Well before he became a construction icon, George Walbridge was an accomplished college football player. He earned All-America honors in 1897 (third team) on a squad selected by Walter Camp, a college football coach and sportswriter nicknamed the “Father of American Football.”
Walbridge played football for two teams: a) he captained the Lafayette College Leopards from Easton, Penn. in 1896; and b) starred as a hard-charging running back for Cornell University in 1899.
His ’96 season was cut short in the month of October by an appendicitis attack he suffered on board a train bound for Philadelphia. The Leopards would have to face powerhouse Pennsylvania without their star back. Walbridge was carried off the train and rushed into surgery. He survived an infection, but didn’t play again that year.
Walbridge’s teammates went out and pulled off one of the biggest upsets of that year, defeating Penn by a score of 6-4. After the game, the entire Lafayette team went to Walbridge’s hospital room and sang the hymn, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”
Decades later, Lafayette’s coach, Parke H. Davis, an attorney and member of the college football’s rules committee, declared the 1896 Lafayette team National Champions.
No record has been found indicating what Walbridge did during the 1897 season. In 1898, he served as a private in the U.S. Army Infantry during the Spanish-American war.
Back on the field
In 1899, Walbridge returned to the gridiron, this time for Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Perhaps his best performance on the field turned out to be his last. On Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1899 Cornell took on the team from Columbia University. Columbia lost its quarterback in the first few minutes, then its star guard, Big White, was tossed out of the game for slugging a Cornell player.
A sportswriter covering the game described Walbridge’s performance this way: “Walbridge, Cornell’s left halfback, was easily the star of the game. He not only excelled in hitting the line, but his spectacular runs for forty and forty-five yards, respectively, for touchdowns through the entire Columbia team, again demonstrated that he is one of the best all-around half-backs in the country, as was generally conceded when he first came into prominence on the Lafayette eleven.”
Three days later, the New York Times ran a headline that surely lowered the spirits of Cornell football fans: “Cornell Team is Crippled; Halfback Walbridge and His Substitute Both Suffer Injuries.”
Cornell lost its next two games: 6-5 to Walbridge’s former team, Lafayette; and 29-0 to Pennsylvania.
Walbridge graduated from Cornell in 1900 with a degree in Engineering.