1940 Boston College Eagles football team

1940 Boston College Eagles football
National champion (self-claimed)
Eastern champion
Sugar Bowl champion
Sugar Bowl, W 19–13 vs. Tennessee
ConferenceIndependent
Ranking
APNo. 5
Record11–0
Head coach
CaptainHenry Toczylowski
Home stadiumAlumni Field
Fenway Park
Seasons
← 1939
1941 →
1940 Eastern college football independents records
Conf Overall
Team W   L   T W   L   T
No. 5 Boston College     11 0 0
Duquesne     7 1 0
No. 14 Penn     6 1 1
Penn State     6 1 1
No. 12 Fordham     7 2 0
No. 15 Cornell     6 2 0
La Salle     6 2 0
Princeton     5 2 1
Columbia     5 2 2
Brown     6 3 1
Bucknell     4 2 2
Boston University     5 3 0
Colgate     5 3 0
Hofstra     4 3 0
Harvard     3 2 3
Dartmouth     5 4 0
Temple     4 4 1
Tufts     4 4 0
Vermont     4 4 0
Villanova     4 5 0
Pittsburgh     3 4 1
Syracuse     3 4 1
Buffalo     3 5 0
Carnegie Tech     3 5 0
Manhattan     3 6 0
Providence     3 6 0
NYU     2 7 0
Yale     1 7 0
Army     1 7 1
CCNY     1 5 1
Massachusetts State     1 8 0
Rankings from AP Poll

The 1940 Boston College Eagles football team represented Boston College as an independent during the 1940 college football season. The team was led by head coach Frank Leahy in his second year, and played their home games at Fenway Park in Boston and Alumni Field in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. They won all ten games in the regular season, were the highest-scoring team in the country, and won the Lambert Trophy, awarded to 'Eastern champion'. With its victory on New Year's Day in the Sugar Bowl over the undefeated Tennessee, champion of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the BC Eagles were widely acclaimed as national champions.[1] Minnesota and Stanford also have viable claims to the national championship.

From 1936 to 1964, the final AP Poll ranking college football teams was taken at the end of the regular season, before the postseason bowl games. The final 1940 rankings were published on December 2, and listed undefeated Minnesota (8–0) first with its thrilling home win by an extra point 7–6 over No. 3 Michigan (7–1). Stanford (10–0) was ranked second, Tennessee (10–0) fourth, and Boston College (10–0) was fifth.[2]

Neither Minnesota nor Michigan played in a postseason bowl game, and Stanford defeated No. 7 Nebraska (8–2) in the Rose Bowl. Tennessee outscored its regular season opponents 319–26, soundly beating such opponents as Alabama, Florida, LSU, Kentucky, Virginia, and Duke.[3] Despite where the AP rated teams at the end of the regular season, BC's post season win over Tennessee was widely deemed the best win of any team in the 1940 season.[4]

  1. ^ See what the nation's leading sportswriters thought of the BC Sugar Bowl victory at “Sports Writers Comment on B.C. Win In Sugar Bowl”, Daily Boston Globe (1928-1960); Jan. 3, 1941; p. 9. For extensive contemporaneous documentation of the championship see http://bcnationalchamps1940.wordpress.com/
  2. ^ Reid Oslin (November 10, 2015). Boston College Athletics – The 1940 Team of Destiny Retrieved July 21, 2016.
  3. ^ Haywood Harris and Gus Manning (2004) “Six Seasons Remembered: The National Championship Years of Tennessee Football”, The University of Tennessee Press/ Knoxville pp. 24–45.
  4. ^ "Sports Writers Comment on B. C. Win In Sugar Bowl". The Boston Globe. Boston, Massachusetts. January 3, 1941. p. 9. Retrieved June 8, 2021 – via Newspapers.com Open access icon.