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.
Tags: 1930s football, bohn hilliard, notre dame, rice football, southwest conference, texas football, texas football history