Colorado College won its last National Championship 53 years ago today. But the Championship was marred by an act of poor sportsmanship that offers clues as to why CC hasn't won another championship in the past 53 years. The crack research staff at LetsGoDU looked into reports that Colorado College's hockey program is under a "Curse" that would explain why they haven't won a National Championship since .A sports-related curse is the effective action of some power or evil, that is used to explain the failures or misfortunes of specific sports teams, players, or even cities.
DU graduate students thoroughly reviewed Wikipedia's List of Sports Curses to find similarities or clues to CC's misfortune. Sports Illustrated is considered by many to be a breeding ground of curses, so a bulk of the research was conducted on back issues of SI.
Last year our researches found two possible clues in the March 10, 1958 issue of Sports Illustrated. Just five days before the University of Denver would defeat North Dakota to win the 1958 National Championship, Colorado College's then president Dr. Louis T. Benezet, threatened to revamp his school's hockey program to "reduce the number of Canadians on CC's roster." Its interesting to note that Colorado College was the defending national champion at the time.
However the DU researchers point to March 1957, when Colorado College raised a question regarding the eligibility of three University of Michigan players—John Randall, Neill Buchanan and Wally Maxwell—all of whom were declared ineligible by the NCAA eligibility committee on the eve of the national tournament in Colorado Springs. CC would go on to defeat a shorthanded Michigan team in the championship game 13-6.
The hockey gods, obviously, were not amused.
8 comments:
The 1957 Harvard Crimson has a set of interesting articles on the NCAA tournament that year. I am not sure that the articles provide insight into the curse, but I leave that to the crack team of researches.
See, for example, the article titled "Hockey Team Discovers a Lavish 'Pleasure Dome' Out in Colorado." http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1957/3/18/hockey-team-discovers-a-lavish-pleasure/
Happy Heinz 57 Day!!!!
Great article Tom.
I would personally like to thank the Constantly Choking Tigers for extending this streak -- and my personal happiness which comes with your misery.
Can't spell flaccid without CC.
Cool article Tom. I wonder what happened to the CC girls?
What happened to the CC girls of '57?
They are all great grandmothers, grandmothers or dead.
Yikes.
CC sucks.
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