The 1939 Stanford Indians football team represented

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in during the

1939 college football season The 1939 college football season concluded with the Aggies of The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (Texas A&M) being named as the national champions by the voters in the Associated Press writers' poll. Led by consensus All-American ...

. Seventh-year head coach Claude "Tiny" Thornhill led the team to a 1–7–1 record, which ultimately contributed to his relief at the end of the season. He was replaced by Clark Shaughnessy, who surprised critics by leading the following year's team, largely made up of the same players, to the Rose Bowl. Shaughnessy noted that the players were not suited to the

single-wing offense In American and Canadian football, a single-wing formation was a precursor to the modern spread or shotgun formation. The term usually connotes formations in which the snap is tossed rather than handed—formations with one wingback and a hand ...

that Thornhill had employed.James W. Johnson
The Wow Boys: a Coach, a Team, and a Turning Point in College Football
pp. xvii-xix, University of Nebraska Press, 2006, . Before the season, the Stanford Board of Athletic Control retained Thornhill as head coach, despite opposition from some of the alumni base. The Indians finished last in the

Pacific Coast Conference The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was a college athletic conference in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959. Though the Pac-12 Conference claims the PCC's history as part of its own, with eight of the ten PCC members (including a ...

with a 0–6–1 record against league opponents. It was the first time in history that Stanford failed to win a single Pacific Coast Conference game in a season. Contemporary sources called the 1939 squad the worst football team to represent Stanford University in the history of the program.Ron Fimrite
A Melding Of Men All Suited To A T; Clark Shaughnessy was a dour theoretician, Frankie Albert an unrestrained quarterback and Stanford a team of losers, but combined they forever changed the game of football
''Sports Illustrated'', September 5, 1977. Stanford's only victory came in the season finale against Dartmouth at the

Polo Grounds The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 through 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1876 and demolished in 1889, was built fo ...

in New York City. At halftime, Stanford trailed 3–0, and Thornhill and his assistants, at a loss for words, asked former " Vow Boys" back Bones Hamilton to deliver a halftime pep talk. He told the downtrodden players, "You are by far and large the worst group of players who have ever worn the Stanford red." The insult motivated the team to score 14 unanswered points to take away their only win of the season. After the game, the

United Press United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th c ...

wrote, "Stanford, the worst team the West Coast has produced in years, pulled the day's gridiron surprise by walloping the strong Dartmouth eleven."

Schedule

Players drafted by the NFL

References

{{Stanford Cardinal football navbox

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

Stanford Cardinal football seasons

Stanford Indians football The Stanford Cardinal football program represents Stanford University in college football at the NCAA Division I FBS level and is a member of the Pac-12 Conference's North Division. The team is known as the Cardinal, adopted prior to the 1982 seas ...