Football Ups and Downs - University of Oklahoma54_1942v15...FOR 47 consecutive years now, the an- nual autumnal mania known as football has fevered University of Oklahoma stu-dents,

FOR 47 consecutive years now, the an-nual autumnal mania known as footballhas fevered University of Oklahoma stu-dents, faculty, alumni, and thousands ofoutsiders as well to such a sweltry pitchof excitement that until the gridiron seasonends in late November, all the ice in Ant-arctica probably could not cool them backto normalacy .

Great holiday throngs of gay, smartly-attired people sometimes numbering morethan 30,000 now move from all over Okla-homa in a single golden October after-noon to the big red-tiled Sooner stadiumat Norman to see with bated breath andto cheer with shrill pealing that sometimes carries several miles the skillful in-tercollegiate version of this rough, cleansport that is so deeply rooted in the state'shigh schools and ward schools .

Even war hasn't killed it, probably be-cause football as a spectacle is so muchlike war without entailing war's tre-mendous causalities. Football at the Uni-versity lived through both the Spanish-

American and first World Wars and prob-ably will exist through the present all-planet struggle as well .

President Roosevelt was shooting at thereason for its necessity when he recentlytold his press conference : "It has beenproved beyond doubt that human beingscannot sustain continued and prolongedwork for very long, without obtaining aproper balance between work on the onehand and vacation and recreation on theother. Such recreation may come by par-ticipation in or attendance at varioussports, motion pictures, music, the drama,picnics, et tetra . All of them have a nec-

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Football Ups and DownsBy HAROLD KEITH

essary and beneficial part in promotingan over-all efficiency by relieving thestrains of war and work ."Football made its start at Norman

back in 1895, twelve years before state-hood . Then the country we now knowas Oklahoma was still in its frontier stage .On the west was the brash young Repub-lican upstart known as Oklahoma Terri-tory whose prairies had been freshlypeopled by a series of runs ; on the east,struggling with the splendid tragedy ofits doomed tribal governments was themuch older Indian Territory. Bill Doolin,the outlaw, was still robbing territorytrains and banks on horseback whichgives you an idea of how far back in itschrysalis the modern state of Oklahomawas tightly tucked when football wasborn at the three-year-old territorial uni-versity down at Norman, O . T., in theautumn of '95 .

The game here was spawned in Bud Ris-inger's green-front barber shop on Nor-man's West Main street where John A .

TROPHIES WON BY O. U. ATHLETES

Shown here is a small part o f the trophies won through the years by the University'svictorious athletes. Represented in the impressive group of shiny gold and silver

awards are major and minor sports included in O . U. 's athletic program .

Harts, a long-haired expression studentfrom Winfield, Kansas, who had playedthe game in his home state, organized ateam at the University, spiking it withFred Perry, who drove the prancing steedsthat drew the Norman fire wagon, andother non-students. There was no both-ersome Big Six conference eligibility com-mittee to plague the football set-up inthose raw days.

This first University team ignominiouslyfailed to score a point. Its only gamewas with the bigger, rougher -and vastlymore experienced Oklahoma City TownTeam. The contest was played in Nor-

man right out on the prairie north of thepresent Fine Arts Building . Wearinghome-made uniforms, the University boyswere soundly licked, 0 to 34 . Hartstwisted a knee and had to retire, and be-fore it was over, the befuddled Normanboys were borrowing the Oklahoma Citysubs so they'd have a full lineup . Alarge crowd watched the fun with mixedemotions and wondered what devilmentthe giddy Norman college boys wouldthink up next.

In 1897 studious, be-spectacled VerneParrington, a young modern languageprofessor from Emporia, Kansas, who hadplayed some football at Harvard, joinedthe Oklahoma faculty and was draftedto coach football . He met the challengebrilliantly and before Governor CharlesN. Haskell booted him off the faculty in1908 and started him towards a notableteaching career at the University of Wash-ington and a Pulitzer prize in history,Parrington's University of Oklahomateams of 1897, '98, '99 and 1900 wonnine and tied one of the total of 12 gamesplayed those four years .

Some of the better-known players of theParrington regime were Fred Roberts, a190-pound farm boy from Mayfield,Kansas, who Norman old-timers declarewas the greatest back ever developed atNorman; two fine tackles in rugged JoeMe kle, another hard-twisted farm lad,and Ed Barrow, a mixed-blood Indianfrom the Chickasha country ; Jap Clap-ham, a plucky end who still lives at Nor-man; Tom Tribbey, a 230-pound youngGoliath from the Pottawatomie countrywho had never ridden on a railroad trainprior to the Texas game of 1900, C . C .Roberts, Clyde Bogle and others .

In 1901 Professor Parrington felt thepress of teaching duties and passed hiscoaching toga on to Fred Roberts . In1902 and 1903 Mark McMahan, a Texasplayer who wore a walrus mustache, tookthe coaching job to make expenses towardhis enrolment in a law school. In 1904the Sooner coach was Dr. Fred Ewing ofKnox college.

That was the year the Sooners met theOklahoma Aggies for the first time andwon, 75 to 0 . However, the score won',be remembered nearly so long as will anincident of the game during which theSooners scored a touchdown in a creek.The game was played at old Island parkin Guthrie . A harassed Aggie punterstanding almost on his goal line, kickedthe ball straight up in the air . The rag-ing north wind carried it back over hishead. With both teams pursuing it, theleather bounded into flood-swollen Cot-tonwood creek . Both teams fearlessly

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splashed in after it but while Sooner TomB. Matthews ducked an Aggie who wasabout to lay hands on it, Sooner Ed Cookcaptured it and swimming to the oppositebank, shiveringly touched it down for ascore .When the game was ten years old at

Norman, the players began to look aroundfor a permanent coach . Everybody'schoice was Bennie Owen, a soft-spokenlittle Irishman from Arkansas City, Kan-sas, who played quarterback under Field-ing H. Yost at Kansas in '99 . The Uni-versity at Norman could personally vouchfor Owen's football coaching ability. In1903 and 1904 Owen's hard-fighting Beth-any Swedes from Lindsborg, Kansas hadmet Sooner teams at Oklahoma City andexpertly administered two drubbings, 12-10 and 36-9. Owen had earlier been calledto Michigan where he helped Yost de-velop the famous point-a-minute Michi-gan team built around the great WillieHeston .In 1905 Owen was hired. The first

two years owing to a reduced financialbudget he came to Norman in the autumnonly, returning after the football seasonto Arkansas City to manage his restau-rant, but eventually the University Ath-letic Association adjusted its finances sothat Owen could stay on full-time . Owenmade Oklahoma a superb coach. He hadto be to satisfy the "wolves" for 22 con-secutive years. Since his retirement, Soon-er football coaches have come and gone

SEPTEMBER, 1942

FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS OF 1915One of the several great teams outstanding in the University of Oklahoma's football history .

almost as fast as Mexican presidential ad-ministrations after Diaz. Next to Owen,the Sooner football coach who held hisjob the longest was Ad Lindsey and hisstint, from 1927 through 1931, lasted onlyfive years .

At first, Owen met far more obstaclesat Oklahoma than he had encountered atBethany, due to lack of playing talentand a schedule that took his club all overthe midlands. He struggled six years be-fore defeating mighty Kansas, the scourgeof the old Missouri Valley in those days,but he beat Texas 2 to 0 at OklahomaCity the first year he coached . He hadfinancial worries, too . Trips were longand gate receipts light. To circumventthis, Owen had to book as many as threegames on one trek and his small, lightsquads would be simply too exhaustedto handle it.For example, in 1905 Owen's squad

played Kansas, the Kansas City Medicsand Washburn, at Lawrence, Kansas Cityand Topeka during a bruising five-daytrip . In 1909 the Sooners rode a chaircar to St. Louis, defeating St . Louis Uni-versity 11-5, then continued by rail toDallas, Texas, where they were spankedfour days later by the Texas Aggies, 0-19,and that night entrained for Austin, Tex-as, where two days later they were easyprey for the Longhorns, 0-30 . All threegames were played in six days . Nowdays college teams play only once a week .But Owen eventually overcame these

handidaps . In 1908 he developed hisfirst formidable team at Norman, a bigSooner outfit that whipped Texas 50 to 0,at Norman. Built around Willard Doug-las and Ralph Campbell, greatest pair ofoffensive tackles in the school's history,this Sooner team romped through its ten-game schedule, losing only to Kansas .Tackles Douglas and Campbell not onlysmashed enemy plays on defense, but theirvicious ball-carrying on Owen's "tacklearound" plays was murderous . In theTexas triumph Douglas and Campbellnot only scored four touchdowns but eachproved his speed afoot by catching fleetTexas backs from behind after longchases to prevent Texas touchdowns .The most convincing proof of Owen's

greatness as a football coach lay in hisability to adapt his offensive style to hissketchy material . A comparison of hisfour greatest teams, the Sooner aggrega-tions of 1908, 1911, 1915 and 1920 whosecombined record was only one defeat in35 games, illustrates this .The 1908 team, built around Douglas

and Campbell, the salty ball-lugging tack-les, was primarily a power outfit with alarge assortment of plays from the old-style mass game . It operated from botha balanced and unbalanced line with thequarterback, squatted behind center, tak-ing the ball on nearly every play andfeeding it to the other backs or to the

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big tackles rumbling laterally to right orleft behind him . Since the forward passhad just come in, the team did very littlepassing. Its strength lay in its stout line,Ends Vernon Walling and Claude Pick-ard, Guards Porter English and Key Wolf,Centers Roy Campbell and Cleve Thomp-son and the indestructable tackles .

But in 1911 Owen came out with some-thing new, a lightweight team built uponspeed . His backfield of Hubert Ambris-ter, Ray Courtright, Claude Reeds andCaptain Fred Capshaw averaged only 150pounds that year but every man" wasrough as a corncob and could run 100yards in less than 11 seconds . With suchswiftness of foot available, Owen junkedhis indirect pass through the quarterbackand introduced the direct pass to the ball-carrying back, varying it with viciouscross-bucks and quick-opening plays thatwere the terror of the midlands . Withits quarterback frequently calling his sig-nals from the bottom of a pile-up, thisteam ran off and left its opposition . Al-though it forward passed some, it wasprimarily a swift-cruising, hard-hittingrunning team. It finished all-victoriousalthough playing all its important games(against Missouri, Kansas and Texas)away from Norman .Owen's all-victorious 1915 team ex-

ploited still another phase of the offensethat was brand new in the old Southwest,the forward pass . Although several ofits players could pass and receive, "Spot"Geyer, a stoop-shouldered fullback fromNorman High School was its ace peggerand End Homer Montgomery and Quar-terback Montford "Hap" Johnson its crackreceivers . Although its backfield lackedthe four-main versatility of the Reeds-Courtright-Ambrister-Fred Capshaw quar-tet of 1911, it had four halfbacks to gowith Geyer and Johnson and two greatlinesmen in End Montgomery and TackleWillis Hott. Its aerial wizardry was un-stoppable. It averaged approximately250 yards on forward passes alone in itsmajor games and conquered its ten-gameschedule with only two close shaves, 14-13 triumphs over both Texas and HenryKendall on those teams' home fields .In 1920 Owen took Oklahoma out of

the Southwest conference and into theMissouri Valley league and his biggestfootball team of all time up to then wonthe Missouri Valley championship in abreeze with no defeats and only one tieagainst it . Whereas the 1908 team hadbeen known for its corking line, the 1911team for its speedy hard-running back-field and the 1915 team for it marvelousforward-passing, the versatile 1920 teamseemed to combine all these elements . Itspowerful line had a great quartet of endsled by Tarz Marsh, an excellent pair of

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Football Ups and Downs

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tackles in Paul Johnston and Roy Smoot,two fine guards in Erl Deacon and BillMcKinley and a swell center in DowHamm .

Phil White, a 190-pound triple threatwho could kick as high as a chorus girland gamely played with a shoulder outof socket, did the punting, passing andplenty of running, Roy Swatek was thedreaded blocker and line-backer, tank-likeHarry Hill did the climax running anddependable Arlo Davis and Frank Ogilviethe quarterbacking . It was a team thatstarted slowly but finished with a pitilesssurge. Against Washington it trailed 3-14 yet won 24-14, it lagged behind Kans-as at the half yet won 21-9 .

With Owen's retirement after the 1926season, the University went into its foot-ball dog days, chiefly because of its policyof refusing to enlist leading Oklahomahigh school players who were escapingto California and other states . Ad Lind-sey, who like Owen came to Normanfrom little Bethany college, struggled fiveyears against this discouraging setup andfinally walked out in disgust . The barswere dropped somewhat for Lewie Hard-age the Vanderbilt backfield mentor whosucceeded Lindsey, but when he won but11 games in three years, the wolf packfigured he was just spinning his wheelsand set up a loud yapping that fetchedhis scalp .

Then out of the chaos came order . Astrong man was needed to revitalize foot-ball at Oklahoma and in Capt. Lawrence"Biff" Jones, whose old Army teams hadgiven Knute Rockne's Notre Damesquads four terrific games and whosemodern Louisiana State juggernauts hadbeen the talk of the South, a strong manwas secured although Jones was terriblyhandicapped in that he had to give one-half his time to the University R . O. T .C. unit . The gruff army man stayed atNorman only two seasons . Neither ofhis Sooner teams those two years wereworld-beaters but the public will neverknow what a far-reaching transformationthe practical Jones wrought in the athleticdepartment's administration, finances andmethods in those two seasons . The wholefootball program was placed on the solid,sensible footing so necessary for successin modern times.The rest of the story is common

knowledge . In 1937 Tom Stidham, Jones'hefty, jovial Creek Indian line coach wentin as head coach with diminutive Dewey"Snorter" Luster handling the backfieldand Lawrence "Jap" Haskell the line .They made a great trio, winning all buttwo games their first season and tyingTexas and Nebraska, both of whom theyslightly out played .In 1938 they hit the jackpot with a

Sooner team built around Hugh McCul-lough, a great triple-threater who mule-skinned the players as though he were acoach . Those were the days of what wereprobably the roughest Sooner defensivelines of all time, ends like Pete Smith,Waddy Young, Pop Ivy, John Shirk andAlton Coppage, the first three All-Ameri-cans . There were also Jud Bowers andGilford "Cactus Face" Duggan, a pair ofrough 225-pound tackles, Harold Lahar,a 215-pound guard who blocked himselfinto a berth with the Chicago Bears andthe 220-pound center Mickey Parks, amodern standout at his position .

In 1939, they deserved an undefeatedseason, a Big Six championship and aSugar Bowl bid and had it in the bag too,until Bob Seymour, big fullback, sus-tained a brain concussion in the first min-ute of the Missouri game. In 1941 Lustersucceeded Stidham as head coach whenthe latter resigned to accept the Marquettejob.

Meanwhile had occured the injection ofbig business tactics into the game . Until1923 Sooner teams had played before rel-atively thin crowds who sat in smallwooden stands . Financing the sportwasn't such a problem then because thesmall Sooner coaching staff also doubledat physical education and was paid outof state funds . Also, the student athleticticket was compulsory in those days andthe athletic department always had a con-siderable cash fund to draw against afterenrolment. It was Owen who envisageddramatization of the sport into a greatpublic spectacle . He built the 30,000 ca-pacity concrete stadium, and supervisedpurchase of the spacious grounds thatnow surround it. Hard times preventedconsummation of his dream. That cameyears later when, after Captain Jones hadwisely built the foundation for strongmodern-day teams, the Stidham-Luster-Haskell staff produced the powerful Okla-homa teams everybody had been waitingfor, drawing huge crowds of 20,000 to30,000 fans to what had been the lonelySooner stadium . And it was a goodthing they did because ever since theBill Murray gubernatorial administration,football coaches were taken off the statepayroll and the student athletic ticket wasmade optional . Football at Oklahomanow has to earn every penny of its ownway .

Just a few days after Coach Luster'sfirst Sooner team completed its 1941season, the Japanese treacherously bombedPearl Harbor, the angry United States de-clared war, scores of the University'sfinest players forsook football to enlist asfliers, sailors, soldiers, and marines andthat brings the 47-year old story of foot-ball at Oklahoma up to date .

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