1942 Idaho Vandals football team

The Vandals were 3–7 overall in 1942 and 1–5 in conference play.

Prior to their second-ever night game, played at Gonzaga Stadium in Spokane against the Second Air Force on October 3, the Vandals practiced under the lights in Moscow with white and yellow footballs.[3] They had won their first the previous year over Gonzaga,[4][5] but lost to the military team, 14–0.[6][7]

In the Battle of the Palouse with neighbor Washington State, the Vandals suffered a fifteenth straight loss, falling 7–0 on a soggy field at Neale Stadium in Moscow on November 14.[8][9] Idaho's most recent win in the series was a 17 years earlier in 1925 and the next was a dozen years away, in 1954.

Two weeks earlier on Halloween, Idaho broke a rare three-game losing streak to Montana in the rivalry game for the Little Brown Stein with a 21-point shutout at Missoula.[10][11] The Vandals turned the tables on the Griz, who had shut out Idaho the previous year in Moscow. When Montana was a member of the PCC (through 1949), the loser of the game was frequently last in the conference standings.

The final game was in Los Angeles on December 5, a 40–13 loss to the UCLA Bruins, the conference champions who were Rose Bowl-bound.[12][13]

Date	Opponent	Site	Result	Attendance
September 26	Oregon State	Neale Stadium Moscow, ID [14]	L 0–32	7,000
October 3	vs. Second Air Force [15]*	Gonzaga Stadium Spokane, WA [6][7]	L 0–14	7,000
October 9	at Eastern Washington*	Cheney, WA [16][17]	W 28–7	2,500
October 17	at Stanford	Stanford Stadium Stanford, CA [18]	L 7–54	5,000
October 24	at Oregon	Hayward Field Eugene, OR [19][20]	L 0–28	4,000
October 31	at Montana	Dornblaser Field Missoula, MT [10][11] (Little Brown Stein)	W 21–0	2,000
November 14	Washington State	Neale Stadium Moscow, ID [8][9] (Battle of the Palouse)	L 0–7	5,000
November 21	Portland*	Public School Field Boise, ID [21]	W 20–14	6,000
November 26	at Utah*	Ute Stadium Salt Lake City, UT [22]	L 7–13	12,500
December 5	at UCLA	Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Los Angeles, CA [12][13]	L 13–40	25,000
*Non-conference game Homecoming

• One game was played on Friday (Eastern Washington at Cheney)
  and one on Thursday (Utah at Salt Lake City on Thanksgiving)

No Vandals were named to the All-Coast team.[23][24]

Three Vandal seniors were selected in the 1943 NFL Draft, which lasted 32 rounds (300 selections).

• List of Idaho Vandals in the NFL Draft

Like many colleges, the football program at Idaho was stopped during the war due to manpower shortages, made official in late September 1943.[1][2] Schmidt continued to reside in Moscow, but his health began to fail in the spring of 1944. He spent his last three weeks at St. Luke's Hospital in Spokane, Washington, where he died on September 19 at age 58.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]

UI alumnus and assistant coach James "Babe" Brown, the acting athletic director and head basketball coach, became the interim head football coach for 1945 and the head coach in 1946.[32]

• Gem of the Mountains: 1943 University of Idaho yearbook – 1942 football season
• Go Mighty Vandals – 1942 football season
• Idaho Argonaut – student newspaper – 1942 editions
• College Football Data Warehouse – Idaho Vandals (1940–44)