One of the projects the Sickos Committee on Substack will explore during this off-season is one where we will do a dive into the internet archives to find out the seemingly lost history of College Football teams who we used to have playing on Saturdays in the fall. We will explore universities and colleges who used to have football but then decided for whatever reason to end their football program. Then we will highlight their Best Season of all time in our however many part series called the Best Season of All Time for Schools Who Stopped Having A Football Team also known as the BSOATFSWSHAFT (Who's the Series that won't cop out when there's danger all about? BSOATFSWSHAFT! Right on)

I’ll give you some background on the program if I can find it. Give you some basic history about the team, when they started playing and when/why they stopped playing and of course their best season in my opinion. Also, I’ll see if I can find a football helmet with the logo or some other cool things and show it to you here.

Now for the next team I wish to explore in this series.

The Seton Hall Pirates 

Why did I choose this team?

Recently, the Seton Hall Pirates won the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) over our beloved Indiana State Sycamores (we call them the Sickomores) in a thrilling game between two teams who had to feel snubbed as they were left out of the NCAA Tournament. I saw the Pirates on the list of schools that used to have a football team, and I am a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. So why not go with Seton Hall as the next in the series?

History of the team

The history of the Seton Hall football program is a weird one, as there were many starts and stops of the program. Also, this is probably the first team in the series where there was not a dedicated Wikipedia page to the team’s history. My work to find the best team of all time was tough here. 

I was lucky to find the school with a write-up about its football program’s history, and I would have to base most of my research on this article here. Seton Hall's former programs. 

They state that the program was founded in 1882 when they played what is now known as Fordham twice in 1883 and won both games. They state “The Setonia varsity eleven” did not have a losing season until 1891. The Setonia eleven surged in the latter half of the final decade of the 19th century, winning 15-straight contests from 1896-1898.

Can I find a source for this? Nope. Their yearbook doesn’t start until 1924. Also, I tried to search newspapers.com to find an article on the team then and nothing either. 

Seton Hall went on to continue its successes by going 8-0 in 1903 and 6-1 in 1904, with wins over Fordham and Manhattan. (Below is the 1904 team). 

I was able to find one win from 1903, and I really loved the score. But that is basically all I could find for this 8–0 year. I really can’t call a team the best team of all time without proof, right? 

Despite the team's winning ways, football was dropped as a varsity athletic program in 1906. 

Well, seven years later, football was back in 1913! However, it only lasted a year, and it was gone again. 

Then it returned in 1930! The program was led by former Notre Dame star Richard "Red" Smith. The Pirates posted three straight 3–4 seasons before disbanding the program once again in 1932.

The Pirates program lay dormant for 32 years but returned again in 1965! This time as a club program. Prior to the 1972 season, there was increasing sentiment that football should be transitioned back to a varsity program, and that push could not have come at a better time. The 1972 Pirates posted an 8-1 record and defeated Marist College, 20-18, in front of 3,000 fans at Fordham University's Jack Coffey Field to win the Eastern Club Bowl/Empire Bowl Football Championship!! I mean, I can't declare a club team the best team of all time. Can I? Well, I make the rules here, so let me think about it.

My god, look at that flow in 1972. 

The momentum from the Club Football Championship led to the push to make the football program a varsity sport again.

In 1973, they returned to varsity football in Division III in the 1973 Metropolitan Intercollegiate Conference. They finished 3-4.

The next year, in 1974, they had their most success as a program, finishing 7-2 (is this the Best team of All Time?). They didn’t finish .500 again until they left the conference in 1978. 

They joined the East Coast Athletic Conference (I searched high and low for this conference and could only find a hockey only conference) and went 5-4 in 1978 but then Seton Hall University aligned itself with the BIG EAST Conference in all other sports for the 1979-80 academic year; the varsity football program played its final season in 1981.

I don’t think I can really compile a record to try to compare Seton Hall to other current schools since the history is so off and on, and again there isn’t even a Wikipedia page for this school's football team!

Why did the football team get shut down?

We know the school aligned with the Big East in 1979–1980. The first year of football in the 1981 Big East Conference had teams such as No. 1 Miami (FL), No. 11 Syracuse, Virginia Tech, Pitt, Rutgers, Boston College and Temple. It may have been unreasonable for Seton Hall to make the leap from Division III football to Division I-A (now FBS) in about a year. I don’t want to say money on this one, but I don’t think a relatively small private school in South Orange, NJ, could be expected to make that kind of leap in such a short period of time.

The 1974 Seton Hall Pirates 

So, I can’t find a full write-up or game-by-game record for the 1903 or 1904 teams. 

The 1972 Club Championship is very nice, but I have to set some boundaries here. The team had to be in the NCAA at the time of the season to be considered the Best Team of All Time. 

I think this 1974 team wins Seton Hall’s Best Team of All Time basically by default. 

The team was coached by Ed Manigan from when they returned in 1965 as a club team and through the end of the program in 1981. 

Coach Manigan doesn’t have a Wikipedia page but I did find an article from the New York Times with a pretty hilarious excerpt in the beginning. New Jersey Sports

“NEWARK, Sept. 19—Ed Manigan, the football coach at Seton Hall, has been dreaming wishbones, and has learned never to say never.

Manigan's team had a scrimmage against Western Connecticut State last week and he was surprised to see his opponents employ a wishbone offense. At the end of the scrimmage, which the Pirates lost, he told his team not to worry about the wishbone.

“I told my players they wouldn't see the wishbone again, this season,” Manigan told the New Jersey College football writers today at the weekly luncheon. “Then the next day I was informed that Cheyney State, which we play Saturday, employs the wishbone.””

Manigan’s picture here seems like they just told him, “What do you mean they run the Wishbone too?”

“Sir, a second team runs the wishbone”

Most of the information I could find was directly from The Galleon - The Seton Hall Yearbook. 

And wouldn’t you know it, Seton Hall hadn’t learned to stop the wishbone, and they dropped the first game of the season to Cheyney State 27-7.

The Hall's second game of the season, a 42-23 defeat at the hands of C. W. Post (aka the Long Island Sharks), disappointing and it put the young Bucs' record at 0-2 to start the year. Seton runners ran the ball 42 times without gaining a yard. Not a good start. 

However, Seton Hall was led by 22-year-old freshman quarterback Jerry Castaldo. Drafted by the Montreal Expos out of High School, Jerry washed out in the minor leagues and returned to Seton Hall as a freshman signal caller. 

The Bucs did show an ability to score through the air using the golden arm of Castaldo, who in his first year broke the all-time Seton Hall record for touchdown passes in a season by lofting 25 TD Passes. (I am going to assume this record was never broken)

In their 3rd game of the year, they went to battle Jersey City State.

Manigan termed "Revenge Match No. 1", this due to the fact that the Gothics had whipped the Hall one year before in Jersey City.

The Pirates were just unstoppable following their loss to Post. They won seven in a row, starting with a 41-18 drubbing of Jersey City State. The Bucs ran up a total of 470 yards of offense, giving the large Homecoming crowd plenty to yell about. 

The next week, they battled with New York Tech. They managed to get back to 2-2 with a slim 14-13 victory. The Seton defense stopped the attempted two-point conversion, and the game was over, with the Bucs coming out on top in Revenge Match No. 2.

According to Manigan, the Hofstra encounter would be Revenge Match No. 3. Castaldo threw a pair of touchdown passes, one to Ducey and another to Racioppe, who awed the 4,100 fans in Hempstead, Long Island by rushing for 160 yards in 25 carries, as the streaking Pirates brought their victory skein to four with a 14-12 win. Kicker Dave Strasser provided the winning margin in the game by putting both points after touchdown kicks through the uprights. (Let’s just say kicking was not their strong point this year and you can see what happened in the next game box score.)

Oh did he haunt the Peacocks. Castaldo did it all and the Bucs romped 31-0. He had two TD runs and one TD Pass all in the first half. They also went 1 for 3 on extra point attempts.

Upsala, in Revenge Match No. 4, proved to be Seton's next victim. The Bucs won the contest 38-0 for their second straight shutout and fifth consecutive victory. Castaldo, once again, was the main cog in the Pirate wheel of success, throwing four touchdown passes. It was with those four TD passes that Jerry broke the old mark for touchdown tosses thrown in a season of only 14.

Kean College was up next, not a revenge match. But they got the most hype since they were coming to South Orange with a record of 8-1. Seton Hall’s defense stood tall, hauling in four interceptions on the day. Castaldo wowed the Seton fans by tossing four touchdown passes, completing 12 of 21 of his attempted passes for a total of 261 yards and a 26-13 win for the Pirates. 

The final game was dubbed Revenge Match No. 5 against Fordham. Castaldo had 310 yards through the air and another four touchdown day, bringing his total of touchdown passes to a “colossal” 25. (A school record we assume will never be matched)

Seton Hall finished 7-2 on the year and 3rd in the Conference. (if you click on Seton Hall here, it just takes you to the main athletics page and nothing more)

Any chance the program returns?

I can never say never with Seton Hall. This program was shut down and started multiple times in its history, seemingly on a whim. The conference they are in right now doesn’t sponsor football, but they could join the CAA like the Big East mates of Villanova or maybe the Patriot League like Georgetown if they wanted to, I think. Of course, this would cost a good bit of money. Maybe they can use those NIT winnings to fund the football team to come back? I don’t expect the program to come back, but who really knows if we ever will see the Pirates running out of a tunnel again?