Stories from the long memory of college sports.
One piece every Friday. The seasons that weren't. The athletes you never heard of. The games that only the radio remembers.
Bad Billy’s Halloween Run
The most famous college football play ever run on Halloween belonged to someone who was, well, not exactly a saint.
Pick Up the Ball and Run With It
A sport that started with a schoolboy picking up a ball and breaking all the rules — or so the story goes — is still running.
Not Very Newsworthy
A women’s national championship. Not very newsworthy. It wouldn’t stay that way for long.
Coach Comeback
Tony Reno died on October 2nd at the age of 52. Before that, he coached two of the greatest comebacks in college football — one in the dark at the Yale Bowl, one in Youngstown, Ohio.
Harriers...Come Out to Play-ee-ay
What Boston is for marathons and Indy is for car racing, Van Cortlandt Park is for cross country — 118 years of college racing on the same trails through the same Bronx woodland.
Super Game, Super Season
In November 1975, sixteen colleges gathered in Virginia for the first women's field hockey national championship. Almost all of them were from places you wouldn't expect. And the ones who dominated were from a place you wouldn't believe.
Four Stadiums, Two Subway Rides, and a Century of College Football the World Forgot
The Bronx — and its neighbor just across the Harlem River — hosted more iconic college football games than almost anywhere in America. Almost no one knows it.
They Played for Their Schools. Then They Gave Everything.
Remembering the college athletes lost on September 11, 2001 — on the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
The Prince, the Streak, and the Team the World Sent to Claremont
How a seven-nation squad from a small liberal arts college ended the most dominant winning streak American college soccer has ever seen — and why almost no one knows about it.
3-2, And a Hundred Years of History Behind It
A reader's correction sent us back to the archives — and uncovered a century of women's ice hockey that America forgot: Mount Holyoke in 1896, the Pembroke Pandas in disguise, and the 1973 Colby team that restarted it all.
Soccer Style is for Soccer
A dusty size-15 kicking shoe, a 63-yard record that stood for 28 years, and the long, strange history of the foot in football — from dropkicks worth more than touchdowns to the day the toe kicker went extinct.
Playday Champions
The first intercollegiate women's ice hockey game was played at Colby in February 1973. Or was it? A reader tip led to Marjorie Bither, a 1956 yearbook, and a whole hidden era of competition no one was allowed to call competition.
The Flying Parson
He may have been the fastest man in the world at his distance. Then a disputed $30 expense claim erased his world record and his Olympic dream — and the timing has never added up.
First to the Floor
The untold history of women's college basketball. Before March Madness, before the WNBA, there was a gymnasium in Northampton, a Lithuanian immigrant with a brand-new rulebook, and the first college basketball game in American history. The men came two years later.
Play Ball — And Keep Scoring
How college baseball stayed true to its high-scoring roots. From a 73–33 final in 1859 to the aluminum bat era, the college game has never stopped hitting.
They Just Showed Up
Before Title IX. Before women's teams existed. Some women didn't wait for the door to open — they found another way in. The untold story of Dorothy Anderson, Cyndy Meserve, and the pioneers who showed up before anyone thought to invite them.
The College Kid Connection
From Penn to Montevideo, from Hartford to Los Angeles, from Saint Louis to the 2026 World Cup — college soccer has always played a part in America's biggest moments.
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