No. 4 Nebraska felled in Madison, 21 September 1974

Fourth-ranked Nebraska entered Camp Randall stadium on 21 September 1974 as a fifteen point favorite. The ‘Huskers had crushed uninspiring Oregon 61-7 in Lincoln to open their season the preceding week, and might easily have been favored by a larger margin. Nebraska was enjoying its headiest football halcyon days. In a run which would not be surpassed until the late ‘90s, Big Red had gone 42-6-3 since the start of 1969 and claimed back-to-back national championships in 1970 and ’71. Only a narrow 17-14 loss at home to unbeaten Oklahoma under first-year head coach Barry Swizter prevented Bob Devaney from claiming an unprecedented third straight national title in 1972. After that season Devaney stepped down in favor of his assistant Tom Osborne. His first team went 9-2-0, beatingTexas in the Cotton Bowl. Over five seasons Nebraska’s six losses had come at the hands of Oklahoma [twice], Missouri [twice], Southern Cal, and UCLA. Each of those opponents finished in the final AP top twenty, and four of them in the top ten. Nebraska simply didn’t lose to unranked opponents, ever.

Wisconsin had not even appeared in the AP poll since mid way through the 1963 season. The early ‘70s were not halcyon days in Madison. Under the tutelage of John Jardine, a former Purdue offensive lineman who never held another head coaching job, Wisconsin continued a woeful run of form. From 1964 through 1973 under three different coaches the Badgers had posted a woeful 34-74-5 record, including two winless seasons in 1967 and ’68. In eight seasons from 1970 to 1977 Jardine went 37-47-3. The Badgers' eventual 7-4 record in 1974 would be his only winning year. Wisconsin did not make a habit of beating anyone in those days, least of all visitors ranked fourth by the AP.

Osborne’s approach in Lincoln was essentially one of continuity—sustaining what Devaney had established. The tradition of Nebraska’s “black shirt” defenses began in 1964 when Devaney first moved to two-platoon football and simply needed to differentiate the defensive and offensive squads. The system quickly evolved into black and grey shirts for the defense, black shirts being awarded on a daily basis to players who had earned them in the previous day’s session. The myth of the “black shirts” only grew under Osborne, who appointed the young Monte Kiffin as defensive coordinator. All-American defensive end John Dutton led Kiffin’s first unit, and while the 1974 black shirts lacked a clear standout they would only give up more than fifteen points on three occasions. On offense Nebraska ran a prototypical power-I, producing multiple 500-yard backs every year. Jeff Kinney ran for 1037 yards in 1971. Tony Davis posted 1008 two years later. With opposing defenses lined up to stop the run, and assisted by talented receivers such as Johnny Rogers, the great ‘Husker teams of the early ‘70s also gained yards through the air. Jerry Tagge exceeded 1300 yards passing each of his three seasons from 1969-71. Dave Humm exceeded 1500 yards every year from 1972-74. Simply put, Nebraska outmatched Wisconsin both sides of the ball.

In contrast, Wisconsin rarely overwhelmed any opponent. Neill Graff’s 1313 yards passing for 11 touchdowns in 1970 constituted the best single-season output by any Badger signal-caller since 1962. Single-digit touchdown totals and completion percentages below fifty were an unwlecome annual tradition. The running game offered some hope, in which Bill Marek’s 1207 yard performance in 1973 made him the third consecutive thousand-yard Badger tailback. Wisconsin’s offensive output gradually improved over Jardine’s first four seasons, but the defense routinely gave up at least three touchdowns. Junior quarterback Greg Bohlig’s 1700 yards passing in 1973 had given hope of better things to come, despite a completion ratio of 45% and a final record of 4-7. With Bohlig and Marek both back, Badger fans expected a relatively productive offense, but few dared to hope that an outmanned defense would hold powerful Nebraska in check.

Certainly Nebraska’s sixty-point explosion the previous week gave cause for concern. After the teams exchanged punts early on, Big Red seized the initiative with 6:00 to play in the first quarter. Nebraska took a 7-0 lead on a 22-yard breakaway dash from wingback Don Westbrook. A national television audience watching on ABC likely sensed another runaway victory, but on Nebraska’s next possession David Humm went down with a hip pointer and left the game. That Humm missed the following two Nebraska games but still finished the 1974 season with 1435 yards and12 TDs is sufficient indication of his talent. In his place, career backup Earl Everett went just 3-of-7 with an interception. Everett and Humm’s combined five completions were good for a paltry forty-seven team passing yards. But so long as the untested understudy had only to hand the ball off, Nebraska continued to look marginally the better team. With 6:14 in the second quarter to play Wisconsin drove half the length of the field before levelling on a nine-yard pass from Bohlig to backup wideout Ron Egloff. After another exchange of punts Nebraska answered with a drive of their own, capped by a six-yard scoring dash from tailback John O’Leary seconds before time expired. As a sophomore the previous year O’Leary had gained 326 yards on 73 carries. Classmate Tony Davis had topped a thousand. Davis and O’Leary would combine for 1025 yards in 1974, before totaling 1118 yards as seniors in 1975. One of the greatest runningback tandems in Nebraska history made a combined 162 yards against Wisconsin, but after O’Leary suffered a concussion early in the second half just four yards shy of a century Davis had to carry the load alone. Missing a thousand-yard passer and a 500-yard back the ‘Husker offense sputtered.

Nebraska extended its slender lead to 17-10 five minutes into the second half on a thirty-yard Mike Coyle field goal. The black shirts gave up yardage that threatened the ‘Husker lead only begrudgingly and in tiny increments. Wisconsin rushed for a team total of just 77-yards on a massive forty-four attempts. The 1974 Badgers were far from second-rate on the ground. Marek would finish the year with 1207 yards on 241 carries, including thirty-points and 304-yards against Minnesota that remain first and second on their respective lists of single-game school records. Alongside him Ken Starch added 637 yards on 110 carries while Mike Morgan gained 461 on 85. Against Monte Kiffin’s immovable defensive front, however, the Badgers managed virtually nothing.

Jardine had little option but to shift to the passing game. Bohlig, a talent at least equal to his now-departed opposite number David Humm, answered the call with a 242-yard performance on 14-of-21 passes. He began to find holes in front of the Nebraska secondary, allowing his receivers to maneuver Wisconsin inside the ten-yard line shortly before the third quarter expired. With 14:16 to play in the game the Badger’s struggling ground attack gained a one-yard score through Bill Marek, reducing the deficit to just 17-14.

The teams then exchanged punts for the fifth time before Tony Davis, who finished with seventy-six yards, shouldered most of the load in a drive that carried Big Red inside the Badger ten with barely five minutes remaining. A touchdown would have decided the game, but without two of its leaders the ‘Husker offense reached only the two-yard line in three attempts. Osborne faced a difficult decision. Nebraska gained 258 rushing yards on the day in sixty-two attempts. The odds favored a touchdown on fourth-and two, and with the black shirts still holding Wisconsin’s ground game in check the danger in falling short seemed relatively limited. But Osborn elected to kick, extending the ‘Husker lead to just 20-14.

Wisconsin had less than four minutes remaining to go seventy-one yards after running the ensuing kick back to its own 29-yard line. On first-and-ten the Nebraska defensive front blew past some shoddy blocking and gang tackled the helpless Bohlig for a six-yard loss. Osborne’s gambit seemed momentarily judicious. A 73,000 home crowd, which had been electrified by their team’s goal-line stand, began to sense an anticlimax. Then, on second-and-sixteen, Bohlig again dropped back. His protection held long enough for him to find receiver Jeff Mack on a seam route at the Wisconsin thirty-five. Bohlig hit Mack in a crowd of ‘Husker defenders perfectly in stride, allowing the flanker to break free and sprint the length of the field. The 77-yard touchdown set up a game-winning PAT attempt, which Vince Lamia duly converted to the delight of an already jubilant crowd.

Needing a field length drive with barely three minutes remaining Osborne called a typical off-tackle running play on first down. A resurgent Wisconsin defense swarmed to the ball, forcing Osborne to call a pass play on second down. Nebraska quarterbacks have never been known for making quick yards through the air under any circumstances. Required to do so for an unlikely late comeback Everett threw an interception. A handful of ultra conservative running plays later the clock expired as glory-starved Wisconsin fans stormed the field.

The day was an aberration. Big Red finished the 1974 season 9-3 with a win over Florida in the Sugar Bowl. While the Badgers limped to 7-4 they would not post another winning season until 1981. That one-point win over a depleted Nebraska team easily constituted the greatest win of John Jardine’s disappointing eight-year tenure, and possibly of two barren decades for Wisconsin football. For Big Red, a streak of annual bowl appearances that began in 1969 would stretch to 2004. ‘Husker fans soon forgot their fourth-quarter loss in Madison.

Big Red has not returned to Madison since that day, or played Wisconsin in any other location. On 1 October 2011 Nebraska will play its first Big Ten game at Camp Randall stadium. Over the last decade it has been the Badgers that have enjoyed the high watermark of school history, while Nebraska has languished—relative, of course, to admittedly lofty expectations. Husker fans will hope for a win, however narrow, that might prove not an aberration but the spark for a renewed dynasty.

Whatever happens, Wisconsin will not be held to seventy-seven yards on the ground.

[Sources: USA CFB encyclopedia; ESPN Big Ten encyclopedia; New York Times; Huksers.com, History of the blackshirts; cfbdatawarehouse.com; huskersmax.com; photos, Madison.com]

Remember the Rose Bowl, part four: Illinois vs. UCLA, 1947

The 1946 Fighting Illini’s two-week round trip to Pasadena proved momentous and eventful, for the team, the Big Nine [later Ten] Conference, and the future of the Rose Bowl Game. During the long journey via New Orleans senior end Bill Heiss married his fiancé in a ceremony conducted aboard the team train — surely a singular event in Rose Bowl history. And as the new Mr. and Mrs. Heiss started their married life together, so the Big Nine and Pacific Coast Conference [later Pac-8] consummated a union that has lasted more than half a century.

Illinois coach Ray Eliot Nusspickle had played in Champagne for the legendary Robert Zuppke. The slight but tenacious 190lb lineman had hitchhiked to Illinois from his home in eastern Massachusetts in the fall of 1928. Eliot wore glasses he could barely see without. One assistant coach heavily discouraged him from pursuing football, but Eliot refused to listen and not only made the Illini freshman squad but also became the first bespectacled catcher in Big Ten baseball history.

Eliot was drawn to Illinois by the fame of the Galloping Ghost, Harold “Red” Grange, and the winning Illini tradition. Zuppke won four national championships over twenty-nine seasons from 1913-1941. After graduating Eliot spent five years as an assistant coach at Illinois College in Jacksonville before returning to Champagne in 1936 as an assistant. Succeeding Zuppke in 1941 Eliot began an eighteen-year head coaching tenure which included three Big Ten titles and two Rose Bowl victories. Subsequent work as assistant athletics director continued a career of service to the University of Illinois that covered almost Eliot's entire adult life.
Eliot coached many fine Illinois teams, but his greatest achievement was undoubtedly leading the surprising 1946 Illini to glory. After an opening win over Pitt the Illini dropped two of the next three games, to Notre Dame and Indiana, scoring only a combined thirteen points in those defeats. Despondent over the lackluster start Eliot tended his resignation, only to have athletics director and basketball coach Donald Mills refuse. Instead Mills appealed to the football players directly, informing them that their poor start had prompted their coach to resign and challenging them to improve their play. The strategy succeeded. Most of the Illini squad consisted of relatively unknown and unheralded commodities. But a few exceptional standouts answered the call and led the team in an unlikely run to Pasadena.

Claude “Buddy” Young was the University of Illinois’ first black football star. The 5’4” speedster made an immediate impact as a freshman in 1944, scoring sixty-four and thirty yard touchdowns on his first two touches vs. Illinois State. A 93-yard run two games later against the Great Lakes Naval Training School remains the longest run from scrimmage in Illini history. Young finished the season with thirteen touchdowns, breaking Red Grange’s 1924 Big Ten Conference record and landing the freshman on several all-America lists. More impressively, Young claimed NCAA track championships in the 100 and 220-yard dash, and tied world records in the 45 and 60-yard dash. After being drafted into the navy in January 1945 he starred the following fall for the Fleet City [California] Naval Base football team, almost single-handedly winning the west coast service team championship with three touchdowns, [including two kick returns of 93 and 88 yards] in front of 65,000 fans at the L.A. Coliseum. In 1946 Young returned to Champagne and led the Illini with 456 rushing yards [a little over four yards per carry] despite persistent injury problems.

Buddy Young in later life as an NFL star

Young shared the backfield with fellow halfback Art Dufelmeier, known fondly as the “Flying Dutchman”. The Beardstown, Ill. native enrolled in Champagne in 1942 and lettered in both football and basketball as a freshman. He enlisted with the U.S. Air Force in 1943 and entered one of the most dangerous service jobs as a B-42 top-gunner. In early 1944 Dufelmeier’s plane was shot down over France. He spent eleven months as a POW inside Germany, losing 35lb before liberation. Simply glad to be alive, Dufelmeier relished his return to football in 1946.

Despite Young and Dufelmeier rushing for over 900 combined yards, Illinois’ only all-conference and all-America selection was right guard Alex Agase. Another tough veteran, Agase had served as a marine in the Pacific. He participated in the amphibious invasions of both Okinawa and Iwo Jima, earning a Purple Heart. Alex’s bother Lou played at left tackle. Alex Agase had scored twice as a sophomore against Minnesota in 1942, making him only the second guard to notch a multiple touchdown performance in collegiate history. The following year he made all-America lists playing for Purdue while training as a Marine in Indiana. Later Agase would coach Northwestern and Purdue. His obvious football intelligence contributed inestimably to the top-notch run-blocking of Illinois' line.

The 10-0 UCLA Bruins entered the Rose Bowl as the bookmakers’ favorite, having outscored their opponents 313-72. All-conference quarterback Ernie Case called the plays for a prolific offense featuring pass-catching ends Burr Baldwin and future hall-of-famer Tom Fears, and bolstered by the breakout running of fullbacks Cal Rossi and Johnny Roesh and halfback Gene Rowland. Rossi weighed in as the Bruin’s heaviest back at just 170lb, but the team averaged a shade over 200lb per man. Several linemen in the 230lb range [as big as they came in the days of one-platoon football] made for an intimidating and forceful UCLA front which stampeded west coast rivals with apparent ease. Averaging just 190lb the Illini were noticeably smaller.

Regardless of any apparent size mis-match, history repeated itself as Illinois out-witted and out-played the bigger Bruins in the same convincing style in which Alabama had blow past the larger Trojans a year earlier. The Agase brothers and Illini captain center Mack Wenskunas opened gaping holes all day, often simply cutting the Bruins down at the knees for Young, Dufelmeier, and Co. to skip over and around. UCLA coach Bert Labrucherie used virtually every player on his three-deep trying to counter Illinois’ unstoppable blocking. But to no avail. The New York Times post-game report claimed that the affair “looked like a college line blocking against high school forwards.”

The Illini marched sixty yards on their first possession for a score. The rout began with quarterback Perry Moss tossing a 44-yard completion to halfback Julius Rykovich. After a kickoff return set UCLA up at midfield Case responded in kind with a 40-yard strike to his diminutive but elusive halfback Al Hoisch. When the Bruins scored to take an early 7-6 lead the 90,000-strong crowd sensed an epic in the making. Instead they witnessed Illinois shifting gears and leaving UCLA behind.

Illinois put together scoring drives of sixty and fifty-five yards on its first two possessions of the second quarter. A lineup of mostly second-string players added a fourth Illini score shortly before the break. Hoisch responded with a scintillating 103-kickoff return [still a Rose Bowl record] to keep the score respectable at the interval. But solo efforts, no matter how impressive, could not make up the difference. Young finished another long drive, this time fifty-one yards, with a short scoring run on the first play of the fourth quarter. Russell Steger then ran back a Case interception for a 65-yard defensive touchdown to make the score 38-14. Stanley Green, a fourth-string Illinois back, added insult to injury with a second six-point interception return in the game’s final minutes.

The Illini prevailed in an outright romp, 45-14. Eliot’s squad held the Bruins to just twelve first downs and forced six demoralizing turnovers. Most incredibly, the Illini held a team that had run roughshod over the west coast to a paltry sixty-two rushing yards. Only 176 passing yards on 29 attempts from Case afforded any offensive success. Despite their lesser physical stature Illinois racked up 320 team rushing yards, including 100-yard performances from both Young and Dufelmeier.

The 1946 season marked the first visit to Pasadena from the Big Ten champion since Ohio State fell 28-0 to Cal in 1921. The Big Ten would provide the visitor at the New Year’s Day classic for each of the next fifty-one seasons. Despite controversy leading up to the game due to the Pacific Coast Conference entering a long-term agreement with the Big Ten rather than invite unbeaten Army, Illinois’ performance provided a thrilling display of dominant football and set a new standard for conference mates. Partly because Midwestern and Pacific teams preceded the rest of the country by three decades in fielding talented black players like Buddy Young, the Big Ten and PCC/Pac-8 perennially produced impressive champions and followed the 1947 Rose Bowl with a long run of memorable [and typically more balanced] attention-grabbing matchups.

Despite the previous hostility of the University of Illinois faculty to the academic distractions a Rose Bowl berth meant for participating students, the headlines, income, and interest its triumph generated proved too seductive. The Big Ten, which claimed only two appearances and one victory in Pasadena prior to 1947, fell collectively in love with the Rose Bowl. Eliot’s surging team claimed an emphatic victory which consummated a strangle-hold on Rose Bowl invitations which the Big Ten still maintains.

[Sources: Buddy Young, Wiki; Art Dufelmeier obit, State Record-Journal; Alex Agase obituary, St. Petersberg Times; Doug Cartland, Ray Eliot; 1947 Rose Bowl, Rockford Register-Star]

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]

Penn State-Nebraska: A rivalry revived?

Under the flood lights on a crisp late-September Pennsylvania Saturday night in 1982, Penn State quarterback Todd Blackledge threw a first down pass to tight end Kirk "stone hands" Bowman in the back of the endzone with just four seconds remaining on the game clock. The last-gasp effort barely found its target. Bowman needed to scoop the ball off his laces with his body moving backwards to make the grab. Somehow he reeled the ball in and his third score of the day overturned a 24-21 deceit to Nebraska, giving the Nittany Lions a precious victory that propelled them toward an eventual first AP title in school history.

One minute and eighteen seconds of clock-time previously, Penn State had begun its final offensive possession of the game sixty-five yards from goal needing a touchdown to win. A personal foul penalty against Nebraska on the preceding kick-off helped matters, but with momentum apparently shifting and the famous 'Husker Blackshirt D on the other side of the line of scrimmage a score seemed unlikely. Nebraska's junior quarterback Turner Gill had capped a scoring drive that ate precious clock in the fourth quarter's waning minutes with a one-yard TD plunge.

That score gave Big Red its first lead of a game Penn State had controlled since a fourteen-yard Blackledge pass to Bowman completed an 84-yard scoring drive after only four minutes. 1982 was the first year of his tenure that Joe Paterno truly emphasized the passing attack. Blackledge was simply too good to under-utilize. He had thrown for four touchdowns in each of Penn State's first three games and threw for three more and 295 yards on 23-of-39 attempts vs. Nebraska. His 2,218 yards with 22 touchdowns as a senior lifted him to second in school career passing totals. Such productivity made for an impossing backfield. Alongside Blackledge running back Curt Warner [who had gashed Nebraska for an incredible 238 yards the previous year] racked up a thousand-yard season en route to graduating with a career total of 3,398, which remains the school record. When Warner broke loose for a 31-yard dash to the 'Husker four-yard line in the second quarter before finishing the drive with a two-yard TD run moments later, Gill and Co. faced a major uphill battle.

The situation was far from ideal for Tom Osborne's second-ranked Cornhuskers. With a loaded backfield featuring future Heisman Trophy winner Mike Rozier and a returning thousand-yard rusher in Roger Craig, Gill preferred to run the option rather than pass down field. When necessary Gill certainly could pass effectively. He graduated a year later standing second on Nebraska's all-time passing list. But with a rushing attack that had accounted for 677 of Big Red's NCAA-record 883 yards total offense during a 68-0 drubbing of New Mexico State the previous week, why pass? On the year Nebraska's three leading rushers alone would combine for 2,844 yards. The following season the 1983 Cornhusker backfield set what is still the school's single-season rushing record with a combined 4,820 yards. Even when compared to the unstoppable ground attacks of the early-1970s and late-1990s, the Nebraska running game of the mid-1980s constitutes a definite high watermark.

Despite their unquestionable pedigree, the Big Red backfield learned on September 25th 1982 that running roughshod over New Mexico State and lining up opposite "Linebacker U" were different matters. Joe Patterno's defense limited Nebraska to a relatively innocuous 233 team rushing yards, and actually caused Craig to leave the game at half time with a strained thigh. Never-the-less, Gill performed as required and dragged his team back into contention with the balanced approach required. The 'Husker signal-caller went 16-for-34 through the air for 239 yards, earning him media plaudits as Big Eight player of the week. With only 38 ticks remaining before halftime Gill threw a 30-yard touchdown strike to I-back Irving Frazier. Then six minutes after Blackledge restored Penn State's 14-point cushion on a pass to flanker Kenny Jackson early in the third quarter, Gill struck again with a scoring strike to Rozier. Nebraska simply refused to go away and it was hardly a surprise when Osborne's team overcame the hostile road environment to seize its late lead inside the final two minutes.

Gill's touchdown dive set up a final, decisive Penn State possession that featured both drama and controversy. Blackledge marshaled his team with apparent ease to the Nebraska thirty-four before the Blackshirts recovered to collapse three consecutive plays at or behind the line of scrimmage. With only 17 seconds remaining, facing a fourth-and-eleven situation and trailing 21-24, Paterno considered for the first time in the game [as he later admitted] going for a tie. But with his place-kicker, Massimo Manca, having already missed three attempts on the day, the Penn State coach decided to try fortune's favor with an ounce of bravery instead. The gamble paid off when Blackledge shot an absolute bullet to Jackson just a step beyond the first-down marker at the NU twenty-three. Blackledge then scrambled for six more before Penn State gained nothing on second down.

It was at that moment that the game attained college football infamy. With all of the team's timeouts expended, Blackledge went deep along left sideline to his other tight end Mike McCloskey. The Nittany Lion receiver was heading out of bounds as the ball reached him and the play ended with him well into the Nebraska bench area. Osborne and Co. could not believe their eyes when the sideline umpire signalled a catch, giving Penn State a first-and-goal from the two with those four precious seconds remaining. Nebraska coaches and players were still crying bloody-murder when Bowman fell backwards out of the endzone clutching his third TD ball of the day, giving number eight Penn State a banner victory as the clock expired.


The call, which was unquestionably wrong, had far-reaching repercussions for both teams. After having gone undefeated in 1968, 1969, and 1973 without winning a national championship, Joe paterno finally gained the AP voters' respect in 1982 despite picking up a loss. The '82 Nittany Lions finished the season 11-1 with a 21-42 road loss to Paul Bryant's Crimson Tide. Despite that loss, several key wins earned the necessary grace for Penn State to be voted number one over 11-0-1 SMU following the bowls. Penn State's opponents combined for a national best record of .687. On New Year's Day, while Nebraska only managed a narrow 21-20 Orange Bowl win over 8-2-1 LSU and SMU failed to impress en route to a 7-3 victory over 9-2 Pitt in Dallas, the Nittany Lions knocked off Herschel Walker and the number one Georgia Bulldogs in New Orleans. Wins over Notre Dame and Nebraska combined with Penn State's impressive Sugar Bowl victory to crown a national championship resume. Without a blown call in the dying seconds on September 25th, the 1982 Nittany Lions would have been just another very good 10-2 Paterno team.

Conversly, that same call caused Tom Osborne to extend his wait for a national championship by another year. The drought eventually lasted to 1994. Big Red finished the 1982 season 11-1 and placed third in the final AP poll. As a senior the following year Turner Gill led his team to a perfect 11-0 regular season and a third consecutive Orange Bowl berth before an endzone pass from the two-yard line once again proved decisive. By the final minute of the game Nebraska had clawed back from 17-0 and 31-17 defecits to reach 31-24 with possession of the football inside the Miami Hurricane thirty. In an uncanny echo of Blackledge's final drive in State College fifteen months previously, three consecutive 'Husker plays garnered little success. Facing fourth-and-eight Osborne called an option play which Gill kept himself, bursting twenty-four yards for the endzone. Down 30-31 number one Nebraska would likely have been voted national champion with an extra point and the tie. But Big Red didn't play for ties. Letting the chips ride for it all, Gill rolled right on a two-point attempt and passed to an open receiver at the front of the endzone. For 'Huskers time slowed to a creep as they watched Miami safety Ken Calhoun close the gap, stretch his body, and put fingertip to ball for a championship-winning deflection. Somehow Nebraska's prolific offenses of the early 1980s never won a national title.

Penn State and Nebraska have played one another on thirteen occasions. Once back in 1920, five times between 1949 and 1958, for a two-game series in 2002 and 2003, and for five straight seasons from 1979 to 1983. The two schools have met six times in State College, six times in Lincoln, and once in the Kickoff Classic at Meadowlands Stadium -- a game in which the 1983 'Huskers meted out bloody vengeance on the graduation-ravaged Nittany Lions for the disappointment inflicted the preceding season. Of these thirteen meetings the five games played during the early-1980s naturally define the identity of the series. Two powerhouse programs known for their old school style and understated dignity clashed with full force at the height of their respective powers. Two massive fan bases in football-obsessed states watched with bated breath as their schools placed national championship aspirations on the line to test their mettle against the best. Nebraska won the first two bouts, 42-17 and 21-7, before Penn State answered in kind 30-24 in Lincoln and so famously in that 27-24 triumph at Beaver Stadium. Sadly, Nebraska's 44-6 romp the following year was the last word on the matter for two decades.

Nebraska finished the 1979 season ranked 9th in the AP poll, Penn State 20th. The following year they polled 7th and 8th respectively. Penn State finished the 1981 season 3rd with Nebraska polling 11th. A year later the Nittany Lions were crowned national champion with Nebraska on their heels in 3rd. In 1983 Big Red finished only behind Miami thanks to their failed two-point attempt, while Penn State followed their disastrous start in New Jersey with an 8-4-1 season to finish unranked for the first time since 1976. Penn State's narrow victory in 1982 helped earn Joe Paterno a national championship. Had the Nittany Lions lost, Nebraska would almost certainly have claimed that laurel. The next year Big Red all but did just that. Simply put, Penn State and Nebraska's games between 1979 and 1983 mattered. And they were nothing if not memorable. The two programs which are perhaps more than any others virtual mirror images of one another provided matchups that built expectations without failing to deliver. It is only a shame they did not continue to play after the '83 Huskers' lopsided coming-out party at the Meadowlands.

Presently Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is considering his newly-expanded league's options for dividing its twelve members into two divisions for football. There are many issues to consider that needn't be rehearsed here. It only need be pointed out that Nebraska has lacked a true annual rivalry game against a conference foe of equal stature since the Texan invasion/hostile takeover of the old Big Eight in 1995. Penn State has perhaps never had a true annual rival. The Big Ten's grand plan to manufacture one via the uninspiring Land-grant Trophy series with Michigan State has been quite the flop. Geography is hardly good grounds for objection in a league with a footprint that now stretches from Philadelphia to a little more than one hundred miles from the Rockies. And more importantly, the Big Ten added Nebraska to increase the relevance and national exposure of its football teams.

Imagine this scenario for the last two weeks of conference play:

Michigan plays Ohio State for one division title. A few hours later Nebraska faces Penn State to decide the other. The following week the winners face off with national championship implications likely at stake.

What could possibly be more appealing and nationally relevant than that?


(Sources: Huskers.com; Michael Weinreib, Daily Collegian; Heisman.com; collegepollarchive.com; USA Today CFB encyclopedia; ESPN Big Ten Encyclopedia; cfbdatawarehouse.com)

Forward to the Past: the SWC reborn?

A busy off-season of college football rumor-mongering and high-stakes brinkmanship appears to have ended a long way short of the "revolutionary" realignment that seemed all but a done deal until the 11th hour of the twelve-day Big XII missile crisis. A sport which often infuriates even its most loyal partisans by the almost imperceptible slowness with which it reforms itself off the field appeared to be on the very verge of a near instantaneous leap into the far reaches of an utterly unkown future. The men at the very center of the game made public comments based on the assumption that this shift would certainly take place. Bob Stoops referred to the proposed Pac-16 as "very exciting" and indulged in on-the-record comments about Oklahoma's prospective new conference rivalries. Deloss Dodd's, the ever-present University of Texas Athletics Director, gathered his school's coaches to inform them that the Big XII was dead and that the Longhorns would be heading west.

Then... nothing. Or almost nothing. The Mountain West switched Utah for Boise. The two most old-school conferences finally got a championship game by adding Nebraska to the Big Ten [12] and Colorado and Utah to the Pac. The Big XII [10] decided that championship games are for conferences that like making life harder for their champions and engaging in actual competition. Notre Dame breathed a sigh of relief. And that was all.

The question we are left with is whether the crazy off-season of 2010 ["expansion-palooza" as some are calling the affair] was a near total shakeup masterminded by a single outsider [former Tennis executive now Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott] or the next incremental step in a gradual, inexorable evolution toward the long expected "age of the super-conference." Due to the lightening pace at which rumor became event and event became non-event there is, I think, a general tendency to view this entire affair as an aberration. Many commentators are giving Larry Scott massive credit for "shaking up" the stolid, crusty Pac-10 and coming nearer than any thought possible to advancing college football more than one step forward in a single move.

Viewed in light of the conversations that surrounded the last major wave of realignment, however, this summer's events seem less unprecedented and revolutionary. Back in 1988 then SEC commissioner Roy Kramer spotted a potentially lucrative loophole in an NCAA by-law that implicitly did not apply to football. The rule states that conferences made up of twelve or more members may decide regular-season champions through championship games. Kramer accurately predicted that a one game playoff for a two-division, twelve-member SEC could generate massive revenue as well as the national prestige with pollsters that the league had historically lacked. The search was on for the best fitting two schools to incorporate.

Meanwhile, the once-mighty Southwest Conference was undergoing an existential crisis. No SWC school could boast a national championship since the 1970 Longhorns. During the ensuing two decades every member institution barring Rice, Baylor, and Arkansas had met with major NCAA sanctions on account of cheating scandals. A negative cycle of pay-for-play slush fund arms races and rival schools turning one another in to the authorities culminated with SMU receiving a one-year total suspension of its football program after the 1986 season. There was some symmetrical justice in this move as it had been ultra-rich oilman and SMU booster William Clements who first set the league on its slippery slope to financial depravity. By 1986 Clements occupied the Texas governor's mansion. The unrepentant Mustang-backer sensationalized a state whose tolerance for football motivated madness is remarkably high by instructing SMU to continue its slush fund payments to players even after existence of the practice had come to public light.

Cash incentives for players and recruits had been an open secret in the SWC for years. Gary Shaw claimed in his sensational 1972 expose on the Darrell Royal regime, Meat On The Hoof, that on his recruiting visit to SMU coaches had unabashedly asked him what kind of car he wanted to drive and promised that one would await him upon his enrollment in Dallas. Shaw claimed he had partly chosen Texas precisely because UT made no such offers. Coaches on Austin only told him, "If you come here you will have a chance to start." But after Royal retired in 1976 the 'Horns began to loose their overwhelming competitive advantage and UT also slid into the new culture of cheating. Between 1981 and 1984 SMU compiled a 41-5-1 record and earned three SWC championships with teams made up of blue-chip recruits who had gone to Dallas for money, stayed for money, and played for money. Conference rivals who cried foul were no more than pots screaming "black" at the kettle. By the time Roy Kramer began tentatively searching for new SEC members in 1989 the SWC had become a national laughing stock and byword for disgrace.

When Darrell Royal and Frank Broyles retired in 1976 they unknowingly took the Southwest Conference's former glory with them.

Frank Broyles, Royal's old sparring partner then Arkansas AD, chaffed under the guilt-by-association his beloved Razorbacks suffered. Broyles was also an astute business manager. He had already done more than anyone to move Arkansas toward the modern age of athletics finance, increasing alumni donations and exploring all manner of new revenue streams. As part of that process Broyles petitioned the SWC for permission to negotiate an independent distribution contract for University of Arkansas radio broadcasts. That request was denied.

Other league members did not want to allow the Razorbacks, who alone enjoyed the advantage of not sharing their state with any rival school, any revenue stream or media market it did not have to share. That short-sighted decision alienated power-brokers in Fayetteville and only heightened the mistrust that was rampant within the SWC ranks.

A former University of Texas women's athletic director Donna Lo-piano summed the situation up best, telling Sally Jenkins:

"[The SWC] is a bunch of institutions that care more about themselves than each other. It's a bad business conference."

Arkansas people began to cast hungry eyes over the SEC's notoriously passionate fan bases and the cache new visiting conference mates would bring. As one Arkansas athletics department official astutely foresaw:

"You don't have to worry about selling out the stadium—you have to worry about expanding it."

SWC average attendances fell consistently through the 1980s while those across the SEC only rose. And home gates were only the tip of the iceberg. By 1990 the complete overhaul of college football's relationship to television broadcasting was in full swing. The sixty-three member College Football Alliance had recently signed a $300 million five-year deal with ABC effective to begin in 1991. The promised riches that led to the landmark Oklahoma Board of Regents vs. NCAA Supreme Court case in 1984 were finally beginning to materialize. If University of Arkansas officials felt alienated by the refusal of the SWC brethren to liberate their radio broadcasting rights, they experienced even greater emotions when considering the possible resources conference TV deals might command in the brave new world of post-NCAA monopoly contract negotiations. The 1990s promised to be an very uncertain decade for collegiate football, and athletics directors worked tirelessly to figure out the best options for their institutions.

Many factors remained uncertain, but several issues could not have been clearer. Firstly, the money collegiate football could command in its immediate future promised to dwarf past revenue. Secondly, through conference-based contracts individual schools could hope to gain a larger slice of the pie than they had under the old NCAA contracts. Consequently, the factors that had created the long-established conference alignments that had defined the game during the twentieth century would necessarily be superseded by new considerations. If Arkansas bolted, the SWC would not only be a discredited, scandal-ridden hive of mutual distrust and institutionalized backbiting, it would also be a single-state league with little appeal to national broadcasters.

While the SEC looked to expand, add a championship game, and promised to command big bucks on the open market, the SWC became a decreasingly appealing asset. Officials at Texas and Texas A&M did everything they could increase their market share in the ailing conference. In 1992, the first year Arkansas played in the SEC, the SWC introduced new revenue sharing arrangements. The league scrapped its ancient 50-50 division of gate revenues between home and away teams. Member institutions playing in televised non-conference games were to retain 80% of the revenue generate rather than the previous 50%. And schools participating in post-season play were to keep the first $500,000 before sharing the remainder with the league as opposed to the previous $300,000. As the SWC cash-cow grew sicker the Longhorns and Aggies milked it harder and kept a greater share. In a statement that rings with starling familiarity to football fans in 2010 DeLoss Dodds, whose tenure as AD in Austin began back in 1981, brazenly told a reporter:

"The world is going to dictate where Texas goes. The marketplace will dictate it."

The very portrait of dysfunction.

The openness with which UT officials implicitly acknowledged that the school was considering following Arkansas out of the SWC created panic in the state legislature. David Silbey, a State Representative and Baylor alum, threatened that if the Longhorns and Aggies left the SWC without his Bears:

"The next time they want to talk about appropriations for new physics professors, they'll have to come through me."

Such threats will surface every time conferences realign. Schools that can command the highest market share will go looking for more, and those that cannot will threaten, rant, claw, beg, and sell their dignity cheap to avoid the ultimate uncertainty of temporary homelessness.

Market driven conference realignment in the early 1990s also created headaches for independents. As future television revenues seemed predestined to follow the most attractive and prestigious conference lineups, the east coast's host of historic independents looked for safe harbors in which to anchor their football programs. The Big East Conference, formed primarily for basketball in 1979, began conference play in football in 1991 to provide a more stable future for nervous independents such as Miami, Boston College, Syracuse, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Rutgers. When Penn State began Big Ten play in 1993 Notre Dame stood alone as the last great independent. Within three short seasons a landscape that had once been filled with independents who had every hope of playing in major bowls and winning national titles [as the Hurricanes, Nittany Lions, and Fighting Irish often did] was all but devoid of such schools.

Only Notre Dame's own lucrative mystique allowed the Great White Whale of conference realignment to hold out. Even then, expectations of the Irish's impending move to the Big Ten ran wild. The possibility of that move created a nervous apprehension in Big East country then as it still does today. One Big East AD commented to a reporter:

"Big Ten officials have declared a moratorium [of four years] on expansion, but who knows if they'll stick to it, once they see the writing on the wall?"

Then as today the Big Ten had its "timetable" and appeared to hold more cards than other conferences. But the bottom line was and always will be the market. Money might make the Big Ten move at any moment in any one of a number of directions. After that everyone else would have to move as well. Of course, Notre Dame didn't want to move. NBC's relationship with ND football began in February of 1990 and has funded Irish resilience at premium rates of return ever since. That precious money, the lifeline keeping Rockne's legacy of lone defiance against the simultaneously loved and hated Big Ten alive, allowed ND athletics director Dick Rosenthal to state emphatically:

"We've been an independent for 148 years. We are independent by desire."

Twenty years on that same money allowed current Notre Dame AD Jim Swarbrick to state that his school's "strong preference" remains independence [a state of being sought over every alternative save Armageddon].

The potential wild card in the whole process both in the early 90s, as today, was post-season revenue. Power players want to figure out the way to maximize bowl revenue while minimizing the number of mouths that revenue feeds and the list of schools that enjoy the opportunity of winning a national championship. Within two seasons of Arkansas' departure from the crumbling SWC the members of the College Football Association had negotiated a post-season structure known as the Bowl Coalition, which pitted the two highest ranked member teams in a championship bowl. This embryonic system grew into the current BCS with the inclusion of the Rose Bowl conferences in 1998. Bowls wanted the most lucrative matchups. Conferences wanted guaranteed bowl berths to add to their new TV contracts. No one except the fans wanted the unpredictable chaos of a playoff, which might generate more money but would also expose bigger fish to post-season competition and claims to revenue shares from upstart minnows.

Orange Bowl president Arthur Hertz stated to Sports Illustrated:

"I'm told by our legal people that if the Big Eight is not constituted the same as it was when we signed the contract [in 1988, with NBC, for six years], then we have the right to reevaluate."

In other words, conference realignment offered the opportunity for renegotiated post-season contracts that could mirror the game changing value of new regular season conference contracts. In such a market the parochial appeal of smaller conferences like the Big Eight and SWC held limited appeal. Frank Broyles saw the writing on the wall and even before Arkansas had officially accepted an invitation from the SEC publicly predicted:

"The '90s are predicted to be moving in the direction of three super-conferences, each with a major network."

Dodds sensed the future direction of college football with equal clarity. Bigger conferences housing multiple heavyweights and boasting blockbusting championship games were the wave of the future. The old SWC was not.

Viewed in light of the landscape as it stood in 1990, the summer of 2010 seems less revolutionary and more a case of 'same song, different verse.' In that same light the final outcome of the Big XII missile crisis seems even more surprising. It also would appear to be utterly unsustainable. The same factors which made the old SWC unstable and undesirable after the departure of Arkansas makes the current Big XII [10] a necessarily impermanent solution. The show may have been temporarily saved at the eleventh hour by money Dan Beebe raised from sources presently known only unto God and a select few other similarly tight-lipped individuals, but in the grand scheme simple market economics must dictate that the patch job will not last. Who in their right mind beyond the Texas-Southwest region will tune in on a weekly basis come fall Saturdays to witness the ritual ass whippings Texas and OU will most assuredly dole out to the grateful likes of Kansas, Iowa State, and Baylor?

Tom Osborne in 2010. Not so keen on Texas.

In 1990 the University of Arkansas left the old SWC because the league had decayed to a shell of its former self. A once-proud conference [home to the state of Texas' first national championship team and first Heisman winner -- neither of which hailed from Austin] had become an irrelevant, parochial group of infighting, backbiting brethren whose incessant scandals reflected poorly on the Hogs and had even begun to cost their athletics programs precious revenue rather than provide it. Association with the dysfunctional Southwest Conference family had, quite simply, become a liability where once it had been an asset.

In June of 2010 the University of Nebraska fled the company of its century-long conference mates for the safe refuge of Big Ten Country. For fifteen years Huskers have indignantly felt the offensive implications of the expanded Big XII's revenue sharing arrangement [which reflects more nearly the post-1992 SWC than the old Big Eight], and the location of the conference headquarters in Dallas. The extra second which miraculously appeared on the clock at the end of the 2010 conference championship game [much to Tom Osborne's chagrin] was, perhaps, the final straw. In pastures new Big Red can be one of twelve equally heard voices at the table rather than one ten utterly irrelevant ones.

Texas politicians and the complete dependence of OU football on its annual date at the state fair in Dallas may be able to keep the rump of the Big XII together for a while, but neither can force the football pedigree rich flagship institutions of other states to suffer bad company indefinitely. Texas politics could not keep Arkansas in the fold back in 1990 when common sense and market economics made the SEC an attractive prospect. Nor could they keep Big Red in the fold when the stable, equitable, lucrative, and cordial Big Ten came calling twenty years later. They, Dan Beebe, nor any other force save God himself will not prevent the Big XII [10] from crashing in a blaze of unmarketable ignominy sooner or later.

Questions have been raised as to the new name for the now numerically challenged Big XII. Presuming the obvious title of "Longhorn Athletic Conference" will not be adopted for fear of depriving Adam his fig leaf, there really is only one sensible choice:

The Southwest Conference.

Abandonned rivalries: Big Red and the Six Dwarves

I haven't posted in several weeks because I've been rather busy, but also because my internet time has been entirely consumed by my morbid fascination with the current conference realignment process. At the time of writing Nebraska is officially in the Big Ten and Colorado officially in the Pac Numeral. Texas A&M is busily flirting with the SEC and imagining a future as a football school of national import in its own right. Texas is apparently considering every single option to figure which one means the most money with the least accountability and easiest schedule.

Anything could happen. But this blog is not about the present or future of college football. All we know about the relation of the current situation to the game's past at this moment is that Nebraska's century-long relationship with the Six Dwarves, the old Big Eight's perennial whipping boys, is over.

I wrote recently about the travesty of downgrading the OU-Nebraska rivalry when the Big XII was formed back in 1995. A few months ago that decision [taken largely with a total lack of courage and foresight by now-discredited people at OU such as then head coach Gary Gibbs] was just a big shame. Now it looks like it might prove an error so costly that it sowed the seeds of the Big XII's demise even at the very moment of its inception. For decades OU and Nebraska played every Thanksgiving Friday in the national spotlight before an audience of millions of spell-bound football fans who couldn't believe the hard-hitting, ground eating rushing attacks these Great Plains powers perennially produced. The winner of that game almost always won the conference. Fairly often they would win a national title, too. At very least they would likely earn a trip to Miami at New Year. The OU-Nebraska game mattered. A lot.

It mattered so much that without it people in Lincoln began to feel alienated in and by their own conference. As Matt Hinton has recently been reminding people, the Big Eight absorbed half the Southwest Conference -- not viceversa. Texas and Co. were the refugees from a discredited, crumbling wreck of a league. The Big Eight was a nationally relevant conference with a strong brand that at the time rested on the edifice of Big Red's unstoppable Triple-Option. In the fifteen years since that time the OU-Nebraska game, stripped of its prime time billing on Thanksgiving weekend, has become secondary in national import to the Red River Shootout. OU-Texas is now the League's annual feature presentation. Nebraska has no great rival and as a consequence has suffered a loss of relevance. The contrived NU-Colorado rivalry has, to say the least, lacked even a fraction of the mystique that saturated the great Oklahoma-Nebraska games of yore.

The silver lining of Nebraska's move to the Big Ten will hopefully be the restoration of the OU series to an annual event, preferably on Thanksgiving. OU played Texas every year out of conference for more than a century before the formation of the Big XII. It would be no different now to add NU to the non-conference slate. This move would be a big gain for college football in general and Nebraskans in particular.

Far less likely to survive the shake-up in any form are Big Red's six lesser 'rivalries' with the soup and potatoes of their old Big Eight menu, the Six Dwarfs.

NU first met Kansas and Missouri on the gridiron in 1892, only the third year of Big Red football. Iowa State joined the slate in 1896. Colorado followed in 1898. Nebraska first joined a conference when the Missouri Valley was formed in 1907. For the first two-decades of its existence the conference grew steadily into a large and unwieldy group that never played a round-robin slate in football. Kansas State first played NU in 1911 and joined the MVC two years later. Oklahoma A&M joined the league in 1925 but never played Nebraska in the three seasons before the league split in 1928. The bigger state schools split from their smaller bedfellows to form a more cohesive football conference in 1928. The new Big Six then became the Big Seven with the addition of Colorado in 1947, then the Big Eight with Oklahoma State in 1958.

Since their first meetings Nebraska has only not played Kansas in 1904 and 1905. Iowa State only fails to appear on the schedule in the years 1902-04, 1920 and 1925. Kansas State is missing in only 1917-19 and 1920-21. Mizzou disappears from 1903 to 1910 and again from 1913-17 and 1920-22 but appears every year thereafter. The Colorado series skipped 1906 and 1908-11 before a long break between 1920 and 1948. Oklahoma State never played Nebraska at all until 1960, but the two then met every year until 1995 and every second year since.

Those six series, especially against KU, constitute some of the longest standing rivalries in college football. They are also some of the most lopsided. Versus Kansas Big Red is a whopping 90-23-3. Mizzou has fared little better at 64-36-3. Kansas State's 77-15-2 constitutes the second-worst effort percentage-wise, while Iowa State owns the longest winless streaks. En route to the ugly end of an 85-17-2 head-to-head record the Cyclones have failed to beat Nebraska for over a decade in five separate stretches and beat them only once between 1978 and 2001. Against Colorado Big Red is 48-18-2, and against Oklahoma State an overwhelming 36-5-1.

For a century Nebraska football literally ran roughshod over these opponents, riding them to forty-six bowl invitations, forty-seven conference championships, and five national titles. When Nebraska played other big boys out of conference the Huskers rarely disappointed and won more often than not. Nebraska also owns a very respectable 38-44-3 record against Oklahoma -- the Big Eight's other juggernaut. There is no doubt that Nebraska football is no mirage created by inflated records racked up against weaklings and only weaklings. Whether under Dana X. Bible, in Bob Devaney's Power-I, or Tom Osborne's Triple Option, Nebraska has never feared clashing heads with fellow heavy weights. But as is the case with all great collegiate programs, the foundation upon which those great championship bouts versus fellow giants rests is a consistently solid conference record against a host of obliging lesser-lights.

Without the Six Dwarfs the Big Eight's big two would unquestionably have amounted to a less perennial brand of large. Those rivalries were rarely interesting, almost never commanded a national TV audience, and will be mourned by no one outside of Big Eight country. But make no mistake; while moving to the Big Ten will likely be a good decision for Nebraska, the step will forever change the face of Big Red football.

So long, friends. And thanks for all the wins.