jrn / sps 362 - lecture fourteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Fourteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football


Review• The NFL matured in the mid

1930s to the late 1950s, becoming a fully acceptable and profitable half of the football kingdom.


Review• The league crowned its first true

champion in scheduled title game between division winners, and rule changes made passing easier.

• That shift gave quarterbacks a chance to shine, and during this period, three stood above the rest: Baugh, Luckman and Graham.


Review• Meanwhile, a new pro league,

the All America Football Conference, launched in 1946 to compete against the NFL and was integrated immediately.

• Paul Brown, who won a national championship with Ohio State, joined the Cleveland Browns of the AAFC.


Review• Brown led Cleveland to four

AAFC titles in its four-year existence, disrupting football with new approaches to everything from statistical analysis to play-calling from the sidelines.


Review• Segregation in the NFL began in

1933 and ended in 1946 when the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles and had to sign African-American players in order to lease the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

• The league still would not be fully integrated until 1962.


Review• The NFL approached the late

1950s with great hope for a profitable future as franchises stabilized, crowds grew and television networks showed interest in broadcasting the games.


The College Game• As the NFL set itself up for the

1950s, college football modernized as well, but the NCAA still refused a playoff.

• The bowl games and a poll instead served as a proxy for national championships as the college game sought to generate a wider national audience.


The College Game• The Rose Bowl was the first

collegiate bowl game.

• It was first played in 1902 on New Year’s Day, with Michigan and Stanford participating, and called the Tournament East-West Football Game. It was not held again until 1916.


The College Game• In 1916, bowl officials named the

contest between east and west the “Rose Bowl,” an expression extracted from Yale’s football stadium, the Yale Bowl.

• In 1923, the game was first played at the Rose Bowl itself, a stadium that reflected the architecture of the Yale Bowl.


The College Game• The Rose Bowl was the only

college bowl game of note until the 1930s, when local promoters decided to tap into the popularity of the game to lure tourists during the New Year’s holiday period.


The College Game• In January 1935, the list of bowl

games grew as South recognized the economic power of the games and organized several, including:

• Orange Bowl, Miami, Florida


The College Game• Sugar Bowl, New Orleans,

Louisiana


The College Game• Sun Bowl, El Paso, Texas


The College Game

Two years later, the Cotton Bowl was held for the first time in Dallas, Texas.


The College Game• The new bowl games served as a

mechanism to draw tourists and fans from the frigid football to the north.

• The New Year’s Day schedule provided the time necessary for fans to make travel plans at the end of the season; after all, they had to take trains – or drive on pre-Interstate roads.


The College Game• Conferences, which had formed

in the 1900s – 1920s (more later) wielded their power by determining the bowl game or games in which its members could play.

• The Southeastern Conference, for example, limited its teams to the Rose and Sugar bowls, at first.


The College Game• And teams playing in the

southern bowl games understood they would be playing against segregated teams in front of segregated crowds.

• That’s why many of the bowl games in the South featured southern teams.


The College Game• The Orange Bowl illustrates the

rapid growth and power of the bowl games from the mid 1930s onward.

• In the first game on Jan. 1, 1935, a small Eastern college, Bucknell, played Miami University.


The College Game• Bucknell won that first game, 26-

0, in front of few people at Miami Stadium.

• In 1936, another small school, Catholic University, defeated the University of Mississippi, 20-19.

• A year later, Duquesne beat Mississippi State.


The College Game• The SEC voted to permit its

teams to play in the Rose Bowl beginning in 1938, and that spelled doom for the smaller Eastern teams.

• The city of Miami, meanwhile, built a large new stadium to host the game.


The College Game• On Jan. 1, 1938, Auburn of the

SEC beat Michigan State of the Big 10, 6-0, in front of 19,000 in Miami’s new Orange Bowl Stadium.

• A year later, the bowl became a major bowl by attracting the two best teams in the nation: Oklahoma and Tennessee, both 10-0.


The College Game• To lure Oklahoma to Miami, the

Orange Bowl Committee’s Earnie Seiler went to the Norman, Oklahoma campus.

• Seiler plastered posters of palm trees, beaches and young women around the university.

• Oklahoma went to Miami for the Jan. 1, 1939 game.


The College Game• In one of the most violent

college football games of the era, Tennessee held Oklahoma to 81 total yards to win, 17-0.

• Officials assessed a total of 242 yards in penalties and ejected several players in a game nicknamed “The Orange Brawl.”


The College Game• The reason for the extraordinary

fierceness of the game is difficult to fathom, given that the national championship wasn’t on the line.

• There was only one mechanism to determine the best team at the time: a poll of the nation’s sportswriters, as compiled by the Associated Press news wire service.


The College Game• The Associated Press became

the unofficial arbiter of the national championship in 1936, when sportswriters selected Minnesota.

• But the poll took place before Jan. 1, and, as such, it rendered the bowl games nothing more than exhibitions.


The College Game• Texas Christian and its star

Heisman winner Davey O’Brien ended the 1938 season as the No. 1 team after the previous top team, Notre Dame, lost to USC on Dec. 3.

• Tennessee was ranked second, unbeaten Duke third and Oklahoma fourth.


The College Game• Yet none of the teams played

each other in bowl games, as Tennessee decided to play Oklahoma rather than TCU in the Sugar Bowl.

• 10-0 TCU met 8-0-1 Carnegie Tech in the Sugar Bowl instead.


The College Game• In the Sugar Bowl, TCU won, 15-

7.

• 7-0-1 Duke played 7-0-2 USC in the Rose Bowl and lost, 7-3.


The College Game• So in the only match between

unbeaten, untied teams, 10-0 Tennessee beat 10-0 Oklahoma but didn’t win the national championship.

• The debate over a playoff was underway and it would persist until the next century.


The College Game• The winner of the Heisman

Trophy, however, was also clear.

• The first winner in 1935 was Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.


The College Game• Yale’s Larry Kelley (left) of Yale

won in 1936 followed by Clint Frank, also of Yale in 1937.

• They would be the only winners of the trophy from the school that served as the cradle for American football.


The College Game• World War II interrupted college

play much more so than the pro game as tens of thousands of players joined the military.

• Some such as Dave Schreiner of Wisconsin were killed in action.


The College Game• Beginning in 1944, some of

these players returned from combat to resume their collegiate studies and rejoined their teams.

• Army, naturally, was the strongest of them all.


The College Game• In both 1944 and 1945, Army

won the national championship behind running backs Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard.

• Known as Mr. Inside, Doc Blanchard won the Heisman in 1945.

• Known as Mr. Outside, Davis won the Heisman in 1946.


The College Game• In 1946, No. 1 Army met No. 2

Notre Dame in the first of several “game of the century” contests in college football.

• The game, at Yankee Stadium in New York, featured four Heisman winners: Davis and Blanchard from Army; Johnny Lujack and Leon Hart from Notre Dame.


The College Game• Many of the players were war

veterans, as were many in the crowd.

• The game thus marked a collective homecoming of America from World War II, underscoring the position of football in American culture as the haze of the war lifted.


The College Game• “ … it was postwar America, the

boys had come back home. In a sense, the game really represented that transition. America had returned to normal, Notre Dame had its football team back and its coach back.” – Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick in 2010 before the two teams met again at Yankee Stadium.


The College Game• The two teams played to an epic

0-0 tie that America from coast-to-coast.

• Army and Notre Dame, two great institutions that cultivated national followings in the 1920s, had united the nation in celebration.

• Now, America would be ready for peace, prosperity and football.

jrn / sps 362 - lecture fourteen

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