The December 6, 1941 Targum announced the first-ever dinner for the football team by the Touchdown Club of New Brunswick for that Monday. By the time the dinner took place there was speculation on how many of the players that night would be missing on next year’s team. Within a week, one Rutgers alumnus had died at Pearl Harbor and another in Manila; Old Queen’s ordered all electric typewriters off so radio news bulletins could be heard over loud speakers; 21 members of Phi Gamma Delta spent midnight to 4:00 a.m. shifts at Post 25A on the outskirts of town voluntarily watching the skies for any aircraft flying toward New York with a secret phone number to contact Mitchel Army Air Field in Long Island if they did; ROTC was mobilized in the event of an air raid; a Rutgers Defense Council was formed; and campus black-outs imposed. The skylight of the College Avenue Gymnasium was painted over to make it look black from the sky. Those same paint flakes floated down on the basketball court and stopped play during the men’s undefeated 1975-76 season. The United States – and along with it Rutgers - had entered World War II.
A dozen Rutgers athletes, eight of them football players, were already in the military by February, 1942 when 41-year old head coach Harvey Harman (1938-41, 46-55) along with backfield coach Eddie Masavage enlisted in the Navy’s V-5 physical training aviation program as instructors. Months later, end coach Al Sabo also enlisted and freshman football coach Dave Bender was made a captain in the Air Corp Intelligence. Rutgers athletic director George Little recommended them to the officers who were in charge - Lt. Commander Thomas J. Hamilton (19-8 as Navy coach 1934-36) and Gene Tunney, (retired heavyweight champion and a commander by WWII’s end). Little said, “In times of peace we indulge in considerable talk of what football and other sports can do for the making of men. If our theories are practical, we should feel in time of war there is a great opportunity offered for athletic leaders… ”
Harvey Harman returned to coach the 1946 Rutgers team. He had wound up on the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard aircraft carrier in the Pacific participating in the Battle of Okinawa and Battle of Leyte Gulf and was discharged from the Navy with the rank of Commander. His staff coach, Eddie Masavage, served 14 months and also wound up on an aircraft carrier, the Essex, before returning to his peacetime job “On the Banks of the Old Raritan.” Both he and Al Sabo were lieutenants, junior grade. And then it was 58-year old Rutgers AD George Little’s turn. Responding to a War Department request, the April 25, 1947 Targum reported, “… Little leaves for Germany on a two-man Commission for a 45-day tour to study the physical education program in the American zone of occupied Germany.”
A dozen Rutgers athletes, eight of them football players, were already in the military by February, 1942 when 41-year old head coach Harvey Harman (1938-41, 46-55) along with backfield coach Eddie Masavage enlisted in the Navy’s V-5 physical training aviation program as instructors. Months later, end coach Al Sabo also enlisted and freshman football coach Dave Bender was made a captain in the Air Corp Intelligence. Rutgers athletic director George Little recommended them to the officers who were in charge - Lt. Commander Thomas J. Hamilton (19-8 as Navy coach 1934-36) and Gene Tunney, (retired heavyweight champion and a commander by WWII’s end). Little said, “In times of peace we indulge in considerable talk of what football and other sports can do for the making of men. If our theories are practical, we should feel in time of war there is a great opportunity offered for athletic leaders… ”
Harvey Harman returned to coach the 1946 Rutgers team. He had wound up on the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard aircraft carrier in the Pacific participating in the Battle of Okinawa and Battle of Leyte Gulf and was discharged from the Navy with the rank of Commander. His staff coach, Eddie Masavage, served 14 months and also wound up on an aircraft carrier, the Essex, before returning to his peacetime job “On the Banks of the Old Raritan.” Both he and Al Sabo were lieutenants, junior grade. And then it was 58-year old Rutgers AD George Little’s turn. Responding to a War Department request, the April 25, 1947 Targum reported, “… Little leaves for Germany on a two-man Commission for a 45-day tour to study the physical education program in the American zone of occupied Germany.”
