William & Mary Tribe football, 1950–59

The William & Mary Indians football teams represented The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Now known as the William & Mary Tribe, the program was established in 1893. Their long-time football rival is the University of Richmond. Their annual meeting is dubbed the I-64 Bowl, so named for the highway connecting the two nearby schools.

The single greatest win of the era came on November 9, 1957, when William & Mary traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to play #10 ranked N.C. State in Riddick Stadium. The Indians (2–5–0) stunned the Wolfpack (5–0–2) with a 7–6 win. The loss dropped N.C. State nine spots in the following AP Poll to #19. It marked the first time that William & Mary had ever defeated a national top 10 opponent (the previous closest occasion occurred on November 6, 1948, when the Indians tied #3 North Carolina 7–7 in Chapel Hill).

1951

 * See also: the William & Mary scandal of 1951 – a scandal that involved former head coach Rube McCray tampering with football players' transcripts and credits to enable NCAA eligibility.

1953
The 1953 William & Mary Indians football team is considered, within the school community, to be one of the most remarkable stories in its athletics history. Due to an academic cheating scandal (coincidentally unrelated to the 1951 scandal), eight of the team's starting members were dismissed from school and another portion of the remaining 33 players transferred out. Among the 24 remaining players, five were returning Korean War veterans and one other had never played a minute of football in his life. Many of them were undersized (the quarterback stood 5'8" and weighed 160 pounds) and even the coaching staff was few in numbers (five total, one of them being the head basketball coach).

Their schedule was so tough that opposing teams would call ahead to make sure that William & Mary still intended on playing them the following week. Remarkably, the Indians started the season 5–2–1 and the only reason they finished with a 5–4–1 overall record was due to accumulating injuries with few available substitutions. Six of the players would eventually go on to play professional football. Their story of grit and determination in the face of overwhelming odds was later written about in a book titled The Iron Indians.

1959
The September 26th contest against the #13 Naval Academy marked the inaugural game in the brand new Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, which replaced Thompson Stadium as the location for all of Navy's future home games. William & Mary would go on to lose the game, 2–29.

Decade totals

 * Final record: 35–57–6
 * Points scored: 1,310
 * Points against: 1,856
 * +/- point differential: –546