Detail of a group shot of the 1940 Cornell Big Red football team

How a 1940 Football Game Became an Icon of Good Sportsmanship

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After winning due to a referee’s error, Cornell forfeited its dramatic ‘fifth down’ victory against Dartmouth—and made national news

By Joe Wilensky

As Bob Kane ’34, BS ’36, a notable chronicler of Big Red sports history, wrote years after the fact: “No victory or bundles of victories have or will ever bring the glory this loss with honor has.”

He was memorializing the outcome of a 1940 Ivy football game that lives in legend more than eight decades later—not so much because of what happened on the field as off it.

In what would come to be known as the “Fifth Down” game, the Big Red relinquished what might have been a key victory, simply because it was the right thing to do.

The date was November 16. The Big Red was ranked second in the country; with an unbroken 18-game winning streak extending from the previous season, the team entertained real hopes of a championship.

The away game at Dartmouth (then known as the Indians, now the Big Green) unfolded on a sloppy, frostbitten Saturday. Until the final quarter, it was scoreless.

Then a field goal by the home team put the score at 3-0.

But with just 45 seconds on the clock, the Big Red completed a deep pass to halfback Bill Murphy ’41, giving the visiting team a first down at the six-yard line.

Big Red football coach Carl Snavely (left) with team captain Walt Matuszak ‘41, DVM ’43
Rare and Manuscript Collections
Coach Carl Snavely (left) and team captain Walt Matuszak ’41, DVM ’43, during the 1940 season.

The next several plays took Cornell to the one-yard line. After referee W.H. “Red” Friesell Jr. called a penalty on the Big Red, he set the ball back to about the six-yard line for the fourth down with 10 seconds remaining.

A failed pass attempt into the end zone prompted Dartmouth fans to erupt in celebration—but after conferring with another ref, Friesell brought the ball back to the six-yard line and signaled that it was again Cornell’s ball.

Friesell may have thought that one or more players had been offsides, which would have required that down to be replayed—or perhaps he simply lost track of which down it was.

Three images that originally appeared in the 1914 Dartmouth yearbook show several of the plays during the last seconds of the famed "Fifth Down" game1941 Dartmouth yearbook
Images from the film of the game’s final minute show (from left) a Cornell first-down three-yard run; proof that no player was offside during the fourth down; and the Big Red's fifth-down pass that resulted in a touchdown.

Either way, with a mere three seconds on the clock, the Big Red ran the same play—and this time, Murphy caught the ball in the end zone.

Cornell got the extra point immediately after the touchdown, winning 7-3 and leaving home-team fans dejected and confused.

The consensus in the press box was that an improper fifth down had occurred. But at that time, the scoreboard was the final authority—and of course, there were no instant replays.

The consensus in the press box was that an improper fifth down had occurred. But at that time, the scoreboard was the final authority—and of course, there were no instant replays.

On the train back to Ithaca, the Big Red players debated the outcome.

They were well aware that their unbeaten streak would be over—and their national title hopes dimmed—if Cornell’s victory were overturned.

Later that day, a joint statement was issued by then-President Edmund Ezra Day and athletic director Jim Lynah 1905.

“If the officials in charge of today’s Dartmouth-Cornell game rule after investigation that … the winning touchdown was scored on an illegal fifth down,” they wrote, “the score of the game … will be recorded as Dartmouth 3, Cornell 0.”

(As it happens, both men had earned their undergrad degrees in 1905: Lynah from Cornell—and Day from Dartmouth.)

Sporting news of the era. (Courtesy of Dartmouth Libraries)

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After reviewing the game footage—which back then entailed waiting for it to be developed—Friesell sent a telegram to the intercollegiate football association commissioner.

“I am now convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt,” he stated, “that I was in error in allowing Cornell possession of the ball for the play on which they scored.”

But, as Friesell acknowledged, he had no power to correct the error: his jurisdiction had ended with the game.

I am now convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in error in allowing Cornell possession of the ball for the play on which they scored.

Referee W.H. “Red” Friesell Jr., via telegram

The commissioner announced that his organization also lacked the authority to change the score, which had already been officially recorded.

It was, essentially, up to Cornell to retain the victory—or give it away.

That same morning, Coach Carl Snavely and Kane (then assistant director of athletics) viewed the game footage.

“And we looked—and we looked—and we looked,” Kane recalled in Good Sports, his 1992 history of Big Red athletics.

One of the whistles that referee W.H. “Red” Friesell Jr. used in the 1940s is now in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution
Edwin A. Rowlands / Smithsonian Institution
A referee whistle used by Friesell in the 1940s now resides at the Smithsonian.

“After running the film back and forth many times [Snavely] turned off the projector, removed his glasses, and quietly said, ‘No question, it was a fifth down.’”

A telegram was immediately dispatched to Hanover: “Cornell relinquishes claim to the victory and extends congratulations to Dartmouth.”

That concession turned what might have been a footnote in Ivy football history into an iconic example of good sportsmanship and honorable behavior.

While a demoralized Big Red lost to Penn the following week—and dropped to 15th place in the final Associated Press poll—the gesture would be remembered for decades.

Dartmouth’s newspaper put out a special edition, and hundreds of its students reportedly paraded through Hanover behind a band playing the Big Red’s “Alma Mater.”

“The result probably deprived Cornell of the mythical national championship of the East,” the New York Times marveled, “yet the Cornell authorities accepted it without a quiver.”

Numerous papers across the country followed suit in lauding the Big Red’s embrace of ethics over gain.

The result probably deprived Cornell of the mythical national championship of the East; yet the Cornell authorities accepted it without a quiver.

The New York Times

“Unprecedented in the annals of sports was Cornell’s magnificent gesture in declaring a football game forfeit to Dartmouth because of a referee’s mistake,” the San Diego Union said in a typical piece.

“It was a striking example of American sportsmanship at its best, of the high plane on which all our athletics ought to be conducted.”

To this day, the game shows up on lists of the greatest moments in football history.

ESPN named it the second-best moment in college football, just behind the famed (but apocryphal) “Win one for the Gipper” speech.

Front page of the November 18, 1940 issue of The Dartmouth college newspaper with the headline "Cornell Concedes 3–0 Dartmouth Victory"The Dartmouth
The Big Green's newspaper on November 18, 1940.

And just about every November—especially around the time that Cornell and Dartmouth face off on the gridiron—the media recalls the Fifth Down game.

It remains the only collegiate sporting contest to be decided off the field after its completion.

“Nearly every day the sports sections brim with stories of human failure—cheating, lying, cover-ups, and worse,” Robert Scott, MRP ’73, and his coauthor wrote in Honor on the Line, a chronicle of the 1940 collegiate football season and the Fifth Down game.

“Modern society seems to embrace bad news, and the opportunities for tales of woe are abundant. But the world of sports has more to offer. Its history over the years is rich in examples of human character laid bare and affirmed through competition. And what greater story could there be than one of victory, hard earned, yielded in the name of fairness?”

Top: The 1940 Big Red football team. (Rare and Manuscript Collections)

Published November 27, 2024


Comments

  1. Andrew Weber, Class of 1977

    Winning stressed over sportsmanship today. Look at Michigan Ohio State game this week with teams fighting after. The Ohio State coach will probably lose his job since 4th loss to Michigan even tho 45 wins to 1 loss other teams in Big Ten.

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