The photo was taken four days before a big game with Lafayette moved to Palmer Stadium at Princeton. The photo is Hazel at Neilson Field - second football home of Rutgers (across the street from College Field, the first home).
In 1953, Rutgers started presenting a trophy for the most valuable player on the varsity football team. Its name is “The Homer Hazel Award.” But the October 10, 1924 Daily Home News said the first MVP award – the Waller Trophy - was a two foot high cup and was displayed at businesses around New Brunswick. Homer Hazel won the inaugural award.
He was in inducted into the inaugural class of the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951.
Homer Hazel earned his football letter in 1916 but had to leave school for lack of funds. He returned to win All American honors in 1923 as an end and 1924 as a fullback (the first to do that), “Top memory of all, perhaps, concerns a bitter midwinter night when between the halves of a game a cheerleader ran into the center of the (Ballantine Gym) floor and after begging silence announced in proud ringing tones that Homer Hazel, the great and legendary Hazel, had just been picked as an All-American. Just as the announcement was concluded, Hazel himself, then on the basketball squad, returned to the floor with the team. The ovation that kept the huge blushing Hazel on his feet for 10 minutes still stands as the most impressive of collegiate memories, then or now,” wrote sportswriter John McDonald in the March 16, 1938 Targum.
