top of page
Search

Navy Dominates Cornell, 41-0, as QB Staubach Excels

Oct. 13, 1962 - Cornell found non-league waters too deep today. The only Ivy League team taking on a service team this year, the Ithacans ran aground against Navy, 41-0. The crowd of 23,358 at Memorial Stadium in Annapolis was the largest to ever see a football game there. It was Family Day. Most of the athletic staff, however, thought it would have been more appropriate to call it “Midshipman Roger Staubach Day.” For the remarkable 20-year-old sophomore quarterback (pictured left) from Cincinnati did everything he wanted to do in directing all six touchdown drives. He twice plunged from the 1-yard line for touchdowns. He completed 9 of 11 passes for 99 yards. And he contributed on the best feats of broken-field running seen since the stadium opened in 1959. While tacklers on four attempts unsuccessfully tried to bring him down, he sped goalward, dashing 68 yards on the last play of the third quarter. A desperation tackle by Cornell’s Dick Clark finally caught him on the visitors’ one-yard line. Then, on the first play of the fourth quarter, Staubach knifed through the opposing line for the team’s third touchdown. After the game, Coach Wayne Hardin said: “I thought Staubach was tremendous today.”

bottom of page