| Year: | 1941 |
| Team: | Idaho Vandals |
| Sport: | football |
| Conference: | Pacific Coast Conference |
| Short Conf: | PCC |
| Record: | 4–5 |
| Conf Record: | 0–4 |
| Head Coach: | Francis Schmidt |
| Hc Year: | 1st |
| Stadium: | Neale Stadium |
The 1941 Idaho Vandals football team represented the University of Idaho in the 1941 college football season. The Vandals were led by first-year head coach Francis Schmidt,[1] and were members of the Pacific Coast Conference.
Idaho was ranked at No. 103 (out of 681 teams) in the final rankings under the Litkenhous Difference by Score System for 1941.[2]
Home games were played on campus in Moscow at Neale Stadium, with one game in Boise at Public School Field.
Schmidt, age 55, was a longtime college football head coach, most recently in the Big Ten Conference at Ohio State University where he was followed by a high school coach named Paul Brown.[3] Schmidt was hired at Idaho in March to succeed head coach
The Vandals were overall in 1941 and in conference play. They did not play any of the four teams from California teams or Washington.
Idaho opened with a homecoming loss to Utah and then played Friday night road games in consecutive weeks, their first under the lights in nine years (last at UCLA in 1932). They split these two, both with the same score losing at Oregon[4] [5] and winning at Gonzaga.[6] [7] [8] Not known at the time, it was the last-ever game against Gonzaga, as the Bulldogs put their football program on hold after this season due to World War II and never resumed it. The teams had played nearly every year for three decades.
In the Battle of the Palouse with neighbor Washington State, the Vandals suffered a fourteenth straight loss, falling at Rogers Field in Pullman on November 8.[9] [10] [11] Idaho's most recent win in the series was a sixteen years earlier in 1925 and the next was thirteen years away, in 1954.
The next week, Idaho's losing streak to Montana in the Little Brown Stein rivalry was extended to a rare three years with a 16-point shutout at Moscow.[12] [13] While Montana was in the PCC (through 1949), the loser of the game was frequently last in the conference standings. The final game seven days later was also a shutout, a victory over Montana State in Boise.[14]
No Vandals were named to the All-Coast team; back Bill Micklich was honorable mention.[15] [16]