This Day in Buffalo Sports History: Leaving the big time
February 8, 1950 -- College football in Western New York has had all sorts of ups and downs over the years -- admittedly, mostly downs. This was another down.
Canisius College had had a football team for many years in the first half of the century. The team used to attract large crowds to Civic Stadium (later War Memorial Stadium) for games. It even made it to a bowl game.
The big games locally, though, were those against Little Three rivals Niagara and St. Bonaventure. Vince Lombardi once applied to be head coach at Canisius. When he didn't get the job, he later said it was one of the biggest disappointments of his life.
But the sport was getting more and more expensive to fund at the highest level. The drain on a small, private school was a large one.
So, the Golden Griffins bowed to the inevitable and announced on this date that it was folding up the program. Niagara and St. Bonaventure (1952) soon followed.
Canisius tried Division III football about a quarter-century later. That worked for a while, but the Griffs dropped that sport again in 2002.
--- Budd Bailey
