Abandoned rivalries: OU-Nebraska

I have posted several times recently about the OU-Nebraska rivalry. In my last post I mentioned as an aside my hope that the one redeeming feature of the newly gutted sell-out Big XII might be that it opened the way to restore OU-Nebraska to an annual fixture as a non-conference game. This apparently will not happen anytime soon. OU athletics director Joe Castiglione recently told Daily Oklahoman columnist Berry Tramel:

"Given our current schedule, I don't see a place for them for 10-12 years."

When asked the same question a few days later Bob Stoops was even more emphatic, and sarcastic:

"Yes, we'll stick them in between Cincinnati and Florida State! If we had a non-conference schedule like a lot of other teams, it would be awesome. But we don't. Something's got to change. If they're willing to do it, we'll have to make some serious adjustments in our schedule."

In other words, playing Nebraska makes it too hard to go 12-0. Roadblocks to an unbeaten year aren't popular anywhere, but least of all in Big XII country. Both Stoops and Mack Brown are on public record several times as viewing the conference championship game as an irritating potential hazard. You can believe that after the extra second league officials had to gift Texas in 2009 to get the 'Horns to Pasadena, Brown and Co. will be happy to see the back of a conference title bout in their reduced ten team league. Why make life harder for yourself, right?
More than ever in the BCS era a zero in the losses column is the golden figure that means a shot at the mythical national title. And OU football has always been about the national championships. Its record of seven AP championships since 1950 puts the Sooners among the elite of the elite. This championship history is what Sooners call "a tradition of excellence." Oklahoma's football history is indeed nothing if not excellent. AP championships in 1950, 1955, 1956, 1974, 1975, 1985, and 2000 under three different coaches indicate a consistent institutional ability to win and a commitment to competitive prowess.

Decade after decade, despite changes in personnel, Oklahoma has built its football dynasty on dominance of its conference mates and triumph in a series of annual bouts with fellow heavy weights. Like most of college football's great powers, most of Oklahoma's annual schedules have always been filled by unimpressive conference rivals. Ohio State and Michigan have their Northwesterns and Indianas. USC has its Oregon States and Stanfords. Alabama has its Kentuckys and Mississippi States.

Besides Nebraska and Texas the schools that make up most of Oklahoma's past records amount to little. In-state rival Oklahoma State boasts only one outright conference championship since WWII, that coming in the Missouri Valley in 1948. The Pokes have only one Big Eight crown ever, shared with OU [of course] in 1978. Kansas only owns two shared conference titles since 1948; Iowa State has none. Mizzou earned its lone outright title in 1960 and shared one in 1969. Kansas State has only one, that of course won through a championship game upset of OU in 2003. Colorado has threatened insurrection with an ounce more consistency, claiming unshared conference crowns in 1961, 1989, 1990, and 2001, with shared titles in 1978 and 1991. Obviously only Nebraska's twenty-three conference titles and five AP championships, and Texas' twenty-one and three respectively, provide much in the way of a perennial elite presence in Oklahoma's past records.

Every single Oklahoma national championship team has beaten both Nebraska and Texas in the same season. More often than not those two wins have provided the most impressive achievements on OU's resume. Of the Sooners' seven national championship winning years only twice were neither the 'Horns or 'Huskers ranked in the AP top twenty. During those years, 1955 and 1956, Bud Wilkinson's legitimacy came from the long winning streak OU was amassing [stretching to forty-seven games between 1953 and 1957]. Victories over 12th ranked Pitt and 14th ranked Colorado in 1955 and 19th ranked Colorado in 1956 also helped. In Oklahoma's five other national championship campaigns both the Longhorns and Nebraska were ranked in the AP top twenty at the time they played OU and after the bowls. Six times at least one ranked in the top ten and once, in 1975, both spent the entire season in the top ten. Three times Nebraska and Texas have provided the only wins over ranked teams on OU's regular season national championship resume.

When the Big Eight merged with the SWC in 1995 to form the Big XII people in Norman made a grave mistake in allowing the OU-Nebraska rivalry to be downgraded to a biannual event. A conscious decision was made to prefer the annual OU-Texas game in Dallas. Naturally the Texas rivalry will always be OU's showpiece event. The Sooners recruit heavily in Texas, have many Texas-based and Texan alumni, and rely heavily on Texas media markets for exposure and revenue. But to football fans of a certain age the OU-Nebraska game on Thanksgiving Day owns a national appeal and irresistible mystique. The University of Nebraska wanted to continue that tradition in 1995. Oklahoma's administration refused. Fifteen years later The University of Nebraska has tired of OU's other rival and fled Texas' domineering presence for the safe haven of the Big Ten. Once again, athletics administrators in Norman are closing the door on any hope of an annual OU-Nebraska fixture. The reason: national championships.

Going undefeated is simply more important than either maintaining traditional rivalries or facing unnecessary challenges simply for the sake of hoping to overcome them. To those college football fans who feel strongly that a healthy regard for the game's history is one of the aspects that sets our version of the game apart from the professional brand, this decision begs an important question:

What does it really mean for the University of Oklahoma to claim a national championship without beating Big Red?

Lords of the Plains no more

Great defensive players: Miami's D-line, 1987-89

When Jimmy Johnson took over the newly invigorated football program at the University of Miami in 1984 the task of replicating Howard Schnellenberger’s success seemed almost insurmountable. The departing head coach had, in five seasons, taken a program from the verge of euthanasia to a national championship. Still, even after half a decade of solid performances the nouveau riche power of the collegiate landscape still seemed more likely to prove an aberration than true aristocracy. Johnson also seemed a questionable choice for heir to the rising empire. His little-more-than-modest record at Oklahoma State would undoubtedly have been worse were it not for the presence of Heisman winner Barry Sanders in his most recent offensive backfields. But Johnson proved naysayers as wrong as anyone could possibly be. He did so by doing exactly what he done in Stillwater — giving the ball to his best playmakers. Of course, in Coral Gables there were plenty of playmakers from which to choose.

Commenting on the brash, presumptuous and ultra-confident demeanor of Miami football during the ‘80s and ‘90s would have been redundant even before ESPN’s recent 30-for-30 film on the ‘Canes. It would be utterly superfluous now. Every college fan knows [even those that weren’t around at the time] that those perennial championship contending Hurricanes played their own brand of football. That approach allowed Johnson to coach his teams to a 51-9 record with two national championships. Besides the oft-commented-upon “swagger” and the relentlessly dominant winning, those Miami teams are typically remembered as fertile breeding grounds for future pro talent, explosive pass-oriented offenses, and a barely-restrained penchant for thuggish behavior.

Those traits certainly did characterize Johnson’s Hurricanes, but Miami had plenty else going on as well. The aerial feats performed by quarterbacks Bernie Kosar, Vinny Testaverde and Steve Walsh [two of whom were future Pro Bowl selections] were matched by the uncontainable receiving skills of athletes like Michael Irvin, Brett Perriman and Lamar Thomas. Irvin’s particular brand of unapologetic self-promotion defined his professional persona throughout his remarkable NFL career. By proxy it came to also define his alma mater’s entire football program. But not every memorable and productive Hurricane from those heady years fits the stereotype of the pugnaciously self-assured NFL star-in-waiting.

Even by comparison to the rest of Miami’s staggering two-decade run, Johnson’s teams from 1987-89 attained an observable high watermark. The ‘Canes went 34-2 over three seasons and missed out on an unprecedented national championship “three-peat” only by virtue of a controversial one-point loss at eventual 1988 AP champion Notre Dame. During that stretch the high-flying, fast-paced, offensive-minded Hurricanes scored less than twenty points only twice and averaged well over thirty. Those teams produced three consecutive NFL quarterbacks, six running backs and five receivers, but all four of Johnson's consensus all-America selections played defense. Three of them – Daniel Stubbs, Bill Hawkins and Greg Mark – were linemen.

Jimmy Johnson’s emphasis on the defensive front is an overlooked aspect of his legacy at Miami, overshadowed as it was by more memorable backfield speed, offensive output and off-field antics. Johnson played defensive line at Arkansas under the great Frank Broyles, including during an 11-0 national championship campaign in 1964.While Johnson and his staff clearly possessed an eye for innate talent and enjoyed a large pool of local recruits, Miami also coached players very well — in Johnson’s case, particularly defensive linemen.

Daniel Stubbs left Miami in 1987 as the school’s all-time leader in both a career and single season sack totals at 39.5 and 17 respectively. Both records remain unsurpassed. To no one’s surprised the 6’4” 250 lb pass-rush machine went on to a successful ten year NFL career that included Super Bowl rings with the 49ers in his rookie and sophomore years. Hawkins and Mark, on the other hand, did not enjoy such fortune as players beyond college. In four injury-hampered seasons with the Los Angeles Rams Hawkins started fewer than twenty games. A disappointing pro career contrasts markedly with the heights Hawkins attained in college, such as his 1988 18 tackle-for-loss and 7.5 sack marks in 1988. The following year Greg Mark became the unit's leader, registering an amazing 15.5 sacks en route to a national championship. Like Hawkins, Mark also failed to make an impact at the next level. His two year NFL career with the New York Giants included few highlights. By 1992 Mark was back in Coral Gable as a graduate assistant, beginning an assistant coaching career at his alma mater that was to last until 2005.

Jimmy Johnson's 'Canes: Unquestionably No. 1

Hawkins’ 3.85 GPA in High School led his football team. He went on to earn a finance degree with a solid 3.4 GPA. Mark’s coaching career proved his organizational and leadership abilities, and analytical skill. Neither was a brainless jock riding a broken system at a “pro factory” school that invariably passed its football through with no semblance of an education. No doubt plenty of Miami players left Coral Gables without much education [as they did every where during the 1980s], but that was not necessarily the rule and certainly wasn’t for Hawkins and Mark. For lovers of the college game it should be these players that define the greatest teams of the greatest era of Hurricane football. They went to class, studied, and graduated. And both achieved the highest points of their playing lives in college playing the game as amateurs. Player of their ilk, as much as Irvin, Perriman, or Testaverde, carried Miami to victory after victory over other highly teams that looked to knock the 'Canes off their perch.

When Miami defeated Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day 1988 it marked the third consecutive season they had handed the Sooners their only loss. In meetings between college football’s two most successful programs of the 1980s Miami emerged as the undisputed champion. That had a great deal to do with passing offense. In each of those three seasons Miami not only provided OU’s only loss but was also the only team to hang more than twenty points on them. Through three seasons no other opponent came any closer than seventeen. Behind Testaverde and Walsh’s downfield passing the ‘Canes posted twenty-seven, twenty-eight and twenty points. In October 1985 Miami waltzed into Norman and stunned OU as Testaverde hit 17 of 28 passes for 270 yards and two touchdowns. The next year back in Miami he was even better, completing 21 of 28 for 261 yards and four touchdowns. In the 1988 Orange Bowl Walsh made 209 yards on 18 of 30 for two scores and one pick. All three of those Sooner defenses ranked statistically among the very best nationally. Miami emphatically showed that the days of front-loading defenses with the best athletes playing in the box to stuff the run were over. Those offensive performances left an enduring impression on football fans in general and OU fans in particular.

But just as important to those victories were the stifling performances of Jimmy Johnson’s defensive lines. OU reached its great heights during the Switzer era on the strength of a seemingly unstoppable manifestation of Darrel Royal’s wishbone offense. In 1985 quarterback Jamelle Holieway rushed for 861 yards on 161 attempts. In contrast he threw the ball on only 58 occasions all season, completing an unimpressive 24 for 517 yards and only 5 TDs. Passing stats hardly seemed necessary for the AP champion Sooners, however, with fullback Lydell Carr adding 883 yards on 188 carries. OU’s two most proficient backs generated more than 1,600 yards rushing offense alone. That productivity continued. In 1986 Holieway rushed for 811 yards on 139 carries, supported again by Carr who made 548 on 101. Earl Johnson added 537 on 72 carries at halfback. Again Holieway’s passing game was a mere afterthought, amounting to 541 yards and 4 TDS on 30 of 63 [barely five attempts per game]. In 1987 the trio of stand-out juniors ran roughshod again. Holieway made 860 yards on 142 attempts while Carr and Thompson were good for 676 and 731 yards respectively on 105 carries each. Oklahoma’s prolific ground game averaged around three hundred yards per outing, except when they played Miami. The 1988 Orange Bowl was typical. Despite their second consecutive No. 1 ranking going when meeting Miami, OU once again stalled. The Sooners managed just 179 team rushing yards. Between the all-American bookends of Daniel Stubbs and Bill Hawkins the Miami line held OU’s wishbone attack between the tackles all day.

While Miami’s high-flying air attacks are rightly remembered as trend setting offenses that ushered in a new era of pass-first college football, the ‘Canes epic threesome of contests against the other great power of the 1980s were won on defense at the line of scrimmage. Perhaps because many of the players involved in those defensive stands did not go on to legendary pro careers, the legacy of Jimmy Johnson’s defensive lines are often subsumed in the image of his irrepressible offenses. That may be understandable, but it is also unfair.



Miami-OU, 1985-87

Sources: Sooner Sports, OU-Miami; Wiki, Bill Hawkins, Danny Stubbs; USA Today CFB encyclopedia; Gainesville Sun, Sept. 4th 1987; Hurricane Sports, Greg Mark; CFB data warehouse)

Whatever happened to OU-Nebraska?

My last post recalled the Big Eight glory days of the OU-Nebraska rivalry. On November 7^th 2009 the Sooners and Huskers played out a depressing 10-3 Nebraska win which featured a single touchdown, scored on a drive of one yard. The game will not enter the cannon of great and memorable meetings in this storied series. Both the 2009 Huskers and Sooners have had their problems at the quarterback position while fielding first rate defenses. It wasn’t surprising that the game proved a less-than appetizing spectacle of mutual offensive inertia. Naturally every great rivalry series will occasionally provide an underwhelming spectacle. That in itself is not a problem. The sad fact about this game is that Oklahoma will not play in Lincoln again until 2013. Since the inception of the Big XII the OU-Nebraska series has only been played two of every four years. Season ticket holders in Lincoln and Norman only enjoy the opportunity of seeing their erstwhile rival as often as they can vote for who resides in the White House. That, in my opinion, is a travesty.

So what ever happened to the OU-Nebraska game?

During the 1984 off-season the U.S. Supreme Court heard and ruled upon a land mark case launched two years earlier to challenge the NCAA’s centrally negotiated television rights monopoly. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma vs. the NCAA proved to be college football’s Brown vs. Topeka. This decision combined with the growing number of channels available to American television sets via cable to pave the way for the near-saturation point levels of exposure enjoyed by the game today. Most importantly, the decision gave individual schools and conference the rights to control and distribute the revenue their games generated. This revolution turned the historical rationale for conference alignments on their heads. Geographical cohesion, natural rivalries, travel costs, institutional bonds and any number of factors that had created and sustained conferences through the mid-1980s were increasingly marginalized as the golden calf of TV revenue grew larger and demanded ever greater sacrifices.

In 1991 the SEC expanded to 12 teams in order to take advantage of a previously over looked NCAA by-law stating that a conference of twelve teams might form into two divisions and create a football championship game. Conference commissioner Roy Kramer saw an opportunity for a high profile game with unparalleled revenue generating capability. He was exactly correct. The SEC set a decade of conference musical chairs in motion after the 1991 season by extent ending invitations to independent South Carolina and long-time Southwest Conference member Arkansas. An ongoing dispute over the school’s radio broadcast and revenue rights made Arkansas administrators only too eager to bolt. This realignment immediately produced two unintended consequences. Firstly, it showed other schools and conferences the immense financial and publicity value of the two-division, championship game format. Secondly, it rendered the SWC an irrelevant, parochial conference geographically rooted in the local identity and tangled political life of a single state.

From the late 1960s onwards a cycle of cheating involving recruitment violation and payment of players infected the entire SWC. Struggling conference rivals attempted to keep from slipping too far behind the increasingly powerful Longhorns and Aggies. Eventually these unscrupulous practices unraveled the entire league. After the NCAA handed SMU’s football program a one-year suspension for the 1987 season boosters at various schools began a sordid retaliatory process of mutual muckraking that reduced the league to an utterly discredited public family feud. Once Arkansas departed UT chancellor William Cunningham began to explore the possibility of following suit. Despite initial flirtations with the academically alluring Pac 10 and Big 10 the most logical choice was the Big Eight. Conversations began primarily with the athletics director of longtime non-conference rival Oklahoma Donnie Duncan. With the model of the SEC’s lucrative expansion as a guide an agreement emerged by February of 1994 to marry the Big Eight with the four largest and most politically influential Texas universities. ABC’s initial contract with the new Big 12 was worth a base $90 million over five years with an extra $10 million incentive to add a championship game. The league obviously possessed the super-regional appeal that the SWC had long since lost.

Conference realignment, the conference championship format, and an increasing volume of nationally televised games through a growing entourage of cable network partners ushered in a new era for college football. Naturally, and perhaps fittingly, many aspects of the game’s former landscape changed. Conference commissioners and school administrators had to balance the weight of history and tradition with the generally more weighty imperatives of garnering the public interest and athletics revenue necessary to sustain competitive advantages. For the Big XII, the two division format added a championship game and created a juggernaut conference of national consequence. But it also involved a geographical divorce for the old Big Eight. Moving OU and Nebraska to different divisions meant potentially losing an annual series that had provided some of college football’s most memorable games and largest television audience. In the SEC several schools refused to allow realignment to disrupt the history of their most important annual fixtures. In order to maintain the Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee rivalries the league created four other annual inter-divisional series. This balance the mathematics of an eight game regular season and maintained the fixtures that created the most local and national interest in the league.

Why did the Big XII decide not to pursue a similar option in order to maintain the OU-Nebraska series? I recently discussed this question with Daily Oklahoman columnist Barry Tramel, an outspoken advocate of restoring the OU-Nebraska series to an annual fixture. According to Tramel the old Big Eight rivalry posed two major problems for the new conference alignment. Firstly, the game had traditionally been scheduled for late November since it almost invariably constituted a de facto conference championship play-off. In that slot the fixture garnered enormous national interest and large TV ratings. The new two-division format generated the distinct possibility Nebraska and OU would meet one another in the conference title game not infrequently. In that case a regular season fixture in November would lose the winner-takes-all relevance that had long made it a national staple.

Secondly, in the mid-1990s little appetite for maintaining the series existed in Norman. The possibility was raised of playing the game as a non-conference fixture on the two years of every four that the schools did not meet in conference play. Nebraska lacks a natural geographic rival and over the long history of Cornhusker football only Oklahoma has provided an annual game against an equally weighted powerhouse. Naturally folks in Lincoln wanted to maintain the annual meeting. But times were hard for OU, which had not won a conference title since 1987. NCAA sanctions and negative publicity resulting from recruiting violations and several high-profile player arrests led to Barry Switzer’s tumultuous and bitter departure in 1988. From 1989 to 1994 Gary Gibbs posted an unimpressive 44-23-2 record with only a single win over each of Nebraska and Texas. 1995 brought the disastrous single season tenure of the fossilized Howard Schnellenberger. John Blake failed to right the ship from 1996 to 1998 with an inglorious 12-22 record. While the 1990s were nothing but unkind to OU Tom Osborne’s Cornhuskers won seven conference and two national championships. Offered an opportunity to drop the Huskers from the schedule two of every four years, Donnie Duncan jumped at the chance. The Big XII replaced OU on Nebraska’s annual November slate with Colorado, the only other team from the old Big Eight that might even attempt to claim anything like national prominence. Suffice to say that this annual rivalry game has thus far failed to match the glory years of the OU-Nebraska series.

Despite his columns appealing to the weight of tradition and the spirit of competition, Tramel does not see any momentum for the idea of restoring the series. Short of adopting Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy’s highly unpopular and wildly unrealistic suggestion of an eleven-game, round-robin conference schedule [which would obviously mean eliminating the lucrative championship game for which the conference was initially created], there is no chance that OU and Nebraska will play annually anytime soon.

Board of Regents vs. NCAA and the explosion of television coverage for college football that followed have, largely speaking, been good for the game. They have certainly been good to fans, who can now see almost every game of any significance nationally televised somewhere on their dial. But no transition between historical eras is ever without cost. The Big XII omelet involved the breaking of several proverbial eggs. The messy divorce of the old SWC has made life very difficult for several of the former member schools not fortunate enough to be taken along to the new Promised Land.

By comparison to the continued struggles of the football program at once-proud SMU perhaps the downscaling of the OU-Nebraska series is a relatively minor consequence. But anyone who remembers the days when the Big Eight's two great colossus programs perennially crashed into one another at the business end of the AP poll is likely to disagree.

(Sources: SI scorecard, 03/07/94; Dunnavant, 50 year seduction; cfbdatawarehouse.com; Boyles and Guido, USA Today CFB encyclopedia; oral interview with Barry Tramel; Sally Jenkins, SI, Sorry state)

Clash of the Big Eight titans

Between 1928 and 1940 Nebraska football won nine outright Big Eight championships, six of those coming during Dana X Bible’s eight year tenure as head coach. They did not win another until 1963. In the intervening years Bud Wilkinson turned conference rival Oklahoma into a national juggernaut, going his first eleven years as head coach without losing a single Big Eight game. Up to the time of Wilkinson’s arrival in Norman as assistant to Jim Tatum in 1946 Nebraska held a huge series lead over the Sooners, 16-6-3. The Cornhuskers did not beat OU again until 1959. By the time Bob Devaney became head coach in Lincoln the center of gravity in the series had emphatically shifted with the Sooners winning fifteen of the preceding seventeen. But from that point on, until the Big Eight’s merger with four teams from the old Southwest Conference in 1996, both OU and Nebraska were never far from the business end of college football’s rankings. Their annual clash of titans almost invariably decided the Big Eight champion and often counted for much more. After Oklahoma joined the Big Eight in 1919 the winner of the OU-Nebraska game claimed the conference title a staggering fifty-five times in seventy-six seasons. From 1950 the winner of the game went on to earn a national championship on twelve occasions. No two conference rivals in the college football’s modern era have collectively achieved so much national success.

Dana Bible’s great Nebraska teams largely relied on good coaching of home-state farm boys. In the post-war era as television allowed the game to develop into an inter-regional phenomenon Devaney was able to restore Nebraska’s fortunes by developing national appeal and a recruiting network that spanned a continent. Wilkinson established a legacy in Norman of complete monopoly on in-state talent augmented with cross-border raids of the best Texas High School products. OU and Nebraska football developed into virtual mirror images. Both schools were flagship institutions in sparsely populated, geographically underwhelming football-mad states. Successive coaches at both programs found ways to attract the best players to their quiet towns, enabling them to field technically sound power-running teams characterized by under-stated class. College football evolved from the T and Diamond formations through the wishbone and into the option but one thing never changed. Every year Nebraska and Oklahoma lined up and ran at each other like a head-on train crash. The winner almost always took all.

In 1964 Bob Devaney received a phone call from an ambitious young coach whose three-year NFL career had ended two years earlier. A native Nebraskan and former state prep athlete of the year, Tom Osborne had played his collegiate football at his hometown Hastings College. He talked Devaney into giving him a position as an unpaid graduate assistant and started out coaching receivers in exchange for a dorm room and meals with the team. Osborne possessed a brilliant mind and in addition to pursuing his doctorate in educational psychology impressed Devaney as a coach sufficiently to earn the job as Nebraska offensive coordinator by 1967. Osborne possessed not only obvious tactical genius and profound organizational skills but also a rare personal touch. In 1969 he recruited Johnny Rodgers, a troubled young man from Omaha’s north side who had both been stabbed and shot another boy in the stomach before his sixteenth birthday. As a Nebraska freshman in 1970 Rodgers was involved in a gas station robbery that earned him two years probation. Osborne took responsibility for young man’s development and under his tutelage Rodgers stayed clear of trouble and played well enough to win the 1972 Heisman Trophy. Under Devaney Nebraska won consecutive national championships in 1970 and 1971. Osborne took over as head coach in 1973. The two men had successfully engineered a football revival in Lincoln. Most impressively they had done it without requiring a corresponding drop off in productivity from conference rival Oklahoma. In Devaney’s second championship year Chuck Fairbanks’ OU Sooners finished 2^nd in the final AP poll. The two rivals played out a 35-31 Nebraska win in Norman that is widely considered to be ‘the game of the century’. Between 1970 and 1975 Oklahoma and Nebraska each won two national championships. Only once in those six seasons did either team finish outside the AP top ten [OU’s 20^th place finish in 1970].

The same year Osborne assumed command in Lincoln Oklahoma’s own long-standing assistant moved up to the head job in Norman. Barry Switzer, a cock-sure young Arkansas graduate, took over for Fairbanks who moved to the NFL. He set about installing a version of Darrel Royal’s new 'wishbone' offense and saw immediate success [even despite NCAA sanctions for transcript irregularities dating to Fairbanks’ tenure]. Switzer’s teams smashed national records for offensive output on the ground. His first Sooner team went 10-0-1 finishing in the AP poll behind only Woody Hayes’ Buckeyes and Ara Parseghian’s Fighting Irish. Switzer won his first five meetings with Osborne, including a1975 home date in which the unbeaten, second ranked Huskers suffered a 35-10 humiliation at the hands of a seventh ranked OU squad that had picked up an inexplicable loss to the visiting Kansas Jayhawks the preceding week. Osborne’s first five Nebraska teams were good. They were excellent, in fact. From 1973 to 1977 Nebraska went 4-1 in the post-season, including victories over Texas in the 1974 Cotton and Florida in the 1975 Sugar Bowl. But they were not good enough to beat OU.

When the Sooners travelled to Lincoln for Switzer and Osborne’s sixth meeting as head coaches on November 11^th 1978 they were again ranked number one and standing unbeaten at 9-0. Behind the explosive running of junior halfback Billy Sims, who would claim Oklahoma’s third Heisman Trophy that year, the Sooners led the nation in rushing with a massive 415 yards per game. Overall, the fourth ranked Huskers were even more productive. Despite a 3-point performance in their season opening loss at eventual national champion Alabama, Nebraska was averaging 515 yards total offense and scoring 41.5 points a game. While neither team relied on vertical passing to any great degree the Huskers showed slightly more balance. Operating out of the Sooners' precision wishbone attack quarterback Thomas Lott was averaging less than seventy yards passing. His counterpart Tom Sorley was passing for 175 yards a game, which only helped Nebraska’s own impressive performances on the ground.

Johnny Rodgers, Barry Switzer and Tom Osborne in more recent times

During a joint mid-week press conference Osborne played some public mind-games, intentionally downplaying his team’s chances. He told reporters in Switzer’s hearing:

“We have good running backs. [Rick] Burns or [Isaiah] Hipp could contribute to their team, but we don’t have anyone they even recruited out of High School.”

Burns had been an overlooked running back out of Wichita Falls, while Hipp was a walk-on from rural Chapin, South Carolina. Despite leading his home-town Eagles to two state AA championships and amassing nearly 3,000 career yards Hipp was not recruited by any college due to a shoulder injury he suffered as a senior. As a High School freshman in 1971, Hipp had watched the OU-Nebraska game on television. Despite never having been near the state of Nebraska he decided on the spot that wanted to be like Johnny Rodgers and would only play for the Huskers. Without any prior contact with Osborne Hipp scraped the money together to fly to Lincoln. He enrolled at NU and managed to catch the coaching staff'’s attention in walk-on try outs. He broke out as redshirt sophomore in 1977 with several hundred yard games, including a 77-yard TD against Indiana that is still Nebraska’s longest scoring run. Hipp was typical of Osborne’s Cornhuskers. Nebraska coaches found talent from across the country, and sometimes talent found them. Osborne’s staff improved players as well as any program in the nation. He may have been serious in talking about his team as over-looked, under-talented and generally not good enough for Norman. But Osborne knew his I-formation offenses, alternating lightening tailbacks Hipp and Tim Wurth with bruising fullbacks Burns and Andra Franklin, could rack up points on anybody. Against Nebraska's prolific offense backed up by famed “black-shirt” defense and playing at home, even Barry Switzer’s Sooners would struggle.

Isaiah Moses Hipp, walk-on

Although the matchup pitted the nation’s two leading offenses both coaches predicted a defensive battle. They were exactly right. In typical fashion OU and Nebraska pounded each other at the line of scrimmage all day. Eventually the narrow margin of victory came from a few fumbles caused by the handful of crucial hits that somehow stood out amid a great host of punishing, text-book tackles.

Virtually nothing separated the teams. Nebraska outgained Oklahoma by only twenty-two yards, 361 to 339. OU ran the ball sixty-one times, Nebraska sixty-two. Oklahoma made only thirteen first downs to Nebraska’s eighteen, but as was characteristic of the wishbone the Sooners made longer runs and outgained the Huskers on the ground by nearly eighty yards and 1.5 yards per carry. OU drew first blood, reaching the end zone on their second possession. The Sooners drove twenty-six yards to the Nebraska forty-four before Billy Sims kick-started his monster day by skipping through the line over right tackle, shaking off a Husker defender at the NU thirty-five and disappearing for a score. Sims was on his way to a 153 yard, two touchdown day and for a moment it looked as though Nebraska would be out classed again. The Huskers followed OU’s score with a Berns fumble on his own thirteen yard line. Fortunately for Osborne the blackshirts responded. Nebraska stuffed OU and pushed them back a yard on the first two plays. On third-and-eleven Lott went around left end on a QB keeper only to meet linebacker Lee Kunz at the corner and have the ball mercilessly stripped. Kunz’ points-saving takeaway provided the first in a string of OU turnovers that defined the game.

The wishbone, like any option offense, can chew up plenty of clock and cover a lot of territory – sometimes quickly in big plays. But the system is one dimensional, and never more so than in Switzer’s version. Lott finished the day with telling passing statistics: zero completions on two attempts. Nebraska defenders knew what was coming and brought pressure consistently, flying to the ball. For success, the wishbone requires misdirection, superior blocking schemes, and above all, ball security. On Oklahoma’s next possession Lott led his team to the Nebraska forty-three before a busted pitch out gave up another turnover. The Sooners simply could not afford such mistakes, but they kept coming. OU put the ball on ground nine times and lost it six. Even the irrepressible Sims was not immune. He lost two fumbles, including one at the Nebraska three yard line in the final minutes of the game with only a field goal separating the two sides. After the game a dejected Sims refused to cut himself any slack, telling reporters:

“I just got hit. But it was carelessness, not the hit. I don’t think I played a good game at all.”

Sims did play a good game. Running backs didn’t gain 150 yards with two scores against Nebraska on poor performances. Not with Osborne running the show. Sims lost the ball because of the hit. OU kept losing the ball all day because everywhere they turned there was a Husker waiting with a hit.

Nebraska answered OU’s relentless ground game with slightly more in the way of balance and variety. After the Sooner’s second turnover Nebraska took the ball fifty-seven yards the other way on a drive that including a ten-yard pace run from Hipp, a deep ball from Sorley to receiver Junior Miller, and a sideline flare pass that Burns converted to a first-and-goal at the OU nine. The drive finished with a straight up power run from Burns out of a deep set I. Nebraska had found their rhythm and very nearly scored again seconds before the break after forcing a David Overstreet fumble on Oklahoma’s own twenty-eight. On that occasion the OU defense limited the damage and Nebraska kicker Billy Todd found only the right upright from twenty-one yards. But even with the score tied and the Huskers’ finishing the half on the disappointment of a botched field goal, it was clear which team possessed the momentum.

The second half picked up exactly where the first had left. Overstreet lost a second fumble on exactly the half way line following a crushing hit from Nebraska’s Derrie Nelson. After OU held the Huskers to nothing on two plays Sorley went deep to Miller again, this time for a thirty-three yard gain. The Nebraska quarterback finished the day with a competent 111 yards on 8 of 20 attempts. That was 111 crucial passing yards more than Oklahoma managed. From third-and-ten Nebraska might have let another turnover slip without converting to points, but Osborne’s power-running offense was backed up by just enough aerial proficiency to keep his team on the field. Four plays took Nebraska the remaining distance with Hipp deftly evading tackles on a quick-footed scoring run from eight yards out.

Nebraska had a precious 14-7 lead but Oklahoma answered immediately. The Sooners drove seventy-three yards on the next possession, showing what they might have done had they been able to protect the football more consistently. Sims capped the march with a thirty yard touchdown run, bursting over the right end of the line before reaching the end zone untouched. For once on the afternoon a Sooner back made a big play without taking a hit or having to physically break a tackle. That would be the last time. On a fifty yard march beginning late in third quarter Sorley brought Nebraska back inside the Sooner ten with a first-and-goal before finally settling for another short field goal attempt from Todd. On his second try the Husker specialist finished the job. Nebraska had a three point lead. Ten minutes later when Sims lost the ball for Oklahoma’s sixth and final time after OU had once again ground their way into scoring position, Osborne finally had his win over Switzer.

The two coaches went head-to-head a total of seventeen times with Switzer earning a clear advantage 12-5. Neither man ever coached at another school. Both achieved astounding success despite sharing a tiny conference with an equally weighted powerhouse rival. Switzer coached at OU until 1988going 157-29-4 with two national titles and at least a share of twelve conference championships. Osborne stayed at Nebraska for a quarter century, eventually surpassing even Bud Wilkinson’s Big Eight win tally with a career record of 255-49-3. He earned three national titles and at least a share of thirteen conference championships. As both assistants and head coaches the tenures of Barry Switzer and Tom Osborne provided the golden age of a rivalry that defined college football on the plains of Middle America for more than half a century.

The defining play of the greatest college game ever played

(Sources: SI, Hipp: Wonder walk-on; AP poll archive; cfbdatawarehouse.com; College football’s 25 greatest teams; Great college football coaches; Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

The 1969 Red River Shootout

It took the Texas Longhorns just nine seconds to open the scoring in a home romp over an overmatched Navy team in Austin on Saturday October 4th 1969. Darrell Royal’s boys had not lost since a trip to Lubbock in September 1968. Senior quarterback James Street had not lost any of his ten games as a starter. Texas was already 2-0 after easy victories by a combined score of 66-7 at Cal and versus Texas Tech, two squads who would both finish the year 5-5. Standout halfback Jim Bertelsen fired off a 43-yard touchdown run on UT’s first play from scrimmage. As he burst from behind his blocker into the

Midshipmen secondary a defensive back had the inside angle for a tackle but Bertelsen stepped on the gas and disappeared. From that point on the game was only a matter of numbers.
Royal pulled his starters from the game permanently after only nineteen minutes. The Horns’ first string offense had been on the field only a totally of 6:29 but posted four touchdowns - all on the ground. Street ran for a score himself and threw only a single pass, which he completed to his favorite (and virtually only) target Cotton Speyrer. Texas’ other first team halfback Ted Koy also ran for two scores.

That was Texas football under Darrell Royal. An all-America selection as defensive back and quarter back at Oklahoma, Royal played for Bud Wilkinson from 1946 to 1949. He was present at the start of Wilkinson’s incredible run as head coach in Norman. The Sooners dominated not just Texas, but everybody during the 1950s. Of all things Texans dislike, being dominated generally and by Oklahomans in particular ranks first. A desperate University of Texas turned to an erstwhile rival in 1956 and hired Royal as head football coach. The Longhorns never looked back. Royal never had a losing season in two decades and delivered eleven Southwest conference championships, two AP titles and one UPI coaches poll title. His best years were powered by the success of an original formation he coauthored with his offensive assistant Emory Bellard.

The wishbone, like all offensive innovations, seems simple in retrospect. But when Royal implemented it early in the 1968 season in a desperation move with his team losing badly in Lubbock, Texas Tech had no answer. A triple option four-man backfield could rack up huge rushing numbers with a combination of complex inside blocking schemes, multiple fake handoffs and manpower mismatches. Defenses used to seeing much less complicated running schemes simply could not account for every runner, allowing the quarterback to hand the ball off to whichever back had no man reading him. The wishbone became the standard college offense by the late seventies and eventually, as is always the case, defenses caught up and made the formation obsolete. But in 1969 James Street was the first and only wishbone quarterback in the game and no defensive coordinator knew what to do about the Longhorns.

The Navy game was Royal’s 100th win at Texas. Heading into the Red River Shootout against Chuck Fairbanks’ sixth ranked Oklahoma Sooners the 3-0 second ranked Longhorns led the nation in rush yards per game, having racked up a combined 1,091 on 211 carries. Bertelsen’s 216 yards on 30 carries with 3 TDS for a 7.2 yard average ranked second in the Southwest conference. Texas’ total offense was also second in the conference despite standing dead last in passing offense with a worthless combined 12 completions in only 27 tries for 119 yards, zero TDs and three picks. Street was 6 of 17 on the year for only 59 yards and no scores. And the Longhorns were unstoppable. That was the wishbone.

Royal didn’t mind winning games convincingly, but he worried that his players might not be ready for OU. Royal acknowledged:

“Winning big has plusses and minuses…. I worry that we haven’t been in one of those old country gut checks.”

This is probably one of the better problems for coaches to face, as Royal readily admitted:

“A coach has got to have problems, and I like mine better this year than last.”

Texas’ problem was stamina and game readiness, so Royal increased the usual tempo and intensity of his game-week practices, attempting to simulate the fury of a Cotton Bowl clash. He hoped his players would be equal to the fever-pitch atmosphere, but felt confident enough to jokingly tell reports:

“If you can’t get up for this one, you must be dead.”

The Longhorns need to be up. Oklahoma had problems of their own, but Fairbanks’ Sooners were no slouches. The Wilkinson steamroller had sputtered somewhat in its later years, with two almost unthinkable campaigns in 1960-61 of a combined 8-11. When Bud finally retired in 1963 he handed off to his long standing assistant Gomer Jones. The job of following a legend is a hard one in any circumstance, but Jones never wanted the limelight. He could stand the heat for only two seasons in which OU went a disappointing 9-11-1. In 1966 things barely improved when new head coach Jim McKenzie went 6-4 before unexpectedly dying. His first year assistant Chuck Fairbanks was left holding the baby and in a very difficult and increasingly desperate environment engineered two conference championships in 1967 and 68. Only a loss to Texas in a 10-1 season kept Fairbanks from delivering a national title his first season. By 1969 Oklahoma sat where Texas had been in the late fifties with Royal’s first teams. Fairbanks’ Sooners were good and could win conference titles, but they were not doing what OU coaches are hired to do – beat Texas and win national championships. To do that, Oklahoma always needed to augment recruiting classes by cherry picking the best talent from south of the Red River.

Fairbanks was able to do just that with the help of an assistant coach he hired to fill his former role after the 1966 season. The son of a prohibition era bootlegger former Arkansas standout Barry Switzer was as brash and country as they come. He made an immediate impact on the OU staff as a highly productive recruiter and superb offensive coordinator. In 1967 every school in the Southwest conference wanted Abilene prep star Jack Mildren. At the time conference recruiting regulations limited SWC coaches to two home visits. The Big Eight had no such rule and Switzer, OU’s West Texas recruiter, visited the Mildrens several times. The coach said later:

“You can’t get to know a kid in two visits. You’re doing all the talking and he’s still looking at his shoes.”

Switzer was always a joker with the press, a charmer with parents and school dignitaries, and an absolute hard-ass with his players. He told a reporter before the 1969 Texas games:

“[Mildren] is not a picture passer and he doesn’t look fast. He’s not a super athlete by any means. In fact he’s a little pigeon toed and … clumsy.”

But Switzer knew what he had in Mildren. In the 1967 Oil Bowl, the annual post-season clash between all-State prep selections from Oklahoma and Texas, the OU commit rubbed his decision in the faces of football fans from his home state by hitting 12 of 12 for 250 yards in the first half alone. That was the only time Mildren would represent the state of Texas on the gridiron. As a sophomore starter in 1969 he led the Sooners to a 2-0 start heading into Dallas for his first Red River Shootout. Mildren started as well in college as he had finished in High School. His first varsity play from scrimmage went for a 67 yard touch down.

Oklahoma had all the balance Texas seemed to lack. The Sooners, like most teams of the era, ran a backfield-heavy offense lineup with rarely more than one man wide. Their base offense was a diamond formation that in addidtion to the era's standard power runs also favored toss-sweeps and passing plays to men coming out of the backfield. That allowed a lot more passing yards than Royal’s system. Of course it helped that opposing defenses were keying in on all-American senior halfback Steve Owens. The tenacious back made over 4,000 yards in three seasons, invariably carrying the ball around 30 times a game. Owens’ work load would be unthinkable today. In one famous trip to Stillwater Owens carried the ball 36 times in the second half alone! He made yards after contact with apparent ease and frequently did work all on his own without sufficient forward blocking.

Offense would not be OU’s problem. In two big wins, 48-21 at Wisconsin and 37-8 vs. Pitt, OU had given up over 400 rush yards. Their starting defense was senior-heavy in the back field but made up of sophomores and juniors in the front seven. The OU middle had looked particularly suspect. That was bad news heading into a game against the nation’s leading rushing attack, and one that did almost everything between the tackles at that. Mildren admitted to reporters that he suspected his breakfast would taste quite awful on the morning of Saturday October 11th.

As events unfolded Mildren’s breakfast could hardly have settled before his Sooners led 14-0. Fairbanks committed to playing Texas at its own game. He loaded the box with an eight man front, daring Street to throw downfield and prove he could do better than 6 of 17 for 59 yards in three games. On offense, OU ran right up the middle, riding Owens’ power and vision. The eventual 1969 Heisman winner gained 123 yards on the day, 53 in the first quarter alone. Mildren capped a sixty yard drive answering a Texas three-and-out with a nine-yard end around TD run after only four minutes. Five minutes later Owens dived over a pile for a one yard score after a short 17-yard drive that followed an interception return. OU linebacker Steve Aycock reeled in a risky Street pass into the flat for excellent field position and the Sooners appeared to be cruising.

For once Texas was making nothing on the ground. OU’s defense refused to live up to its underwhelming billing, holding the Horns just 158 yard rushing on the day. The Sooners made a more impressive 198 team yards on ground in reply and also finished with a slight edge in first downs at 20-18. But in the end Royal’s Longhorns squeaked out a comeback win in a manner that characterized the now mythologized “cult of ‘69” Texas team. Like so many championship teams Royal’s boys did what they had to do when they had to do it, and they were lucky.

After two series that ended in a punt and a pick, trailing by fourteen, Street knew there was only one way to beat OU. He had to answer Fairbanks’ challenge and complete passes. He settled himself and did just that. On the first play of UT’s third possession Street hit Speyrer for a 35 yard strike and two plays later found the same receiver for a 24 yard touch down. On the Horns’ fourth possession he hit Bertelsen underneath and the halfback converted the catch for a 55 yard gain to the OU twenty. Bertelsen did the rest of the work, out racing OU safety Joe Pearce for 19 before converting himself from the one. Street was well on his way to a relatively impressive 9 of 18 for 215 yard passing performance and just like that Texas had leveled at 14-14.

The teams remained neck and neck in the third period. Texas opened with a 54 yard drive that resulted in a 27 yard field goal from the hilariously named Happy Feller, who despite only having attempted one previous three-pointer led the Southwest conference in scoring solely by virtue of converting PATs after UT’s many touchdowns. OU answered with a field goal from Bruce Derr after Vince LaRose picked of a James Street pass and ran the ball into a crowd of Longhorns before deftly handing off to Pearce who ran it back to the 24 before Street himself pushed the safety out of bounds.

With the two teams going blow for blow, each answering the strength of the other, a single moment seemed likely to change the game. Texas took a 20-17 lead early in the fourth period on a second Feller kick after a drive that began with another Street completion to Speyrer, this time for 49 yards, stalled. The teams then traded punts and OU had more than seven minutes remaining to retake the lead when safety Glenn King fielded UT’s kick at the OU 23. King said after the game:

“I was in the right position to field the ball, but that was about it. I took my eye off [it] for a split second. I was thinking about running with the ball before I caught it. I wanted to get us in good field position.”

King only succeeded in getting the Horns into good position. He spilled the kick and Texas cover man Bob McKay quickly covered it. Steve Worster, Bertelsen and Koy’s less flashy but highly efficient colleague dove in from the one to cap a short drive and put Texas ahead 27-17 with barely six minutes to play. The decisive moment had come and gone. Oklahoma never crossed their thirty yard line in the remaining minutes.

King acknowledged after the game:

“Being from Texas makes losing to them hurt all the more. I had special reason, too. Texas didn’t offer me a scholarship… and I wanted to get them back for that. I guess that’s why I messed up… I was too keyed up.”

Oklahoma had given everything on the day. Despite losing by ten it had been a close contest. The Red River Shootout turned out to be their best effort of the year. OU finished just 6-4, losing by thirty to eventual Big Eight champion Nebraska. Texas, on the other hand, went from strength to strength. The nation’s leading rushing offense blew out every opponent until their season finale showdown in Fayetteville vs. second ranked, unbeaten Arkansas. Once again, James Street threw winning completions when Texas needed him to, and once again Speyrer was on the other end. Royal’s charmed Horns posted one of College Football’s all-time great comeback wins with one of the all-time great clutch plays. Unbeaten Texas was voted national champion and went on to defeat Ara Parseghian’s 8-1- Fighting Irish in the 1970 Cotton Bowl. James Street started 19 games as Texas’s first wishbone quarterback. He won all of them.

The 1969 Red River Shootout was everything that makes the OU-Texas series one of the game’s great rivalries. Though Texas’ victory was the eleventh win for the Horns in twelve years Cotton Bowl games was always a hard fought, close affair. OU dominated the fifties and Texas the sixties, but overall, this series is as even as they come. Since 1950 the record is a dead heat. It is also important to remember that for most of its history the series was an inter-conference rivalry. OU has seven national titles since 1950 under three coaches. Texas has four under two. In the modern era OU and Texas are two of the game’s half-dozen great powers and yet every year they voluntarily risked a loss against the other purely for spirit of competition.

So in this 40th anniversary season of the great 1969 national championship winning Longhorns and the irrepressible Steven Owens’ hard won Heisman Trophy, here’s to OU-Texas. May the sacred Crimson-Burnt Orange line never be crossed!

(Sources: Fort worth Star-Telegram; Terry Frei, Horns, Hogs and Nixon Coming)

The 1956 Heisman Trophy

1956 provided probably the most interesting and controversial Heisman trophy race in college football history. That year more than half-a-dozen players had a legitimate claim and might have taken the prize any other season. This crowded field of worthy candidates virtually guaranteed that any result would leave a bitter taste for some. No single Heisman year more clearly defines the dominating shadow the award casts over college football, both for good and for ill.

In the modern era college football’s premier award has evolved into a media driven runaway-train. Every season begins with one or two clear favorites, decided on publicity power and the record of program he represents as much as individual talent. As of 2008, ten schools have claimed 14 of the last 16 Heisman trophies: Notre Dame, USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan, Miami, Florida and Florida State. These are the schools with the most wins and/or greatest media draw over the last two decades. As Chris Huston will tell you, the Heisman is as much about which school a player represents as it is about the player himself. Things weren’t so different in 1956.

Notre Dame had gone 8-2 in 1955 under second-year head coach Terry Brennan, who despite his youthful age of only 28 reached 17-3 in two seasons. The Domers’ only losses came at the hands of 9-1 Michigan State, then enjoying their golden age under Hugh Dougherty, and on the road at USC. The memorable performances of multi-threat halfback Paul Hornung only added to expectations. As a junior the "Golden Boy" had gone 46 of 103 passing for 743 yards and a 9-10 ratio, in addition to carrying 92 times for 472 (a 5.1 yard average) and 6 TDs. Hornung also kicked 5 PATs and 2 field goals. Heading into the fall of 1956 Hornung had name recognition, impressive stats, played for a winning team expected to improve, and possessed limitless personal appeal. He was boyishly handsome, devilishly cocky and irresistibly talented. But most of all, he played for Notre Dame. Sports writers in the mid-fifties loved the Irish with abandon. So in early September, the Heisman seemed to be Hornung’s to lose.

Hornung competed against probably the largest and most talented crowd of Heisman hopefuls ever. Down in Knoxville, standout Tennessee halfback Johnny Majors led the Vols to an unbeaten regular season on his way to a career total of 2,575 rushing yards. The Vols shocking upset loss to Baylor in the 1957 Sugar Bowl occurred after the voting, in which Majors polled second. Five places behind him, the nation’s leader in total offense, Stanford’s John Brodie, gained only gained enough votes to come in a lowly seventh!

At Oklahoma, the defending national champions and odds-on favorites to repeat, Bud Wilkinson’s amazing winning streak stretched back to September 1953. Halfback Tommy McDonald finished second nationally in touchdowns with 17. His own teammate, OU halfback Clendon Thomas, denied him the national scoring title by a single TD. McDonald finished third in the voting with 973, just ahead of Oklahoma’s All-American center and linebacker Jerry Tubbs. A few of Tubbs’ 724 total votes would easily have made McDonald coach Wilkinson’s second Heisman winner, but Tubbs and McDonald essentially cancelled one another out. No member of the Sooners' 1956 class claimed the Heisman despite having never lost a single collegiate game.

Finishing fifth on the ballot was a senior running back from Syracuse by the name of Jim Brown. The consensus All-American back had carried 128 times in 1955 for 666 yards and 7 TDs. Although these numbers were impressive they proved insufficient to capture the attention of national writers who doubted the credibility of East Coast, Independent football. ‘Cuse could not claim a single championship or bowl win. Their only post-season appearance, the 1953 Cotton Bowl, had resulted in a 61-6 thrashing at the hands of mighty Alabama. If the Irish had pedigree to spare, the Orangemen could hardly buy it. Since taking over as head coach in 1949 Floyd “Ben” Schwartzwalder had only reached a mediocre 35-27-1 in seven seasons -- all while facing opponents the writers viewed with suspicion. Syracuse football had never produced a single household name at any position. In September 1956 the national spotlight rested on the hopeful Irish, the unstoppable winning streak, and the indomitable Tennessee Vols. Few national fans and pundits spared a thought for lowly Syracuse.

Jim Brown forced his way onto the national stage and into Heisman contention in the same way he forced his way into opposition backfields: with a peerless combination of size, brute force, speed, and startling finesse. Brown racked up 986 yards on 158 carries for 13 TDs and a 6.3 yard average. He was also a crushing middle linebacker and, like Hornung, carried most of his team’s place kicking load. At around 230lb Brown was a monster in the age of mostly white-bred one-platoon football. He routinely stiff-armed hopeless tacklers into the turf, but his game cannot rightly be characterized as a mere matter of raw power. Teammates said Brown used only the energy required for the play at hand. He always conserved his strength for the moment of greatest need. Whenever the situation truly demanded a marathon effort, Brown seemed to have an extra gear and would leave tacklers standing.

Somehow the indefatigable Brown also possessed sufficient surplus energy to letter in track and field, basketball and lacrosse. Brown averaged 15 ppg in basketball his sophomore year and 11.5 ppg his junior year. He contributed in multiple track and field events, routinely making the difference between victory and defeat at meets. He lettered four years in lacrosse, topping the national scoring table his senior season and leading Syracuse to a 10-0 record: its first unbeaten campaign since 1922. The most famous incident of Brown’s illustrious collegiate career occured after his football eligibility expired. On a clear May day in 1957 he competed against Colgate in high jump, winning the event before the Orangemen’s final lacrosse fixture against Army. As Brown attempted a change into his pads some teammates, frantically fearing defeat against their arch-rival, found him in the locker room and begged him to contribute in two other events. Brown placed in javelin and discus before leading the lacrosse team to an 8-6 victory with two goals while still wearing his track shorts. The track and field team triumphed by 13, the exact number of points Brown's performances added.

Jim Brown suffered in the Heisman race because he did not play a football game truly in the national spotlight until his final appearance, in the 1957 Cotton Bowl. By that point the trophy had been awarded. Had the Downtown Athletic Club waited until after the bowls (as it still doesn’t but absolutely should), voters would have been impressed as Brown carried Syracuse almost single handedly against a TCU team that ranked as undoubtedly the best opponent the Orangemen faced during his collegiate career.

Led by their own All-American, halfback Jim Swink, the Frogs had dominated the Southwest Conference. TCU’s diversified passing attack proved a handful for the Orangemen. The Horned Frogs scored a touchdown in each quarter, three of them on drives of over 60 yards. Of TCU’s 335 total yards, 202 came on 13 complete team passes of 16. The entire Frog team combined for just 133 rushing yards. Brown made 132 alone in reply. He scored the first three Syracuse touchdowns and ground out much of the yardage on the drive late in the fourth quarter that set up a 27 yard TD pass from Chuck Zimmerman to Jim Ridlon.

On Syracuse's first scoring drive, in the second quarter, Brown kick-started a comeback with a searing run of 24 yards. He added 6, 5, and 18 before a 2 yard plunge across the plane – all coming after he set the drive up with a 30 yard kick return from the end zone. From goal line to goal line Brown accounted for 90 of the 100 yards. The run-focused Orangemen made only 3 of 7 passing for 63 on the day, but one of those completions came on a fullback toss from Brown to Ridlon for 20 yards. Brown also added a kickoff return of 46 yards and attempted all four PATs. His play alone would have earned a hard fought tie had Narcico Mendoza not burst through the line to block his third kick. The two-point conversion did not enter college football until 1958. Given the opportunity Brown would surely have been the odds on favorite to tie the game from three yards inside the final two minutes. As it was, his failed PAT attempt made the difference.

There simply has never been a college athlete like Jim Brown. There never will be again. Yet he finished only fifth in the Heisman voting his senior year. Fifth: for the premier award in the sport at which he excelled more than any other. Surely Brown deserved the Heisman?

In the end Paul Hornung claimed the award – the first player ever to do so without gaining the most first place votes. Hornung polled fewer first place votes than both Johnny Majors and Tommy McDonald. Majors also beat him on second place votes. Brown polled only half of Hornung’s 1,066 total votes, despite gaining only 79 fewer first place votes. Hornung became the only player to claim the Heisman after a losing season. This result still stands out to many as one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in college football history. Even Notre Dame writers acknowledge that the “Golden Boy” hardly deserved the crown.

Steve Delsohn wrote: “Hornung didn’t deserve it. Not with three touchdown passes and 13 interceptions. And not on a 2-8 team. The Heisman should have gone to Jim Brown. The magnificent Syracuse fullback averaged 6.2 yards a carry, gained 986 yards, and scored 14 touchdowns. But, in 1956, Jim Brown had the wrong color skin.”


In response to such assertions it must firstly be noted that Paul Hornung was an outstanding football player. Voters did not simply look for any old character to palm the trophy off onto because Brown was black. On any ordinary Notre Dame team Hornung would have claimed the Heisman in a cake walk. He starred in football, baseball and basketball at Flaget High School in Louisville, setting statewide records and attracting the persistent attention of Bear Bryant, then head coach at the University of Kentucky. Almost sixty years since he graduated, the Kentucky High School Athletics Association still bestows the annual “Paul Hornung Award” on the state’s outstanding football player.

The “Golden Boy” was an extremely versatile player. In addition to attempting the majority of Notre Dame's passes he was a stand-out defensive back and a considerable rusher, gaining 472 yards on 92 carries as a junior. He also featured as a place kicker and punter. He finished second in Heisman voting as a junior. Ohio State’s Howard “Hop-along” Cassidy claimed the prize with an impressive 964 yards rushing and 15 TDs. Cassidy was a great running back. But Hornung was so much more.

After entering the 1956 season as Heisman favorite Hornung amassed 1,337 yards total offense, second highest in the nation. He added 420 yards rushing and 3 TDs to his passing totals. Many feel that his dire passer ratio of 3 TDs to 13 INTs resulted from the graduation of Notre Dame’s entire 1955 receiving core. Hornung was the sole highlight on a woeful Irish team. In his final collegiate game, a gruelling road test at USC which he played with two sprained thumbs, Hornung accounted for 354 yards total offense, including a 95-yard kick off return for a touchdown. Notre Dame lost.

In the mid-fifties, under the leadership of controversial President Father Theodore Martin Hesburgh, the University of Notre Dame deemphasized football for the only time in its history. Hesburgh sought to reestablish the primacy of the school's academic reputation and did so by very publically reducing football scholarships. Those cut backs began to bite in 1956, leaving the Irish numerically thin and relatively talent starved. Irish fans still argue as to how far Hesburgh’s actions really cost their football team, but head coach Terry Brennan and several former Irish coaches were in no doubt. What is absolutely certain is that 1956 was the historical nadir for Irish football. And in that darkest hour only the star of Paul Hornung shone true to the Notre Dame tradition.

Hornung went on to become a hall-of-fame pro star with the Greenbay Packers. He led the NFL in scoring from 1959 to 1961 and was league MVP consecutively in 1960 and 1961. His 19 points in the 1961 NFL championship game remain the individual record. In 9 seasons as a pro he made 66 of 140 field goals (not a bad record for the era), averaged almost 7 yards per pass attempt, and scored 50 rushing TDS with a 4.2 yards per carry mark.

The legendry Vince Lombardi once gave Notre Dame’s “Golden Boy” the highest possible praise, saying:

“Paul Hornung could do more things than any man who ever played this game.”

No doubt several other players hold manifestly justifiable claims to the 1956 Heisman trophy. But whatever can be said about the controversial award, it is impossible to claim that Paul Hornung was catagorically undeserving.

Race did factor into the 1956 Heisman chase, but not in the sense that many commentators believe. It is hard to conclude that the college football establishment was not prepared for a black Heisman winner when only five years later the same voters granted the award to Ernie Davis, the next 'Cuse running back to wear Brown's jersey number. In fact, the racial barriers that most hurt Brown’s chance of earning college football’s top award lay within his own school.

Brown attended Syracuse at the urging of Kenneth Molloy, a prominent alumnus and personal supporter from his hometown of Manhasset, Long Island. Schwartzwalder did not want Brown on his team and only accepted him under pressure from Molloy. Brown did not even have an athletic scholarship his freshman year. Molloy and other local supporters in Manhasset raised money to pay his school fees - a fact Brown only learned later.

Syracuse had already experimented with one black football player. A talented quarterback named Avatus Stone had endured two seasons of dehumanizing treatment before seeking refuge in the Canadian Football League in 1952. Stone was not allowed to eat or room with white teammates. Coaches punished his mistakes disproportionately and forbade him from fraternizing with Caucasian coeds. When Stone protested and reacted with anger, several times striking out physically at coaches and players, he was labeled a troublemaker.

Initially Schwartzwalder told Molloy that he never wanted another black player on his team. They were “too much trouble.” But Brown toughed it out, used his righteous anger to fuel his performances, and played his way onto the team.

Brown faced the same abuse Stone suffered through. He was isolated, ostracized and struggled to rise up the depth chart despite his eminent talent. He saw little playing time as sophomore, entirely because of bigotted animosity from the coaching staff. On several occassion his mentor and ally Roy Simmons, the Syracuse lacrosse coach, talked Brown into staying in school after he resolved to quit.

Under-utilized on a mediocre team, playing as an Eastern Independent for a coach with an unimpressive track record, Brown’s position entering the 1956 season could hardly have contrasted more starkly with that enjoyed by Paul Hornung. Brown had never played in a bowl. He had not earned national attention as a junior, and he did not play for a fashionable team. The 1955 Orangemen had won only five games to Notre Dame's eight.

Then as now, media relations, program prestige and access to the national TV and radio spotlight decided the Heisman trophy race as much as talent. Ernie Davis won the trophy in 1961 not because the intervening years had wrought a massive racial sea-change in America. They hadn’t. Davis won because Brown’s talent and sheer resolve broke the Syracuse coaches. Schwartzwalder started Davis as a sophomore in 1959. The Orangemen rode his running to an 11-0 season, a Cotton Bowl victory over Texas, and the school’s only national title. By his senior year the eventual Heisman winner was a recognized star on a prominent team with an AP championship in the bank.

The reality of how the Heisman trophy winner is largely selected actually makes Hornung’s triumph an important and satisfying record. Once, if only once, a man on a losing team has earned college football’s highest award for recognition of individual talent. The trophy is supposed to acknowledge the single greatest player in the game. Instead, it has increasingly become an award for the designated leader on the nation’s most successful and fashionable team. It grows more unsatisfying every year.

Were I the sole arbitrator of the annual Heisman race, the 2008 trophy would have gone to Todd Reesing, QB of the 7-5 Kansas Jayhawks. He plays at an unfashionable school but his numbers compare favorably to Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow. No player does more with less. Isn’t that what separates individual greats from the herd? And has any player in college football history ever done more with less than Paul Hornung, who in 1956 single-handedly defended the honor and glory of the Notre Dame tradition on the worst Irish team of all time?

When the Downtown Athletic Club of Manhatten first informed John Heisman, one of the great architects and evangelists of the game, of their intent to name an award for the sport’s outstanding player after him, he protested. Heisman did not want to lend his name to anything that singled out one man in a team game. Compare this view of the sport to current media coverage that elevates Tebow so far above the Gators that his image now eclipses an entire university. Heisman no doubt turns in his grave every time an ESPN commentator recounts the tale of Tebow’s tear-jerking postgame press conference following the famous home loss to Ole’ Miss. Just as Heisman warned, the trophy that took his name fails to represent the root of college football's genius. Our sport's premier award has become a mockery and lies in dire need of reform.

Next year, I suggest bestowing it upon the noble and talented leader of a uninspiring sub .500 team.

(Sources: CFB data warehouse; Hornung stats: ESPN Classic on Hornung; Syracuse stats on Brown; Brown’s hoops stats; Mike Freeman, Jim Brown; Steve Delsohn, Talking Irish; SU box score of the Cotton Bowl; http://www.heisman.com/; Vols rush stats; John Devanny, Winners of the Heisman Trophy; Dan Jenkins, Greatest Moments)