To put the The Curious Case of Steve Sebo in perspective, let us see if this can be described in the context of today’s world of NCAA College Football, where there is year-around coverage of team stats, player story lines and BCS rankings, permeating a vast network of TV stations and websites. Picture this if it happened today:
Enter a university with a winning football tradition, a team with 15 consecutive non-losing seasons in which 7 of seasons were of 2 losses or less. The school then endures a losing season, and the head coach resigns. Enter the new head coach.
The new head coach loses every game in his first two seasons. They school does not fire him. They ardently back him, support him, give him a chance to turn things around. In his first 5 seasons, this coach never posts a winning record. The school continues their ardent support, refuses to dismiss him, rather, they give yet another year. And in his 6th season, this coach’s team wins a title, posts a 7-1-1 record, the tie against a nation’s decade-long powerhouse.
At the end of the season, the school dispatches him. Seems unbelievable? It happened.
Consider the Curious Case of Steve Sebo, Head Coach of the Penn Quakers.
From 1938 to 1953, the Penn Quakers, coached by George Munger, had 15 consecutive non-losing seasons, 7 seasons of no more than 2 losses and one wonderful undefeated season. Then in 1953, the Quakers went 3-5-1 and Coach Munger resigned as Penn’s football coach. Steve Sebo is named to succeed him.
Coach Sebo’s first two seasons prove to be difficult years, back to back 0-9 seasons to start out his coaching tenure at Penn. Still, the administration backed him, despite the downward trend. In his debut season, The Quakers scored 74 points and were shut out twice, but in his second season, the Quakers scoring dropped to only 34 points and his team were shut out 5 times.
It should be noted that in 1954, The Ivy League was formed. Penn’s football team was hampered by the new league’s restrictions which included a ban on spring practice, yet the Quakers still matched up against old rivals like Notre Dame and Penn State.
The next three seasons, the Penn Quakers won a total of 11 games and by the end of the 1958 season, they now had 5 consecutive losing seasons under Coach Sebo.
Then in 1959, the Quakers caught lightening in a bottle. They started the season with three consecutive shutout wins over Lafayette, Dartmouth and Princeton, outscoring their opponents 57-0 over 3 games. They beat Brown the next week 32-9 to set up a show down with Navy, who was rolling into the game on the edge of marvelous decade of football. The Midshipman went 55-30-9 in the 1950’s, including a Cotton Bowl victory the year before, 1958, against Rice.
The Quakers earned a hard fought 22-22 tie against the Midshipman, keeping the Quakers' undefeated season alive. The following week, the Quakers suffered their only loss of the season, 12-0 upset to a 3-2 Harvard Crimson, team. The Quakers won their last three games outscoring Yale, Columbia and Cornell 80-31 capping an incredible turn around season for Coach Sebo’s once forlorn team. The Penn Quakers capped one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college football history and had won the Ivy League Championship.
At the end of the 1959 season, the administration, which had sat by and watched the football program suffer through the 5-year-long drought in abject support of Coach Sebo, allowed his contract to expire at the of the Championship season. Coach Sebo’s 7-1-1 Quaker team had compiled the best Quaker football record in 12 years.
The Curious Case of Coach Sebo, one possible explanation is the good ol' conspiracy theory:
To try to illuminate what may be considered unfortunate episodes that occurred at the University of Penn following the 1959 football season, one must return to 1954. It was alleged that for Penn to have been accepted into the Ivy League in 1954, Penn's new president, Dr. Gaylord P. Harnwell, may have either promised or assumed that Penn would have a losing football program. Of course this is nothing more than a theory. But, when Steve Sebo's coaching contract was not renewed at the end of the 1959 season, Penn students were informed the decision was actually made a year earlier in response to alumni pressure. However, instead of buying out the 1959 year of Sebo's contract prior to the season's first game, the administration allowed him to coach his final year. It was also alleged the administration assumed he would deliver yet another losing team. When this did not happen, in many circles, the University became an object of scorn after suddenly releasing a successful coach following years of disappointment.
What actually occurred following the 1959 season may never be publicly known, but indeed, the curious case of Coach Steve Sebo remains a remarkable story in the annals of Ivy League Football History.
Aftermath: After Coach Sebo’s contract was not renewed following the 1959 season, he became the general manager of the New York Titans, the newly formed team from the newly formed upstart league, the AFL. The Titans were renamed as the New York Jets in 1963, but Steve Sebo left the Titans in 1962 to become the athletic director at the University of Virginia.
Sources:
USA Today College Football Encyclopedia
ESPN College Football Encyclopedia
Official NCAA Division I Records Book
Jay Abramson - Jay Abramson’s career in mathematics education began in the early 1980’s in Texas where he taught and coached at middle ...
