Look back on Cornell’s most elaborate prank against Syracuse, led by a young Dick Schaap

Syracuse University students and staff could not believe their eyes when they saw the front page of The Daily Orange newspaper on November 5, 1954.
The campus paper delivered bombshell news. SU was being booted out of the NCAA.
A bold headline declared that a “Grid Scandal Rocks Hill as NCAA Acts.”
The story, written by editor-in-chief Ed Hardy, said that recruiting violations by Coach Ben Schwartzwalder’s football team had led to Syracuse’s banishment from college sports, reporting that the coach had been caught recruiting coal miners from his native West Virginia to play for the Orange.
The report came the day before the school’s always intense football game against Upstate New York rival Cornell.
The paper had more bad news.
Headlines included:
Eventually, some readers began noticing something odd about that morning’s Daily Orange.
It was full of advertisements from the Cornell Daily Sun, the campus newspaper of the Orange’s then-biggest rival. The opposition paper tagged itself “Ithaca’s only Syracuse newspaper” in the ads.
Syracuse had been pranked.
That morning’s Daily Orange had been a fake front to back, a phony, an intricate stunt perpetrated perfectly by Cornell students.
(The story about SU’s “crack quiz kids” was the only true article in it. Syracuse’s Quiz Bowl radio program had lost the night before to Georgetown, a fact that the pranksters probably relished.)
The Syracuse Herald-Journal praised the stunt that afternoon, calling it,“Probably one of the best ‘Black Friday gags’ ever pulled on one school in the history of collegiate hi-jinks.”
How the men from Cornell pulled off their hoax was an amazing feat of planning and execution.
The prank’s origins began over a year before, after Cornell Daily Sun reporters and editors were lampooned in The Daily Orange’s “Spring Day” joke issue.
Seeking their revenge, Cornell’s editor-in-chief Richard Schaap, who later hosted ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” from 1988 to 2001, came up with the idea of the bogus SU newspaper.
It began with an innocent visit to Daily Orange offices on October 14, 1954 by Schaap and managing editor Philip Levine. They spent hours with Hardy and his staff. It was supposed to be a friendly meeting.
“The Syracusans were only too willing to divulge information about their methods of publication and delivery while showing the visitors around their composing and press rooms,” the Cornell Daily Sun revealed on November 8, 1954.
This was just the beginning of Cornell’s subterfuge.
A week later, they returned to the Syracuse campus during early morning hours to spy on the Orange’s publishing operation, paying particular attention to when press workers started their work and delivery boys arrived.
The operation looked doomed at a planning meeting on October 27.
Turn-out was low and plans to print the phony newspaper appeared impossible. The Ithaca Journal, the Dryden Press, and other local printers could not help.
Three days later, Schaap was in New York City, covering Cornell’s football game against Columbia, when he received an urgent telegram from Levine.
It read:
“Operation ‘X’ Okay. Cortland will print. Must, repeat, must have stories by Monday noon. Urgent you return immediately.”
With Cornell safely ahead 20-0, Schaap, the future sports columnist and editor at the New York Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Sport magazine, and on-screen personality at NBC, ABC, and ESPN, left the game to work on the prank.
Over the next two days, fake stories for the phony Daily Orange were written, photos were taken, and 6,500 copies of the parody newspaper were printed at the Cortland Standard before being rushed to Ithaca for storage.
At 3:30 a.m. on Friday, November 5, two cars filled with Cornell students departed for Syracuse.
They stormed into the newspaper office and informed press worker, Stanley Kula, what they were up to.
Kula was in no position to stop them.
“I came to work at 5 a.m. as usual, and when I came down to the press room to change my clothes, I was surrounded by about 20 kids.” he told the Herald-Journal. “They were plenty big – all around 200 pounds or better. They looked like football players to me. They were too much for me. Who was I to argue with them?”
(The Cornell men treated Kula kindly. He was given coffee; they discussed politics and played some gin rummy together. “They were very nice about it,” he said.)
A sign went up onto the front door of The Daily Orange which told their circulation staff to stay away. “Press Breakdown and Electrical Failure. Come Back Later at 10 A.M.”
That gave the invaders a couple hours to distribute their phony papers. They hung around campus to gauge the Syracuse reaction.
These included:
“My God, I knew they’d catch up with Schwartzy.”
“I wonder if my roommate was caught in this drinking raid?”
“It’s the best copy of the D.O. this year.”
Some readers, after realizing they had been pranked, hoped that “our football team will get even tomorrow.”
They would not.
To add insult to injury, Cornell defeated Syracuse and their legendary running back, Jim Brown, the next day, 14-6.
Orange editor Ed Hardy tried to save face after the prank.
“Imitation is flattery,” he wrote. “It was too bad the Cornellians did such a poor job of it. The hoax was cleverly executed but many of the articles were near-libelous and in extremely poor taste.”
He told The Post-Standard that he did not realize that Schaap’s and Levine’s visit weeks before were the beginnings of the prank.
Cornell’s hoax got national attention. The story was picked up by The Associated Press, the United Press, the New York Daily News, and several radio stations.
The Herald-Journal’s executive editor, Alexander Jones, cheered the stunt against his own hometown school, calling it “sinister genius.”
“Of all the college ribs of one school against another, the feat of Cornell students in taking over the Syracuse Daily Orange for a day comes pretty close to being tops,” he wrote.
Coming during the contentious election season of 1954, it provided the “belly laugh that has been so badly needed lately. I am all admiration for the faultless execution of this daring plan.”
For Jones, the students, and for local football fans it was sad that was the prank came just before what appeared to be the last ever football game between the two schools.
Cornell was joining the Ivy League in 1955 and Syracuse was becoming a national power, winning the national championship in 1959.
“It is very sad that the Syracuse-Cornell football tradition ends with today’s game,” Jones wrote. “There will be no opportunity for even more diabolical revenge.”
The teams did renew their rivalry in 1957 and 1958 and it could be argued that Syracuse got their revenge for the Cornell prank, easily winning both games by a combined score of 89-0.