Remember the Rose Bowl, part 3: the 1946 Big Nine pact

The Tournament of Roses flower show and parade, Pasadena’s annual New Year’s Day tradition since 1890, hosted an exhibition “East-West football game” in 1902. Fielding “hurry up” Yost took the University of Michigan’s unbeaten “point-a-minute” Wolverines to play the team he had coached the previous year, Stanford. West coast football was then still in its infancy and the Stanford squad simply could not play with Michigan. In an uncharacteristic show of mercy, Yost allowed the game to be abandoned after three quarters with Michigan leading 49-0. The event provided little in way of exhibition, and Tournament of Roses organizers shelved the “East-West football game” in favor of chariot races and polo matches.

The first Tournament of Roses "East-West football game"

Football returned to the Tournament on New Year’s Day 1916, coinciding with the inaugural season of Pacific Coast Conference football. With the exception of two wartime games featuring short-lived military training school teams in 1918 and 1919, the Pacific Coast Conference [and later Pac-8/10] provided the host team every New Year’s Day until 2002. For its first two decades as an annual fixture the Tournament of Roses game [known as the Rose Bowl after construction of Pasadena’s famous elliptical stadium in 1923] securing a guest team often provided something of a challenge. The trip involved weeks of train travel and considerable inconvenience and expense, all for a game that counted for nothing more than the fun of the trip and the experience of playing. Tournament organizers aimed to attract elite east coast teams. From 1916 to 1925 visitors included Brown, Harvard, Penn, Navy, Notre Dame, and Penn State. While those institutions doubtless enjoyed the trip, none made repeat appearances. For the 1922 game the Tournament committee could secure no better guest than tiny Washington and Jefferson college of Pennsylvania, which played Cal to an uninspiring scoreless tie. Four years later three schools, including unbeaten national champion Dartmouth, turned down invitations before desperate organizers decided to turn to Southern Conference champion Alabama.

Only once during the three decades after 1916 did a member of the Big Ten Conference repeat Michigan’s appearance in the experimental 1902 scrimmage. John Wilce’s 7-0 Buckeyes traveled to face California on New Year’s Day 1921, and were solidly beaten 28-0. Faculty representatives on the Ohio State University athletics board subsequently decided that the academic disruption the trip involved for participating students constituted an undue burden. The university decided to decline any future invitation to post-season games. Faculty members at the other Big Ten member schools followed suit, establishing a conference-wide rule against post-season play which lasted a quarter century. Ohio state's decision was hardly unusual. Despite defeating Stanford 27-10 in the 1925 Rose Bowl, Notre Dame University decided against future post-season play and did not accept another bowl invitation until 1969. Navy had made a similar decision the previous year after playing Washington to a 14-14 tie. The Midshipmen made no further bowl appearance until 1955.

Ohio State in the 1921 Rose Bowl

The decision to approach a southern school in 1925 proved a turning point for the Rose Bowl, and the entire history of post-season collegiate football. The Crimson Tide edged Washington in a 20-19 thriller, earning new respect for southern football. Alabama football gained popularity within the south and the praise of sports journalists nationally. Dixie remained an under-populated social and economic backwater. The south rarely made national headlines for good reasons. University of Alabama administrators viewed the trip as more than worthwhile. The following year Wallace Wade's Crimson Tide became the first repeat visitor to the Rose Bowl, playing Stanford to a tough 7-7 tie. Alabama made five further appearances in Pasadena over the next two decades, building much of the university’s early legacy of football greatness on the edifice of a 4-1-1 Rose Bowl record. Other schools saw an opportunity to garner some of the interest and heightened prestige that the Big Ten, Notre Dame, and military academies had to spare. Between 1928 and 1945 Duke, Georgia Tech, Georgia, Tulane, Southern Methodist, and Tennessee [twice] each made the trip to Pasadena, often providing thrilling games and drawing sell-out crowds. Rising eastern independent Pittsburgh boosted its growing reputation with four appearances.

By the mid-thirties, just a decade after Alabama’s first visit, the Rose Bowl had established itself as such a popular, thrilling, prestigious, and lucrative annual sporting fixture that entrepreneurial city fathers in several southern towns decided to follow suit. Since 1907 the Havana Athletics Club had intermittently hosted post-season visits from southern schools. Assumption College in Windsor, Ontario held a few similar games against mid-Atlantic region guests. Several other cities held one-time games pitting their hometown team against a visitor, such as the 1921 “Fort Worth classic”. But the Rose Bowl had offered the only annual post-season clash between a regional champion and the best willing and available guest. After the Sugar, Orange, and Cotton Bowls entered the picture in 1935 and 1936, New Year’s Day emerged as one of the great national spectacles on the American sporting landscape. Fans and journalists flocked to games which allowed participating universities to crown successful seasons by showcasing their varsity squads in the national limelight. A share of the gate receipts provided a welcome bonus.

Despite the obvious success of their annual fixture, Tournament of Roses organizers and Pacific Coast Conference members continued to fret over the annual headaches of selecting a guest. Southern schools provided interesting games, but the east and mid-west remained the demographic and economic heartland of the nation. After 1935 the Rose Bowl faced the added threat that southern teams would in future prefer bids to play closer to home in Dallas, New Orleans, or Miami. From the mid-thirties onwards the PCC made repeated overtures to the Big Ten [then still more commonly referred to by its original moniker dating to the league’s inception in 1896, the Western Conference] to establish a formal relationship with the Rose Bowl. Not until 1946 did those efforts bear any fruit.

By the end of WWII post-season bowls had become sufficiently established that athletics personnel within numerous Western Conference member schools began to consider an end to the prohibition on post-season play. Needing little encouragement, representatives of the ten PCC schools voted unanimously to extend a formal invitation early in the 1946 season for the Big Nine [as the conference was briefly known following Chicago’s withdrawal that year] to enter a long-term agreement regarding Rose Bowl participation. Ohio State’s board of regents led the way in overturning the post-season ban their school had originally established by approving the potential agreement on September 25th. OSU president Wilbur St. John told reporters:

“I have always been in favor of having the two conference winners meet, and I feel confident in saying that all Big Nine coaches and athletics directors share my opinion. However, it is a matter for the faculty to decide.”

Three weeks later conference commissioner Kenneth Wilson convened an informal meeting in Chicago at which members voted five to four in favor of pursuing the PCC proposal further. Minnesota, Illinois, Northwestern, and Purdue cast the dissenting votes, with Illinois faculty representatives providing the most outspoken opposition to the academic disruptions bowl trips involved for student-athletes. Due to such concerns the Chicago meetings drafted numerous provisions for a counter proposal qualifying the terms on which the Big Nine would consider participation. The narrow majority tentatively approved a five-year Rose Bowl agreement but reserved the right for the Big Nine champion to decline a bid and send another conference member instead. The conference further stated that the same representative would not appear more than once over a three-year period, and also requested the privilege of nominating a non-Big Nine independent [newspapers presumed Notre Dame] to appear in case no conference member wished to accept.

Collectively the reservations amounted to a complete assumption for five-years of the Rose Bowl committee’s invitational prerogatives. But the PCC remained enthusiastic. Stanford athletics director Alfred Masters told reporters:

“It would be a great thing if it happened. A permanent fixture of this kind would assure us a high-class opponent every year.”

University of California athletics director Clinton Evans was even more explicit regarding what the PCC stood to gain. He told reporters:

"We would welcome an opportunity to have the Western Conference champion meet the Pacific Coast champion every year in the Rose Bowl. It would eliminate the necessity of sending out invitations in December. The Big Nine plays an outstanding type of football every year."

In other words, Evans and his colleagues worried about the same question that still haunts bowl organizers in 2011 — not how to secure a chance at lining up the best possible matchup, but how to eliminate the chance of ending up with an unattractive fixture.

The same day as the Chicago meeting trustees in Iowa City voted to approve the possible agreement. A university spokesman told a reporter: “We think it would be a grand thing.” The attitude in Ann Arbor was more reticent. While Michigan representatives in Chicago voted informally to pursue the deal, trustees and faculty remained unconvinced. A university official told reporters:

"We have objected to the idea because the five or six extra weeks practice required of players would keep them away from their studies just that much longer."

Internal conversations continued at Big Nine institutions through October. Ultimately the opportunities offered by the lucrative, high-profile Pasadena fixture overrode objections. At a second Chicago meeting on November 14th conference members voted 7-2 to formally accept the proposal, Minnesota and Illinois being the only hold-outs. PCC commissioner Victor Schmidt was present to provisionally approve the terms of a five-year contract under which his league and the Big Nine would share the Rose Bowl’s annual gate receipts — a princely sum at roughly $450,000. Not coincidentally a significant increase in ticket prices [from $5 up to $5.50] had already been announced earlier that month.

The timing of the agreement Schmidt carried back to California for final approval by PCC members was ironic for two reasons. Firstly, Illinois [whose faculty had most virulently opposed the plan] led the Big Nine standings. Two days after the Chicago meeting the Illini defeated Ohio State 16-7. Only in-state rival Northwestern stood between them and a first conference crown since 1928. A win would give Illinois first right of refusal on a bowl bid it had vocally opposed the conference receiving. Secondly, while the pact was designed to preclude the risk of the Pacific Coast champion hosting a relatively unattractive opponent, by far the most prestigious guest available in 1946 did not belong to the Big Nine. Earl Blaik’s great wartime Army teams, led by Heisman winners “Doc” Blanchard and Glenn Davis, had not lost a game since falling to Navy in 1943. The Cadets crushed Penn 34-7 in Philadelphia on November 16th and had only the Midshipmen to beat for a second consecutive unbeaten season. Unofficially, West Point did not accept bowl bids, but Superintendent Maj. Gen. Maxwell Taylor explicitly left the door open. The same day that Big Nine officials met in Chicago, Maxwell told journalists.

“The Army has received no bowl bid and remains focused on completing the current season. If an invitation is received I will give consideration to the advantages and disadvantages of a post-season game. Normally the Academy is solidly against post-season games, but this year there are plainly exceptional conditions which may warrant special consideration.”

Army had played a post-season game, though not technically a bowl, against Stanford in Palo Alto on December 28th 1929. If there was ever a year for repeating that precedent, this was it.

On November 19th the Presidents and athletics directors of all ten PCC members met in Berkeley. Schmidt and Kenneth Wilson were present to sign the agreement if officially approved. But by the time of the meeting every major west coast newspaper had called for the Rose Bowl to invite Army. Administrators at USC and UCLA both publically favored that option. A closed-door meeting approved the five-year deal but initially left the door open to defer the start date to the 1947 season. The value of Army as a bowl participant could not be doubted when on November 20th, immediately after receiving news that the PCC had approved the pact, Sugar bowl president Sam Corenswet issued a formal invitation to the Cadets.

The following day the Rose Bowl formally announced that the PCC had, on a second vote, chosen not to defer the new pact. Illinois, not Army, would appear in Pasadena on New Year’s Day 1947. Many west coast football fans expressed outrage. Following the announcement, Illinois athletics director Douglas Mills received nearly 600 telegrams in a single day appealing for his school to stand aside in favor of the Cadets. With World War II a recent memory, national sentiment in favor of the poll-topping service academy teams was at an all time high. A telegram from Ernest Newquist, the spokesman for a group of southern Californian football fans who opposed the Illinois invitation, lambasted Mills:

"It is with deep regret that we find it necessary to inform you of the bitterness which now exists among Southern California football fans as to the possibility of you, or any other Big Nine representative playing here on January 1st. In the name of all that is decent and just, it is inconceivable that Army should not be allowed to play this year. We fans will never forgive the freeze-out of Army, nor will ever believe that any Big Nine school would deliberately accept a bid knowing they were not welcome… Your conference and school could gain the nation’s admiration and respect by first allowing the invitation to be extended to Army."

Whether or not Newquist spoke for most or even many Californians, he certainly echoed the sentiments of the man then serving as Rose Bowl committee chairman. USC athletics director Willis Hunter issued a joint statement with his UCLA counterpart, saying:

"We did everything in our power to make it possible for the U.S. Military Academy team to play in the Rose Bowl game, recognizing from the beginning the strong public interest in seeing the unbeaten Army team play in this traditional New Year’s classic. Representatives of the Big Nine, however, stated that if the postponement occurred it would be necessary for them to return to their conference for further action, with considerable doubt as to the outcome. I regret very much that it was made impossible for Army to be the eastern representative in the 1947 Rose Bowl game, although I am fully appreciative of the advantages of the agreement now completed with the Western Conference.”

Essentially Kenneth Wilson had strong-armed PCC representatives with a “now or never” warning. As a result West Point missed out on the Rose Bowl and decided against the Sugar bowl bid. Army would not play in a bowl game until 1984.

Controversy for the new PCC-Big Nine pact did not end with the Cadets. The agreement explicitly permitted the nomination of a replacement “eastern” team for the last two of its five year duration. Thus the agreement explicitly shutout the southern schools which had provided the Rose Bowl’s guest on no fewer than fourteen occasions since 1926, and had done so much to make the game’s reputation as an annual thriller. Exciting games against non-eastern teams had drawn large crowds and national radio audiences, and entertained gushing journalists. Now Big Nine schools wanted to ensure themselves control of the game’s multifarious value.

Southeastern Conference coaches publically criticized the pact. LSU coach Bernie Moore called the move “the biggest mistake the Rose Bowl ever made.” He claimed that the Sugar and Orange Bowl games might in future “take the traditional national championship away from the Rose Bowl.” Frank Thomas, coach of the reigning Rose Bowl champion Crimson Tide, echoed Moore’s sentiments. He commented that the decision would leave great teams available for the newer southern bowls. Moore, Thomas, and other southern football luminaries openly questioned the Rose Bowl’s logic in opting for a safe annual matchup with the Big Nine, rather than remaining open to the possibility of a stronger candidate emerging from another conference.

Not for the last time, PCC and Big Nine personnel responded to such criticism by claiming a higher moral standard. Cal head coach Frank Wickhorst commented that the PCC and Big Nine had “strict and similar” eligibility rules preventing member schools from fielding ringers of tenuous connection to the university. Implicitly Wickhorst defended the pact by labeling southern schools as unscrupulous football factories — still a familiar refrain.

California officially accepted a Rose Bowl bid on November 28th. Illinois accepted a bid to represent the Big Nine two days later. Despite Ernest Newquist’s assertion that California football fans did not welcome a Big Nine representative, when tickets went on public sale three weeks later the crowd quickly got out of hand. A small-scale riot led to bottles being thrown at police officers, several of whom were hospitalized. The fifty cent price increase, absence of the unbeaten Cadets, and controversial snubbing of southern teams did nothing to dampen local enthusiasm for football. It is likely that an appearance from Army would have created even wilder scenes. Doubtless very few of the Californians seeking tickets felt any particular attachment to the Fighting Illini.

Faculty representatives at Illinois had dug-in against the Rose Bowl agreement, but when the offer to participate actually came, the university found the promise of significant revenue and public attention impossible to refuse. Not only did the Big Nine [Big Ten after the addition of Michigan State in 1950] not exercise its right to nominate “outside” representatives for the final two years of the five-year term, but it eagerly renewed the pact upon its expiration and continued to do so until approving of the Rose Bowl’s inclusion in the equally controversial Bowl Championship Series in 1998. While the Big Ten maintained a prohibition on the same conference member appearing in Pasadena on consecutive years until 1972, no conference member ever turned down an invitation.

On December 8th 2010, at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in New York, longtime Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany aired his frustration over the BCS provision requiring the Rose Bowl to accept a non-automatic qualifier once over a four-year span if certain specific conditions arose. Delany told WAC commissioner Karl Benson, interrupting his comments regarding the BCS allowing his teams to play postseason football on the “big stage”:

“The problem is that your big stage takes away opportunities for my teams to play on the stage they created in 1902.”

Historically speaking, Delany’s comments could hardly have been farther off-base. The Big Ten conference did not “create” the Rose Bowl in 1902. While the truncated and lopsided Michigan-Stanford exhibition of that year technically represents the first Tournament of Roses game, the event did not emerge as anything like a prestigious and lucrative annual “big stage” until after Ohio State’s disastrous showing and subsequent post-season boycott in 1921. The Big Ten’s exclusive pact with the PCC did not establish a prominent fixture on the American sporting landscape. It merely served to eliminate from involvement other institutions, many of whom had done much to solidify the event’s reputation.

The Big Ten’s relationship to the Rose Bowl established in 1946 was not creative but rather exclusionary, monopolistic, and controversial. Many view it in the same light today. Karl Benson should not have been surprised at the venom of Delany’s objection to the possibility of unbeaten Boise State or TCU taking a Rose Bowl spot from less deserving Big Ten or Pac-10 teams. If Delany’s forbear Kenneth Wilson was willing to strong-arm the unbeaten West Point Cadets out of the way of a two-loss Illinois squad barely a year after the end of WWII, what would posses him to give a damn about some pesky upstart squad with a blue field?

Jim Delany: persona non grata among college football's have-nots

[Sources: New York Times; cfbdatawarehouse.com]

Great defensive players: Charles Smith, George Webster, and Charlie Thornhill

On a chilly, hostile November afternoon in East Lansing at the end of the 1966 season Coley O’Brien walked toward the ball at his own thirty-yard line. With a minute remaining, a keenly anticipated meeting between unbeatens No.1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Michigan State was tied at 10-10. Offensive mistakes on both sides had given opportunities that imposing defenses had staved off, including a first quarter Spartan fumble on their own four-yard line that produced no points for the Irish. With sixty seconds to play and seventy yards to go the football gods had given Notre Dame one last chance, but Ara Parseghian decided controversially not to take it. The Spartan defense lined up expecting a deep ball. When O’Brien handed off for two consecutive short-yardage running plays without any apparent urgency reality dawned on the now disgusted Michigan State players. As a cacophony of boos rained down from the stands Spartan defenders added their own insults and taunts.

Senior Defensive End Charles “Bubba” Smith yelled: “Come on, sissies.”

Linebacker George Webster shouted across the line of scrimmage to the Irish players in their huddle: “You’re going for a tie aren’t you? Get of the field, you’ve given up!”

Parseghian calculated correctly that Notre Dame’s prestige and polling power would deliver a national championship despite the school’s policy of refusing bowl bids and a record blemished with a tie. Sports Illustrated writer Dan Jenkins led the charge of outraged journalists lobbying for pollsters to “punish” Notre Dame. Jenkins sarcastically wondered whether Parseghian had exhorted his players to “Tie one for the Gipper!” But appeals for AP voters to bestow the title upon Bear Bryant’s Alabama after the Tide dismantled Bob Devaney’s Cornhuskers in the Sugar Bowl fell on deaf eras. Notre Dame’s emotional grip on football pollsters could not be broken. That fateful game in Spartan Stadium on November 19th 1966 has been defined in football lore and memory ever since by Parseghian’s somewhat cynical and certainly ignoble calculation. The unbeaten Spartans somehow got lost in the story, playing only the role of unmemorable dancing partner to the real actors from South Bend.

The outcome of that game and its subsequent place in college football history is highly lamentable. November 19th 1966 would more rightly be remembered as the last game of two incredible seasons for the best ever Michigan State defense. Smith and Webster, two time all-Americans of outstanding pedigree, should have finished their careers in East Lansing as they had spent every preceding minute — hustling like the hounds of hell and running over helpless opponents in pursuit of victory. Instead, Parseghian’s conceit and the Big Ten’s nonsensical prohibition of repeat Rose Bowl performances forced the Spartan stand-outs to play end their years in the collegiate game on a low note of anger and frustration.

The 1965 and 1966 seasons remain the high watermark of Michigan State football history. Had the home fans known that November that more than forty years later they would still be awaiting a second performance as repeat Big Ten champion they would probably have rushed the field looking for blood. In fact the Spartans have only claimed a single outright Big Ten title and shared two more in the forty-four years since. The explanation for that all-too-brief high summer of success and the juxtaposing drought that has followed is surely the basic philosophy of the State’s head coach, and his laudable lack of racial prejudice.

Duffy Daugherty played his college ball at Syracuse without much distinction before serving in WWII. After the war Daugherty returned to Syracuse as an assistant to his former coach Clarence “Biggie Munn. Daugherty followed Munn to Michigan State in 1947 and was an integral part of a staff that coached the Spartans to successive unbeaten campaigns and national titles in 1951-52 and a shared conference title in State’s inaugural Big Ten campaign in 1953. Daugherty succeeded Munn as head coach the following year, but with the exception of a Rose Bowl victory and a second place AP finish in 1955 he largely failed to match Munn’s achievements until the mid-1960s.

Daugherty assumed a jocular persona, always having a quip on hand. Publicly he discussed his work as a coach in an almost flippant tongue-in-cheek manner. He brushed off the stresses of the job, such as the pressure to win, with whimsical cracks such as: “The alumni are always with you, win or tie.” But behind the revelry everyone knew that Daugherty took the game very seriously indeed. His ability not to take himself too seriously allowed him to see that victory did not depend upon some revolutionary system or stroke of genius he might contribute. Rather he frankly admitted:

“The reason you win is because you’ve got more good players than the next guy. Most football games aren’t won on the field. They’re won from December to September, when recruiting is done.”

If winning meant finding and fielding the best available players Daugherty didn’t care who they were or where they came from, as long as they wanted to play for Michigan State and would play hard. College football’s color barrier had been broken in the north and west long before Daugherty assembled his great teams of the mid-1960s. Ernie Davis won the Heisman playing for Daugherty’s alma mater four years before his first conference championship. But there still remained an unwritten rule at northern schools that coaches would only field a few black players. For whatever reason, coaches only played the very best black athletes on otherwise lilywhite teams. The 1966 Fighting Irish, for example, who eventually won the AP title over the an unbeaten Alabama team which eastern sportswriters unfairly associated with their state governor’s impetuous stand on the schoolhouse steps, fielded only one black player. Daugherty didn’t care if his entire team was black. His coaches scoured the south, finding young athletes barred from playing for schools in their own states and bringing them to East Lansing.

When the towering Charles Smith left Beaumont, Texas in 1962 aged eighteen he had never had what he would call a “real conversation” with any white person. He later joked that he never seen nor heard of Jews and was surprised to learn in Michigan that there were different types of white people. Regardless of any culture shock Smith felt the 6’7” 280 lb giant settled down to play probably the best defense of any player in Spartan history — he is still the highest drafted player ever from Michigan State. Smith moved his huge body with frightening speed, reaching opposing backfields with apparent ease. Coley O’Brien only saw the field for Notre Dame in that famous 1966 game because Irish starter Terry Hanratty suffered a separated shoulder early in the first quarter when Smith leveled him behind the line of scrimmage. Moving with speed and hitting with brute force Smith quickly established himself as both the anchor of State’s line and the spearhead of its pass-rush.

Behind Smith's defensive line Daugherty built a flexible unit based on speed that looked more like modern defenses designed to stuff the spread than its Big Ten peers. At the heart of the unit was hybrid Safety/Linebacker George Webster. The 6'4" 225 lb South Carolinian was as fast as any Big Ten receiver and strong enough to single-handedly lay out any running back. Webster played with an insatiable intensity. State's defensive captain Cornerback Don Japinga called Webster the greatest footballer he ever played with or against. Japinga said of Webster:

"He literally punished every ball carrier."

Directing the Spartan Linebacker core another southerner flew to the ball with enough ferocity to earn the moniker "mad dog". Charlie Thornhill of Roanoake, Alabama would never have even found East Lansing without the intervention of the very image of Dixie's football establishment, Bear Bryant. Thornhill scored over two-hundred points as a senior running back and became the first black athlete to earn player of the year accolades from Roanoake's Touchdown Club. Thornhill was surprised and thrilled to find Bryant at the awards reception and even more surprised when the living legend asked him where he planned to attend college. Thornhill had an offer from Notre Dame, but Bryant asked him to wait on committing until he made a phone call.

That call went to Duffy Daugherty. On Bryant's recommendation Michigan State offered Thornhill a scholarship. The Bear chaffed under the frustration of his state's system of racial segregation. No one ever accused Byrant of progressivism, but he like Daugherty didn't care about anything in his players but their attitude and ability. Ever the football-obsessed pragmatist Bryant simply wanted to win. He wanted the best athlete's and didn't care whether they were black, white, or green. He eventually led the SEC toward integration in the early 70s, a process eased by the stunning effortlessness with which the USC Trojans led by Fullback Sam Cunningham ran over the all-white Crimson Tide in Birmingham to open the 1970 season.

But the Bear wasn't only a self-interested glory-hunter. Until such a time as Alabama's political climate would accept his desire to recruit black students he went out of his way to steer young men toward northern schools that would actually put them on the field. As a freshman Thornhill had a misunderstanding and confrontation with a Michigan State assistant that left him buried down the depth-chart and ended his hopes of earning a spot at running back. When Daugherty finally gave him a chance to play some downs at Linebacker in drills between the starting offense and second-string defense Thornhill made tackles on six straight plays and absolutely blew-up State's starting quarterback. Neither he nor Daugherty ever looked back.

In Smith and Webster’s junior and senior seasons Michigan State went 19-1-1, losing only to UCLA behind the stunning play of sophomore sensation quarterback Gary Beban in one of the great Rose Bowl upsets. Going a perfect 14-0 in conference play through those two seasons the Spartans gave up only 34.6 rushing yards a game and held their opponents to a combine seven fourth quarter points. Smith and Co. never tired before the guys across the line. Daugherty, like most Big Ten coaches then and since, preferred a ball-control run heavy offense and a reliable defense. Defensive players in any color didn’t come any more reliable than Smith, Webster, and Thornhill. With talent of their caliber on the field, scoring against State proved virtually impossible.

In the years since that infamous Michigan State-Notre Dame game the football gods have not smiled on East Lansing. Spartan coaches have struggled to attract the best players to State — the less storied and fashionable school in Michigan. Even as the Daugherty’s greatest team claimed its second straight Big Ten title, changes were afoot far to the south that eventually spelled the end of Sparty’s greatest era. Jerry LeVais, an undersized but speedy receiver from Smith’s own hometown of Beaumont had accepted an athletic scholarship from SMU in the spring of 1965 and became the first ever black player in Southwest Conference football history in 1966. Slowly but surely the SWC’s color barriers came down over the ensuing years. The University of Texas fielded its first back varsity football player four years later. Inevitably, as these institutions opened their doors to black players the pipeline of talent that created Daugherty’s great success dried up. If Bubba Smith were a High School standout today, the chances of him not signing to play for Mack Brown would be approximately nil.

Sources: Sporting News, CFB's 25 Greatest Teams; Dan Jenkins, "An upside down game"; USA Today CFB encyclopedia; Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring; cfbdatawarehouse.com; ESPN, Big Ten Encyclopedia)

SEC coaching rivalries: Nick Saban vs. Urban Meyer, in context

My last few posts have considered five of the most thrilling coaching rivalries in SEC history: Frank Thomas and Robert Neyland *, Johnny Vaught and Paul Dietzel *, Ralph Jordan and Paul Bryant *, Vince Dooley and Pat Dye *, and Phillip Fulmer and Steve Spurrier *.

I came up with the idea of surveying this question because I was wondering about the historical context of the current titanic Urban Meyer-Nick Saban death struggle. It seemed to me that the SEC has a richer, or at least broader, coaching tradition than other conferences, which have often been dominated for almost their entire history by two or three powers (the Michigan-Ohio State, OU-Nebraska, and Texas-Texas A&M/Arkansas rivalries spring to mind). But in the SEC Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Auburn, LSU and, more recently, Florida have all had one or more great coach who built regionally and nationally prominent programs. Even Kentucky, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt have enjoyed brief moments of regional significance. Through all that long and rich history, one pattern emerges. In every generation of SEC football two coaches seem destined to rise above their peers and wrestle for conference dominance (and usually with it national supremacy).


At present the SEC boasts the best group of coaches in college football. But amongst them all the resumes of two stand out. Heading into the 2009 season Urban Meyer's overall record as a head coach stood at 82-17 and 43-9 at Florida. He has won two BCS championships and has one undefeated season. Between Utah and Florida his teams are unbeaten in three BCS bowl appearances. His teams have won two Mountain West Conference titles (in two years) and two SEC titles. At the time of writing, Meyer's winning percentage at UF is significantly better even than Steve Spurrier's (even discounting shameless trouncings of the occasional rent-a-victim non-conference foe).

Nick Saban has a BCS championship of his own. His record heading into 2009 was 110-50-1. At LSU he went 48-16 with two conference titles. His Toledo team won the MAC in his only year as head coach, and his best Michigan State team finished second in the Big Ten (no mean feat at MSU - ask anyone who's tried).

Though Saban and Meyer between them have dominated the SEC since 2000 it was not until Saban took the Alabama job in 2007 that the two coaches' careers actually collided. Fittingly it was not until last year's SEC championship game that they actually coached against one another. After a 7-6 campaign in which much wheat and chaff were separated Saban's Tide went 12-0 in the 2008 regular season. When #1 Alabama and #2 Florida met in Atlanta the teams went blow for blow through three quarters before the stamina of the younger Crimson Tide waned. In the final analysis, three third down plays inside the Alabama ten-yard line that Tim Tebow completed for touchdowns in tight coverage made the difference.

Webster's dictionary defines the word monomania with this picture

This also reflects a long standing trend in SEC coaching rivalries. The difference between two giant programs is often made by the presence of a special player who rises above the crowd. That was true for Paul Deitzel with Billy Cannon, Johnny Vaught with Archie Manning, Pat Dye with Bo Jackson, Vince Dooley with Herschel Walker amongst others. With every consensus top 3 recruiting class Meyer and Saban rein in, the chances that they rather than another SEC coach will find the next generation's special talent increases.

At the time of writing Florida and Alabama are first and second in the AP poll. Both are undefeated. The chances that Saban and Meyer's next bout will come this December in Atlanta seem high. It seems equally likely that this ongoing battle will define SEC football for the foreseeable future.

Probably the first of many.

[Update: The Meyer-Saban coaching rivalry will not be deciding the near future of SEC football greatness so much as the Myer-Miles rivalry. Who saw that coming? Look for Bama and Ohio State to renew this rivalry in a major post-season game sometime soon.]