GEORGE C. ADAMS: WHO SAYS ADAMSES CAN’T BE GOOD ATHLETES?

GEORGE C. ADAMS – As part of Balladeer’s Blog’s seasonal posts headed into America’s 250th birthday I recently reviewed the 1970s miniseries The Adams Chronicles – Part One HERE and Part Two HERE. Those two blog posts were so popular I decided to do another Adams, but one who stands out not for nation-defining political accomplishments but for college football.

George Caspar Adams was born on April 24th, 1863. His father was John Quincy Adams the Second and his mother was Frances Crowninshield-Adams, as in the Crowninshield ancestors of the Washington Post‘s Ben Bradlee.

In 1882 George graduated from the Adams Academy, which was founded by America’s 2nd President John Adams. From there he entered Harvard University, graduating in 1886. Despite the high brow reputation of most Adamses, George made the Harvard Crimson football team, playing Halfback on Offense and Rushing End on Defense.

NOTE: For those unfamiliar with the history of American football, I’ll point out that until well into the 20th Century a football player had a position on Offense AND on Defense, since those aspects of the game were not yet separated. The term for this was “going BOTH ways”, which obviously meant something entirely different from what we think of today.

In 1883, George Adams’s first year on the team, the Harvard Crimson had an 8-2 record. Their two losses came at the Princeton Tigers on November 17th and in their end-of-season rivalry game against the Yale Bulldogs on November 29th. In 1883, the Harvard-Yale rivalry game (still called THE Game) was so huge on the American sports landscape that it was played on a neutral site – New York’s Polo Grounds.

Coming into this 1883 edition Yale led the series 4-1-2. Attendance at this gridiron clash was roughly 10,000. Yale won 23-2 under the old 1800s scoring system. (Don’t ask. Field Goals could count as more points than Touchdowns under certain circumstances and that’s just the start of the weirdness.)   

In 1884 the Crimson went 7-4, following which Harvard dropped football for a year. That was partly in disgust over the Crimson losing to Yale 51-0 on November 22nd. The main reason was Harvard’s ongoing feud with college football’s Powers That Be at the time, since different scoring systems were still being used by different colleges and Harvard hated playing by one set of rules for some games each year and another set of rules for others.

Though Harvard fielded no football team in 1885, George Adams helped lead the push to restore football and in 1886 they did, with Adams back at his old positions. The ’86 team went 12-2 (how many games a team played was also inconsistent in those days).

George dabbled in real estate after graduating but in 1890 Harvard University decided to get as serious about football as many other institutions were getting, so they hired Adams and another former player, George A. Stewart, as Head Coaches.

Adams and Stewart ushered in the era of no-nonsense football coaching for the Crimson. The team went 11-0 in the 1890 season and were named National Champions.

Harvard got the Yale monkey off their back, defeating the Bulldogs 12-6 on November 22nd before a crowd of 17,000 at Hampden Park. The Crimson defense under Adams and Stewart was so formidable that the only other team to score ANY points against them that season had been the Amherst College Lord Jeffs (now the Mammoths) back on October 11th. 

Adams was still coaching Harvard in 1891 as the Crimson went 13-1. Their lone loss came against – you guessed it – Yale, 10-0 on November 21st, again at neutral Hampden Park. This time attendance was 25,000.   

For the 1892 season, George Adams coached Harvard to a 10-1 record. One guess who beat them. The Crimson used a Flying Wedge formation against Yale but still lost to them 6-0. The Flying Wedge was considered so dangerous it was outlawed in subsequent seasons.

Adams left coaching, having accumulated a 34-2 record over 3 seasons. He continued investing in real estate and was a recreational yachtsman in the Boston area. George C. Adams died of tuberculosis in Quincy, MA on July 13th, 1900 at age 37.