and Iowa State and Cornell for another 2.

Coaches would sometimes teach during the week and move on to another squad that needed help. Mercenaries for hire to teach college boys the intricacies of playing pigskin.

During his time as a mercenary coach, Warner typically spent one half of the season at one school and finished the year at another.

But Little's brief experience in pro football showed him the value of a coaching staff, not just one all-knowing guy like Warner. Georgetown was one of the first college programs to utilize assistant coaches. Little et al. installed "game plans" and had success. With the success came pressure & scrutiny, and Little was now in demand as a coach. Could he bring to another school the level of success he brought to Georgetown?

In today's world of NIL ("name, image, and likeness") as money is sprayed out haphazardly to a broad swath of players yet egregiously imbalanced across the college sports landscape, it might be interesting to look at what was happening a century ago.

Athletic scholarships, as we know them today, were looked upon unfavorably by the public. It was common to give players scholarships or aid for school for any number of reasons, but who got what and how much was also left undisclosed by universities. At Georgetown, financial aid usually came in the form of work-study for the ballplayers who needed it.

The Carnegie Foundation issued a national report that “doxed” Georgetown and four other schools—eventual “Ivy League” members—for offering scholarships. Coach Little was unhappy being grouped with this unsavory band of WASP-y elites and their pay-for-play football programs.

"There is no such thing as an athletic scholarship at Georgetown, and there is no reason for classifying us in the group which subsidizes teams."

The claim from Carnegie was that Little requested finances from Georgetown president, Fr. Coleman Nevils, SJ, to support 100 men, "the number of men that we may have here next year on scholarship for athletics."

Ironically, it wasn't reputation that got in the way.  It was money. Seems like someone at Georgetown had been undercounting the gate at Griffith Stadium—the home of the Washington Senators and the field where the Hoyas played their home games—thus, Little's 10% share of the gate was a little light.

After the 1929 season ended, Coach Little's contract was up for renewal. The issue of the gate receipts had not been resolved. His alma mater, Penn, offered Little nearly double his Georgetown base salary—the astronomical sum of $15,000.

Further north, and well prior to their entrance into the Ivy League, Columbia tacked on $3k more in an offer to entice Little. Fr. Nevils, who had inherited Little's contract, had little room to negotiate and opted against pursuing the coach any further.

Little accepted the new job and went on to glory at Columbia. Though the glory was short-lived. From 1936 to 1956, Columbia only had 6 winning seasons.

Little coached the Lions for 27 seasons with a few great seasons mixed in, including the 1933 campaign where his squad upset the Stanford Indians in the Rose Bowl and finished 8-1. Cliff Montgomery, the Lions quarterback called "KF-79" in the huddle, a hidden-ball trick that led to Columbia's 7-0 upset over the boys from The Farm. The lone pockmark in Columbia's 1933 record was a 20-0 loss to eventual undefeated co-national champion, Princeton.

The Michigan Wolverines were selected as national champion in 1933 by most polls and selectors. The Princeton Tigers (number 7 according to the Associated Press) retroactively garnered the natty from Park Hill Davis in his last official historical poll in 1934 in Spalding's Foot Ball Guide.

For good measure, Columbia also considers itself the 1933 national champ by virtue of winning the Granddaddy of Them All … and going 8-1. As a historical note, this was the last season any member of the current Ivy League—which began play in 1956 in Little's final season at Morningside Heights—has participated in a postseason game.

And if we're being fair, the 1933 Boston College Eagles finished 8-1 as well, with the sole blemish on their record a 32-6 loss to the Fordham Rams at the Polo Grounds. The Rams featured a 5'8", 180-pound freshman tackle who, a few years later, playing guard, became known as one of the famed Seven Blocks of Granite and then went on to have perhaps the most iconic coaching career in history … Vince Lombardi.

Even though their campuses were mere miles apart, the Rams of Lombardi's era did not play Little's Columbia squad.

Fast forward to 1940 and a star recruit, Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, a French-Canadian halfback out of Lowell, Massachusetts spurned two Catholic schools—the more local Boston College and the Indiana university founded by brethren of his French heritage—to play for Coach Little at Columbia. The young player then broke his leg during his freshman season, battled with Little as a sophomore, was benched for doing so, and then dropped out of school and went on to become a literary pioneer of the Beat Generation.

Jack Kerouac parodied his former coach in the novel Maggie Cassidy, a fictionalized account of the halfback's early life.

More on Coach Little tomorrow, but first more on our coaching program. It’s not the gridiron, but we use the principles we learn from athletics and business to help folks get on or stay on the right track.

As always,

Brian

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