--- title: College Football: LIFE Magazine Photos From the Gridiron description: LIFE.com celebrates the players, fans, cheerleaders and coaches who made the action on and off the college gridiron back in the day so downright picturesque. canonical: https://time.com/3874633/life-on-the-gridiron-old-school-college-football-photos/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-10-22T18:03:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:54.921Z og:title: College Football: LIFE Magazine Photos From the Gridiron og:description: LIFE.com celebrates the players, fans, cheerleaders and coaches who made the action on and off the college gridiron back in the day so downright picturesque. og:url: https://time.com/3874633/life-on-the-gridiron-old-school-college-football-photos/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte870ca4a6287e66d/6988487bf887dc49b8e8f938/13_00980973.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Pittsburgh 1953 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: College Football: LIFE Magazine Photos From the Gridiron twitter:description: LIFE.com celebrates the players, fans, cheerleaders and coaches who made the action on and off the college gridiron back in the day so downright picturesque. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte870ca4a6287e66d/6988487bf887dc49b8e8f938/13_00980973.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # LIFE on the Gridiron: Old-School College Football Photos > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 22, 2012 6:03 PM UTC  Pittsburgh vs. West Virginia, 1953. Pittsburgh vs. West Virginia, 1953. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 22, 2012 6:03 PM UTC For some sports fans, fall is always welcome as the season when baseball finally gets interesting. But for countless other fanatics, autumn is about one thing: football. And not professional football, either. From Maine to California and all points in between, the last four months of the year are when _college_ football is in full swing. It doesn’t really matter all that much whether a school is in the SEC or the Big Ten; the Ivy League or Big Sky; Division I, II or III: when summer’s over, every Saturday is football Saturday, and every game — especially against a long-time rival (Army-Navy, OSU-Michigan State, Cal-Stanford and on and on) — feels like a matter of life and death. From the time LIFE began publishing as a weekly in 1936, the magazine covered college football as closely and as breathlessly as it covered the other three most popular American sports of the middle part of the 20th century: baseball, boxing and horse racing. And for decades, professional football played second fiddle to college ball in the pages of LIFE. Then again, those were also the years when the magazine devoted page after page to teams from schools like Yale, Princeton and Trinity; hardly powerhouses today, but back in the ’40s and ’50s those squads could play with any teams in the country. Here, LIFE.com celebrates the players, fans, cheerleaders and coaches who made the action on and off the college gridiron back in the day so downright picturesque. There are big players here (Heisman winners like Glenn Davis and Steve Spurrier) and famous teams (Notre Dame, LSU, et al.). There are highly emotional coaches and worked-up fans. There are, in short, scenes that capture the emotional and visual scope of college football in the middle part of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of LIFE photographers. _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter_ [_@lizabethronk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Pittsburgh vs. West Virginia, 1953. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Trinity's Charles Sticka, 1955. Grey Villet—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Michigan's Tom Harmon in 1940, the year he won the Heisman. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Ohio State's Paul Sarringhaus gets instruction from a coach, 1941. Myron Davis—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Army's "Dream Backfield" in 1946: Thomas "Shorty" McWilliams, Arnold Tucker and Heisman winners Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis. Sam Shere—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Notre Dame's Bill Wightkin leaps to snatch a 44-yard toss against Tulane, 1949. Joe Scherschel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  An SMU cheerleader shows his spirit at a University of Texas football game, 1950. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Syracuse vs. Texas, 1960 Cotton Bowl. Syracuse beat Texas 23-14 behind a great performance by Ernie Davis -- the first African American to win the Heisman. Robert W. Kelley—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Saint Mary's University (Texas) halfback Henry Tutor, 1936. Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A player is carried from the field with a broken collar bone during a 1952 Notre Dame-Michigan game. Mark Kauffman—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Navy fans, 1953. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Army-Navy game, 1953. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Army-Navy game, 1953. Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Navy's Joe Bellino, 1960. George Silk—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Eugene "Mercury" Morris, West Texas State, 1968. Bob Gomel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Michigan State football, 1952. Joe Scherschel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Minnesota University's Paul Giel, exhausted after a 67-yard run which set up Minnesota's only touchdown against USC, puts an ice pack on his head, 1953. Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Billy Cannon, LSU's All-American halfback, 1959. George Silk—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Yale's Ben Balme is carried off the field after the 1960 Yale-Harvard game during the Elis' last unbeaten and untied season. Stan Wayman—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Cotton Bowl, 1960. Robert W. Kelley—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Syracuse vs. Texas, 1960 Cotton Bowl. At left is the great Ernie Davis (#44) -- the first African American to win the Heisman. Robert W. Kelley—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Notre Dame's legendary coach Ara Parseghian can't bear watching as the Fighting Irish lose in 1964. Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  University of Florida's Steve Spurrier (#11), 1966. Bill Eppridge—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Eugene "Mercury" Morris, West Texas State, 1968. Bob Gomel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3874633/life-on-the-gridiron-old-school-college-football-photos/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3874633/life-on-the-gridiron-old-school-college-football-photos/"},"headline":"LIFE on the Gridiron: Old-School College Football Photos","datePublished":"2012-10-22T18:03:01.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:54.921Z","description":"LIFE.com celebrates the players, fans, cheerleaders and coaches who made the action on and off the college gridiron back in the day so downright picturesque.","url":"https://time.com/3874633/life-on-the-gridiron-old-school-college-football-photos/","keywords":["Sports topic","College","Football","Harvard","photography","Culture","black and white photography"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte870ca4a6287e66d/6988487bf887dc49b8e8f938/13_00980973.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ben Cosgrove","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte870ca4a6287e66d/6988487bf887dc49b8e8f938/13_00980973.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Pittsburgh 1953","caption":"Pittsburgh vs. West Virginia, 1953.","creditText":"Yale Joel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3874633/life-on-the-gridiron-old-school-college-football-photos/","name":"LIFE on the Gridiron: Old-School College Football Photos"}}]}] ```