The winner went to the Sugar Bowl, the loser, the Orange Bowl. Eight-five years ago this week, 41,700 filled Fenway Park for the game between #5-ranked Boston College and #9-ranked Georgetown on November 16, 1940. The Hoyas haven't played at Fenway since, while the Crusaders last played there in 1955.
"Georgetown jumped out to an early 10-0 lead, but BC responded," wrote Michael Coleman in a 2006 feature in The HOYA. "The Eagles' first touchdown was a short-yardage plunge into the end zone. It roused controversy among spectators because of the previous play, one in which a Hoya defender was called for pass interference near his own end zone on Boston College's fourth-down attempt.
"A reporter covering the game also thought that the call was suspect: The legendary Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich wrote that, "BC was helped to the touchdown by an official's abysmal ruling of interference. The official covering the play downfield saw nothing illegal. The call was made by the referee standing at midfield," he wrote.
"With the score 19-16, a defensive stand by Georgetown left Boston College at fourth down and long near its own end zone with very little time on the clock," Coleman continues. "BC's star quarterback, "Chucklin'" Charley O'Rourke, remained resourceful. He ran backwards around his own end zone ... before Hoya tacklers could bring him down for a safety.
"While the safety cut BC's advantage to only a single point at 19-18, it did the necessary damage by allowing valuable time to elapse from the game clock. Following the safety, BC used its free kick to pin the ball deep in Georgetown territory with time winding down. Georgetown's offense had no opportunity to answer.
"The loss was Georgetown's first since 1937, and may have foreshadowed the futures of the two football programs. Boston College went on to win the Sugar Bowl over Tennessee to finish undefeated with a 10-0 record; BC's coach, Frank Leahy, was rewarded with the highly coveted Notre Dame head coaching job after the perfect season."
A 1940 column by HOYA sports editor Al Cotter tried to put some perspective into what he saw. It is reprinted below:
"We sat for many a vacant moment wracking our brain to discover a means of adequately starting off this week's column. Many times during the past two years the possibility of a defeat to the greatest football team in the history of Georgetown has been in the back of our mind and we schemed of ways and means of just how we would express it in printed words. Now, the unfortunate time has come but none of our eloquent pre-thought phrases seem to ring true. Is it possible to put in writing just what that one point loss really means to the team and to Georgetown?
Unless one was intimately connected with the activities about the home of the Hoyas they could not, however hard they might try, understand the hidden meaning behind the score which read quite simply Boston College 19, Georgetown 18. They would never know of the bleak and bitter disappointment which filled the heart of every true son of the Blue and Gray as their gallant team went down to its defeat in the murky muck of Fenway Park. Or the thoughts of the loyal ones who traveled all the way to Boston as they stood outside of the stadium and watched the Eagles' merry band of hysterical rooters march up the street raising high broken pieces of goal posts, the spoils of the victors.
We spoke of a between-the-lines story, for that is just what it is. If ever a team deserved to win a game the Hilltoppers certainly had this right on that dusky day in old Beantown. They arrived practically unheard of in that section of the country but you can be certain of one thing it the good fathers ever gave thought of moving Georgetown into New England the Hoyas would have more self-appointed alumni than Notre Dame has in New York.
Not since Grant took Richmond has one thing so captured the whole-hearted support of any one group of people. Forty thousand fans fought their way into the Eagles' stronghold remaining on their feet a good part of the afternoon. Many of them wildly cheering a team they had never seen before.
Many more clustered about their radios afraid to leave them for fear something would happen the second they were away. Bartenders let their customers go thirsty, wives let their families go hungry, citizens who never saw football played sat spellbound as "the greatest game in 40 years of gridiron history" unfolded on the rock-ribbed New England soil. You will note quotation around those words for they are not original. It is from a story by one of the greatest sports authorities in the United States today. A man who has seen many a sporting thrill in his countless years of reporting, and who ought by now to be slightly calloused to all but those athletic thrills head and shoulders above the ordinary. This same man known far and wide as Grantland Rice was so overcome by the spectacle he had witnessed left his type-writer in the press box.
The Boston newspapermen, jubilant that their team had come through, turned and shook the limp hand of this crestfallen corner as he made his sorrowful path into the foggy darkness. They went out of their way to express admiration at the clean hard hitting attack of the Hoyas. They hoped that the game would become a traditional contest and with each ensuing year this rivalry will become more firmly intrenched between these two great Jesuit schools. For there is no doubt that this was real collegiate football at its best with no quarter given or asked and each team striving with all it had till the last gun was fired."
