The 1946 Penn Quakers football team was an
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
team that represented the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in the
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
during the
1946 college football season
The 1946 college football season was the 78th season of intercollegiate football in the United States. Competition included schools from the Big Ten Conference, the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the Big Six C ...
. In its ninth season under head coach
George Munger, the team compiled a 6–2 record, was ranked No. 13 in the final
AP Poll
The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...
, and outscored opponents by a total of 265 to 102.
The Quakers ranked third nationally in total defense, giving up an average of only 158.9 yards per game.
[ They also ranked fourth in scoring offense (33.1 points per game),][ 10th nationally in total offense (340.0 yards per game),]Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
(AP) or International News Service
The International News Service (INS) was a U.S.-based news agency (newswire) founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909. (INS) on the 1946 All-Eastern football team: center Chuck Bednarik
Charles Philip Bednarik (May 1, 1925 – March 21, 2015), nicknamed "Concrete Charlie", was an American professional football player in the National Football League (NFL). He has been ranked one of the hardest hitting tacklers in NFL history an ...
(AP-1, INS-1); tackle B. Gallagher (AP-1); guard Robert Rutkowski; and halfback Maderak (INS-2).
Chuck Bednarik and George Munger were inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame
The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...
in 1969 and 1976, respectively.
The team played its home games at Franklin Field
Franklin Field is a sports stadium in Philadelphia, United States, at the eastern edge of the University of Pennsylvania's campus. It is the home stadium for the Penn Relays, and the University of Pennsylvania's stadium for football, track and fi ...
in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
.
Schedule
Rankings
After the season
The 1947 NFL Draft was held on December 16, 1946. The following Quakers were selected.
References
{{Penn Quakers football navbox
Penn
Penn Quakers football seasons
Penn Quakers football
The Penn Quakers football program is the college football team at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The Penn Quakers have competed in the Ivy League since its inaugural season of 1956, and are a Division I Football Championship ...