Archive for June, 2009

1901: The strange story of Kirksville’s ‘bone doctors’

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

By Gaylon Krizak

“Quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum (What is food to one person may be bitter poison to others).” — Lucretius, “De Rerum Natura”

The whispers started early in the season; before it had even begun, in fact, for many teams (eventual national champion Michigan, for example, was five days away from its season opener against Albion).

Tucked well into “Gossip of the Gridiron” — a regular and vigilant college football notes column — in the Sept. 23, 1901, edition of the Lincoln (Neb.) Evening News was an item that began:

“Next Friday the (Nebraska) team will leave for Kirksville, Mo., to play the Osteopaths there. It is thought this will be one of the toughest proportions of the year. The doctors have been training since the middle of August under direction of Coach (Ernest C.) White, who made his reputation at Missouri in 1899. There are ugly rumors of professionalism in connection with this team. …”

No evidence was presented; no substantiation even hinted at. Yet, there it was in black and white: one of the many charges that forever dogged the team representing the American School of Osteopathy (ASO) of Kirksville, Mo., which in three short years had gone from a school with no football team to a Midwestern powerhouse.

How? Depends on who was telling the story.

Out of nowhere

There was no NCAA in 1901. College athletics, rigorously championing a strict amateur code, had no real self-policing mechanism past the honor system. Consequently, countless stories exist of players enrolling for the semester a sport was in session, then vanishing the moment that season was done.

A magazine devoted to “Northeast Missouri history and folklore,” The Chariton Collector, framed the era this way in a Spring 1984 history of Kirksville’s “ ‘O’ Men”:

“At this time there were no set rules to keep a team from cancelling a previously arranged game to play someone else, or just not to play at all. Other rules, such as a player’s right to play, the length of games, the size of the field, specific rules, and other decisions were argued before each contest. An athlete could play four years at an undergraduate college before coming to ASO, and then could continue to play as long as he studied osteopathy at ASO.”

Founder of ASO, whose gridiron program had some bone-rattling moments

Founder of ASO, whose gridiron program had some bone-rattling moments

That last sentence was the key to Kirksville’s argument, as well as its success. Three days after the first “Gossip of the Gridiron” accusation ran, another item appeared featuring Dean Charles M. Laughlin’s rebuttal, which read in part: “Athletes here are under the control of the faculty and no professionalism is allowed. We stick strictly to the amateur rule. To my personal knowledge, all members of our football team are regular members of the school and do not belong in any sense of the word to the professional class.”

Kirksville “became a well-respected school” because of its gridiron prowess, the Chariton Collector piece hypothesized. It described the ’01 team this way: “Some of the players of the early teams were so big that they organized their own club known as the Osteopathic Beef Trust.”

After a 3-3 start that included losses to regional heavyweights Nebraska (5-0), Kansas (17-6) and the Haskell Indian Institute (36-6), as well as a 22-5 revenge victory over Missouri, the Osteopathic Beef Trust went on a tear. Kirksville rolled to seven consecutive victories in which it shut out six opponents (allowing 6 points to Christian Brothers, Mo.) and averaged more than 38 points per game, a huge number in the iron-man, pre-forward pass era.

To be sure, the opponents included the Gem City Business College, Tarkio, Ottawa (Kansas, not Canada) and Highland Park (Iowa, not suburban Dallas). But there was one big fish among the small fry, and it was with that victory that the trouble really started.

Messin’ with Texas

As the Osteopaths’ record improved, their reputation plummeted. The discord reached a head when Kirksville hosted Texas on Nov. 19. The Longhorns were playing the second of four games in what then was labeled a “northern trip.” Befitting the era, those four games were played in a span of nine days, with the visit to Kirksville coming three days after an 11-0 win at Missouri that improved UT’s record to 6-0-1.

To put it mildly, the Osteopaths were anything but generous hosts, except in one regard: With the score 48-0 midway through the second half, White agreed to Texas coach Huston Thompson’s request to end the game early. Kirksville’s hurry-up style had run the ’Horns ragged; the halftime score was 36-0, with the home team five yards away from another touchdown when the half ended.

Only two penalties were called in the game, neither of which was for holding. Odd, since Kirksville reportedly had been flagged for holding 12 times in one half while nipping Christian Brothers 11-6 in a tune-up for the Texas game. But little was thought of it at the time.

Instead, the Longhorns’ immediate wrath was aimed at the Kirksville students and fans. As described by Lou Maysel in his 1970 book, “Here Come the Texas Longhorns,” the Texas team boarded the train that eventually took it to Lawrence, Kan., for its next game four days later. The Longhorns, however, “found all the seats on the special coach filled with Kirksville students. They remained in their seats for the 50-mile ride to Moberly, Missouri, forcing the Texas team to stand the entire distance.”

Were the Osteopaths out of line, or were they just operating under the standards of the day in that way, too? The Chariton Collector retrospective described a scene from earlier in the ’01 season:

“(The 1901 Missouri State Football Championship) and the win over Missouri were especially sweet. The previous year a trainload of about 225 supporters left for Columbia. The train, which was four cars long, was covered with the school colors of red and black. After ASO lost 13-0, Missouri fans rushed the train and tore down the banners, carrying them triumphantly through the city streets. They also proceeded to take personal belongings of the ASO crew such as canes, hats, and trophies. As the students of ASO resisted, a general riot followed and several people were injured on both sides. During a short layover in Moberly, the engineer of the train was given an osteopathic treatment to calm his nerves and ease his tensions. In the following days, Columbia newspapers apologized for the outrageous conduct of their fans.”

No apology followed the Longhorns to Kansas.

‘Through with them’

On Nov. 22, a day before Texas was to meet Kansas, UT athletics officials along for the trip made a stop in Kansas City. As dutifully reported in the next day’s edition of the Lincoln Evening News — “Gossip of the Gridiron,” of course:

“An impromptu meeting of the heads of athletics in Kansas, Missouri and Texas universities was held in Kansas City yesterday. It was the unanimous opinion that the Kirksville, Mo., osteopaths should be boycotted in the future. Nebraska will heartily endorse this movement and it is said Iowa will unite with Nebraska. The chief objection to the bone doctors is that they play rough, harsh football, and treat guests in an ungentlemanly manner. …”

A chief source was listed as “Manager McMahon of Texas university.” This probably was team captain Marshall “Big” McMahon, since UT’s ’01 team manager was James Taylor. No matter. McMahon’s words packed far more of a wallop than the Longhorns’ on-field play had done just days earlier.

McMahon claimed Kirksville had agreed upon using V.H. Bremner of Des Moines, Iowa, as an official, then reneged at game time even though UT had paid Bremner’s way to Missouri. “(Kirksville) threatened to declare the game off and deprive us of our $300 guarantee if we insisted on Bremner officiating,” McMahon said.

Instead, he continued, the two coaches were used as officials.

“Then we got decidedly the worst of it,” the Evening News quoted McMahon as saying. “The crowd was so threatening that our coach did not dare to give us even what was coming to us, and once when a wrangle came up, the crowd surged into the field and threatened to mob us. On the other hand, White’s work was high handed robbery. His men were holding continually, but he could not see it, and to cap it all off he himself purposely got in the way of a play that robbed us of a chance for a touchdown, and when we protested said it was accidental.

“Texas, you bet, is through with them.”

Epilogue

A St. Louis Globe-Democrat report later confirmed the Lincoln paper’s list, saying Haskell also had joined Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa and UT in agreeing to boycott the Osteopaths, with each school reportedly leveling allegations similar to McMahon’s. ASO officials again denied any wrongdoing and said the boycott rumors were without substance.

Only Haskell among those six schools ever played Kirksville again.

The Osteopaths finished the 1901 season 10-3, having outscored their opponents 359-69. And Kirksville for a couple of years found a decent supply of big-name opponents to replace the boycotters: Illinois in 1902-03, plus Wisconsin and Notre Dame in ’03.

But its reputation continued to dog the program. More than a decade after the fateful 1901 Texas-Kirksville game, UT coach Thompson (who left after the ’01 season, his second in Austin, with a 14-2-1 record) labeled the Osteopaths a team “composed of ringers from all over the country.”

The Chariton Collector piece obliquely referred to “some complications through the years” as the reason the Kirksville program went through 19 coaches in its 29-season history.

After 1903, the big-name opponents were all but gone for good. Kirksville played TCU in 1920-21, but incomplete College Football Data Warehouse records indicate the program’s final quarter-century was otherwise spent taking on similarly small colleges from Missouri and surrounding states.

Since the end of the 1928 season, football fans have been deprived of such cheers as: “Oskie wow-wow! Skinny wow-wow! Osteopaths! Ribs raised, Bones set, We cure — you bet! Osteopaths!” Still, in many ways nothing needed more reconstruction than the school’s reputation. So, with football gone, the future physicians — befitting the proverb found in Luke 4:23 — healed themselves.

ASO eventually became the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine (KCOM) as part of A.T. Still University. It is ranked by U.S. News and World Report as “one of the best medical schools in the country for rural and family medicine training.”

However loosely the term “student-athletes” fit the participants at the time, Kirksville for that can at least partially thank its early football teams:

“At the turn of the century, ASO was a little-known school because the study of osteopathy was still relatively new,” the Chariton Collector piece concluded. “Athletics gave way to a stronger emphasis on study, and with the greatness of its athletic program, the emphasis on medical organization must also be as great. With the help of its intercollegiate sports program, ASO gained needed recognition. This, in turn, led to the development of ASO to KCOM and its respected reputation in medicine.”

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Long before BCS mess, there was 1949 Pacific

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

By Gaylon Krizak

They came from the West, meaning many of their exploits went unnoticed by a significant portion of the country – more specifically, the influential Eastern media. Some critics who did notice them dutifully labeled their schedule weak and dismissed their considerable accomplishments. And when it came time to hand out the major bowl bids, they were snubbed while a similar team from not far away received one.

All of that happened to the Boise State Broncos of 2004 … 55 years after it happened to the Pacific Tigers of 1949.

Of course, the ’04 Broncos had the Liberty Bowl as a consolation prize (losing 44-40 to once-beaten Louisville). In 1949, there were just 14 bowls (although only six truly could be considered major), and, as Joe Marvin put it in a 1990 article for the College Football Historical Society Newsletter: “None of the major college champions wanted to risk their reputation against this powerhouse aggregation from the small San Joaquin Valley town (of Stockton, Calif.).”

As a result, the groundbreaking achievements of this team from a Methodist school of just 1,137 students tend to be treated as a historical footnote, if they’re noticed at all.

Too bad, because the Pacific Tigers of 1949 were a team ahead of their time.

A ‘magnificent genius’ succeeds Stagg

Larry Siemering was a successful high school coach in California before joining the College of the Pacific staff in 1941 as an assistant under coaching legend Amos Alonzo Stagg. When Stagg, at age 84, retired in 1946 after the Tigers’ third consecutive losing season, Siemering took over and immediately began to reshape the Pacific program.

He installed an offense that (like variations of the spread in the 21st century) had worked in high school but, critics charged, would fail at the college level. It had elements of the T- and wing-T formations, but relied on hidden-ball elements such as belly-series and spinner fakes. It was complex and, in many ways, years ahead of its time. Roy Kirsten, a Pacific receiver in 1947-48, in a 2006 article in the Stockton Record called Siemering “a magnificent genius type of coach.”

Siemering’s first two Pacific teams went 10-1 and 7-1-2, but things truly came together – as they did for many college programs – in 1949.

The NCAA allowed players who had been in the service during World War II to retain their remaining eligibility once they returned to school. Consequently, teams in 1949 fielded some players who had first competed collegiately as far back as 1942. The result was a plethora of deep, loaded teams across the land.

That even applied to tiny Pacific, although the Tigers’ undisputed leader was neither a grizzled war veteran nor physically intimidating.

The ‘Little General’ takes control

Eddie LeBaron was a senior in 1949, even though he was just 19 years old. He was a 60-minute player despite being just 5-foot-7, 165 pounds. And although he was surrounded by talent – the Tigers’ top 12 rushers in 1949 averaged 6.2 yards per carry, for example – LeBaron was the focal point of a lethal offense.

It didn’t start out that way. Opening in Lodi, Calif., against a San Francisco team that included future Pro Football Hall of Fame members Ollie Matson, Gino Marchetti and Dick Stanfel, the Tigers slugged out a 7-6 victory.

Pint-sized Eddie LeBaron and Pacific were unappreciated 1949 giants

Pint-sized Eddie LeBaron and Pacific were unappreciated 1949 giants

That was Pacific’s final close shave of the season. Its average margin from then on was 56.8-6, with eye-popping numbers on both sides of the ball. The defense shut four opponents out and allowed just nine first-half points. But the national headlines that did include Pacific invariably focused on the LeBaron-led offense.

A 52-0 rout of Loyola (Calif.) was followed by a 34-7 victory over Cincinnati, coached by another “genius” on offense, Sid Gillman. After that came victories over Nevada (47-6), Portland (75-20) and San Diego State (62-14) before a rematch with San Jose State, which had handed the 1948 Tigers their only loss.

It was no contest. Pacific pummeled the Spartans on their home field, 45-7. The victory finally boosted the Tigers into the Associated Press Top 20, at No. 19.

From there, the Tigers coasted through the remainder of the season: 45-6 over Utah (after which they mysteriously vanished from the AP poll for a week), 45-0 over Fresno State, 88-0 at Cal Poly and 75-0 at Hawaii. The Associated Press dispatch from Honolulu summed it up thusly: “Eddie LeBaron and College of Pacific – a school ignored by bowl game promoters – closed an undefeated, untied season with a crushing 75-0 victory over the University of Hawaii last night. A record crowd of 28,000 in Honolulu saw the Rainbows take their worst defeat ever with the Tigers scoring fast and often.”

The final AP poll, for whatever reason, came out Nov. 28, with several teams’ seasons – including Pacific’s – still in progress. With the help of two No. 1 votes after the Fresno State win and four after the pounding of Cal Poly, the Tigers rose to No. 11 on Nov. 21, then No. 10 in the final poll.

LeBaron, though snubbed by the major All-America teams, finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting and was, for the third time in four years, a first-team “Little All-American.”

The offense he led averaged 502.9 yards per game, topping the 500-yard mark seven times. The Tigers scored 575 points, an average of 52.3 per game, and smashed the previous NCAA record for points in a season (504 by Army in 1944).

And yet …

Because, as the NCAA’s 2008 Division I Football Records Book phrases it, Pacific was an “undefeated, untied (team) in regular-season games not included with major colleges at the time” you won’t find its accomplishments where major 1949 leaders are listed. You have to go to the Division II book for mention of the ’49 Tigers.

Yet Pacific trounced San Jose State, which went on to beat Texas Tech in the Raisin Bowl in Fresno, Calif. And they never got a shot at Santa Clara, which was considered a West Coast power at the time and finished 8-2-1 by beating Bear Bryant-led Kentucky in the Orange Bowl. The Broncos and Tigers beat five common opponents – Santa Clara by an average score of 27-10.4, Pacific to the tune of 44.8-6.6.

A Nov. 23, 1949, AP story quoted California coach Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf as saying Pacific was being considered by at least one of the four major bowls of the time. Since Cal-Ohio State was set as the Rose Bowl matchup, and since Santa Clara days before had been selected by the Orange, that left the Cotton and Sugar.

Instead, thrice-beaten North Carolina got the spot in Dallas opposite Rice, and the Sugar went with an Oklahoma-LSU matchup. The Gator took 7-3 Missouri to meet Maryland, and the Sun opted for 5-4 Georgetown against host Texas Western.

Along with the Raisin, the minor bowls that snubbed Pacific were the Tangerine, Pineapple, Oleander, Sunshine, Salad, Harbor and, of course, the Cigar (a Havana, Cuba, game that pitted Wofford against a relative newcomer, Florida State). Reports that Pacific would be matched with Baylor in a special postseason game in San Francisco turned out to be just talk, especially after the Bears voted against the trip.

The NCAA records list Pacific among the major colleges from 1950 on, including Division I-A designation beginning in 1978. But even though players such as Dick Bass in the ’50s and Aaron Turner in the ’90s brought the Tigers distinction, the program’s 76-year history ended after the 1995 season when the school dropped football.

Oh, and to bring things full circle, a bowl game also awaited Boise in 1949, but omission from that game didn’t faze Pacific. Boise met Taft in the junior-college Shrine Potato Bowl in Bakersfield, Calif.

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1984, part III: BYU steps through the looking glass

Friday, June 12th, 2009

By Gaylon Krizak-Guest Writer

“We’re through the looking-glass here, people … white is black and black is white.” — Kevin Costner, as Jim Garrison, “JFK”

By the time the Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl and the other Jan. 1 games had been played, the eventual national champion’s season had been over for 11 days.

Five teams (including Nebraska on two occasions) had relinquished the No. 1 ranking over the course of the season, leaving the distinction by the 12th week to a team that hadn’t even been in the preseason Top 25 and which played outside the elite power conferences.

Brigham Young was no stranger to success by 1984; the Cougars had won 11 games or more in four of the five previous seasons. But playing a schedule that included no teams ranked in the final Associated Press poll (Pittsburgh flamed out after an early No. 3 ranking), BYU cruised to a 12-0 regular-season record and its seventh straight Holiday Bowl berth as Western Athletic Conference champion.

The Cougars’ unbeaten record and unlikely No. 1 ranking brought the subject of choosing a Holiday Bowl opponent more scrutiny than ever. The spot was offered to Washington, which had been No. 1 for four weeks before losing to Southern Cal and in the process missing out on the Pac-10’s Rose Bowl slot. But the Huskies still were No. 4 nationally with just that one loss.

They said no, opting for the more prestigious (and better-paying) Orange Bowl opposite No. 2 Oklahoma. After all, it was common knowledge that since the Associated Press began handing out its national championship after the bowls rather than at the end of the regular season, no team finishing No. 1 had played in a December bowl.

So BYU wound up playing Michigan, which had been a top-five team before quarterback Jim Harbaugh broke his arm but which came to San Diego sporting a 6-5 record. The Wolverines’ national cachet carried more weight than their record — worse than the 7-4 mark with which Arizona, Illinois and Clemson stayed home during a season in which there were just 17 bowls.

Robbie Bosco led BYU to an unexpected national title in 1984

Robbie Bosco led BYU to an unexpected national title in 1984

Accordingly, the Cougars and QB Robbie Bosco — third in the Heisman voting, behind Flutie and Ohio State running back Keith Byars — beat the Wolverines, but by a final 24-17 margin that didn’t exactly silence the BYU critics. The Cougars trailed entering the fourth quarter, but won when Bosco threw a 13-yard TD pass to Kelly Smith with 1:23 remaining.

Washington went on to handle OU, 28-17. No. 3 Florida (9-1-1) was out of the picture, banned from bowls by the NCAA. No. 5 Nebraska finished with two losses. Simply put, the voters’ choice was uninspiring but clear:  unbeaten and largely untested BYU, or once-beaten Washington.

By just 20 poll points, the AP voters picked BYU. It was at that time the closest final margin in the poll’s 49-year history (the final 1991 poll margin was just four points, with Washington again on the short end, this time to Miami).

Conspiracy theorists point to BYU’s title season as the genesis for what evolved into the Bowl Championship Series — more precisely, the leaders of the power conferences began to organize the major bowls into first a coalition, then an alliance, and finally the BCS as it now exists. Their goal, say the theorists: to prevent another BYU from claiming to be the best in the land.

Has it worked? Ask Tulane (1998), Marshall (1999) and Hawaii (2007); be prepared to ask twice when questioning Boise State (2004, 2006) and Utah (2004, 2008). Each fielded an unbeaten team from outside the six power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10 and SEC) plus Notre Dame. None played in the BCS championship game, and only relaxed eligibility rules (and the addition of the separate BCS title game) allowed Utah, Boise State and Hawaii into non-title BCS games

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1984, part II: Southwest Conference-the beginning of the end

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

By Gaylon Krizak-Guest Writer

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” — Narrator, “1984”

In 1984, the Southwest Conference celebrated its 70th anniversary by staging a championship race no one seemed to want to win. The co-champions that eventually emerged would find themselves facing major NCAA sanctions over the years that immediately followed, one absorbing a penalty never before — and never since — issued.

The other one represented the conference in the Cotton Bowl with a 7-4 record and was held in such high regard by bowl officials that one was famously quoted as saying: “On the day of the game their fans drive up and eat at 7-Elevens or rob them.”

A conference that since the mid-1930s had been among the nation’s elite — one whose champion the year before was a play or two away from a national championship — was reduced to that. And it would only get worse.

Texas, that ’83 contender, quickly shot up to No. 1 in the ’84 polls when it beat preseason No. 1 Auburn at home, then routed Penn State at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Even after a controversial tie with No. 3 Oklahoma in dismal conditions in Dallas (Sooners fans to this day claim OU was robbed of a late interception in the end zone that all but would have sealed the win), the Longhorns were No. 2 through seven games.

Then came the collapse. UT lost three of its final four (four of five, counting its bowl game), awakening only to rout the year’s surprise team, TCU, 44-23. Sandwiching that were losses of 29-15 to Houston (nine turnovers), 24-10 at Baylor (five interceptions) and 37-12 to Texas A&M, which set the stage for a run of successful seasons by finishing 6-5 with season-closing wins over TCU and UT.

(Later, after an embarrassing loss to Iowa in the inaugural Freedom Bowl, one Texas fan joked that the Longhorns had installed the “Speed Limit defense — we stopped ’em at 55” (to UT’s 17).)

The Longhorns’ plunge left SMU and Houston in control of the Cotton Bowl race, which went down to the wire and was settled only when UH beat Rice 38-26 in the final game.  The Mustangs had the better overall record (9-2 to 7-4), but when each finished 6-2 in SWC play, the Cougars got the bid opposite Boston College by virtue of their 29-20 victory over SMU in mid-October.

On a freezing, drizzly New Year’s Day in Dallas, Doug Flutie and BC promptly disposed of the Cougars 45-28, leaving the UH fans — at least one of whose cars sported a sign that read: “Where’s the 7-Eleven? We’re hungry” — even less happy with their trek up Interstate 45 … those who made the trip, anyway. The crowd of 56,522 (67,381 paid) was the game’s smallest since 1978, when Maryland took on … Houston.

SMU, meanwhile, got a trip to Hawaii for its efforts, and cashed in with 27-20 Aloha Bowl victory over Notre Dame (the SWC’s only bowl win in five tries that season). But the seeds of the Mustangs’ undoing — and, ultimately, the conference’s as well — already had been sown.

Eric Dickerson-symbolized SMU's rise and fall

Eric Dickerson-symbolized SMU's rise and fall

In its preseason edition, Sports Illustrated hinted at what was to come: “Many Mustang boosters blame Texas for the tip-offs that launched the ongoing NCAA investigation of the SMU football program. THE LIES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU read SMU bumper stickers. Meanwhile, Longhorn fans add to the atmosphere of the Vitriol Bowl with bumper stickers that read SUPPORT PRO FOOTBALL: WATCH THE SMU MUSTANGS.”

That investigation led to three years’ probation in 1985 for recruiting violations, with sanctions including a two-year bowl ban that kept 6-5 SMU teams in ’85 and ’86 home for the holidays. But that was a parking ticket compared to what awaited.

In 1987, the NCAA handed down the so-called Death Penalty, shutting down the SMU program for at least one season because of the continuing nature of its recruiting violations and a slush fund to finance payments to players (approval for which came from, among others, alumnus Gov. Bill Clements).

The Mustangs did not field a team again until 1989, and have been largely uncompetitive since the NCAA’s nuclear option was unleashed. So damaging was the penalty, in fact, that it has not been utilized again at the Division I level.

That’s not to say the NCAA quit handing down probations, however. During the 1980s, only Baylor, Rice and Arkansas among the nine SWC schools escaped some sort of NCAA football penalty.

With its programs in tatters, SWC teams soon saw Texas high school talent leaving the state in unheard-of numbers. In its final eight seasons as Cotton Bowl host, the conference saw its champion — including borderline national title contenders Texas (1990) and A&M (1992) — lose every time. The bowl committee increasingly turned to the opponent as the drawing card, bringing in Heisman winners Flutie, Bo Jackson of Auburn and Tim Brown of Notre Dame during a four-year stretch.

By 1992, Arkansas was gone, having bolted for the Southeastern Conference. By 1996, the SWC was no more, its remaining members scattered throughout three leagues. Those who grew up around it and thought it would last forever learned their Orwellian lesson the hard way.

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1984: Orwell, with a touch of 1 Samuel, Alice and JFK

Monday, June 8th, 2009

By Gaylon Krizak-Guest Writer

(first in a three-part series on 1984)

It was probably less Orwellian than Lewis Carroll-ish; more a trip through the looking glass than anything that paralleled “1984”, the 1949 George Orwell tome overwritten about throughout the year.

Strike that. It was more akin to a line from “JFK” referencing Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.

On second thought, maybe there was some Orwell mixed in: In at least one case, true believers eventually were forced to denounce something they had considered sacrosanct.

Mix in a biblical parable, and you have 1984 — one of college football’s strangest seasons.

David and Goliath do Miami

Spoiler alert: In 1 Samuel 17:1-58, young David — either a young man or a boy (depending on the account) armed only with his staff, sling and five stones — takes down the Philistine Goliath (estimated in various telling as anywhere from 6-foot-7 to 9-foot-6). His trophy is Goliath’s head, and David goes on to become king of Israel.

Spoiler alert II (for those who don’t get ESPN Classic): In Miami’s Orange Bowl, 5-foot-10 Doug Flutie caps one of the wildest games on record by throwing a final-play 48-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass to Gerard Phelan, giving Boston College a 47-45 victory over Miami, the defending national champion. Flutie’s trophy is the Heisman, and he goes on to play in three pro leagues and have a cereal named after him.

The Eagles had won just two of 10 previous meetings with Miami and was an underdog the day after Thanksgiving, 1984. In truth, BC probably had a better team than Miami in 1984, though not by much. The Eagles were 8-2 and ranked No. 10 when they visited the Hurricanes, 8-3 and ranked No. 12. But Miami already had cultivated a reputation of being tough at home, and the field by game time was a swamp from steady rain.

In future retellings, the first 59 minutes, 54 seconds of the game became an indistinguishable offense-filled blur, and with good reason.  BC led 14-0 early, but Miami scrambled back and took a 45-41 lead with less than a minute to play.

hail-flutie

Flutie prepares to hail mary

Flutie moved the Eagles from their 28-yard line to the Miami 48, but only six seconds remained when he dropped back to run “55 flood tip.” Hail Mary time. Flutie’s 46th pass of the day, thrown into a wind gusting up to 30 mph, sailed more than 60 yards in the air. The ball skimmed over a pack of Eagles and ’Canes gathered around the goal line and into Phelan’s arms in the end zone.

It would be BC’s last victory over Miami until 2007, by which time both schools had helped symbolize the shift in the sport’s landscape with their moves from independent status to the Big East and, finally, to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

One unexpected effect, as chronicled in Murray Sperber’s 2001 book, “Beer and Circus”: “A surprising result of Flutie’s triumph, never previously seen in American higher education, was that applications for admission to BC spurted upward during 1985-86; hence the term ‘Flutie Factor’ for application jumps sparked by nationally televised college sports victories. (Subsequently, when BC’s football fortunes declined, so did applications, yet they remained higher than before the ‘Hail Mary’ touchdown.)”

(Sperber went on to add this criticism: The “Flutie Factor” at BC and other schools also led to an increase in the “party atmosphere” at each campus.)

Back to ’84: Miami, which that season already had yielded the biggest comeback in NCAA history in losing to Maryland (up 31-0, the ’Canes lost 42-40), went on to drop a 39-37 decision to UCLA in the Fiesta Bowl at sunny Tempe, Ariz.

BC’s reward? Dallas in January.

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Michigan State Begins Big Ten With A Bang-1953

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

by Bert Hancock

As Danny Thomas’ show titled “Make Room For Daddy” debuted across America’s living rooms in 1953, Michigan State’s once fledgling football program had convinced the Big Ten to finally make room for its debut that same fall.

Clarence “Biggie” Munn had coached at Syracuse in 1946 before plying his wares at Michigan State the following season, where he brought along his inevitable successor, Duffy Daugherty. Munn was a broad-shouldered guy with a powerful physique and relentlessly good nature who enjoyed the game more than a lot of his more uptight peers. He even often sat with the players during team meals, and they loved playing for him.

Under the direction of school president John Hannah, Michigan State had already begun a gargantuan growth spurt from a land-grant institution often derisively referred to as a “Cow College” (from its agricultural roots) to a major university with several times as many students (about 20,000) by the mid-1950s.

Hannah, who began his regime in 1941, reasoned that a high-powered football program would bring the relatively unknown school the kind of prestige needed to attract a wondrous and large faculty. “If it meant the betterment of Michigan State, our football team would play any eleven gorillas from Barnum and Bailey any Saturday,” sang the ambitious school president at the time.

Fight for acceptance into Big Ten

As Michigan State College (the word “university” did not become part of its name until 1955) grew, the University of Michigan’s resistance to its striving for Big Ten admission grew as well. As such, a bitter pill was added to a rivalry already formed from the natural in-state battleground setup and near-annual gridiron clashes.

After three rugged years of formal effort following decades of hope and despair, Michigan State was admitted into the Big Ten (aka “Western Conference”) in December of 1948. Though the occasion demanded celebration (and Michigan State students leveraged that to the hilt), one somber note was added. The Spartans would not be allowed to compete for the conference title in football until 1953.

Biggie Munn’s boys in 1949 gave Michigan State reason to be proud despite facing the long delay ahead, playing Michigan to its closest in years, finally falling just short by a 7-3 count.

The Spartans’ program continued making headway on the strength of two main factors: Munn’s staff and the recruiting of black players.

Integration a critical ingredient in giving the program strength

Though the Big Ten area integrated with more aggressiveness than most parts of the country, Michigan State fired it up another notch.

“No school was more receptive to black players at that time than Michigan State,” said former standout Henry Bullough (1952-’54), who also coached under Duffy Daugherty at MSU from 1959-’69. “You look at other teams in the Big Ten in the early ’50s and they probably averaged four or five blacks on their entire team. We’d have five or six starting alone. We wanted to provide an opportunity to those who were denied one.”

Some referred to State as “the Brooklyn Dodgers of college football.” One of the benefactors–who also benefited the school tremendously–was lineman Don Coleman, the school’s first black All-American and inevitable inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame. His head coach Biggie Munn praised Coleman as “the number one blocker and finest lineman, pound for pound, I’ve ever seen.”

Coleman savored the opportunity. “What we did at Michigan State helped everyone take a step closer to better understanding those who before that had no prior contact with one another,” he reflected.

Spartans become national player

In Biggie Munn’s first game in 1947, Michigan had obliterated State 55-0. By 1951, the Spartans invaded Ann Arbor and blasted the Wolverines, 25-0. A perfect season vaulted Michigan State to a heady No. 2 in the country at season’s end.

Despite the loss of the entire offensive line and a number of additional starters, Munn and his top assistant Duffy Daugherty possessed sterling reps for constructing great lines, and they lived up to the billing.

Building off of the glory of ‘51, the 1952 version impressed even more, walloping its opponents by a cumulative 312-84 and capturing the school’s first national championship.

Beyond recruiting talented black players (as well as white ones), Munn’s multifaceted offense, what he deemed the “T double wing,” played a big role. Stated Biggie (named 1952’s national Coach of the Year) following grabbing the national title, “The T double wing has been important in the success of the last three teams at Michigan State. In the last three years we have lost one game. To my knowledge I had never seen this formation before in football.”

At the time, many teams were using some form of the split T with option running emitting from that formation. Munn often took such trends to the next level.

Finally, Michigan State begins Big Ten play

You figure the suspense of actually facing conference competition would be enough, but added to the mystery was the stunning rule change on substitution after 1952. Suddenly, players would need to thrive on offense and defense both, following several years of specialization (like we’re used to seeing these days).

Spartan head coach Munn hated the dramatic change. After carefully building the pieces to a national powerhouse, he feared the new rule would tragically throw the gridiron landscape wide open going into 1953. Magnifying this mess was the reality that 19 of his standouts over the great ‘51-’52 run had completed their eligibility.

Still, in Michigan State College’s Big Ten initiation, it handled Iowa, 21-7. First test passed easily enough. Munn then decisively disposed of his alma mater, Minnesota, and the Spartans’ win streak bulged to 26 games.

TCU’s Fightin’ Frogs came to East Lansing next, seemingly a non-factor for the Spartans’ powerhouse. After all, the visitors had been playing no better than mediocre ball the last few years and, in fact, were on their way to their worst mark (3-7) in seven years.

Incredibly, Michigan State found itself in a huge hole, 19-7, late in the game. Just as it appeared college football’s biggest upset was in the books, the Spartans shot back with 19 unanswered points in a 26-19 triumph.

Two weeks later, Biggie Munn’s unbeatables took on Purdue, another paltry squad on its way to a 2-7 record that season. But stunningly, the Boilermakers took a late lead over the heavily favored Spartans, 6-0, following the fullback’s plunge over the goal.

Lightning struck in the Spartans’ favor on the ensuing kickoff, as super scatback LeRoy Bolden raced 95 yards in an apparent rescue, only to have a penalty bring the ball all the way back deep into Michigan State territory.

That sunk the Spartans, and the “Spoilermakers” had shocked the country while breaking the streak at 28 games in . Biggie Munn also suffered his first shutout defeat since the 1947 Michigan drubbing that began his East Lansing career.

Playing solely for pride?

Though unbeaten Illinois had a clear inside track to the Rose Bowl now, Michigan State refused to lie down. LeRoy Bolden personally bludgeoned  Ohio State with three touchdown runs, including ones of 20 and 37 yards. Said a dejected Woody Hayes of Ohio State, “That’s twice now he’s done that (knocked the Buckeyes out of the Big Ten race).”

It still appeared that this standout State program would fall shy of its dream of winning the conference in its first season. There would be others, but the school had waited so long and had come off of two perfect seasons, hoping to continue such a string.

But, just as it appeared that bridesmaid status would be the best in store for ‘53, Wisconsin shocked formerly unbeaten Illinois, 34-7. Meanwhile, Michigan State’s fourth consecutive handling of hated Michigan (on NBC’s nationally televised “Game of the Week”) gave it an unexpected tie for the title.

The league had quandary on its hands in determining the Rose Bowl representative. On the one, this new kid on the block–which had been despised in some quarters–had proved itself fully worthy of membership. Still, residue of the bitterness remained, and Illinois had been a longtime member and was unbeaten most of the season.

The vote was just as close as the conundrum, with suspense mounting as five separate ballots produced a deadlock, 5-5, in votes for Michigan State or Illinois. Finally, Ohio State convinced Indiana to side with the rookie representative, and suddenly the first-year competitors were playing in the Granddaddy of Them All.

msu-ucla-54-rose-pennant

The season now had, in many ways, already brought long-starved Spartans more satisfaction than they could have hoped for, having been left out of its Big Ten ambitions for ages. Would it represent the conference well, now, or would it crater on the huge stage awaiting it?

UCLA, the opponent, played its home games nearby, and its program had been through two Rose Bowl’s already.

The Bruins acted like they’d “been there, done that,” in taking and owning a comfortable 14-0 lead late in the first half. Just then, Michigan State’s Ellis Duckett broke through the line to block a UCLA punt, gathered it in and ran for a lead-slicing touchdown. That gave the Spartans the spark they needed going into halftime.

With head coach Munn working them into a frenzy for the second half and  Billy Wells busting loose, Michigan State broke out with three more touchdowns.

Halfback Wells, perhaps inspired by a meeting with then starlet Debbie Reynolds earlier, buzzed for 80 yards on the ground and then bolted for a 62-yard punt return to put the Spartans up, 28-20. He followed that with a touchdown saving tackle of a Bruins’ receiver who’d broken loose, putting a close to this great game.

Closed, too, was Biggie Munn’s fabulous career as head coach, opting to focus solely on his duties as athletic director, with his first duty hiring his longtime assistant, Duffy Daugherty. As a result, despite a setback in 1954, Munn was able to maintain the momentum he’d engineered for years to come.

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Oct. 6, 1934: Texans clear away the tumbleweeds

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

by Gaylon Krizak-Guest Writer

Texas in motion pictures frequently is portrayed as one big monochrome haven for dust and tumbleweeds — even when the story is set in the tree-laden east, along the Gulf coast or in one of the state’s many concrete-and-steel cities. As famed radio announcer Bill Stern was said to have advised: “Never let facts stand in the way of a good story.”

And so it was on Oct. 6, 1934, as two college football teams from the Lone Star State made their way to the state of Indiana to, in the view of the experts, receive another lesson in how the sport was really played.

Texas before that day was a place from which many nationally notable players came, not a place where they stayed to play. Players who genuinely deserved national recognition — Louis Jordan of Texas, Joel Hunt of Texas A&M and Raymond “Rags” Matthews of TCU — might be thrown a third-team All-America bone, but never were mentioned among the true elite. Baylor guard Barton “Botchey” Koch in 1930 became the state’s first consensus first-team All-American.

Teams from the state rarely faced the powers of the day — generally acknowledged as teams from the Ivy League, the Big Ten (then known as the Western) Conference and the two service academies (Army and Navy; there was no Air Force), as well as a smattering of schools in the Northeast, South, Midwest and California … and, of course, Notre Dame. When they did, the results usually were disastrous: Notre Dame, for example, walloped Texas 36-7 and Rice 55-2 during a three-day swing through Texas in 1915.

How fitting, then, that the Longhorns and Owls were the Texans who, not quite 19 years later, traveled north in an attempt to clear some of the dust off the nation’s conventional wisdom.

A Notre Damer beats Notre Dame

The University of Texas fielded the state’s first intercollegiate football team and, for the most part, its most successful in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Longhorns were unbeaten in their first season, winning two games each over town teams from Dallas and San Antonio in games that spanned late 1893 and early 1894. Their first losing season did not come until Clyde Littlefield — a star on Texas’ 1912-15 teams — coached UT to a 4-5-2 record in 1933 — not surprisingly, his last year at the Longhorns’ helm.

Brought in to restore some luster and perhaps even transform Texas into a national name was Jack Chevigny, a renowned back at Notre Dame who reportedly scored “one for the Gipper” in the Irish’s famed 1928 victory over Army. Five years later, Chevigny wound up in Austin, where he coached St. Edward’s University to the Texas Conference title in his only season before being hired by UT.

Chevigny’s alma mater happened to be the second team on the ’34 Texas schedule, and he was asked if he wanted the school to back out of the game. No, Chevigny replied, and immediately began zeroing in on the Irish. In his Longhorns debut, a 12-6 victory over Texas Tech, Chevigny reportedly told star back Bohn Hilliard to fake a limp after scoring on a 94-yard run, so as to fool Notre Dame scouts.

Once in South Bend — and with Hilliard miraculously at full speed — Chevigny stoked his team to a fever pitch with an emotional pregame speech. He then used his knowledge of the Notre Dame personnel to full advantage, having Charley Coates aim his opening kickoff at Irish halfback George Melinkovich, who was said to have a penchant for early game fumbles. Melinkovich dutifully bobbled the ball at the Notre Dame 5-yard line and fumbled for good at the 18, where Texas’ Jack Gray recovered.

On first-and-goal from the 8, Hilliard rode guard Joe Smartt through a hole at right tackle, then followed his touchdown run by kicking the extra point. It turned out to be one  of the biggest PAT’s in Texas history — Notre Dame needed a drive of just 9 yards for a second-quarter TD after a Longhorns fumble, but Wayne Millner missed the extra-point try after Melinkovich’s fourth-down blast from inside the Texas 1.

The 7-6 score held the rest of the afternoon as each team threatened but failed to add points as the game wound down. The game ended with the Longhorns at the Irish 4, with Hilliard fumbling four plays after returning an interception to the 12.

Notre Dame’s loss, which spoiled the home debut of former “Four Horsemen” member Elmer Layden as head coach, was its first ever in a season-opening game.

Rice plays spoiler against the Boilers

Rice Institute (it would not be designated a university until 1960) didn’t win a football championship during the first 20 years of the Southwest Conference. It also entered the 1934 season with a new coach: Jimmy Kitts, an offensive innovator. Kitts’ fortunes were boosted by the return of star backs Bill Wallace and John McCauley, who had missed the 1933 season after an exam-cheating scandal in ’32.

The Owls were 1-0-1 when they traveled to West Lafayette, Ind., having beaten Loyola (New Orleans) 12-0 and tied LSU 9-9. The Boilermakers, like the Fighting Irish against Texas, were playing their season opener, which drew only 12,000 as Purdue fans expected a light test a week before their trip to South Bend.

The game entered the fourth period scoreless; both teams ran the ball well during the first three quarters, but each also threw three interceptions. Rice finally broke through early in the fourth when McCauley took a short pass from Wallace and broke tackle after tackle en route to a 45-yard touchdown.

From there, the Owls’ defense took command, recording a fumble recovery, a blocked punt and an interception before Frank Steen forced and recovered a fumble in the Purdue end zone for the clinching TD in a 14-0 Rice victory.

The Associated Press, in its roundup of college football games for Sunday newspapers, said of the day’s events:

“The football experts had better retire to their bomb-proof shelters.

“In as great a succession of early-season upsets as the game ever has known, Notre Dame’s Ramblers, Purdue, Michigan, Cornell and Pennsylvania all went down to stunning and unexpected defeats yesterday.

“Two of these form reversals were credited to invading outfits from the Southwest Conference, the Texas Longhorns and Rice Owls.”

Epilogue

The Longhorns again were the invading outfit Oct. 20 as Texas (3-1) met Rice (4-0-1) in a game so widely anticipated that Humble Oil set up for it a network of clear-channel radio stations in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Rice carried a 7-6 lead into the fourth quarter before Texas broke through, a 74-yard pass from Buster Jurecka to Jimmy Hadlock setting up Hilliard’s short field goal with three minutes left. But in those final 180 seconds, the Owls struck twice — a 67-yard TD pass from Wallace to Ray Smith, followed by a 35-yard interception return by Harry Fouke — for a 20-9 win that was their springboard to their first SWC title.

Rice wound up 9-1-1 and was fifth in the final Dickinson Ratings, the main college football rankings system until the Associated Press poll debuted in 1936. Kitts also led the Owls to the 1937 SWC title, but had losing records the following two seasons before leaving to coach his alma mater, Virginia Tech, for three years. He was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1956.

Chevigny’s first Texas team finished 8-2-1, far and away his best record in his three years with the Longhorns. He’s the only UT coach to finish with an overall losing record (13-14-2).

(Speaking of Bill Stern … he told the story after Chevigny’s death on Iwo Jima during World War II that a gold pen given to Chevigny after the 1934 upset — supposedly carrying this inscription: “To Jack Chevigny, an old Notre Damer who beat Notre Dame” — was used by a Japanese admiral during the signing of the peace treaty. No authentication was ever found.)

Notre Dame beat Purdue 18-7, but both teams went on to record subpar seasons. The Irish finished 6-3, while the Boilermakers stumbled to a 5-3 mark.

SMU and TCU also recorded noteworthy intersectional wins in 1934. The Mustangs downed Fordham 26-14 on Oct. 27, and the Horned Frogs beat Santa Clara 9-7 on Dec. 8. That set the stage for the SWC’s true leap into the limelight the following season, when SMU visited TCU with both teams unbeaten and vying for the conference’s first-ever Rose Bowl berth. SMU won 20-14, then dropped a 7-0 decision to Stanford in Pasadena, Calif., while TCU was downing LSU 3-2 in the Sugar Bowl that same day.

The Mustangs’ No. 1 finish in the final Dickinson Ratings marked the first of three SWC national championships in the 1930s. TCU, led by Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Davey O’Brien, won the title — only the third awarded by the Associated Press — in 1938, and Texas A&M won it the following season.

By 1940, the state’s previous college football reputation was driftin’ along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds, to quote a popular Sons of the Pioneers song of the era.

Authored — like the upsets that began to turn the perception of the SWC around — in 1934.

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Strangest Storm-Miami Hurricanes of 1965

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

by Bert Hancock

Miami’s Hurricanes are known for a lot of things the past twenty-five years, little of which is losing football. But they once struggled mightily, to the point of nearly dropping the program.

A bit before that crisis point, in 1965, the ‘Canes were staggering from two losing seasons in a row following the loss of quarterbacking great George Mira and were searching for an identity.

Loss of George Mira Created an Erratic Hurricane

Loss of George Mira Created an Erratic Hurricane

This independent–no conference affiliation at the time–faced a schedule loaded with heavyweights. To no one’s surprise, Miami flunked its share of tests. Dejections including head-shakers to SMU (4-5-1 record on the year), Tulane (2-8), and Pitt (3-7). When you lose to squads like that, you know the big shots are going to make a tough sport even more unbearable.

Not this time, though.

Miami traveled to Syracuse to face the ninth-ranked and ground powered Orangemen. It promptly slammed the door on that running game, stifling the great Floyd Little to 60 yards in a 24-0 plastering. Meanwhile, Miami’s less heralded Pete Banaszak bulled for 104 yards.

The ‘Canes later shocked Sugar Bowl-bound, 10th-rated Florida and Steve Spurrier, 16-13. But though that came late in the ‘65 campaign, it wasn’t the end of the story.

Facing a powerful and sixth-ranked Notre Dame that including jarring running backs Nick Eddy and Larry Conjar, Miami valiantly held its own with two second half defensive stands. The result; a 0-0 deadlock when the final gun sounded.

The frustrated Fighting Irish would capture the national championship the following season with 1965’s personnel making the bulk of that great group.

This particularly 1965 storm known as the Miami Hurricane (5-4-1 record) blew in the most erratic manner possible. Weakly built programs were unscathed, even left thriving, while stoutly fortressed entities were dealt extensive damage. By the time this Hurricane was spent, the result may have been “the best mediocre club of all time.”

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