The Original Purdue Harbor, 1947: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

Today, the #1 Ohio State Buckeyes roll into West Lafayette, Indiana. Their prey is weak. Purdue’s expected to lose. Ohio State is expected to dominate. And they probably will! 

But stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A highly-ranked opponent rolls into Ross-Ade Stadium with the expectation of dominating Purdue’s oft-hapless football team. The invading team underrates the Boilermakers. The Boilermakers have other thoughts, and after 60 minutes, Purdue emerges as a victorious underdog. It feels rehearsed because it’s happened so many times over the years, to the point that there’s a term of art associated with the event: Purdue Harbor. 

The precipitating event for the Purdue Harbor etymology was a pure shock for the Buckeyes, a bolt out of the blue akin to December 7, 1941. In October 2009, no Ohio State fan could have contemplated that the lowly Boilers would come over the horizon and take them down. But it happened. The name stuck in the early days of social media and sports blogs, and it became part of modern day college football lore. And then it happened again against Ohio State in 2018. It happened against #2 Iowa in 2021. It continues to be A Thing. And historically, it’s been a thing for longer than you might guess.

Purdue have been unlikely giant-killers well into the distant past, but there are specific requirements for a game to be a candidate for a Harboring. 

1. It must be a home game at Ross-Ade.
2. The opponent must be ranked top-ten in the AP poll.
3. Purdue must be unranked. Bonus points for being at or below .500. 

With that criteria established, there have actually been quite a few Harbors over the years. There are home wins over #1 ranked Notre Dame, plus a handful of wins over top-ranked Michigan State, Minnesota, and Michigan. And those are all great stories in their own rights (especially, the 1976 win over #1 Michigan. That Purdue team didn’t have a passing touchdown! No, wait. Stay with me. They didn’t have a passing touchdown ALL SEASON.) 

But there has to be an original ur-Harboring, a first time in which those specific but exacting requirements meshed. Purdue has played football since 1889. Ross-Ade was built in 1924. AP polls have been a thing since 1936. Where does that leave us? 

Friends, I announce to you, as bizarre as it sounds: The first Purdue Harbor was against … 

Illinois. No, for real. 

The place: Ross-Ade Stadium. The contestants: 1947 #5 Illinois, coming off of a conference championship and a Rose Bowl championship against UCLA. Purdue, 2-2, coming off a demoralizingly winless Big Ten season, and very much unranked. A packed crowd of 42,000 Boilermakers in the stands. 

Let’s go back. Let’s try to imagine how it felt to be there on that day. 

Illinois hadn’t lost for 10 straight games, dating back to an October loss to the Indiana Hoosiers the year prior. They were looking ahead to a home date with #2 Michigan the following week. Meanwhile, Purdue had snuck a win against an admittedly pretty terrible Ohio State squad, got pasted by #1 Notre Dame, and then kicked the snot out of Boston University in Fenway in the preceding weeks. It’s a weird vestige of the time, but newspapers would compare the average weights of the linemen on each squad; Purdue was 13 lbs heavier than the Illini lines, but viewed to be slow and lumbering. The Illini were favored by 14 points, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion. It would all come down to Moss v DeMoss, the teams’ respective QBs.

What was assumed to be a surprisingly modern aerial battle ended up being a slog, a puntfest, a Big Ten West matchup before we knew what that meant. At half, a 7-7 tie. Purdue’s punter aimed for a coffin-corner and nailed the Illini on their own 2 yard line. The Boilermaker defense held Illinois in the following series and forced the Illini to punt in return. Purdue nailed a few long passes and found the end zone.  Boilermakers, 14-7 in the 3rd quarter. And after that they sat on it, milking the clock and running the time down. A solid defense flustered Illinois’ QB Moss, although the Illini attempted several last-gasp passes to even the score late in the 4th. Despite the odds and expectations, #5 Illinois went down looking ahead to the Wolverines. Purdue Harbor struck out of the blue for the first time. The 42,000 fans in black and gold lost their minds. Could you script a better Homecoming? 

It’s sometimes hard to imagine or compare football antiquity to the present day game. The past is a foreign country and even for a sport rooted in its rich history, the times have changed pretty dramatically. The game is faster, bigger, more monied, more professionalized. The colleges that surround the sport have changed even more! But that idea of a shock loss, of unwarranted confidence so quickly turned, that bitter, adrenal feeling of “Oh God, not like this, not to THEM!” remains an ever-present fear in the sport.

And when you roll into Ross-Ade as a top-ranked team? Abandon all hope, ye who enter Purdue Harbor.