By ROB CURTIS
Staff Writer
 

As most people on this campus know, the Bobcats clawed up the Colby White Mules last weekend in an outstanding victory that came down to the very last second and a missed field goal attempt. What most people did not know was that the game was the 100th meeting of the two teams. What is fitting is that this weekend's game is also the 100th meeting of the Bowdoin and Bates teams.

Coming off the Colby win puts Bates in the position to obtain the CBB Championship -- something that it hasn't won since 1986. However, the CBB Championship is only the icing on the cake; this rivalry has produced some of the greatest games ever played by Bates. It would be only proper to begin a new era of Bobcat football by taking the Polar Bears by storm this weekend.

The rivalry between these two teams teleports us back in time to the fall of 1889, when Bates was only 34 years old and Garcelon field was still in the College's distant future. The game was played at Bowdoin and the Bobcats were torn limb from limb. They were beat so soundly by the dominant power house of Bowdoin that the next game between the two teams wasn't for a number of years. A revival of sorts swept through Bates in the mid-1890s and football again was started at the College. This time results were better, but our first win wasn't until 1897 when the Bobcats beat the Polar Bears and went on to an undefeated season.

After that year the Bates-Bowdoin game was never the same. There were a ton of great games throughout the years, including the 1925 game, when a last minute touchdown won it for the Bobcats, and the 1954 game, when Bates won by one point to break an 11-game losing streak. Of course, who could forget the Biggest of the Big in our generation, the 33 to 29 beating of the Polar Bears on November 4, 1995 where it came right down to the last play! Yet, in all its splendor, the game is only half the draw. It's the rivalry that counts and the Bates versus Bowdoin slugfest is one of the biggest of them all, dating back to the turn of the century. The similarity of the schools and the competition in more than just athletics gives fire to the rivalry itself.

Even the administrations have battled it out in the history of the rivalry. In 1900 there was no game played because of administrative squabbling over the game payments and over who had home field advantage. Bowdoin insisted that the Bobcats come down to Brunswick, and that Bates should receive only a part of the game day purse whether the Bobcats won or lost. This was unacceptable and the game was canceled.

The real stuff that rivalries are made of began to take place in the 1920s and early 1930s. The 1929 Bates Bobcats were the State of Maine Champs, and they beat Bowdoin 26-0 that year in Brunswick. At the culmination of the game, a mass of students rushed the field and tore down the Bowdoin goal posts. The tearing down of the goal posts was accompanied by extensive chalkings on the road down to Brunswick and on the Polar Bear's campus, all in support of the Mighty Bobcats. It was the start of a war of defamation.

In the early 1930s, a number of Bates students waged a spirit war. The war consisted of repeated instances where the Bobcat warriors would go "paint up" Brunswick and Bowdoin's Whittier field. Nothing really came out of the spirit wars because Bowdoin did not retaliate (Bowdoin's president urged students to resist retailiation). The spirit war eventually ran its course and fizzled out.

Yet little things like the stealing of the Bates stuffed Bobcat and repeated pranks have kept the rivalry thick. The restructuring of the athletic conferences in the 1970s and the formation of the CBB has also given new meaning to beating Bowdoin. Never was that more apparent than in 1981, when a mass of Bates students crashed the Bowdoin gate and stormed past the ticket box. One student was arrested and approximately 100 students got to watch the Bobcats win the CBB crown for free.

"In reference to the Bobcat fans crashing of the gates in 1981, it was still a time when admission was charged for visitors. The crashing of the gates was perceived to be an in-your-face prank," said Webb Harrison, the Bobcats' coach at the time. "Where the students felt that busting through the gates was a way to get a point across; bluntly, why should we pay them? They're Bowdoin, the enemy."

Bowdoin is indeed the enemy yet again this weekend, and Bates students will have the opportunity to watch fellow classmates battle for the CBB crown. If things are as crazy as they usually are, then this has the potential to be the game of the century, if not the millennium!