page_title: Virginia Cavaliers football
section_title: SAIAA (1912–1920)
hierarchical_section_title: Virginia Cavaliers football / History / Coaching carousel (1900–1920) / SAIAA (1912–1920)
caption_attribution_description: UVA running back Buck Mayer
context_page_description: The Virginia Cavaliers football team represents the University of Virginia in the sport of American football. Established in 1888, Virginia plays its home games at Scott Stadium, capacity 61,500, featured prominently at the center of its campus near the Academical Village. UVA played an outsized role in the shaping of the modern game's ethics and eligibility rules as well as its safety rules, after a Georgia fullback died fighting the tide of a lopsided Virginia victory in 1897.
  Quickly asserting itself as the South's first great program with 28 straight winning seasons from its first in 1888, Virginia football claimed 12 southern championships and was the first program outside the Northeast to defeat perennial power Yale, on the first attempt in 1915. During those early days, Virginia established long-lasting rivalries that still continue on: particularly the South's Oldest Rivalry with North Carolina and a heated rivalry with VPI. Virginia has also played William & Mary annually or biennially for extended stretches since 1908.
context_section_description: 1912 featured Virginia in the inaugural South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SAIAA) season. Season tickets were $7.50 for students and $9.50 for alumni when 8,000-seat Lambeth Stadium opened in 1913, with a price tag of $35,000. The season began with three home shutout victories for Virginia, followed later in the season by a home game with Vanderbilt that was billed as The Football Classic of the South. Trainloads of alumni rolled into Charlottesville to watch Virginia crush the Commodores, 34–0, at Lambeth's dedication.
  For years hence, it was traditional to designate "a greatest home game" each season. In 1914, it was Georgia—a "Rally 'Round the Rotunda" won by UVA, 28–0, in a drizzle, as Robert Kent Gooch "general-led his men with rare ability", the Alumni News gushed. Betting was heavy on Yale for a 1915 game that ranked as the biggest all-time win at that stage of Virginia's history. No Southern team had ever defeated the Ivy League power until Virginia—led by quarterback Norborne Berkeley and Buck Mayer—won 10–0 in New Haven. Headlines in the Charlottesville Daily Progress read, "Yale Bowl a Soup Tureen—Virginia Eleven Serves Dish of Bulldog Stew!" The 1915 Virginia team was also the only team to beat the "point-a-minute" Commodores. The season's only loss was 9–0 on the road at Harvard. Harvard's only loss was to national champion Cornell. Halfback Eugene N. "Buck" Mayer was the South's first consensus All-American.
  
  The University's first-ever losing football season occurred the next year, including a 61–3 payback at Yale. "Played them too early in the season", moaned a 1916 Alumni News. Questions about the role of athletics were cast aside in 1917, dwarfed by a larger battlefront now known as World War I. Athletics were curtailed in 1917 and 1918 "in an effort to adapt this University to the stern necessities of a people at war", according to the Corks & Curls.
  The war ended, enrollment began to rebuild, and football practice resumed in 1919 with only two lettermen. "All Trains Lead to Charlottesville!" proclaimed posters promoting the "Great Post War Gathering of Virginia Alumni" for the November 15, 1919, home game with Vanderbilt. UVA lost, 10–6, and dropped the traditional Thanksgiving Day game with North Carolina to finish the "start-up" season at 2–5–2.
  In December 1919, Dr. Rice Warren was hired as coach in 1920. Warren led the 1920 squad to a 5–2–2 record. UVA also joined the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1920, but left with many SIAA teams to form the Southern Conference in 1921. Rice Warren's tenure ended before the 1922 season, and new coach Thomas Campbell guided the team to a 4–4–1 record—not so mediocre considering the '21 team had managed only three points in its final four games.
caption: Buck Mayer in 1915
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