Marv Hubbard’s high school athletic career was not atypical for the type of athletes Colgate did and still attracts. When those who live outside of the New York City area think “New York,” Broadway, the Yankees, and the great theater and restaurants of “the big city” usually come to mind. For those of us who know the difference between “New York State” and New York City, we think “cows, farms, and few people” per square mile once one leaves the City’s northern or western suburbs. Most of New York State is every bit as rural as Indiana though this is an often overlooked fact. Hubbard was an exceptional multi-sport athlete at tiny Randolph High School, a rural outpost near Jamestown, N.Y. in the southwestern part of the state. While Randolph was and remains small, his home in Red House, N.Y. is in the smallest municipality in New York State, thus by any definition, Hubbard, despite tremendous athletic ability, was “small time” in his high school athletic career. While his locale placed him well within the recruiting environs of Penn State, Pitt, and in-state Syracuse, they failed to find him due to Randolph’s tiny size, limited competition, and almost non-existent exposure. Colgate was tipped off by an alumnus in the area and for the Red Raiders, Hubbard was a fortuitous find.

 

Many forget that long before the Big East Conference, the BCS, and conference realignment to insure intra-conference playoff monies almost all of the big time college teams in the East were Independents. Great rivalries between Penn State and Pitt, Syracuse and Penn State, Holy Cross and Boston College, and Army against everyone else provided Saturday highlights for decades. Colgate was lumped with all of the major powers as well as Holy Cross, Rutgers, and Villanova and every week was a big game. Hubbard’s small town high school career according to some motivated him to excel and to others, put a governor on his confidence but by the time his junior year at Colgate arrived, he and linebacker/fullback Ray Ilg were clear-cut pro prospects. Ilg, the larger of the two at 6’1” and 225 pounds, played linebacker effectively with the Patriots for two years while Hubbard, which may come as a surprise to some, provided the slashing running at 210 compact pounds of muscle. Just as coming from a very small high school program delayed Hubbard’s collegiate development, coming from Colgate left him a bit ill prepared for the realities of the Raiders and the AFL. Knowing little about adjustments that needed to be made to shifting defenses and the multitude of offensive alignments the Raiders utilized, Hubbard once commented, “…I didn’t have any confidence in myself, I was lost. I didn’t know anything about formations. I think we used about two of them at Colgate.” Having never blocked because he was always his team’s outstanding ball carrier, this too was a new skill he just didn’t have. Released by the Raiders, he tried the Denver Broncos with similar results, this termination coming with the addition of a “conflict” with another player. Reluctantly, Hubbard eventually found his way to the Atlantic Coast Football League where most of the teams had a relationship with an NFL “parent team” that assisted with coaching and funding.