Centre College was a college football powerhouse in the early days of the sport.
Since early in the history of college football, it has been customary to pick the best players from across the country each year and designate them as All-Americans. Over the years, there were various organizations, newspapers, and “football experts” who felt qualified to make annual picks that made up different All-American teams.
Walter Camp
However, for over three decades, beginning in 1889, only one All-American team was accepted by consensus to be THE team which was accepted to be the most coveted and recognized by players and fans of the sport, and that was the team selected by Walter Camp, who has been called “The Father of American Football.”
Walter Camp was born in New Britain, Connecticut, on April 7, 1859, 10 years before 1869, the first college football game between Princeton and Rutgers. He entered Yale in 1875 and played in the first game ever played between the Eli and Harvard in the fall of that year. After graduating in 1880, Camp entered medical school, but the sight of blood made him faint, and he wisely changed his career plans and went into the clock business, eventually becoming the president of the New Haven Clock Company in 1902.
Camp’s love of football led him to devote many hours as the advisor to a succession of coaches at his alma mater. By 1906, football had become so rough, with an ever-increasing number of injuries, some fatal, that President Theodore Roosevelt invited a group of football devotees to attend a White House meeting. Out of the old “Rough Rider’s” intervention, changes in the game’s rules were proposed to make it safer, including the legalization of the forward pass, which opened up the game to make it less like rugby with its “two yards and a cloud of dust” approach.
Camp was at the Washington meeting, and as one of the founding members of what would become the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), he was in the forefront of other decisions which also determined that plays would be run from a line of scrimmage, along with the standardization of points allowed for touchdowns, extra points, and field goals. He was instrumental in designating that 11 players made up a team, what constituted a penalty, and how many yards should be forfeited for an infraction, along with other concepts which make the game what it is today.
Camp not only served on the NCAA rules committee from its inception but was its chairman from 1911 until his death at age 65 from a heart attack while attending the committee’s annual meeting in 1925.
The first ever All-American team was announced in 1889. There is no definite agreement if the idea was Camp’s or that of an individual named Casper Whitney, who was the editor of a short-lived magazine named “This Week’s Sport.” However, Camp definitely took over the naming of the team after that first year. Obviously, Camp couldn’t attend every game played each week, so he devised a system where he would ask sportswriters, officials of games, and trusted athletic figures to be his “eyes and ears” during games, reporting their observations back to him. The make-up of Camp’s team was kept a secret until it was announced in “Collier’s,” a now defunct, national weekly publication.
1919 All-America team
Centre College of Kentucky was a small, liberal arts college in the heart of the state’s Bluegrass Region where its players, coaches, students, and administration, along with most of Danville and Boyle County and much of Kentucky, eagerly awaited the December 13, 1919 issue of Collier’s and the announcement of the 1919 All-American team. After all, Walter Camp had proclaimed that he felt Centre had the top team in all of college football in 1919 due to its win over West Virginia, which trashed Princeton, 25-0, along with victories over Virginia and Indiana, on the way to a perfect 9-0 record.
Also, in the 1919 Spalding’s Football Guide, Camp recognized the skills of Bo McMillin, Red Weaver, Red Roberts, and other Colonels for their play during the 1918 season. However, Centre College was concerned about its players being recognized simply because of the fact that the South had routinely been excluded when post-season awards were passed out regarding All-American honors.
Of Camp’s 18 All-American 198 first-team selections since 1900 (there was no team in 1917 due to the Great War ), the breakdown was as follows: Yale 47, Harvard 39, and Princeton, 21, for a total of 107 players. The “Big 3” of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale had 54% of the total selected. This was understandable. The “Big 3” dominated football during that period, and that domination meant that those schools had the best material. The rest of Camp’s selections were heavily weighed toward the East: Penn 14, Army 9, Dartmouth 8, Brown 6, Navy 5, Cornell 4, Pittsburgh 4, Syracuse 4, Colgate 4, Carlisle (PA) 3, Columbia 3, and Penn State, Amherst and Rutgers, all 1.
These additional programs, added to the “Big 3,” meant that colleges from the East had grabbed 174 positions or 88% of the All-American selections. All of the other programs outside of the East, which had players who made the All-American squads were larger colleges that had significant student bodies far exceeding the numbers at Centre. They were Michigan 8, Chicago 6, Minnesota 4, Illinois 2, and Ohio State, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame, all 1.
It didn’t take much analysis to see that a small college, especially a small college from the South, would have a tough time placing any of its players on Walter Camp’s All-American first team. The only such player from the South named since 1900 was 1918’s Ashel Monroe “Bum” Day of Georgia Tech, and Tech, with an enrollment of nearly 2500 at the time, was no small college like Centre with its student body of less than 200 during 1919-20.
Therefore, it was truly historic when Walter Camp’s All-American Team was announced for the 1919 season. It was a realization that college football had worthy players and programs outside of those that had been traditionally recognized during the first 50 years of the game.
“First Eleven” position at Center… Weaver, Centre Quarter… McMillin, Centre, Alvin Nugent “Bo” McMillin was the quarterback, James Redwich “Red” Weaver was the center. Camp also picked second and third All-American teams each year. James Madison “Red” Roberts was placed on the 3rd team at an end position in 1919. 
Of the 33 players named in 1919 on the first, second, and third teams, Centre had three picks. Centre quite proudly announced that it was the only team in history to have three Walter Camp All-Americans, as shown in the photo below. It was understandable that such a claim would be made by the little college, but it wasn’t factual. For instance, Harvard had five first-team selections in 1901.
However, it was factual that no other college had over two selections in 1919. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton each had two, as did Dartmouth, Ohio State, Colgate, and West Virginia. The following year, in 1920, Bo McMillin was Camp’s second-team quarterback.
Red Roberts, third-team All-American end in 1919
Bottom row, Red Weaver, 5th from left Top row. Bo McMillin, 1st left, and Red Roberts, 5th left
In 1921, Red Roberts was placed on Camp’s first team at an end position, and Bo McMillin was again put on the second team at a quarterback position. Red Roberts, 1st team end, 1921
It is of particular interest that Bo McMillin, Red Weaver, and Red Roberts all played high school football together in the fall of 1916 in Somerset, Kentucky, as members of the “Briar Jumpers.” How many small-town high schools can make the claim to have three All-American college football players who played together the same year?)
To summarize, Centre’s All-Americans were:
1919
Bo McMillin- first-team quarterback
Red Weaver- first-team center
Red Roberts- third-team end
1920
Bo McMillin- second-team quarterback
1921
Red Roberts- first-team end
Bo McMillin- second-team quarterback
After the Great War, the Centre College Colonels had truly put the little school on the national map in the world of college athletics as the United States entered the “Roaring Twenties.” And the best was still to come for the little college as it successfully became a nationally prominent player in the higher echelons of college football.
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Chapter 11 in The Story of the Centre College ‘Praying Colonels’ and Their Rise to the Top of the Football World, 1917-1924.
