Francis "Reds" Bagnell

Football

Penn's legendary All-American halfback

In the late 1940s, the University of Pennsylvania football team was a nationally ranked independent playing a big-time schedule that included Penn State, Virginia, Wisconsin, and California.

The Quakers filled Franklin Field weekly, with home attendance doubling that of the NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles.

The star of that Penn team was Francis "Reds" Bagnell, a freckle-faced kid from the neighborhood who grew up dreaming of playing for the Quakers. As a 12-year-old, Bagnell served as the team's water boy, and he went on to become one of the school's all-time great athletes, lettering in football, baseball, and basketball.

"I can't say I knew he'd be a great player when I made him our water boy," coach George Munger once said. "I did realize, ‘Here's a kid who's willing to pay the price.' Nobody worked harder or played harder than Reds.

"We used to kid him about his (lack of) speed and he didn't like it. One day he returned a punt for a touchdown against Navy. He came over to me, still puffing, and said, ‘No speed, huh?' We still laugh about that."

Bagnell grew up near 36th and Sansom, a short bicycle ride from River Field where the Penn football team practiced. He became such a fixture at the workouts that Munger gave him a Penn jacket. Years later, when Notre Dame tried to recruit Bagnell, he never even considered it.

"I was a Penn man all the way," he explained.

Bagnell was an All-City performer at West Catholic High and a perfect fit in Penn's single wing offense. In 1950, the tailback finished among the NCAA leaders in total offense and won the Maxwell Award as college football's outstanding player. He led Penn to a 6-3 record and a #13 national ranking. Their game against #2-ranked Army drew 78,000 fans to Franklin Field. The highlight of that season was a win over Dartmouth in which Bagnell set an NCAA record with 490 total yards (214 rushing, 276 passing). Joseph M. Sheehan later wrote in The New York Times: "Bagnell put on what indubitably is the greatest one-man show Franklin Field has ever witnessed."

After his senior year, Bagnell was selected to play in the North-South All-Star Game and the College All-Star Game. He could have gone on to the NFL–the New York Giants selected him in the 1951 draft–but he enlisted in the Navy and served four years as an officer.

After his discharge, he returned to Philadelphia where he joined Fahnestock and Company Investment Bankers. In 1967, he was named Senior Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange, but he never lost touch with his football roots. He was elected president of the Maxwell Football Club in 1976 and inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame one year later.

Bagnell passed away in 1995 at age 67. Given his love for his hometown, tonight's honor would have pleased him greatly. "I love Philadelphia. I love all the teams and I love the fact I'm part of the city's sports history," he once said. "People still talk about our (Catholic League) title game against Roman. They talk about my game against Dartmouth or the (1950) game against Army. As a kid growing up here, that's the stuff I dreamed about.

"When I got the chance to play for Penn, I thought that was the ultimate. When I made All-American and won the Maxwell Award, all my aspirations were satisfied. I never even thought about making the Hall of Fame. To me, the Hall of Fame players were the immortals, guys like Red Grange, Doak Walker and Gale Sayers, guys who had unique talents.

"I don't put myself in that class. I was a plugger, a hang-in-there kind of player. I didn't have great natural ability. If I had one outstanding quality, it was my competitiveness."

"Reds and I were the same type of players, both hotheads," said Chuck Bednarik, who was Penn's senior center when Bagnell was a sophomore tailback. "My last game, we were losing to Cornell and Reds threw a long pass that was incomplete. I didn't know it, but Reds got the hell knocked out of him when he released the ball.

"I was ticked off about the incompletion, so I asked Reds, ‘What happened?' He tore into me. He said, ‘Whaddya mean what happened? (Bleep) you.' I was 22 years old, just back from the war. I wasn't about to take a lot of (bleep) from some 18-year-old. I said, ‘Don't talk to me like that, you little red-headed so-and-so.' The coaches had to cool us down.

"But that's how Reds was. He did a helluva job as a leader. He wasn't a big fellow, but he played big every week."

Bagnell was once asked how he would like to be remembered, and replied, "I only want to be remembered as a guy who tried hard and made a few friends along the way."

By Ray Didinger-Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame - Inductee