Did you know the Lambert Trophy still exists?

I got to thinking about this because our season so far reminds me of Lou Holtz's description of what Penn St used to do for decades under Paterno: "hide out in the mountains" and go undefeated until finally playing a high-ranked team in a major bowl. It's why the Lions had several undefeated teams that no one considered national champs. Of course, we will get our high ranked opponents after this weekend's presumed yawner.

Back to history: What those Penn St teams would win was the Lambert Trophy, which to my surprise still exists though no one cares any more. In its heyday, the trophy went to the best college football team in the east, typically from among a host of independent program that mostly played each other as a quasi-conference: PSU, Pitt, Syracuse, WVa, Rutgers, BC, Army and Navy. In more recent decades Miami was included, and long ago Fordham won it. And they gave it Dartmouth (!) inn 1970. But take those core teams and you'd have a good league that made geographic sense -- so unlike today, with Pacific Coast teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference and Rutgers vs. UCLA in the B1G. Yikes.