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Oklahoma's new football staff Left to right, Tom Stidham, head
coach, Dale Arbuckle, assistant coach ;Robert "Doc" Erskine,
backfield coach; Stanley Williamson, line coach, and Pete Smith end
coach .
WITH the engagement of Stan-ley Williamson as line coach and
DaleArbuckle as assistant coach, Tom Stidham, Big Chief of Sooner
football, quick-ly put his University of Oklahoma foot-ball house
in order late in February andat this writing the green but
potentiallypowerful Sooner spring practice squad isbusily working
at Owen field .
Williamson, a big, graying 200-pounderpossessing excellent
personality and a fineknowledge of line tactics, captained
andplayed center for Howard Jones' strongSouthern California eleven
of 1931 thatstopped a Notre Dame winning streak of24 consecutive
games at South Bend thatyear. After his graduation from the Tro-jan
institution, Williamson coached at Ok-lahoma City university and
later at Kans-as State college .Arbuckle, whose undergraduate
football
was played at Enid High School and hiscollege football from 1923
through 1926(he missed the 1924 season because of aninjury on
Bennie Owen's Sooner elevens,tutored at both Duncan and
OklahomaCity Central high schools prior to hiscoming here and
developed outstandingteams.
Stidham reorganized his staff, movingRobert "Doc" Erskine,
freshman coach,
1 4
Sports ReviewBy Harold Keith
to the backfield coaching slot vacated byDewey "Snorter"
Luster's recent resigna-tion, and shifting Lawrence "Jap" Has-kell,
efficient Sooner line coach the pastthree years, to the freshman
coaching job.Pete Smith, end coach, stays on in hiscapacity .
Haskell's switch to the freshman coach-ing job was particularly
welcomed byHaskell himself since it released him fromfootball
spring practice duties which badlyhampered his baseball coaching .
Afterthis season Haskell loses off his Big Sixchampionship baseball
team such out-standing players as Roy Myers, PopeyeLasater, Jack
Riley, Herb Schefer, CarolBerryman and Jimmy Pope, not to men-tion
Infielders Joe Gulledge and JerryCrosby who just recently passed up
furtherSooner competition by signing with theBoston Bees of the
National league andthe Tulsa Oilers of the Texas league
re-spectively . The loss of all this playingtalent necessitates the
development of al-most an entirely new team and will re-quire all
of Haskell's expert coachingtime in the spring, hence Coach
Stidham'sdecision to release him from his line-coaching duties and
switch him to an-other staff position .Tragedy struck the Sooner
football
squad February 28 when Justin Bowers,Oklahoma's All-Big Six
right tackle fromWaukegan, Illinois, was accidentallykilled in an
automobile wreck near thelittle Negro town of Boley. Bowers andJack
Steele, sophomore fullback fromLone Wolf, were driving back from
analumni banquet at Muskogee where theyhad been guests . Steele was
driving,Bowers asleep in the back seat, when thecar struck a bridge
abutment and was prac-tically demolished . Steele was uninjuredsave
for severe shock but Bower's neckwas broken and he died instantly,
in spiteof the ministrations of a Negro physicianwho soon happened
by the scene. Ashort funeral service was held for thepopular tackle
at the Catholic chapel inNorman with Father Joseph Hallisey
incharge and hundreds of students attend-ing the sad event. Coaches
Stidham andErskine then accompanied the body toWaukegan, Illinois,
Bowers' home, wherefinal services were held and burial made .
Bowers' death not only shocked andsaddened the whole squad but
left the Ok-lahoma football problem more acute thanever . Gone are
nine starters of last fall'seleven : Ends Frank Ivy and John
Shirk,Tackles Bowers and Gilford "CactusFace" Duggan, guards Ralph
Stevenson
THE SOONER MAGAZINE
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and J . R. Manley, and backs Bob Sey-mour, Dick Favor and Beryl
Clark . Alsolost are such valuable reserves as ends Al-ton Coppage
and Charles Starr, tackleGeorge Wilhelm, guards Jerry Bolton
andCapt . Norval Locke and fullback Byron"Ten Yards" Potter .
Besides, back J . S. Munsey's shoulderhad to be re-operated
which means hecannot participate in the spring exercises .Neither
can L. G . Fricdrichs, anotherhack, nor lZay Mullen, end, both of
whomunderwent knee cartilage operations, al-though all three will
be available nextfall .
In spite of these exceedingly gloomytidings, there is some fine
football ma-terial available at Norman even thoughmost of it is
green as an engineer'sshirt . Stidham's move to offset the al-most
irreparable loss of All-American Ivy,Shirk, Coppage and Starr at
end was toshift center Cliff Speegle and right halfBill Jennings to
that position . Louis"Tree Top" Sharpe, 210-pound, 6-foot 5-inch
junior from Checotah and LyleSmith, 200-pound junior from
Fairview,are returning along with half a dozenhusky sophomores
.Take out Roger Eason, Duggan's al-
ternate, and Howard Teeter, lettermanfrom 1937 who is trying a
comeback inspite of the handicap of weak underpin-ning, and the
tackles will all be green asemerald. But they are big and
willing,particularly four sophomores, 215-poundJohn Funk of
Okmulgee, 225-pound JoeAllton of Claremore, 230-pound HomerSimmons
of Seminole and 215-poundLaddie Birge of Duncan, and ClovisPierce,
last year's squad man, and theoutlook at tackle is at least
hopeful.
Stidham has shifted Harold Lahar,senior right tackle, to guard
this springto capitalize Lahar's speed and down-field and weakside
blocking skill . Al-so returning at that position areOlin Keith,
Hollis junior who be-came a real hand last year, and Ralph"Fats"
Harris, 240-pound Stroud juniorwho missed most of the 1939 games
be-cause of a leg injury, and also AllanFender and Willie Wick, two
1939 squadmen who saw no competition, and suchsophomores as Sammy
Stephens andMitch Shadid .Novel Wood, up to 202 pounds, will
handle the center position with Jack Mar-see, his and Speegle's
alternate last au-tumn, right behind him, followed bysophomores
Bill Roberts of Seminole andClare Monford of Lawton .
Favor's competent substitute at theblocking back position last
year, MarvinWhited of Hollis, is looking great at thatjob with
sophomores Bill Campbell ofPawhuska, Dene "Pug" Harp of Fair-view
and Roy Cagle of Oklahoma Cityall battling for the right to play
behindhits .
Beryl Clark's loss at left half hurt but
APRIL, 1940
The five seniors who graduated from the Sooner basketball team
this spring . Left toright, Herb Scheffler, Marvin Mesch, Gene
Roop, Marvin Snodgrass and Jimmie McNatt
juniors Jack Jacobs, Orv . Mathews andFriedrichs are still on
hand and also soph-omores Lindell Hayes of Wagoner andBoyd Bibb of
Sayre. Although Munsey,smartest signal-caller of last fall's
team,is out of the spring drill, he will be readythis September at
right half and so willGus Kitchens, his alternate, and sopho-mores
Bill Mattox of Meridan, Mississippi,and Tom Rousey of Quincy,
Illinois,while the versatile Jennings can be shiftedback to that
spot if necessary . Stidhamalso plans to try speedy Orville
Mathewsthere as well as at left half .Seymour and Potter will be
hard to re-
place at fullback, yet two big, fast sopho-mores, Jack Steele,
194, of Lone Wolfand Huel Hamm, 200, Oklahoma City,are running and
blocking viciously inscrimmage while Pat Shanks,
Drumrightsophomore, and Johnny Martin, BrokenBow senior who played
next to Seymourlast year, should strike their stride soonas they
recover from petty scrimmagehurts.Although Oklahoma must concede
a
great deal to experienced teams like Ne-braska, Texas, and Santa
Clara, the Soon-er football situation is far from hopelessin spite
of the tremendous casualties . Al-though some lickings are in store
this fallfor Stidham's young squad, Oklahomashould be a power in
1941 with a junior-senior team . Next season's
losses-backsJennings, and Martin and forwards Wood,Speegle, and
Lahar-total only aboutone-third of the veteran talent flown
fromthis year's club .
Tie for basketball titleThe tipsy-turvcy Big Six basketball
race ended in a triple tie between Mis-souri, Kansas, and
Oklahoma as CoachBruce Drake's senior team drubbed IowaState at
Ames March 2, 51 to 42, and
closed the home season with a decisive47-36 spanking of Dr . F.
C. "Phog" Al-len's Kansas Jayhawkers .The Sooners were a
consistently formi-
dable aggregration in the closing weeksof the 1940 campaign,
winning eight oftheir last eleven games . Drake, theyouthful Sooner
coach who always has hisboys clicking their finest down the
homestretch in March, cannily accomplishedit by shifting Herb
Scheffler, 6-foot3-inch center, to a position in the outsideline on
attack where Scheffler's cool gen-cralship, skillful spot passing
and deadlylong shooting could be utilized (Schefllerscored 55
points in his last five games),and also by introducing a new star
inHugh "Flyrod" Ford, 6-foot 6-inch center,from Billings, and so
eternally polishinghis bewildering offensive system of singleand
double screens that it shone with in-creasing lustre in each game,
introducingthe deadliest Sooner set shooting sinceHugh McDermott
turned out his greatOklahoma teams of 1928 and 1929 .Ford
demoralized Kansas at Norman
March 8 with his leaping larceny off thelip of the Jayhawk goal
and also someelegant pivot post shooting . Nearly everytime Kansas
tried for a goal, Ford simplytook the heart out of Doctor Allen's
fineteam by jack-knifing spectacularly abovethe ring to pick the
well-aimed Kansasshots right out of the hoop, and his un-guardable
turn shooting, in which hedunked the ball after a giant body
swingthat looked like the slow revolution of ahorse-drawn hay boom,
helped swell theOklahoma score . The popular SoonerIrishman, Jimmy
McNatt, hit seven fieldgoals that night to give a gorgeous
shoot-ing exhibition and win the Big Six in-dividual scoring
championship for theseason by ten points while Marvin Snod
(PLEASE ]URN TO PAGE 38)
15
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Sports Review(CONTINU ED FROM PAGE 15)
grass, the "Human Handcuff," whosebristly blond hair stands
straight up as hedogs great enemy scorers, slipped the
steelbracelets on both Ralph Miller and How-ard Engleman, Kansas'
great scorers, whowere permitted only one field goal each .
All this made Oklahoma look very goodin the Big Six playoff for
representationin the National Collegiate tournamentand the Sooners
justified this rating onthe small, exceedingly slippery
neutralfloor of the Forum at Wichita, Kansas,on March 11 by
defeating Missouri 52 to41 in their first round game .With seven
minutes to go, the score
was tied 39 to 39, thanks to Missouri'sgreat spree of
one-hand°_d shooting . HereCoach Drake sent Ford, his slim giantwho
had been resting, back into actionand the Billings rookie broke up
the ballgame . First he leaped his length to stealtwo Missouri
shots out of the hoop . Thenhe was fouled by Blaine Currcnce,
Tigercenter, which proved a four point mistakeas Ford not only
canned the field goalCurrence sought to prevent, but also
coollypocketed both free throws .However Ford's next goal
completely
fractured the Missouri morale . Standingwith his back to the
basket although hehad its location nicely gauged by the po-sition
of his feet, Ford suddenly and au-daciously flipped the ball back
over hishead in a totally "blind" shot that toeverybody's amazement
swished throughcleanly . That was the play the big crowdtalked
about as it filed from the Forum.Incidentally, big Schefflcr's
excellent spotpassing and point-blank gunnery fromsemi-long set
positions, and Captain Mar-vin Mesch's accurate long shooting
frombehind Drake's cleverly conceived screens,not to mention Ford's
feat of scoring 19points and doing some very telling de-fensive
rebounding, also were factors .Oklahoma lost the finale the
following
night to the fresh Kansas team, which haddrawn a bye and had the
additional ad-vantage of thoroughly scouting the Soon-er tactics
during the Missouri battle . Kans-as won 45 to 39 . The Missouri
victory the,night before while the Kansas playerswere resting and
studying the Sooner at-tack, had taken a costly toll of speed
andstamina from Oklahoma although Kans-as's spirited rebound play
which nettedher 25 more shots than Oklahoma got,and her aggressive
throttling of Ford de-serve credit .
Doctor Allen's Jayhawks won the gamein the closing ten minutes
of the firsthalf when they whirled into a 27 to 16lead that tired
Oklahoma could neverquite overcome .The dogged rally of the
exhausted Ok-
lahomans in the second half, as Drake'sseniors, realizing it was
their last game
38
together if they lost, gamely resolved tosell themselves as
dearly as possible, wasa beautiful and thrilling sight to
thehundreds of Sooner alumni and well-wishers present among the
noisy throngof 3,500 that packed the Formn .
Captain Mesch launched it on a fastbreak by feeding the speeding
McNattfor a setup. Then Schefller dodged alunge by John Kline,
burly Kansas guard,and banked in a long goal . Don Eblingcountered
for the Jayhawkers with a fol-low-in after a missed Kansas free
throwbut the red-clad Sooners, cool opportun-ists now where they
had seemed slow andlethargic in the opening half, scored threemore
field baskets in a row to cut theKansas lead to 29 to 26 and force
the rat-tled Jayhawkers to sue for time out.The third of these
quickly manu-
factured Oklahoma goals was the mostspectacular play of the
night. Howard"Rope" Engleman, Kansas forward,had the ball in
Kansas's outside lineof offense . Suddenly McNatt, who wascoiled in
front of Engleman watchinghim like a cat does a bird, hurled
himselfupon the Jayhawker, wrested the bulbfrom him, sprawled to
the floor andsprang up in one continuous motion, andspanking the
leather into a fast bounce,wove like a snake between
JayhawkersAllen and Harp and fled dribbling to thedistant goal,
gaining ground on his threeKansas pursuers with every stride
untilhe doubled his lithe body into theair beneath the Kansas
basket to de-liver the ball hoopward and then hurtleon into the
crowd. But behind him thesphere lay safely in the meshes .
Kansas braced, forced big Ford's c1cc-tion from the clash
because of personalfouls, and stretched her lead only to
haveCaptain Mesch, who was shooting stun-ningly, deposit his sixth,
seventh andeighth field goals of the evening to cutthe Kansas lead
to 37 to 35 with threeminutes left to play .Then pandemonium
reigned. Oklaho-
ma got the ball and rushed it to the Kans-as goal while the
crowd, on its feet roar-ing, threatened to go mad. But everytime a
Sooner raised his arms to shoot thetying basket, some Jayhawker
threw him-self upon him. The turning point of thegame occurred when
Bobby Allen, alertson of the Kansas coach, wrenched theball away
from the heroic but totallytuckered Mesch and Kansas didn't
sur-render it thereafter until she had scoredanother goal, then
froze the ball just in-side the center line, spreading and
weak-ening the Sooner defense and drivingthrough its thinned
salient for two moregoals.The game was the last for five Okla-
homa seniors, Captain Mesch, McNatt,Snodgrass, Schcfcr and
Reserve GeneRoop who made glorious basketball his-tory for Oklahoma
the past three years.It was also the finish of young Drakes
second season as Sooner coach, in each ofwhich Oklahoma has won
a Big Six CO_hampionship.
Faculty
A A
Art work praisedWoodrow Crumbo, '39cx, Indian artist,
was interviewed last month for the Eve-ning Star in Washington,
D.C ., where hewas painting Indian murals in the newDepartment of
Interior Building .Mr . Crumbo is head of the art depart-
incur at Bacone College, near Muskogee ."Young Woodrow Crumbo
waved a
paint brush at a reporter today," the in-terview began, "and
announced that he isgoing to give the District its first taste
ofAmerican art." He declared, "There's notan American painting in
any of your fam-ous galleries here-every last picture isEuropean .
The true `American' art is In-dian art."The article was generous
with praise
for the "warm, subdued earth colors per-fected before the white
men knew theworld was round ; for the dignity andpride which
characterize the symbolismwhich the red-skinned painter creates
intwo dimensions ."
(GOVnNULD FROM PAGE 8)
Dr . Charles E. Decker, professor ofpaleontology, headed a
geological fieldtrip last month which was sponsored bythe Oklahoma
City Geological Society .
At the request of President W. B. Biz-zell, Dean S. W. Reaves
has appointed acommittee of thirteen from the Collegeof Arts and
Science to study the cur-riculum of the college and to make
rec-ommendations for its revision in the in-terest of economy,
efficiency, and scholar-ship .
For the regular Thursday afternoon teaat the Faculty Club March
14, the com-mittee was as follows: Mrs. B. J . Heinrich,Mrs. A. B.
Sears, Mrs . Leroy Smith, Mrs.A . K . Christian, Mrs. Cecil Britc,
MissLaura Miller .
A faculty luncheon for the Junior Hon-ors Group was held in the
ballroom ofthe Union Building March 14 . Highscholarship was
recognized . PresidentBizzell was the principal speaker.
Three faculty members participated ina regional conference on
citizenship andgovernment at Dallas, Texas, last month.The three
and their subjects are Dr . H.V. Thornton, "The Manitowoc Plan of
aCitizenship Day ;" Dr . Cortez A . M . Ew-ing, "Training for
Competent Citizen-ship ;" and Dr . Joseph C. Pray, "Tax
Jus-ticc---flow It Can Be Achieved?"
THE SOONER MAGAZINE