WOW! What a game! I just found a short 4 minute video of a football game between San Jose State and Santa Clara University. This short video was like a 21st century sports highlight if I had to compare it to something. Take a look!

While I could go on all day about the fact-paced, action-packed football game you just watched, I bet you’re wondering why I even posted that video. To fill the gaps, here’s a bit of context.

Recently, I took a journey to the archives. At the archives, I found an intriguing book which I discovered to be Santa Clara University’s yearbook brand, The Redwood, from the year 1950. One main section of the book was of SCU’s football program, which I believe was quite popular.

While reading the football material, however, I felt as if the information I was reading could be enhanced somehow. I thought to myself, “a video clip of a SCU football game would be able to portray exactly what football was like back then…” So then, I turned to Youtube to find such clips. And that’s how I found this clip.

The above ~4 minute clip I found is of the game, San Jose State versus Santa Clara University and basically summarizes everything about SCU football-related I read about in the yearbook. The yearbook and the film are published within two years of each other, which I found to be remarkable and lucky of me to find (the yearbook was published in 1950 and the film is from 1951).

While the video quality is not as clear as it is today, I was still able to relate some things I read from the yearbook to what was in the film. For instance, the yearbook speaks of a vast amount of people attending football games; Stanford versus SCU in particular had 35,000 people attend the game. The game SJ State versus SCU was quite similar. In the background of the video I saw many blurry faces that filled the stands, leaving no seat empty. Clearly, football was mandatory for SCU students. These students’ passion for football are echoed both in the yearbook and film. Each student had the responsibility to support their fellow Bronco football players.

Source – In the faded background, you can see the many fans and literally no open seats

I also noticed adjectives in the yearbook that I could see the Broncos possess during the football game clip. I was shocked at how honest and accurate the details were between the two.

In my own high school’s yearbook, I found multiple occasions in which the misuse of words occurred. I believe our school was trying to give more praise than what actually existed in reality. For SCU, however, that was not the case. All of the praise SCU gave for its football program actually did happen.

By finding an actual clip of a football game, I could trust the yearbook source more. The consistency and similarity between the two encouraged me to further pursue learning about the football team and all athletics at SCU. I want to know just how great we used to be, and maybe even figure out why the football program is not around today.