John Heisman's Georgia Tech team beats Cumerland 222 - 0.
Tech was winning 126 - 0 at halftime, and you know what Heisman told his boys? He told them, "Look out for those Cumberland boys. There's no tellin' what they have up their sleeves." Now that's a football coach.
Former Notre Dame star Curly Lambeau takes a job as a clerk with India Packing Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Lambeau convinces his boss that there are enough good football players in the company to form a semi-pro company-sponsored team, and the Green Bay Packers are born.
Most of Lambeau's players didn't like him much, and didn't think he had much of a pigskin head on his shoulders. He was good at kicking butt, though, and getting his men to play hard.
He had a reputation as a tough disciplinarian, but his rules didn't apply to himself. He caroused, drank, ran with women and Hollywood-types - all of the same things he'd punish his players for.
But he coached the Packers for 29 years and in the NFL for 33 years, going 226 - 132 - 22, and he has his name on the side of the greatest pigskin stadium in the NFL - Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The American Professional Football Association is formed and Jim Thorpe is named its president. The Akron Pros are awarded the first championship.
Representatives from the biggest schools in the SIAA meet to form the Southern Conference.
Tennessee plays its first game at Shields-Watkins Field, capacity 3,200. The field would later be named Neyland Stadium and hold 107,000 plus.
The first pigskin battle played on Shields-Watkins Field was against Emory & Henry College and the Knoxville Army marched to a 27 - 0 win.
The field started being built in 1919. Col. W.S. Shields, president of the Knoxville City National Bank, ponied up the original cash for the stadium. Of course, these days it's called Neyland Stadium, named after the great coach and soldier Gen. Robert Neyland, who dominated the southern pigskin scene from 1925 to 1952.
Now the stadium is the second biggest in the country and can hold as many as 107,000 fans on a Saturday afternoon.
Georgia Tech and Notre Dame begin rivalry that will last eight straight years. The Irish won seven, including the 1924 match-up that featured the famed Four Horsemen and Seven Mules. The final score was 34 - 3.
I remember that two Irish players went over to the Georgia Tech locker room to pay a compliment to the Tech players "You guys are so fast and shifty - how in the world did you get that way?"
Tech halfback Don Miller said, "As you know we spend a lot of time traveling around the country - and our shiftiness comes from climbing in and out of upper berths."
Grange was the first ball carrier I ever saw that had the shake n' bake. I won't never forget October 18, 1924, when Grange's Illinois team met Fielding Yosts' "Point-A-Minute" Michigan Wolverines.
Illinois stadium was being dedicated and Yost's teams hadn't lost a game in three years. Well, Grange took the opening kickoff and slashed, dashed, whirled and scampered his way 95 yards for a touchdown. In the next ten minutes, Grange scored another three touchdowns of 67, 56 and 44 yards, then sat our the final three minutes of the half.
It was the best twelve minutes of football I'd ever seen. Then in the second half, Grange scored a fifth touchdown and passed for a sixth, and the Illini beat the mighty Wolverines 39 - 14.
When Grange was introduced to the eastern media during the Penn game, on the first play from scrimmage he bolted 60 yards for a touchdown.
He went on to sign a $100,000 contract with the Chicago Bears and he single handedly double attendance at professional football games.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse lead Notre Dame to an undefeated season and the national championship. Elmer Layden, Jim Crowley, Don Miller, Harry Stuhlreder were each unanimous All-Americans.
Y'all have seen the picture of Layden, Crowley, Miller, and Stuhlreder holding footballs and wearing helmets and sitting four across on those horses.
Well, Stuhlreder was sitting on my little horse "Pepper," the one with the white blaze that looks like a map of West Virginia between her eyes. She was a good horse and Stuhlreder wasn't too keen on climbing aboard at first.
I miss Pepper.
Alabama Governor Bill Brandon allows Alabama Coach Wallace Wade to write a letter under Brandon's signature lobbying the Rose Bowl selection committee to chose Alabama to face Washington.
Alabama gets the Rose Bowl bid, and Washington is a 2 -1 favorite in the game. After his team arrives in California, Wade calls home and instructs Alabama fans to send telegrams to his homesick players reminding them, "Now is their chance to get even with the damn Yankees."
Alabama fell behind 12 - 0 in the first half, but Alabama came back to take win 20 - 19.
I remember Alabama's third touchdown came on Johnny Mack Brown's 60-yard touchdown catch making the score 20 - 12. Well, Washington got the ball back and drove 88 yards for its own touchdown making it 20 - 19.
Clinging on to that one-point lead, the Bama boosters wanted the game over with. Well, in those days, the time-keeper signaled the end of the game by firing a gun into the air. The time ticked down in the forth quarter and the time-keeper raised his gun into the air, but he couldn't get it to fire.
Just then, one of the Alabama boosters left the press box, ran onto the field, took the gun from the time keeper and fired it himself. Until this game nobody outside of the South knew about Alabama football.
Red Grange signs to play with the Chicago Bears less than a week after his college career ends, and the NFL gets the star it needs and gains some legitimacy.
Five days later, in a snowstorm, 28,000 fans show up to watch Grange lead the Bears to 14- 13 win over the Columbus Tigers.
More than 300,000 fans watch the Galloping Ghost play over ten weeks, and the attendance figures make Grange a rich man, and rockets Bears owner George Halas to the top of NFL ownership.
Alabama plays Stanford in the Rose Bowl to a 7 - 7 tie. The game is noteworthy as the first ever broadcast nationally over the radio.
It's the day I realized how the radio and the pigskin game went together. I was sitting on the porch.
It was cold outside, but my baby niece was visiting and she was taking a nap, so my Mama made me set the radio up outside. It was broadcast by NBC, I believe, and I could see the players banging heads in my mind's eye.
That Alabama team had some of the finest nicknames in pigskin history. Lovely Barnes, Snake Vines, Goofy Bowdoin, Rosy Caldwell.
Well, Stanford scored first on a 20-yard pass from George Bogue to Ed Walker and went ahead 7 - 0. With four minutes to play in the game, Tide center Babe Pierce blocked a Stanford punt, and Alabama took over at the Indian's fourteen yard line.
Four plays later, Jimmy Johnson, dislocated shoulder and all, scored on a two yard plunge. Herschel Caldwell kicked the extra point, and I hollered so loud that I woke up my baby niece and my Mama stomped my toe.
Been watching the pigskin game my whole life, and I've seen a lot of strange things. The "Immaculate Reception," Woody Hayes punching Clemson's Charlie Bauman, but I don't think I've ever seen anything like Roy Riegels wrong way run that cost his own team the 1929 Rose Bowl.
Reigels scooped up a Tech fumble and ran like heck towards his own goal. Now Reigels was a center, and centers ain't the swiftest players on the gridiron, but he was running like some sort of madman, and his own player, a safety, tripped him up six inches from his own goal line.
Then Tech scored a safety on the next play, and Reigels took himself out of the game and sat on the Cal bench. Cal ended up losing 8 - 7, and Reigels wrong way run cost his team the Rose Bowl!
The Chicago Tribune wrote about the incident: "Right there is at least 10 years' food for the California chapter of the Brotherhood of Second Guessers."
Them Yalies were wearing blue sweaters, and it was hot as a wagon axle in Athens that day. Well, the Yalies wilted in the heat and lost 15 - 0.
Yale's main man was a 144-pound All-American halfback named Albie Booth. Booth's nickname was "Little Boy Blue" and the "Mighty Atom." Booth couldn't get loose from the Georgia defense all day long.
On one play, Georgia end "Catfish" Smith stopped Booth in the backfield with a gut-busting tackle, and Booth said to Smith, "Look here, there are some things that don't go in this game." "I know," said Smith, "and one of them is Albie Booth."
One southern sports historian called the game, "The biggest thing to happen in the South since Appomattox - except this time we won."
Benny Friedman revolutionizes the game by throwing 20 touchdown passes for the NFL's New York Giants, shattering all previous records.
Friedman was one heck of a football player. When he was growing up in Cleveland, he was cut from the East Tech High School football team because the coach thought he was too small.
Well, that was a mistake. Friedman transferred to Glenville High, where he led the team to the Cleveland City title and then to the state title. On the way, he ran for four touchdowns against East Tech High.
He played his college ball at Michigan, where he was so good that Fielding Yost came out of retirement to coach him. Friedman's fourteen touchdown passes revolutionized the game in 1925, and led Michigan to the Big Ten title. Friedman's main passing target was Bennie Oosterbaan. The "Benny to Bennie" connection became nationally known.
Friedman began his pro pigskin career with the Cleveland Bulldogs and the Detroit Wolverines. Then Giant's owner Tim Mara bought the Detroit team just so he could get Friedman. Mara knew that Friedman would have appeal in New York because of the large Jewish population. When he threw for 20 touchdowns in 1929, the record stood for thirteen years.
March 31, 1931, the world is stunned and saddened by the news that Knute Rockne has been killed in a plane crash. Rockne won 88% of his games, still the greatest winning percentage in college football history.
I remember I was in the barbershop getting my weekly trim when the anchor man came on the radio and said that Rockne had been killed. Melvin the barber took the scissors away from my head and we both looked at the radio and listened to the voice tell us that the plane he was flying in had gone down over Kansas.
I remember Mel said, "I ain't a fan of Notre Dame, but I liked that Rockne." Then he went back to cutting my hair and we didn't say nothing else for the rest of the time. Next day in the newspaper, there was a story about the accident and I cut it out and put it in my pigskin scrapbook.
There was a quote from two farmers who'd been the first to get to the plane:We spent two hours trying to haul the lifeless bodies out of the wreckage. There were two pilots and five passengers. We had no idea who they were. I knew nothing about football, but I knew who Knute Rockne was. We all felt terribly sad when we finally identified his body.
It said in the newspaper that Rockne's own mother heard the news over the radio. "It is God's will," she said. "We must not question it." I've never flown on a plane, and Rockne's death is the reason why.
Of course, nobody knew that the SEC was gonna become what it is today - the most football-crazy conference in the U S of A.
Folks been asking me for years why the South takes the pigskin game like life and death. I think it's cause we didn't have nothing to do down here fifty or sixty years ago. There weren't no museums or plays back then. The cities weren't big enough to have professional sports teams.
So, the pigskin became our opera and the gridiron our stage, and men like Paul "Bear" Bryant, Joe "Willy" Namath, and Herschel Walker are our three tenors. That's just what I think.
Alabama wins the first SEC conference championship.
The 1933 Alabama team was coached by Rockne man Frank Thomas. The Tide went 7 - 1 - 1 that season. They tied Ole Miss 0 - 0, and lost to Fordham 2 - 0.
That Tide team was led by All-Conference halfback Millard "Dixie" Howell. Of course, in 1934 Howell led the Tide to the National Championship and a 10 - 0 record.
He had some help that year from a mean hombre named Paul "Bear" Bryant, J.B. "Ears" Whitworth, and Don Hutson, who was the greatest pass catcher I ever saw, bar none. Sorry, Jerry Rice, but I aim to speak the truth.
Of course Beattie Feathers was running behind Bronislua "Bronco" Nagurski, the greatest fullback to ever play the game. My grandma could have toted her walker for at least 750 yards running behind Nagurski.
Steve Owen, the New York Giant's coach, said about Nagurski, "There's only one defense against him - shoot him before he leaves the dressing room!" Red Grange said of Nagurski, " There was something strange about tackling Nagurski. When you hit him at the ankles, it is almost like getting an electric shock. If you hit him above the ankles, you are likely to get killed."
One last legend about Bronco. Evidently he opened a gas station after he retired from the NFL Bears. A visitor to town asked whether or not he was successful.
"Once someone gets gas from Bronco, they never go anyplace else," a local told him.
"Is the service that good?" asked the visitor.
"No, not really." said the local.
"Does he have the best price?"
"About the same as everybody else."
"Then the gas must be better."
"No, it's just regular gas."
"Then why does everyone keep coming back to Bronco?"
"Because when Bronco Nagurski puts your gas cap on, no one but Bronco Nagurski can get it back off."
The Alabama Crimson Tide fields one of the greatest single-platoon teams ever, featuring such greats as quarterback Dixie Howell, receiver Don Hudson, and a lineman named Paul "Bear" Bryant out of Arkansas.
In the 1935 Rose Bowl, the Crimson Tide met a Stanford team that featured All-American fullback Bobby Grayson. Bryant was matched up against All-American tackle Horse Reynolds, an enormous player for that era at 6-4 250 pounds.
After falling behind 7 - 0 on a Bobby Grayson touchdown run, the Tide went on to win 29 - 13 on the back of a spectacular performance by Howell.
Dixie Howell had a spectacular game against Stanford, and the great sports writer Grantland Rice wrote, "Dixie Howell, the human howitzer from Hartford, Alabama, blasted the Rose Bowl hopes of Stanford today with one of the greatest all-round exhibitions football has ever seen." Howell gained 111 yards rushing and 160 yards passing, and he punted six times for a 44-yard average.
I remember what Coach Bryant said about facing the gargantuan Horse Reynolds, "I was having bad dreams about facing him. I remember I held him once for Howell to make a long run, but I didn't block him all day."
Will Rogers said of that game, "It was like holding up a picture of Sherman's March to The Sea in front of them Alabama boys."
College football begins using a different ball that is more elongated and allows for more accurate passing.
Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago wins the first Heisman Trophy. The trophy is named after the Downtown Athletic Club's athletic director John Heisman.
Berwanger was what I call a "football player," in that he could play any position on the field. By the end of the season, he ran for 577 yards, passed for 405, returned kicks for 359, scored six touchdowns, and 5 PAT's.
Later in the year, the NFL had its first ever draft of college players and Berwanger was the first player chosen by Philadelphia.
The Associated Press begins publishing the a college football ranking. Minnesota finishes the season 7 -1 and is crowned the AP's first National Champion.
Byron "Whizzer" White of Colorado becomes the first 1,000 yard rusher in college football.
This was the year that "Whizzer" White finished second to Yale quarterback Clinton Frank for the Heisman Trophy. I only saw White play once, and I forget who it was against.
I remember they had him pretty well hogtied in the first half, but in the second half, he went wild. On one play, he got cornered by a punt at around the fifteen yard line, drop-stepped to the ten, side-stepped a few tacklers, then weaved his way through the rest and bolted down the opposite sideline for a 85 yard touchdown.
Later in the game, he squeezed around the right end and outran the defense for a 57-yard touchdown. White still holds an armload of Colorado football records for the longest punt return, most touchdowns in a half (4), most punt returns for touchdowns in a game (2), and longest kick-off return (105 yards).
Oh yeah, and he was a Rhodes Scholar, World War II veteran, and Supreme Court Justice. But this is a pigskin site, so we won't get into all that.
The Duke University defense is the first to go an entire regular season without allowing a point.
That Duke team was coached by Alabama man Wallace Wade, and it set some amazing records. Fewest plays allowed in a season (336 for 961 yards), fewest yards per play (2.56), fewest yards allowed in a game (-49 against N.C. State), and on and on.
Then they went out to Pasadena to meet USC in the Rose Bowl. I remember that game went back and forth between two great defenses for about three hours. Then, late in the third quarter, USC punter Granny Lansdell punted to Duke's George McAfee, and McAfee returned the ball to the USC 49 yard line. Duke got stopped at the twenty-five, though, and had to settle for a field goal by Tony Ruffa, making the score 3 - 0.
Then the Trojans got the ball with two minutes left to play on the Duke 35 yard line. USC coach Howard Jones sent in fourth string quarterback Doyle Nave. None of the other quarterbacks had been able to do anything. Nave somehow completed three straight passes to end Al Krueger, with the game winning touchdown coming from 16 yards out.
So, there it was - USC scored a touchdown and Duke fell 7 - 3 and one minute shy of going undefeated and unscored upon for the season.
Helmets become mandatory equipment.
Tom Harmon of Michigan becomes the first finish college with more than 2,000 yards rushing.
Old number 98 was as good as any football player I ever seen, bar none.
In three years at Michigan, Harmon gained 3,458 yards running and passing, and scored 33 touchdowns, breaking Red Grange's record of 31.
I used to watch him on the newsreels at the Saturday picture show. I remember watching the highlights of his last college game against Ohio State.
The game was played in Columbus, but Michigan had the Buckeyes under their thumb even back in 1940. Harmon ran for three touchdowns in that game, passed for two more, kicked four extra points, and averaged 50 yards on three punts. Michigan won the game 40 - 0, and the newsreel showed the Ohio State fans swarming Harmon after the game. Some of them tore of pieces of his jersey as souvenirs.
It was the darndest thing I ever seen. Harmon won the Heisman Trophy that year by a landslide.
Chicago beats Washington 73 - 0 in the NFL title game, the most lopsided victory in NFL history.
Sewanee leaves the SEC after being unable to win a single game in eight seasons.
The little school Sewanee had fallen far since I'd ridden that train with them through Mississippi in 1899.
The 1899 pigskin team was as tough as any in the history of the game, but they couldn't compete anymore with the big schools in the south.
November 15, 1941 Grambling Eddie Robinson wins his first football game over Tillotson College 37 - 6.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor causes the Rose Bowl to be played in Durham, North Carolina. Large gatherings are prohibited on the west coast.
Georgia's Frank Sinkwich becomes the first college player to run and pass for over 2,000 yards.
Notre Dame beats Michigan in the first ever battle between No. 1 and 2 ranked teams.
Notre Dame won that game 35- 12 and finished the season 9 - 1 - 0, and won its first National Championship.
That Irish team was led by coach Frank Leahy. Leahy had scrapped the Notre Dame Box formation and was using the T-formation instead.
The Irish wasn't supposed to do much that season. They only returned two starters from the '42 team that went 7 - 2 - 2, and they played seven of their ten games on the road. But they had Angelo Bertelli at quarterback and Creighton Miller at halfback, and they were two tough hombres.
Bertelli completed 5 of 8 passes for two touchdowns against the Wolverines, and Miller gained an average of 16 yards per carry. The Irish lost their last game of the season to Great Lakes College on a 40-yard pass with 33 second left in the game.
They still won the National Championship, though, and Bertelli won Notre Dame's first Heisman Trophy.
Because of WWII, several retired players return to action. Free substitution is allowed so that older players can rest.
Army averages 56 points per game, which is an all-time record.
From 1944 to 1946 the college pigskin universe was dominated by Army and greatest football duo in the history of the sport - Doc "Mr. Outside" Blanchard and Glenn "Mr. Inside" Davis.
Blanchard was 6 foot 208 pounds and ran the 100 yard dash in 10 second flat. Davis ran for 2,957 yards. Together they led Army to three straight National Championships, and in 1945 Blanchard won the Heisman Trophy, while in 1946 Davis collected one of his own.
I was lucky to see the two greatest games they ever played. In 1945, in front of 102,000 fans and President Harry Truman, Blanchard scored three touchdowns, one a 46-yard interception return, where I watched him run through the last defender like he was nothing but a cloud of smoke.
Army went 9 - 0 that year. Then, in 1946, when Blanchard was out with a knee injury, I saw Davis single-handedly beat Michigan by running for one touchdown of 58 yards and passing for another. Davis ended up that game running for 105 yards and passing 158. On that 58 yarder, he swiveled his hips to work his way outside, then his ankles sprouted wings, and away he went.
Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside ended their career with one blemish on their record - a 0 - 0 tie with Notre Dame.
Davis averaged 8.26 yards per carry, a record that won't ever be broken, and he scored 59 touchdowns.
The forward pass is legalized from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, encouraging the use of the modern "T" formation.
The Irish went the next three season without losing a game.
The '46 and '47 squads were led by quarterback Johnny Lujack, but had some help from the likes of All-Americans George Connor, Bill Fischer, and future Heisman winner Leon Hart.
In '46, the Irish went 8 - 0 -1, with the tie coming in a scoreless game against Army.
In '47, the only team to challenge the Irish was Northwestern by a score of 26 - 19, and the Irish ended up beating No. 3 ranked Southern Cal 38 - 7. Lujack won the Heisman and the Irish finished No. 1 for the second year straight.
The Irish started the 1948 season with a close call against Purdue 28 - 27 at the Pigskin Vatican, and ended the season with a 14 - 14 tie against a Southern Cal team with revenge in its heart.
USC might not have knocked off the Irish, but blocked their third straight No. 1 finish. Michigan got the nod instead.
Lujack was gone in '48, but the team was led by the backfield of left halfback Terry Brennan, and right halfback Emil Sitka.
In 1949, the Irish went 10 - 0, and weren't challenged until the last game of the year against SMU.
That game was tied 20 - 20 behind the strong effort of SMU running back Kyle Rote with seven minutes to go.
Then Notre Dame went on offense and literally shoved the ball down SMU's throat with ten straight runs covering 54 yards and ending with a touchdown.
SMU got the ball back with time to score, but Rote threw an interception to Notre Dame's Jerry Groom.
So that ended a streak where the Irish went 36 - 0 - 2. Nineteen-fifty was Oklahoma's year and the Irish went 4 - 4 - 1.
On December 4, Alabama and Auburn play for the first time since 1907. Alabama wins 55 - 0.