October 15, 1960 – Washington State at Oregon (Homecoming)

click to embiggenThere was a time when Homecoming was a big deal.

For years the Homecoming game was the excuse for alumni to return to campus, festooned in yellow and green finery. They would stay in spare dorm rooms, in their old frat houses, with friends and family and professors. There would be pep rallies all week, campus tours, a Homecoming Queen would be selected (invariably female), a Friday night bonfire torched off after being guarded all week by frat members against unauthorized ignition by OSC interlopers.

By 1960 there were signs that the Homecoming traditions weren’t exactly being passed on with exuberance to the current student body. The student rallies were casually attended. The traditional variety show didn’t feature the usual slapstick. And the featured musical event, a McArthur Court concert by pianist Roger Williams, seemed to have little to do with either football, homecoming or even the University itself. But it was still Homecoming, one of those things that just “was”.

Eventually it all became a little passé, and – like anything else traditional in the Sixties – perceived as “establishment.” One year the Homecoming festivities were pushed back a week to avoid conflicts with Vietnam war protests. The city of Eugene banned open burning, killing off the bonfire tradition.

And for a few years, roughly from 1975 to 1982, there was no official Homecoming activity of any kind. The Greek system did what it could to keep it going, but the general attitude was of a kind with the way the Seventies had gone in general; the football team wasn’t worth coming home for, and the most famous Homecoming parade associated with the campus in that era featured the Deathmobile and was filmed in Cottage Grove.

Still, back in the day, homecoming meant something. For years at Oregon, when the Civil War was scheduled in Corvallis, it meant a late October game against Washington State, a potentially beatable team to please the old grads back in town for the party.  In 1960 Len Casanova’s squad had wins over Idaho, Utah and San Jose State to offset a stinker at Michigan. Because the Ducks were now without conference affiliation, they could be considered for post-season bids, and the schedule was favorable to developing a record impressive enough for the Eastern bowl organizers. Get to seven wins and they’d have a shot at a bowl.

But first they had to eliminate one of those homecoming traditions. The Webfoots hadn’t won a homecoming game since 1955. And the incoming Cougars, after four weeks, were the nation’s #1 passing team, featuring #1 receiver Hugh Campbell. For the first fifty-four, minutes of the game it looked like another loss; QB Dave Grosz had only completed one pass, the Ducks had blown numerous opportunities in WSC territory, and they trailed 12-7. Then, within 42 seconds, everything changed. First Grosz hit end Lew Burnett for a 32 yard touchdown with six minutes left to take the lead 13-12. The PAT was missed, but on the first play after the kickoff, Duck halfback Mike Rose took a 29 yard pick-6 from WSC QB Mel Melin, giving Oregon a 21-12 lead that held to the end of the game.

The 1960 Ducks parlayed later wins at Cal and over Stanford and West Virginia, along with a Civil War tie, into a 7-2-1 record and did get that bowl bid. It wasn’t exactly the dream postseason date, a game in the snow in Philadelphia against Penn State, but it was a bowl, and only the fifth Oregon appearance in postseason play.

Program Notes –

• This issue of Oregon Varsity Review is notably green; not in the current organic sense, but literally printed with green ink, in some kind of a style statement that (fortunately) only lasted one season.
• Curious that the first program advertisement for a color TV is on a monochrome page. The roughly 19” set listed on the inside cover sold for $495 – over $3,600 in current dollars. No remote included.
• There was a time when Advanced Placement was a new concept. That time was around 1960, and a program feature on page 6 touts Oregon’s AP programs. “If a student can complete some of his college work in high school, why ask him to repeat it in college?” (I can think of a few reasons..)
• For once, the center “roster spread” isn’t sponsored by tobacco. Instead it’s the 1961 Studebaker Lark, a sporty convertible, inappropriately festooned in orange, which you apparently had to drive to believe.
• It was the 10^th year at Oregon for Cas and assistant coach Jack Roche, and a feature on page 16 wishes the pair a happy anniversary. Oregon AD Leo Harris: “Cas and Jack.. are fine gentlemen who helped us conduct an honorable athletic program through their fine leadership of the young men who have played here. I am sure we all wish them well in the future.”
• The 1960 “Voice of the Ducks,” John Tasnady of KUGN, contributes #9 in the “A Game To Remember” series, the Halloween 1953 victory over USC in Portland. “With the majority of the fourth quarter left to play, the fans watched in wild amazement as the Ducks, with one of the year’s major upsets in reach, fought to maintain their lead…”
• Only one tobacco ad in the 1960 program, on the back cover, but it’s way out, man. Check out those turntables. The guy on the left is obviously squaresville, with his Sibelius and Beethoven and all those other longhairs. No match for the bohemian vixen at right, in the sunny colored booth, with Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, and Ella, showing off the length of her unlit smoke while batting her eyes behind Buddy Holly glasses. Almost makes me want to fire one up. Not really.

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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