[Bar Chat returns, Wednesday.]
College Football Quiz: In the decade of the 80s, how many
national championships did schools from the “Southeast” win
and who were they? Answer below.
Johnny Mac”s Football History
Ask the casual fan for a list of great college coaches and some
usual suspects will turn up; Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Knute
Rockne, Eddie Robinson, and possibly Tom Osborne or Bobby
Bowden. But rarely will you hear the name of Bud Wilkinson.
History is strange sometimes, because Charles Bud Wilkinson
compiled one of the finest records in all of college football.
Born April 23, 1916 in Minnesota, Bud was an athlete from an
early age. He played as a youth for a neighborhood team known
as the “50th Street Tigers,” who were quarterbacked by future
golf-great Patty Berg (as in Patricia). Quite a feat for those days,
wouldn”t you say? When Bud was just 6, he and his mother
were in an accident that seriously injured her. She passed away a
year later. Bud”s father decided to send him away to high
school, Shattuck Military Academy in Fairbault, MN. This
military training would have a direct effect on his style of
coaching years down the road. While there, Bud played football,
basketball, hockey and ran track.
He enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1933 to play for
Coach Bernie Bierman, who was very well regarded at the time.
The Gophers were a national power then, winning 3 national
titles in Bud”s tenure. Wilkinson played guard and quarterback,
a strange combination I”ll grant you. He was a good enough QB
to lead the college all-stars to a win over NFL champion Green
Bay in 1937. While at UM he also played goalie on the hockey
team and captained the golf team. He was offered the co-
captaincy of the football team in 1936, but decided to defer to a
teammate who was suffering scholastic problems. Bud thought
the honor would help motivate the other player. This type of
behavior would be typical of Wilkinson.
He was the Big Ten medal-winner for athletics and academics in
his senior year. A short stint in his father”s bank helped him
decide on a career in coaching. He served as an assistant at
Syracuse and Minnesota before joining the Navy in 1943,
serving as a hangar deck officer on an aircraft carrier as well as
coaching football for the Iowa Pre-Flight team. After the war
ended, Jim Tatum asked him to join his staff at Oklahoma in
1946. Tatum left the next year for Maryland, and so at the ripe
old age of 31, Wilkinson assumed the Head Coach and Athletic
Director duties at OU.
After a slow 2-2-1 start, his team ran off five-straight to take
what was then the Big Six title. This started a string of 13
consecutive conference championships. The Sooner dynasty was
taking shape. They went to the Sugar Bowl the next 2 years;
posting wins over North Carolina and LSU. Then they opened
up 10-0 in 1950, running their victory streak to 31. A loss to
Kentucky in the Sugar Bowl that year snapped the run, but OU
captured their first national title anyway.
That was but a taste of the streak to come. After a loss to Notre
Dame and a tie with Pitt in the 1953 season, Oklahoma beat
Texas to start what would eventually become a 47-game winning
streak. Undefeated in ”54, ”55 and ”56, Oklahoma won 2
national titles before losing to Notre Dame in November of 1957.
The 47 straight is a major college record and the Sooners
dominated opponents, averaging 34.5 points while allowing but
6.
The Notre Dame game was the lone loss in ”57 and Oklahoma
ended up 10-1, as they would in ”58. They went to the Orange
Bowl both years, defeating Duke and Syracuse. Overall, from
1948 to 1958, Wilkinson”s charges would post a 107-8-2
record.107-8-2!! Unbelievable.
The team slipped a bit the next few years and Bud retired after
the 1963 season, still a young man of 48. Before stepping down,
he was named by JFK as the first director of the President”s
Council on Physical Fitness. This whetted his political appetite
and Bud made a run for the Senate in 1964. A conservative by
nature, he picked a bad year to run as a Republican. LBJ won in
a landslide, yet Bud lost his race by a mere 21,000 votes to
Democrat Fred Harris. [And no, he didn”t demand a hand
count.]
He became a TV analyst in 1965 and was named a special
consultant to President Nixon in 1969. At age 61, Wilkinson was
inexplicably lured back to the game by St. Louis Cardinals owner
Bill Bidwell who tabbed him to coach the team in 1978. As is
the case with many successful college coaches, he found the pro
game a totally different animal. He lost his first 8 games, as
many as he had lost in that ten-year run at OU. By 1979 he was
fired, having compiled a 9-20 record.
Wilkinson did some TV work afterward and passed away in
1994 at the age of 77. He will always be remembered as a
coaching legend, because he did it the old-fashioned way.hard
work, perseverance and innovation. He preached preparation
and recruited players of high intelligence and character.
Willkinson valued academics and conditioning. He was known
as a master motivator and communicator, ruling with his wit and
intellect as opposed to intimidation. And he recruited Oklahoma”s
first African-American in 1956, years before other schools would
follow suit. That player, Prentice Gautt, would credit Wilkinson
with helping him cope with all the problems inherent in being
first.
Wilkinson is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and
the National Football Coaches Hall of Fame. In 1975, at age 60,
he married one Donna O”Donnahue, who was 27 at the time.
That puts him in my personal Hall of Fame.
[Sources: “Bud Wilkinson: An Intimate Look,” Jay Wilkinson;
ESPN Biographies of the Century.]
White Christmas?
Following are the forecasts from the Farmers” Almanac for the
period 12/24-12/27.
NE: Fair skies.
Great Lakes and MW: White Christmas? Heavy snow around
Great Lakes area.
SE: Sunshine giving way to increasingly cloudy skies.
North Central: Heavy snow Rockies, Plains States.
South Central: If you”re dreamin” of a white Christmas,
northern New Mexico might get it; farther south, east, across
Texas, the Mississippi Valley, a heavy rain falls.
NW: Stormy, especially along coastal plain.
SW: Stormy, especially along California coast.
*12/26-27, 1947: New York”s Big Snow. Central Park measures
26.4″ in 24 hours. 27 died.
*12/16-18,1973: Southern New England ice storm. 1-3″ of ice
fell on CT.
Christmas Tune
Back in 1943, Hugh Martin was a songwriter for MGM when he
and his partner Ralph Blane agreed to write three songs for the
movie “Meet Me In St. Louis,” starring Judy Garland.
Martin needed to write a song for a “tearjerker scene” in which
Judy Garland”s character sings to her sister about the family
having moved to New York.
So Martin proceeded to write what he considered to be a great
tune, starting out. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It
may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past.”
Garland wanted something a little more cheerful. So the
rewritten song started with. “Have yourself a merry little
Christmas / Let your heart be light / From now on, our troubles
will be out of sight.”
A decade later, Frank Sinatra called Martin to ask if he could
record the song for his own Christmas album. But Frank had one
request. Could Martin brighten it up a bit?
Well, Martin turned the last verse over and over in his head.
“Some day, though, we all may be together, if the fates allow.”
And then, as Martin put it himself, “There was a pretty tree and I
thought, ”Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”” Frankie
loved it.
[Source: Erin Shaw / Scripps Howard News Service]
Origin of Christmas
The following is from the “Dictionary of the Bible,” edited by
David Noel Freedman.
“Not knowing the date of Christ”s birth, the early Church sought
one by combining calendrical speculations with the exegesis of
biblical numbers. Several dates were suggested, including Mar.
25, Apr. 2, May 20, Nov. 8, Dec. 25, and Jan. 6. The earliest
evidence, the ”Depositio martyrum,” has the Feast of the Nativity
being celebrated on Dec. 25 by the year 336 in Rome. Within a
century this date was almost universally accepted.
“Dec. 25 marked, in the Julian calendar, the winter solstice (the
beginning of the victory of light over darkness after the year”s
longest night) and, after 274, the feast of the birthday of ”Sol
Invictus” (the ”invincible sun”), patron deity of the emperor.
“A related early tradition identified Mar. 25, the ”Sunday” of
creation week, as the date of Christ”s conception (nine months
before Dec. 25!).”
Sample Christmas Menu
Spinach and ricotta ravioli with butter and sage; turkey stuffed
with chestnuts, celery, prunes, chicken or turkey livers, butter,
pancetta, ground veal, hot sausage, pear, apple, walnuts, sage
rosemary, cloves, vegetable oil, and cognac. [“Italian Cooking in
the Grand Tradition,” Jo Buttoja and Anna Marie Cornetto.]
Top 3 songs for the week of 12/21/68: #1 “I Heard It Through
The Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye) #2 “Love Child” (Diana Ross &
The Supremes) #3 “For Once In My Life” (Stevie Wonder)
College Football Quiz Answer: Southeastern schools took 5 titles
in the decade of the ”80s; Georgia (”80), Clemson (”81), Miami
(”83, ”87, ”89). The other five were Penn State (”82, ”86),
Brigham Young (”84), Oklahoma (”85), Notre Dame (”88).
–Mike Bell, a London pub owner, commenting on a recent
appearance by President Clinton and British Prime Minister Blair
where he claimed they walked out on a $37 tab.
“They bloody well did not pay.” [Newsweek]
—
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince
of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall
be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his
kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal
of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Isaiah 9:6 – 7
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory
of the glory of the Lord shone” round about them: and they
were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring
you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
Luke 2:8 – 10
Merry Christmas, my friends!
Brian Trumbore
