It was the fall of 1940, and Americans turned to college football for relief from the turbulent world around them. The Depression still had its grip on the nation and, across the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain raged. As war crept closer every day, the nation's first peacetime draft called Americans to the defense of the country. While the great Tom Harmon of Michigan set new standards on the gridiron, on other fields black stars struggled for the right to play. At Stanford, coaching genius Clark Shaughnessy reinvented the game and in the process engineered the greatest turnaround in the history of college football. But the team everybody was talking about was Cornell. Fueled by the most powerful offense in the country, the Big Red dominated the national rankings until, on a snowy field at Dartmouth, they eked out a win with a touchdown on the last play of the game-or did they? When it came to light that the touchdown had been scored on a grievous error by the officials, Cornell, undefeated and in the race for the national championship, faced a wrenching decision. The 1940 season was one of the most exciting on record-and one that taught America about the values that really matter.
Honor On The Line
The Fifth Down and the Spectacular 1940 College Football SeasonBy Robert J. Scott Myles A. PoctaiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Scott and Myles A. Pocta
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-3208-9Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................ixINTRODUCTION............................................xiCHAPTER 1 THE CONTENDERS................................1CHAPTER 2 THE DISCOUNTED................................15CHAPTER 3 WAR CLOUDS....................................29CHAPTER 4 THE MONEY.....................................38CHAPTER 5 CONTROVERSY...................................45CHAPTER 6 HARMONIZED....................................50CHAPTER 7 DISCOUNTED NO MORE............................60CHAPTER 8 THE GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT.....................71CHAPTER 9 THE LEGEND....................................92CHAPTER 10 IT GETS PERSONAL.............................103CHAPTER 11 THE EAGLES SOAR..............................124CHAPTER 12 RANKINGS.....................................129CHAPTER 13 SETTLED ON THE FIELD.........................146CHAPTER 14 HONOR ON THE LINE............................168CHAPTER 15 TANGLED IN THE WEB...........................183CHAPTER 16 RESOLVED.....................................194CHAPTER 17 INTO HISTORY.................................200CHAPTER 18 THE CURTAIN COMES DOWN.......................217CHAPTER 19 ON DISTANT FIELDS............................225EPILOGUE................................................230NOTES...................................................251INDEX...................................................291
Chapter One
THE CONTENDERS
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. —SENECA, Moral Essays
By the second week of September, while the warm days of summer dwindled to a last precious few, the leaves high on the hillsides of upstate New York had already begun to change colors. The fall of 1940, local residents later insisted, would be the most spectacular fall foliage season in many years. Already the crisp bite of autumn was in the night air, and the sumac and the goldenrod were staging their opening acts. First a random leaf would turn around the edges, then a lone tree would stand out from its neighbors still cloaked in their green summer hues. Soon the landscape would be awash in the vibrant russets of the oaks and the brilliant ochres of the poplars. On the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, overlooking Lake Cayuga, the ivy-covered walls prepared for a scintillating fashion show, when they would soon take on a brilliant scarlet hue. The leaves, it seemed, could hardly wait to burst forth. The early colors, shimmering in the late summer breeze, were a harbinger of a spectacular autumn to come.
When Coach Carl Snavely greeted the Cornell football team for the first day of fall practice on September 11, about two weeks before the rest of the student body arrived on campus for classes, he had every reason for optimism. Since his arrival in 1936, Snavely had presided over a resurgence of Cornell football that had lifted it from a winless season in 1935 under his predecessor, Gil Dobie, to a spot among the national elite by 1938, a year in which Cornell lost only one game. And 1939 had been even better. Cornell finished the season undefeated with a perfect 8-0 record and ranked fourth in the country by the Associated Press. Two rating systems, Sagarin and Litkenhous, had declared Cornell the national champion, and it counted among its victories an impressive win over the Big Ten champion Ohio State in Columbus. The team had received an informal bid to the Rose Bowl, which it declined. Its bowl policy, shared by a number of schools, including most of the schools of the Ivy League and the Big Ten, was that eight games per year was an appropriate limit. And Cornell had not lost since the 1938 Syracuse contest, an undefeated stretch of twelve games punctuated only by a Thanksgiving Day scoreless tie with Penn.
As Snavely sketched out in his mind the starting lineup for the Big Red, he had every one of the eleven spots tentatively taken by a senior, and every one of those seniors had started at least one game the year before. In 1939, the team captain, fullback Vince Eichler, had been hurt and lost for the season before the first game, and now, with him healed and ready to return, Snavely saw no opening for him among the starting eleven. Indeed, of the regular starters from the previous year, only halfback Whit Baker was missing due to graduation. The second team, tentatively, was nearly as experienced, with two juniors in an otherwise all-senior lineup. Of the projected traveling squad of 33 players, 24 were seniors. Several prognosticators were indicating that Cornell's team might be even better than the 1939 version.
But Snavely was not an optimistic man by nature, and his biggest obstacle in 1940 could have been the high expectations set by others. The success of the 1939 team, the return of veterans nearly three-deep at every position, and the nearly unanimous opinion of the experts that Cornell would be an eastern powerhouse left Snavely little room for failure. The toughest team on the schedule appeared again to be Ohio State, and the only question from detached observers seemed to be whether the Big Red could repeat its 1939 victory over the Buckeyes. Snavely would not be able to feign weakness. Too many people knew how good his team would be. Stanley Woodward of the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "Theoretically this Cornell team is one of the greatest that ever has stepped out ready made on a football field," and added, "Snavely maintains the same mournful mien that he has been so successful in projecting in the past...." Look, in its annual preseason football forecast, warned, "Carl Snavely is always moaning. Don't listen to him." Snavely was not beyond trying, however. "We ought to win at least two games this year," was his droll prediction for the season.
Snavely was unusual among major college football coaches of the day in that he was not himself a product of a major college program. Born the son of a minister in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Danville, Pennsylvania, he played his college football at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, where he was team captain his senior year. California's Stub Allison and Colgate's Andy Kerr were, along with Snavely, among only a handful of major college coaches with small-college backgrounds. Snavely had coached at Bucknell and North Carolina before coming to Cornell in 1936. He shared with his Cornell predecessor Gil Dobie, nicknamed "Gloomy Gil", a dour outlook on life, though not Dobie's abrasive edge. His humor, only seldom coming forth, was of the driest variety. He was often tight-lipped with the press, and served as a brick wall of protection around his players. Though he often gave one-word answers to reporters hungry for a scoop, the press loved to tease him about his peculiar ways, and he seemed to take the ribbing well. He could, from time to time, open up to the point that he was generally well liked, despite his aloofness. John Kieran of the New York Times called him "an apple-a-day and early-to-bed fellow of simple rustic background and native habits." Though intense at times, often to the point of being considered unfriendly, he had outside interests, most notably golf. His friends complained of his slow play on the links, since his gridiron perfectionist tendencies carried over to the golf course.
One columnist noted that he had smiled twice during one game, thus using up his allotment for the rest of the year, and had only one chuckle left until November. But they all respected him for his coaching abilities, his fanatic attention to detail, and his demand of perfection. The New York Times, in a tribute to Snavely's abilities, called the 1939 Cornell team a "beautifully coordinated unit, thoroughly grounded in the fundamentals of blocking and tackling and almost letter perfect in the mastery of its offensive and defensive assignments." Snavely was a pioneer in the use of movies to analyze his team's performance. His first camera operator had been his wife Bernyce, but he gradually came to trust others. His well-drilled teams exhibited qualities reporters could recognize and respect, and Snavely had a bank of good will built up with them. By the end of the year he would need it.
While many of the coaches, following in the footsteps of Notre Dame great Knute Rockne, built their team around a star player, Snavely rejected the idea. He molded his team based on balance and teamwork, not on the star system, as at Michigan, or on a run-first approach, as at Minnesota, or on startling new ideas, as at Stanford. Snavely differed from Rockne in his approach to the passing game, as well. When it came to passing, Rockne was more guarded as a coach than he had been as a player, and he once said, "The pass is like a lot of dangerous things in life ... if it cannot be controlled, it's wisest to stay away from it before it ruins you." Others had equal disdain for passing. "A good running game behind good blocking is the smartest game.... Passing is a gambler's game," said Minnesota's Bernie Bierman dismissively. Snavely's approach to football strategy differed as well from that of his predecessor, Dobie. While Dobie's ideas gravitated to simplistic between-the-tackle running, he never acknowledged the need to adjust to new developments, to exploit the passing game, or to develop defenses against it.
Snavely had quality depth at every position, and he loved to pass. Of the two features that would characterize the Cornell team under Snavely, one would be the aerial game. The other was the players' seemingly instinctive brainy grasp of the game. When he praised his team, which was occasionally, Snavely emphasized the players' intellectual qualities. "The boys are far above average intellectually and this gives them additional ability to absorb," he said.
Team captain Walt Matuszczak, called a "flawless blocker and chess-brained field general" by Illustrated Football Annual, seemed a perfect man for the job. The youngest of ten children of a dairy farmer from upstate Lowville, New York, on the edge of the Adirondacks, Matuszczak aspired to be a veterinarian upon graduation, and his low-key personality seemed an ideal fit for the situation. Snavely's offense relegated him to the role of signal-caller and blocking back, and he hardly ever carried the ball or even touched it except to hand it to another player. Matuszczak took great pleasure in his work, and he was rivaled in his claim as best at his position in the country only by Michigan's Forest Evashevski. "Matuszczak has few peers as a blocker. He loves to bowl them over," said the Associated Press. As to the obscurity that role brought him, "I have no further ambitions," he said. His idea of fun was to call the signals in the huddle in Polish, a language in which he and teammate Mike Ruddy, but no other player, were fluent.
The football players of the day, due in large part to the limited substitution rule and the single-wing offense, could not claim to be specialists—passers, kickers, defensive backs—but instead of necessity were well rounded football players. Similarly, many of them were not exclusively football players, but versatile athletes, often involved in a number of varsity sports. Cornell provided a good example. The baseball team, for instance, looked much like the football team. Backs Walt Scholl and Lou Bufalino held down the infield corners, third base and first base, respectively; the outfield had end Al Kelley in left field, quarterback Mike Ruddy in center, and Matuszczak in right; center Bud Finneran was behind the plate, and the pitching was handled largely by halfback Walt Sickles and end Ray Jenkins. All these men played prominent roles on the football team. Additionally, Howie Dunbar, starting guard on the football team, was also starting center on the basketball team; and the track team had tackle Fred West, shotputter, and end Jim Schmuck, quarter miler, who were both starters on the football team, as well as Hal McCullough, Kirk Hershey, and Swifty Borhman.
When it came to post-season honors, it was Matuszczak who received attention from the Heisman Trophy balloters, while tackle Nick Drahos, from Cedarhurst, New York, the fifth of 12 children of Czech parents, would be accorded All-America honors for the second year in a row. The mainstay of the team, the man who logged more playing time than any other, was 176-pound center Bud Finneran from Harrison, New Jersey. But when asked which of the Big Red they feared the most, opposing coaches usually identified Mort Landsberg , from Mamaroneck, New York, who played fullback on offense and safety on defense. The speedy Landsberg was given a chance to play when Vince Eichler was injured, and even the former team captain couldn't earn his spot back from him. In the 1940 NFL draft, Mort Landsberg was the last player chosen, but after playing a year of pro football with the Philadelphia Eagles he entered the Navy to become a fighter pilot. In the George Bush Presidential Library there is a photograph, taken in July of 1943, of the ten men of Flight 44, Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station. In the back row, fourth from the left, stands the future 41st President, George Herbert Walker Bush. Next to him, to his immediate right, stands Mort Landsberg.
Snavely's emphasis on teamwork over individual performance allowed him to play skilled but smaller performers at key positions. While Drahos, West, Dunbar, Hershey, and Matuszczak were well above average in size, Finneran, Landsberg, Lou Conti, Kelley, Scholl, and McCullough were undersized, and their skills might have been lost in the system of another coach.
One reporter, after an interview with Snavely, managed entry into the Cornell locker room and was shocked at what he found. There was a radio playing loud swing music, Bud Finneran was playing a makeshift drum set with a washboard, Al Kelley was tap-dancing on a trainer's table, and the spontaneous joyous party atmosphere was rivaled only by what the reporter said he once saw in the New York Yankee locker room after a World Series victory. Snavely knew all about it, the players claimed, and did not object. The coach might have been dour, but Cornell had a very happy football team.
Football writers, perhaps a bit frustrated by the highly cautious nature of the coaches of the day, especially when discussing their teams' prospects for the season, teased them all mercilessly, and Snavely in particular. His unrelenting pessimism, given all he had to be optimistic about, was more than the writers could abide without resorting to poking fun. They stood by slack-jawed as Snavely pronounced, "Colgate should lick us, believe it or not," and "It's ridiculous for anyone to expect us to beat Ohio State ." He said he expected the Buckeyes to "murder us."
"Cornell's football chances for 1940 are doubtful," summed up sportswriter John Lardner . "Texas A&M is doubtful. Georgia Tech is doubtful. Indiana is very, very doubtful. Columbia is extremely doubtful." Lardner teased that those were the only teams whose coaches he had talked to so far. What, in the case of Cornell, whose prospects to any reasonable person seemed so shiningly bright, was doubtful, Lardner wondered. It was the time of year when football coaches donned their sackcloth and ashes and dabbed at their eyes with crying towels, answered the Reno Evening Gazette. "There is, of course, the possibility that one or more of the Cornell players will go to a circus and get mauled by a lion," it suggested as the only possible doubt. Snavely took it all pretty well.
Despite outward appearances, Carl Snavely knew he had a team fully capable of winning the national championship by acclaim. But he knew as well that there were many teams that would challenge his for the title. In the next two months some would fall by the wayside, others would unexpectedly join the challenge, and all would be buffeted by the winds of fortune, both good and bad. Talent would be a prerequisite, Snavely knew, but it alone would not be enough. The only thing that could alleviate the preseason anxiety was opening day, when all the loose and airy talk of prospects would be replaced, as it always was, by more solid talk of achievement. Like the autumn leaves on the Ithaca hillsides, the Cornell football team couldn't wait to burst out. But fans, students, alumni, and the players and coaches would all have to wait until October 5, a week later than for most teams.
Some enthusiastic followers expressed impatience that Snavely would not step forward and embrace the great prospects of his team. Others came to his defense. "Nothing quite as promising had been seen since Napoleon started out to Moscow with the Grand Army behind him," wrote athletic manager-turned-columnist Rym Berry of the Cornell team. "But every football coach knows that the road to Moscow leads also to Elba and to St. Helena.... The mob wants Napoleon to look at them and say, 'We'll take 'em, boys, we'll take 'em.' But with the inexorable certainty of Elba and St. Helena pressing on his heart, the coach says no such thing. And the mob snarls!"
* * *
The crowd of 35,401 fans in Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California, craned their necks to get a better look at Tom Harmon standing on the goal line ready to receive the opening kickoff. It was September 28, 1940, and at last the beginning of one of the most tumultuous college football seasons in history was moments away. The crowd that was gathered to watch the Michigan Wolverines play the California Golden Bears had all heard plenty about Harmon, perhaps the most famous player in America, but few had ever seen him play. By the end of last season his picture had already appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which proclaimed him "the No. 1 footballer of the year." Neither had many in the crowd ever seen the powerful Wolverine team play, since its last trip west had been to the inaugural 1902 Rose Bowl. Intersectional games, though not rare, were logistically challenging, often involving three or four days of travel in each direction. The fact that Michigan represented the Western Conference , which played its games 1500 miles to the east, underscored the status of the West Coast as something of an outpost when it came to sports in general and college football in particular. It would be seven years before major league football, and 18 years before major league baseball, ventured west, and visits to the west by distant teams in any sport were significant undertakings.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Honor On The Lineby Robert J. Scott Myles A. Pocta Copyright © 2012 by Robert J. Scott and Myles A. Pocta. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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