The Lost History of the Lambert Trophy And Lambert Cups

There are many trophies in college sports and college football – national championship trophies, conference championship trophies, Rivalry trophies, and most valuable player trophies.

In the early 1930s, the two sons running their family jewelry business in 1933 chose to sponsor a college football trophy for the best team in the East, and the Lambert Trophy was born.

It would be a momentous decision for college football, as it would finally give teams in the East actual hardware to play for, and through the years it would be a traditional award that would genuinely coveted by Eastern college football programs decades later.

But that’s not the main reason why the initial Lambert Trophy was made.

The two sons, named Victor A. Lambert and Henry L. Lambert, named it the Lambert Trophy after their late father, August V. Lambert, in his memory.

“Behind the award lies the story of a young man, an immigrant, who all his life regretted his inability to attend a college and play football,” The Times-Union reported on December 1st, 1936. “and who, when he had achieved prominence and means, became one of the city’s outstanding sports enthusiasts. It is in his memory that his two sons have donated the perpetual trophy for eastern college football supremacy.

August V. Lambert was indeed an immigrant from Germany, who came to America at 18 years old with $7 in his pocket and a German-made clock for capital. He talked his way into running a watch and clock repair stand in the corner of a book shop, and eventually made enough money to buy a brick and mortar store, along with his brothers, who joined him.

At some point their business expanded into jewelry and precious stones, and the charismatic August Lambert shared the secret of his success, as retold in his obituary in The New York Times. “I went regularly to dances… [and] I made many friends among the boys and girls, and they, of course, came to me for their engagement rings and wedding rings. And their sons and daughters came to me for their engagement rings a generation later, and in recent years the grandchildren of my first customers have purchased their rings here.”

August was very athletic and indeed a big sports and athletic enthusiast, even in his later years, as evidenced by his involvement in the Early Risers Riding Club, a group of businessmen who rode mornings in Central Park. But his love of sports, and especially of college football as a fan, was the reason why the trophy for Eastern football supremacy was named the Lambert Trophy.

It was August V. Lambert’s name on the trophy that was issued annually from 1933 all the way until 2019, when the Lambert Trophy (and associated Lambert Cups) almost ended.

A Champion For the Eastern Independents

In the 1930s, athletic conferences were at best loose confederations for the most part, and by the late 1930s large conferences like the Pacific Coast Conference, Big 10, SEC and Big 8 had started to form from the largest football conferences.

Football programs in the East, however, still largely remained football independents, free to schedule however they liked. Unlike the members of conferences, they had no equivalent of a conference championship to play for. That’s where the Lambert Cup came in, and it’s why, almost immediately, it was a great success.

From newspapers at the time, speculation on which Eastern team would lift the Lambert Trophy were all over sports sections in the East. It helped that the award was created and conceived in New York City, the press hub of the East, and the Lambert brothers had the Big Apple as a destination to toast the winners.

Each year a panel of voters, would be formed, sometimes radio announcers, sometimes writers, and sometimes lifetime college football coaches would make up the weekly balloting.

And there was the trophy itself – a very large piece that was distinctive and large. Atop it is a player who is depicted running the football, the college football player that August V. Lambert almost certainly wished he could be when he was in his early 20s, reminiscent of the Heisman pose.

Cornell in 1939 won the trophy for the first time, finally getting the Lambert out of the Pittsburgh area. The Pitt Panthers won the first two years of the award in 1936 and 1937, with neighboring Carnegie Tech winning the trophy in 1938.

In the early days of the Lambert Trophy, Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Army and Navy dominated for the most part. Running back Jim Brown’s 7-2 Syracuse team in 1956 won the trophy, as did Army fullback Doc Blanchard’s Army teams of 1944 and 1945.

Penn State, Cornell, Fordham, Boston College and Princeton rose up to win some, with running back Dick Kazmeier’s undefeated Princeton teams in 1950 and 1951 adding the Ivy League to the recipients. (Cornell was an independent when they won in 1939.)

Overall, Penn State, has won the Lambert Cup more than any other Eastern school, dominating the modern era. The Nittany Lions have won it a grand total of 35 times, including four of the last six years. Next up is Army (8-time winners, last won the trophy in 2020), Pittsburgh (7, last in 2021), Syracuse (6, last in 1992) and Navy (6, last in 2015).

The Lambert Trophy, later renamed to the Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, was run by a variety of different operators in the 2000s and the 2010s, with custodianship ultimately reverting to the ECAC in 2020. Summer of 2021 was the final time the ECAC awarded the Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, when they retroactively to Penn State (2019) and Army (2020).

After that, several years passed when A.J. Mayowski approached the ECAC in an effort to revive and preserve the Lambert Trophy. The result was the resurrection of an honored Eastern football tradition, and a new group of writers to help determine Eastern FBS football supremacy.

To commemorate the occasion, the new Lambert Trophy Championship Association retroactively determined Pitt as the Lambert Trophy winners for 2021 and Penn State for 2022 and 2023. And in 2025, the 2024 Lambert Trophy went to Penn State once again their third straight.

School	Total	Years won
Penn State	35	1947, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024
Army	9	1944, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1953, 1958, 2018, 2020
Pittsburgh	7	1936, 1937, 1955, 1976, 1979, 1980, 2021
Syracuse	6	1952, 1956, 1959, 1966, 1987, 1992
Navy	6	1943, 1954, 1957, 1960 (co-champions), 1963, 2015

“Small Colleges” Get Their Own Lambert Cup

In 1957, the success of the Lambert Trophy – and the fact that only “major college” teams found themselves in the poll – inspired the Lambert brothers to add another piece of hardware for “small college” teams.

In 1957, the NCAA hadn’t split yet into divisions officially, though the NCAA listed football schools at the time as “small” and “major”. While this classification was informal and fluid – schools could easily go from “small” to “major” if the NCAA just said so – it also wasn’t tied to money, as there were no TV contracts to speak of.

“For the past 21 years,” The Allentown Morning Call reported, “the top Eastern eleven has received the Lambert Trophy. During that span, a small college team has never been voted the best in the East, although numerous squads had the potential to upset the trophy – winners if given the opportunity. Therefore, to give the smaller school the recognition it justly deserves, Victor and Henry Lambert have placed in contention the Lambert Cup.”

The Cup, while smaller than the massive Lambert Trophy, was no less prized by the number of smaller schools in the East, of which there were many.

“It will be of great help to the game in this [Eastern] section,” then-ECAC commissioner Asa Bushnell was quoted as saying.

As anticipated, the establishment of the Lambert Cup for smaller colleges indeed injected excitement among smaller Eastern schools like Delaware, Gettysburg, New Hampshire and UConn. Schools like Williams, Amherst and Trinity were also excited about the possibilities.

In the end, though, it was Lehigh University that ended up winning the Lambert Cup in its inaugural year in 1957.

The Engineers, led by QB Dan Nolan, went 8-1, losing only to powerful VMI 12-7 at home late in the season. Lehigh otherwise played a challenging schedule, beating early Lambert Cup contenders Delaware and Gettysburg as well as Rutgers, Buffalo and Columbia. (Their archrivals Lafayette almost beat them at the end of the year, but the Engineers rallied from a 13-13 tie to prevail 26-13 and seal their Cup win.)

“The cup stands on a square base, around which are mounted silver plaques, for the inscriptions of future winners,” Lehigh’s student paper The Brown and White said. “The bowl portion is over a foot in diameter. It is covered by a top which has a football player mounted on it.”

The original Lambert Cup was presented to the winner of the “small college” division of the ECAC, which later became ECAC Division II, which later became NCAA Division II. In 1982, however, a decision was made by the Lambert grandsons to shift the original Lambert Cup to be awarded to the best NCAA Division I-AA (now called Football Championship Subdivision) team in the East.

In the mid 1980s, the I-AA Lambert Cup occupied an interesting place, as at that time, both the freshly-reclassified Ivy League and their upstart sister conference the Patriot League chose not to accept postseason playoff bids.

That made for some interesting Lambert Cup title chases with Holy Cross not only having one of the best I-AA teams in the East, but also the country. It gave extra meaning to the Lambert Cup for those schools, for it was in their cases the highest level of possible accomplishment for these teams.

As the Patriot League embraced non-scholarship football in the early 1990s, the Atlantic 10 conference, which rose from the ashes of the old Yankee Football Conference, dominated the Lambert Cup awards at that time, with its members winning nine consecutive awards. (The streak was broken by Hofstra in 1999, then competing as an I-AA independent.)

Delaware and James Madison out of the CAA Football/A-10 Football/Yankee Conference have dominated the Lambert Cups over the years, winning 15 of the awards, with the Dukes winning the last awarded Lambert Cup in 2020. Overall, Delaware won 19 Lambert Cups at the Division II and FCS levels. (Ironically, due to that Cup switch in 1982, Delaware never officially “won” any Lambert award than the original Lambert Cup – it followed Delaware’s move from Division II to Division I-AA.)

Team	Total	Years won
Delaware †	8	1982, 1991, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010
James Madison †	7	1994, 2004, 2008, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020
Holy Cross	5	1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989
Villanova	3	1992, 2002, 2009
Lehigh	2	2001, 2011
UMass †	2	1998, 2006
New Hampshire	2	2005, 2014
Rhode Island	2	1984, 1985
William & Mary	2	1990, 1996

The Lambert Bowl

The Lambert Bowl wasn’t a game played between two college football teams – it was the third of the Lambert awards issued by the Lambert brothers.

“The Lambert Bowl will be awarded for the first time this season to the football team turning in the best performance among the 34 colleges in Division III of the Eastern College Athletic Conference,” an AP report from October 20th, 1966 said.

The ECAC was the nation’s largest athletic conference in the nation at the time, comprising 138 members in 1963, many of them smaller colleges like Central Connecticut State, Delaware Valley, Wagner, Merchant Marine, Lycoming and Merrimack. While the NCAA kept the designations “major college” and “small college”, the ECAC internally started to break down their massive membership into divisions I, III, and III, based on a broad, subjective definition of “size”.

It was in that spirit that the Lambert Bowl was added to the Lambert Trophy series, in an effort to create a trophy for the smallest of ECAC schools to play for. Like the Lambert Cup, its presence was to give an opportunity for smaller colleges to compete for Eastern college football supremacy at their level.

Like the Lambert Trophy and the Lambert Cup, the Lambert Bowl quickly became a source of excitement for those schools in the East – with a twist.

In the early years of the award, Wilkes (PA), Wagner, and Merchant Marine were all Division III powerhouses in the ECAC. Wilkes (PA) won 32 straight football games from 1966 to 1969, but Wagner in 1967 went undefeated, narrowly winning the Lambert Bowl from undefeated Wilkes (PA).

In 1968, Merchant Marine, led by George Paterno (Joe Paterno’s brother) in his swan song season, went 7-1, with their only loss coming to Lafayette, themselves in the running for the (Division II) Lambert Cup that year. The controversy spilled over into the press after 8-0 Wilkes (PA) went undefeated again, winning the Lambert Bowl for the second time based on their pollsters.

“I have to stick up for my players this year,” George Paterno said. “So I have to say we feel badly about the Lambert Bowl committee’s selection.”

The 1969 Merchant Marine team, led by first year head coach Bob Tallman after George Paterno’s retirement, would win the Lambert Bowl the following season with a 7-2 record, losing only to Lambert Cup hopeful Gettysburg and Division III LIU.

During the history of the Lambert Bowl, the trophy’s most frequent winners have been clustered in different eras. Ithaca (NY) won 8 outright or co-awards in the 1970s and 1980s, Rowan dominated in the 1990s and early 2000s, winning 8 themselves, and more recently Wesley College won six Lambert Bowls in the late 2000s and 2010s.

Mulhlenberg won the Lambert Bowl in 2019, their first-ever Lambert award, the final year so far that it’s been awarded.

Team	Total	Years won
Rowan	8	1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005
Ithaca	8	1974, 1975, 1978, 1980, 1984 (co-winners), 1985, 1988, 1991
Wesley	6	2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015
Alfred	2	1971, 2016
Brockport	2	2002, 2017
LIU †	2	1973, 1976
St. John Fisher	2	2006, 2013
Wagner †	2	1967, 1987
Washington & Jefferson	2	1992, 1994
Widener	2	1981, 2000
Wilkes	2	1966, 1968
Union (NY)	2	1984 (co-winners), 1989

† Now a member of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

Final Lambert Plaque Becomes The Final Lambert Cup

The 1970s and 1980s were tumultuous period of NCAA reorganization. During that time, the NCAA abandoned the concept of “major college” and “small college” and reorganized more stringently in divisions.

When the dust settled in 1982, the original Lambert Cup ended up as the award representing the best Division I-AA football, or Football Championship Subdivision, team in the East.

A different, temporary “Lambert Plaque” was awarded to the best Division II team in its place for a few years, but as the Lambert awards moved from the purview of the Lambert’s grandkids to the Meadowlands/New Jersey Sports Authority and the ECAC, a decision was made to make a Division II Cup as well.

Since Division I-AA, Division II and Division III all had “cups”, at that point somewhere it was decided to jettison the name “Lambert Bowl” and just call all three cups the “Lambert Cup” for their respective divisions.

Even though the physical award changed, the Division II Lambert Cup remained a highly prized award for Eastern Division II schools and was considered a big achievement for their programs, especially in Pennsylvania among PSAC schools.

The new Lambert Cup for Division II was last presented in 2018, when LIU (then called LIU-C.W. Post) won the award. LIU has actially won three Lambert awards overall.

Overall, the D-II Lambert Cup more recently was dominated by IUP out of the PSAC, who won the cup 12 times between 1987 to 2017. Before that, Delaware won the cup 11 times from 1959 to 1979 before transitioning to Division I in the 1980s.

School	Total	Years won
IUP	12	1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2012, 2017
Delaware ‡	11	1959, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1969 (co-winners), 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973 (co-winners), 1974, 1976, 1979
West Chester	6	1967, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2013, 2019
Lehigh †	6	1957, 1961, 1973 (co-winners), 1975, 1977, 1980
New Haven	4	1992, 1995, 1997, 2011

† Now a member of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
‡ Now a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).