The University at Buffalo Rugby Football club was established back way way back in 1966. (Did you know that they played with rocks instead of balls? Or was had they advanced to using animal byproducts? One wonders...) Back in the 60's UB rugby was an open club with non university students and even some staff members as part of the team.
Sadly in 1971 the club gave up its ties to the university and became the Buffalo Old Boys men's club now Buffalo Rugby Club (buffalorugby.org). BRC remains to this day to have strong ties to UBRFC where half of the coaching staff has played and most of the graduating players go to continue their careers.
In 1976, a university team was again organized as the "Mad Turtles" playing within the New York Upstate Rugby Union (URU). Team jersey colors were sky blue with a band of red-white-navy-white-red. The team picked the name "Mad Turtles" due to the abundance of snapping turtles that had to be removed from the practice field before the day could start. These malcontented beasts inspired our men and thus a mascot was found. The team negotiated a sponsorship in 1980 with Koch's Brewery of Dunkirk, N.Y. and changed their team name to the "UB Black Horses", named after Koch's Black Horse Ale. The uniforms changed at this time to solid black with an embroidered Black Horse Ale patch on the left chest. This was obviously back when the drinking age was 18. In 1984, when the drinking age changed to 21, the sponsorship ended when the UB Student Association funded the team and they again became the "Mad Turtles", switching colors to crimson jerseys with crimson and gold hooped sleeves. Jim Tempel can be seen wearing one of these jerseys at the 2018 Alumni Game:
