October 12, 1957: San Jose State at Oregon

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In Oregon’s first Rose Bowl season since 1920, the big story of mid-October wasn’t the heady play of the Oregon backfield. It was the controversy caused by the disclosure that admission standards at Oregon for out-of-state students were being raised without regard for the needs of the athletic department.  Up the road, OAC did not differentiate between locals and imports with regard to qualifications, and as a result the Beavers were said to be poaching athletes – primarily football and baseball players – who wanted to attend Oregon but couldn’t qualify, because of an arbitrary decision by the admissions department. This, as could be expected, did not sit well with the alumni, nor with local scribes:

“.. in addition to the loss of university prestige and the revenue needed to make the athletic department self-sustaining, there is always the matter of putting the coaches in the position of playing in a highly competitive league without the tools to compete. In view of the high caliber of men currently coaching the Oregon teams, it seems  unfair to handicap them in this matter.” – Dick Strite, sports editor, Eugene Register-Guard

The admissions department eventually backed down after negotiations with UO president Meredith Wilson.

The ’57 Ducks didn’t do a lot of backing down on the field. Coming into week 4 off a shutout of UCLA, and with their only loss to a Pitt team that went on to whip USC and blow out Nebraska, Len Casanova’s best team so far had only allowed 12 points over three games. For the first of only three games in Eugene that season, the townies were treated to a puff pastry in San Jose State. The passing attack that would prove so effective later in the season had yet to be fully developed, and the Webfoots ground out a 26-0 victory with a decidedly unbalanced attack – 59 runs and 11 passes. But two of Oregon’s four touchdowns came via air; one from halfback Charley Tourville to a wide-open Jim Shanley for 16 yards, the other a two-yard flip from QB Jack Crabtree to end Jay Wheeler, after Shanley opened the 2^nd half with a sensational 61-yard kickoff return. Shanley added a 58 yard run off tackle, and nose tackle Bob Peterson blocked a SJS punt into the end zone and recovered for the game’s final score.

Later, in a season where Washington, UCLA and USC were declared ineligible for the various hijinks that eventually led to the distintegration of the old PCC, Oregon beat USC 16-7 behind the then-record 211 rushing yards of Jack Morris in its penultimate regular-season contest to clinch a tie for the conference title. The Webfoots lost the ’57 Civil War, but earned the Rose Bowl bid anyway thanks to a no-repeat clause, OSC having won the 1956 title.

Program Notes –

• The generic covers by “R. Vrooman” continue, with costly period oils and watercolors eschewed for something you could slap on the front of a thirty-five cent magazine. This cover appears on several other college programs of the period.
• The advertising mix is interesting: KitchenAid dishwashers, Lady Sunbeam Shavemasters, Longines wristwatches spoke to an odd demographic. Maybe the publishers thought the ladies would be spending more time staring at the program than at the action – and, judging by the Cracker Jack ad, where the girl is staring at the prize while the guy watches the action on the field, they might have been onto something.
• Going along with the apparent appeal to the distaff fan, page 18 has an un-bylined feature, “Try Something New”, that implores the reader to “take your attention off the ball carrier for a couple of plays and watch some particular lineman do his job” for a “new football thrill.” It’s non-generic, current (“the replacements have come along nicely and have helped ably in each of the first three games”) and well written.
• For once something other than tobacco shares the color sections, with only the center roster spread and back cover bearing cigarette ads.

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November 1, 1952 – College of the Pacific at Oregon

Those who worship the memory of Len Casanova – and they are legion, your faithful blogger included – sometimes forget that it took him a while to get things going his way. Coming out of the wreckage of Jim Aiken’s program, Cas went 5-19-1 over his first 25 games, and there were some frustrating moments; a three-game shutout streak in early 1953, a 49-0 debacle in Seattle in 1952… and home-and-home losses to College of the Pacific. The return match with the Tigers, a 14-6 Webfoots loss in Eugene, is the subject of this week’s program.

The game was played under fog and clouds that threatened but did not release, preserving a five-year streak of no rain at Hayward Field. (It is not known whether one of Don Essig’s predecessors uttered the immortal “It never rains at 15^th and Agate!”) After being blown out 34-6 in ‘51, the Webfoots made a better accounting of themselves in the rematch; their first-quarter touchdown, an 84-yard strike from Hal Dunham to Ted Anderson, stood as the longest pass play in Oregon history until 1970. But Oregon couldn’t find the end zone again, and couldn’t withstand COP’s balanced attack, led by HB Tom McCormick, who scored both of the Tigers touchdowns.

(Oregon had its share of trouble with Pacific over the years, dropping 3 of the 7 contests before the Tigers folded their football tent in 1995, the third loss being a real doozy – the 1983 season opener at Autzen, where they were favored by three touchdowns.)

Program Notes:

• It was Election Week in America in 1952, and one can draw whatever conclusions one wishes from the fact that while the Republicans ticket purchased a full-page ad in the Oregon program (page 25), the Democrats couldn’t be bothered. (Eisenhower and Nixon held a distinct campaign advantage on the gridiron. Ike was a member of the powerful Army football teams of 1913-1916, and a teammate of former Oregon head coach Cap McEwan. Ike’s running mate was a JV tackling dummy in high school at Whittier, and later famously called a play for Washington during the 1971 NFL playoffs. There is no record of Adlai Stevenson ever donning pads and cleats, and although his VP candidate, John Sparkman, was from the football hotbed of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the Democrats were trounced in the election.)
• In his only two seasons at the helm in Stockton, 1951 and 1952, Ernie Jorge guided COP to a Sun Bowl bid each year. But head coaching didn’t seem to be Jorge’s calling. (The questionable financial state of the program probably didn’t help; COP would only hire coaches on a one-year contract, and there was some discussion of dropping football altogether, as Santa Clara would for a few years after 1952.) Jorge moved on after the 1952 season to assistant coaching positions with the NFL Chicago Cardinals and, later, at Navy, under his friend and former Pacific assistant Wayne Hardin. (That’s the “Hardin” in the photo at the top of page 6.)
  During his tenure with the Midshipmen, Jorge befriended the son of a fellow assistant coach, and each week sent the ten-year-old football junkie a copy of the Navy offensive game plan for the next game. The envelope was labeled “BILL’S READY LIST.” (The boy grew up to be Bill Belichick.) While on a scouting trip for his last employer, the Houston Oilers, Jorge suffered a fatal heart attack in his room at a Holiday Inn in Kent, Ohio; he was 51 years old.
• Once again, the only color outside of the program’s cover is for tobacco advertising. The center spread, again brought to you by Chesterfield, is nondescript, but the other full-page ads feature a pair of comely lasses; unidentified on the back cover (Camel), but on the inside cover is Dorothy Collins herself, the “Sweetheart of Lucky Strike.” Collins was a star of Your Hit Parade, a weekly TV show featuring vocalists lip-synching popular songs of the day…
  and it’s not a huge leap from this to American Idol, is it?  (Collins died of respiratory distress in 1994, in one of life’s little ironies for a tobacco wench; she suffered from chronic asthma.)
• The $2552.88 for a ‘52 Buick – delivered – in 1952 works out to around $21,000 in 2011. That RCA Victor TV on the inside back cover for $199.95? A little over $1600 today. You can buy a 1952 Buick Super from a dealer in Happy Valley for $8,499 as of today (9/12/11), and in the words of the seller, “gas it up and drive it to L.A. from Portland.” If you could find a 1952 RCA Victor television today, you’d see nothing but static… assuming it would fire up at all.

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November 4, 1950: WSC at Oregon

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1950. The Fifties hadn’t really started yet. The baby boomers were just becoming babies. Car companies were still grinding out models based on pre-war designs. The Cold War began in earnest after Russia announced a successful atomic bomb test, and McCarthy had just begun his rampage against the commies in the State Department. In November, the Korean War reached a tipping point, as UN troops, in their first meaningful action, proved remarkably ineffective.

And in Eugene, Oregon, a football coach was in the middle of what would become – and remains – the worst football season in Duck history.

Jim Aiken’s descent from hero status was as sudden as his emergence four years earlier. Having taken a team of veterans – literally, vets, WW2 style – and guided them to a conference championship and Cotton Bowl berth in 1948, he was the toast of the town. But the vets graduated, and Aiken started doing what everyone else had been doing in the conference.. recruiting on the edge, and providing under-the-table benefits, in an effort to get and keep good players.

At one point, after the Colorado game in mid-1949, Aiken’s Ducks had won 19 of 22 games. From that weekend forward, his teams went 1-15. In a few years scandals throughout the conference would blow up the old PCC and send Oregon into independence for a few years, but by 1950, all his non-compliance had earned Aiken was a team full of undersized underachievers.  And it showed on the field. Only guard Chet Daniels would earn as much as honorable mention on the All-Coast team for 1950.

By the 1950 Homecoming game, against Washington State, Aiken’s Webfoots had slogged their way to a 1-5 record, with the only win against Montana; they had just lost in LA to one the worst USC teams in history, 30-21, and the normally gruff coach had changed his preparation tactics. He gave the team the week off from full-contact practice, no pads, hoping the rest would do them some good. Not much else had worked; by game seven, senior QB Earl Stelle was 34-79 for 427 yards, two TDs and 10 interceptions, and the backfield by committee – Tommy Edwards, Don Sloan, Ron Lyman and Carl Ervin – was averaging under 100 yards a game.

The week off didn’t help, as the Cougars overcame a halftime deficit with two TDs in the last 10 minutes for a 21-13 road victory.  And so went the rest of the season. A 14-2 Civil War loss put Oregon’s record at 1-9, statistically the worst in school history, then and now (as of 2010). Even the Register-Guard, which at the time could hardly be called a critical judge of the team, laid into them.. in a matter of speaking:

Wait until next year! That’s a crock of buttermilk, and a saying that has been worn to shreds. But there is no doubt that 1950 has been a “building year” for University of Oregon football. And we don’t mean character building, either, although some attention might be given to intellect.. When September arrives, the nine regulars and 25 other veterans should give Oregon the nucleus for a fair-to-middlin’ grid team – providing the boys aren’t more worried about their ‘pay checks’ than blocking, tackling and point-production.. You can’t expect too much help from the freshman squad.”

– Dick Strite, Eugene Register-Guard

Aiken was sacked the following June under bizarre circumstances, replaced by Len Casanova.

Thus, the highlight of the weekend wasn’t at Hayward Field, but down 13^th a few blocks; the brand new Erb Memorial Union was dedicated the day before the game, and the $2.1 million complex received rave reviews from students and alumni. The game program this week features a three-page photo spread on the new EMU.  “For the first time, unaffiliated students can get a warm meal on campus.” (How many of our readers know that it took 27 years for the EMU to go from concept to completion? I didn’t.)

Program Note: Some new advertisers appear — KUGN, longtime voice of the Ducks, all 1000 watts of her; and West Coast Airlines, “a government certificated, regularly-scheduled airline.” The future has, at last, arrived.

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