The score still follows Joseph V. Walton ’65 more than six decades later: 6-6.
During Rivalry 100 on Nov. 21, 1964, Lehigh scored an early touchdown, but Walton missed the extra point. Lafayette tied the game, but its kicker also missed the extra point. The game ended 6-6, the most recent tie in The Rivalry and, because of college football rule changes, potentially the last.
“It’s kind of fortunate that it ended in a tie,” says Walton, who was a senior playing in his last game. “We were both about the same skill level. The score reflects that.”
A Love for Lehigh Passed Down
Walton’s father, Joseph L. Walton ’37, was captain of Lehigh’s football team. Both Waltons played in four Lehigh-Lafayette games without losing, something the younger Walton says no other Lehigh father-son duo has done. But there’s one distinction he wishes he shared with his father.
“My father could say he always beat Lafayette, which is a better way to say it,” Walton explains. “One of the regrets in my life is that I can’t say that. I say that I never lost to Lafayette.”
Still, Walton’s role in Rivalry 100 earned him a place in Lehigh football history. The ball he kicked off to start the game was taken to the College Football Hall of Fame. Black scuff marks from his cleats can be seen in photos of the ball.
Trying to Settle the Score
The tie resurfaced in 1990 as the theme of the Class of 1965’s 25th reunion, which Walton chaired. He wanted to settle the 6-6 score with a kicking competition at Lafayette’s Fisher Stadium, the site of Rivalry 100. He even called the former Lafayette kicker.
“I said, ‘I’m Joe Walton from Lehigh, and I played in the Lehigh-Lafayette game. We both missed extra points.’ At that point, he said, ‘Oh, s—.’ Plumpf,” Walton says, imitating a phone being hung up. “And that was the last I ever heard from him.”
The night before his kick, Karen Doyle Walton Ed.D.’83 remembers her husband announcing that he was heading to the mall to buy cleats. She asked him the last time he kicked a football. His reply: at Rivalry 100.
At 9 a.m. on the Saturday of the reunion, the Fisher Field scoreboard was lit up with the familiar 6-6 score. Although the former Lafayette kicker was absent, Joseph lined up for another extra-point attempt, 26 years after missing the one that helped produce the tie.
“It was a worm-burner,” Karen says.
Joseph takes over the narrative: “Pretty much like the one I missed at the 100th game. I think it ended in another draw. I don’t think it really solved the problem.”
“The Brown and White and The Lafayette newspaper, I think each one had a very flowery report of it,” Karen says. “The Lehigh paper said that they won, and The Lafayette said that they won. So perfect!”
More Than a Game
The Waltons have spent decades keeping pieces of Rivalry 100 close.
Their collection includes a game program, an enlarged photo of the ball Joseph kicked off on display at the College Football Hall of Fame, and 16 mm reels of game film. He’s leaned into his inauspicious part of Lehigh football history.
“What do you do if you’re the guy who missed the extra point in the 100th game to make it a tie?” Walton says. “You can try to forget about it. That wasn’t my approach at all. I brought it up to stimulate the interest of our class but also the game itself. I wanted to talk about it wherever I could.”
Sixty-two years to the day after Rivalry 100, Rivalry 162 will be played on Nov. 21 at Fisher Stadium. Lehigh trails the series 74-82-5, but it’s won the past two games and seven of the past 11.
But being confident in a win — as Walton was more than six decades ago in Rivalry 100 — doesn’t mean much in The Rivalry, which dates to 1884 and is the most-played ongoing series in college football history.
“Anything can happen at a Lehigh-Lafayette game and has,” he says. “Big underdogs have won. There have been blowouts. It’s unpredictable.”
