The Long, Unique History of Carroll Football
Carroll's Old-Time Football History
In sports, anything 50 or more years old is old-time, and while it is hard to believe how quickly time has passed, Carroll's 2026 Homecoming celebrates the 1976 team that last took the field a half-century ago.
After spending too much time researching football history, I wanted to share a few episodes about old-time Carroll football.
Carroll Football's Beginnings
Carroll students formed a football team in 1893 and planned to play a Waukesha team, but there's no evidence the game happened. Instead, they waited until 1894 when they played and lost four games to high school teams.
Defending the First Touchdown Pass
Knute Rockne credited St. Louis University with throwing the first legal forward pass in a game against Carroll on September 25, 1906, and everyone believed him for nearly a century.
Unfortunately for Carroll fans, I've found forward passes thrown three days earlier during the New Hampshire-Maine and Bates College-Fort Preble games, and a week before that in a Michigan high school game. Despite passes being thrown in previous games, the first touchdown pass came in the Carroll vs. St. Louis matchup, when the bad guys tossed one for a TD.
Frame Field: A Place Called Home
Before Schneider Stadium and Haertl Field, Carroll played home football games on Frame Field, now the site of Schneider Stadium. Frame's football field ran east-west, with the grandstands built into the bluff near the current scoreboard and one end zone ending at Barstow Street.
Carroll vs. The Big Ten
Carroll played Michigan State and Michigan in back-to-back games in 1916, losing to Michigan State 20-0 on a Saturday before falling 54-0 to Michigan the following Thursday. The Pios lost to Iowa 46-0 in 1929, to the Chicago Maroons 19-0 in 1934, and again to the Maroons 31-0 in 1935. So, Carroll currently stands 0-5 against current or former Big Ten members. Still, I'm sure we'll light up the scoreboard in our sixth game against a Big Ten foe.
Carroll Coaches of the 1920s and 1930s
Carroll football benefited from tremendous coaching in the 1920s and 30s, largely thanks to former Centre College players. Centre, a small Kentucky college, made a splash by beating several top programs in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The Associated Press voted their 1921 win over Harvard as the biggest upset of the first 50 years of the 20th century.
William Ganfield was Centre's president until he took the same role at Carroll in early 1921. He hired Centre alum Matty Bell to coach Carroll's 1922 team, but he left after one year for Texas Christian University (TCU). He later led Texas A&M and Southern Methodist University (SMU), taking his teams to the Rose and Cotton Bowls.
Ganfield replaced Bell with former Centre quarterback Norris Armstrong, who coached Carroll to a 44–11–6 record from 1923 to 1930. Notably, a September 1923 newspaper article previewing the 1923 team was the first to refer to a Carroll athletic team as the Pioneers.
Glenn Thistlewaite was next up on the sidelines. Thistlewaite won the Big Ten title at Northwestern in 1926, led Wisconsin from 1927-1931 and took over at Carroll in 1932. He guided Carroll to a 10-2-1 record before leaving to coach Richmond.
Wally Lemm played at Carroll from 1938 to 1941, then served as an assistant coach in 1946 and 1947. Lemm would then bounce between college and NFL roles, eventually winning the American Football League Championship as the assistant head coach of the Houston Oilers in 1960 and as head coach in 1961.
Lockney Lines
Football fields looked barren until the 1950s, but that changed thanks to Waukesha's John Lockney. A football fan and youth sports organizer, Lockney recognized that game officials often struggled to spot the ball correctly between the yard lines, which were five yards apart.
Lockney had the idea to add more markings to the football field by painting short stripes at one-yard intervals near the hash marks and along the sidelines. He convinced Waukesha High to give it a try, so he and a few friends painted his stripes on Haertl Field for a September 1954 game. When Carroll played Whitewater on Haertl Field the next day, it became the second game, and first college contest, to use those stripes.
After Lockney convinced Wisconsin to use the lines for a nationally televised game, his Lockney Lines garnered positive reviews, and within 15 months, the NCAA mandated them for all college fields. The NFL soon required them, too. Today, Lockney Lines comprise 83 percent of the lines on fields.
The First College Overtime Game
Football games often ended in ties until 1973, when the NCAA established national playoffs in Divisions II and III, and developed overtime rules to break ties. None of the playoff games ended in a tie during regulation play the first three years.
Carroll's 1976 football team won the CCIW championship and advanced to the NCAA playoffs, where they hosted Buena Vista. The teams tied 14-14 after four quarters, leading to the first overtime game in NCAA history. Carroll failed to score on its possession, while Buena Vista found the end zone and advanced in the playoffs.
Hopefully, those episodes shed light on Carroll's football past. More importantly, let's look to the future and the many victories to come.
