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 Only Season of All Time in our however many part series called the Best Only Season of All Time for Schools Who Stopped Having A Football Team also known as the BOSOATFSWSHAFT (ya damn right). 

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, 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 other cool stuff to show it to you here.

Now for the next team I wish to explore in this series in a little bit of a special edition of the series.

The UC-San Diego Tritons

Why did I choose this team?

I wrestled with doing a post for this one but I was curious due to a tweet from our friend CFBCampusTour (Follow Him on Twitter) about his alma mater’s football program. I randomly remembered his tweet from March, and I decided to try to modify this series to fit this story into it.

History of the team

I found a fantastic article called The untold history of UC San Diego’s terrible, weird and glorious single season of football and immediately subscribed to read it. I’ll use the quotes from it throughout the post. 

“UC San Diego is known for nerdy pursuits such as combing the cosmos for quarks and quasars and creating driver-less vehicles that deliver the mail. It’s not known for fielding rough-and-tumble football teams. But the moment has come to acknowledge a fact that has largely been lost to history.” 

For one year— and one year only — UCSD had a football team.

Oh, I am intrigued. We have a one-year wonder program here. 

“The year was 1968, and the team brought a bit of school spirit to a new campus that was reeling from the social upheaval caused by the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and free speech campaigns.”

Oh no, they created a football team to calm down social upheaval?? 

The YouTube video Undefeated Since 1968 by Praveen Nair does a fantastic job of going through the social upheaval on campus and mixing this with the football team. It’s a great video with a mix of football intertwined with social issues on campus of UCSD with a bit of a Jon Bois flair.

“I realized that the football team was the least important thing that happened in 1968 as I clicked through the news pages to get to sports,” said Nair, who narrates the no-budget documentary in a wry, breezy voice. “It was a singular moment not only in campus history, but in the history of the country.”

Triton player (in white) trying to tackle a Caltech Beaver player. (From the Caltech Yearbook called THE BIG T.)

Do I get to count that as a win??? There are a few more coming. Commish has some internet searching skills.

In late 1967, students began circulating a petition that called for the school to create a football team. Before long, they had gathered more than 1,000 signatures, and to everyone’s surprise, UCSD granted their wish.

Just a general note about the founding of UC San Diego below:

“UCSD was chiefly founded by oceanographer Roger Revelle, who wanted the campus to rapidly evolve into one of the nation’s foremost science and engineering schools. He detested the idea of big-time sports being part of the mix. As Nair notes with joy, Revelle went so far as to say that if UCSD ever started a football team, he hoped that it would lose every game it played.”

Well, we got news for Mr. Revelle, his wish came true.

Why did the football team get shut down?

“After the 1968 season, players complained about not earning academic credit toward a physical education major.”

It was that bad they didn’t even give them class credit????

On top of that, the rest of the student body voted 3 to 1 against allowing financial grants for athletes—not even if they were privately funded. Not even if every dollar for the jocks and football players got matched with dollars for students who weren’t athletes.

Most of the football players transferred long before that spring vote.

Those remaining staged a protest and threatened to boycott the 1969 season. Their boycott became a moot point. In the shadow of Vietnam, no one noticed when football was dropped due to a lack of participation.

They even lost the battle of causes to protest.

Full quotes are cited from A San Diego Football Flashback: UCSD's 1968 Pigskin Experiment

The 1968 UC San Diego Tritons

Walt Hackett, was hired away from his position as San Diego Chargers defensive coordinator to become the brand-new football team that year at UCSD.

Triton home games were played on a field adjacent to Old Miramar Road. (I tried to find this but had no luck at all; I am not that good after all)

“Hackett was a no-nonsense guy who stressed that education came first and that no practice would last more than two hours. But he did have his 31 players train at one of the most intimidating spots imaginable: Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.”

I love the contrast here. No practice for more than two hours, but let’s train with the Marines!

To the schedule!

Their first game was set against La Verne.

Their QB, Greg Gleason, scored their first points, and they took a 6-0 lead, but La Verne then scored 41 unanswered. Gleason later transferred to Tulane.

The Tritons only had 74 total yards on the day. “Also the cheerleaders chanted “USCD” at the first game” and that probably didn’t help matters.

Next week they traveled to Thousand Oaks to take on Cal Lutheran.

They were crushed 56-8.

They travelled to Los Angeles to take on Loyala Marymount. They lost 34-14. It was their closest loss on the year and also the most points they scored in a game.

I went to the Loyola yearbook and noted this photo appears to be from the game. Although, I am not 100% sure on this one as there was not a caption and it was in black and white.

Their next game was against Cal Western. They took a lead again thanks to Gleason but ultimately gave up 34 unanswered to lose 34-7.

Their next game is against Caltech and this game is incredible.

It likely takes place between college football players who have never won a college football game before. Caltech was on 34-game losing streak for the Beavers that stretched back to their 1964 season and the Tritons are winless on the year.

If you want the Jon Bois style play by play of this game, it starts around the 29 minute mark of Nair’s YouTube video and it is worth a watch for sure. Undefeated since 1968.

Caltech takes advantage of the mistakes by the Tritons and build a 34-25 lead, the Tritons get a TD late but fail to recover the onside kick and lose 34-31. Their closest loss of their program’s history.

Caltech’s fans and players go nuts with the celebrations after this win. The yearbook for Caltech just posts pictures from this game and this game only for the entire football season summary.

The fun part here is that the Caltech players try to carry the coach off the field but don’t get far because the coach is bigger than most players.

A Full page headline was in the paper and the yearbook for this win as seen below and called it V-Day!! (screenshot from the video)

The Caltech fans ripped down the goalposts.

And then they set things on fire as you tend to do after a big win.

The Tritons had to head out to Las Vegas to take on UNLV. They took an early 6-0 lead but again they allowed a ton of unanswered points and lost 27-6.

Their final game was against the Gaels of St. Mary’s in San Francisco. (This appears to be a photo of the game I found in the St. Mary’s yearbook but they didn’t label it)

The Gaels won easily 27-13 and this was the last game in the football history of the UC-San Diego Tritons.

Any Chance of the Program Returning?

The founder of the UCSD got his wish, stating if they ever had a football team, he wished they lost every game. Which they did. I am not sure if they would bring football back, and it really seems unlikely. However, it would be nice to at least play until you get a win.

I know my friend Mike Barker at College Football Campus Tour would like them to try football again.

But will they? Who knows.