The Justice

Players on the Brandeis football team carry head coach Benny Friedman, center, and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, following a win. Photo courtesy of Adam Levin

The Brandeis football team literally limped towards the finish line of the 1959 season. Bitten by the injury bug, the team's record was 0-7-1-the worst of the program's brief nine-year history-and a far cry from the sterling 6-1 mark accomplished just two seasons prior in 1957.

With a talented group of underclassmen set to return for the 1960 campaign, the next season was supposed to be the one to get the program back on track.

But the team never got its shot at redemption.

Soon after the conclusion of the 1959 season, head coach Benny Friedman called a team meeting in the athletics office of Shapiro Gymnasium.

"Nobody had any idea of what the meeting was about," Martin Zelnik '61 said. "Nobody had a clue, including the captains and captains-elect [for next season]."

Friedman's message would be far worse than any loss experienced during the forgettable 1959 season. A somber head coach, the pioneer of Brandeis football delivered a very simple message to his players: The administration had cut ties with the football program.

"Everybody looked around and was shocked," Zelnik said. "There hadn't been any indication to any of us that this was going to happen."

Understandably, players were outraged.

"I was quite angry," end Mike Long '60 said. "I always wanted to look forward to attending football games [as an alumnus] and homecoming events."

"It was a heartbreaking situation. We were shattered that [Brandeis] would drop a program like that," Jim Stehlin, '57, a quarterback during his Brandeis career, said. "To be very honest, some of the football players felt used. Maybe at the time [football] was right for some publicity but when we had done what we were supposed to do, they wanted to go in a different direction. It still hurts today."

Football, after just nine years of existence at Brandeis in which it had helped bring an identity to the young university founded in 1948, soon faded into oblivion. There was little outcry from the student body. The Justice had planned a series of articles looking into how the loss of football would affect the school, but only ran one story.

Continued...

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