Ollie Matson

It is a sad day for the Flea Flicker and for football.  Hall of Fame runningback, Ollie Matson, died yesterday in Los Angeles.  He was 80.

My father and I could always talk about football.  Most times it seemed to be the only thing.  I absolutely enjoyed those talks.  I hope that he did too.  Those talks frequently started with his days as a student at the University of San Francisco in the early '50s.  It would be a stretch to say that he was Ollie Matson's friend.  They knew each other and often talked before and after classes.  It's interesting that those talks rarely involved football.  Perhaps that is why Matson enjoyed them.  When I started collecting football cards as a kid, I started with the current players of the '70s.  I soon targeted the older players from the '40s, '50s, and '60s.  Through my father, I felt that I knew Graham, Layne, Brown, and Unitas as well as Tarkenton, Bradshaw, and Staubach.  Prime among those targets were the players from USF.  That team was loaded.  Matson was 1 of 8 players to move on to the NFL.  There would have been a 9th had Burl Toler not destroyed his knee at an All Star game.  Toler still made an impact on the NFL, becoming the first African American official.  Five of the 8 earned Pro Bowl honors during their careers.  Three have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  In 1972, Matson and Gino Marchetti became the first college teammates to be inducted together.  Bob St. Clair has since joined them in Canton.  Another future Hall of Famer, Pete Rozelle, was just entering the football world as the school's sports publicist in 1951.  It is difficult for me to think of Matson without thinking of this USF Dons football team.  They were a team in every sense of the word.  Due to his presence there, I have always felt that my father was a part of that team.  I suppose, through association, I am too.  USF was struggling to support the team.  A great team, a great season could save the program.  USF had that team and that season.  They would go undefeated at 9-0.  Cal and Stanford, Rose Bowl teams in '51 and '52 respectively, wouldn't play them.  At the time, all the Bowl games were in the South.  Those Bowls would only take USF if Ollie Matson and Burl Toler were left at home.  That was out of the question.  "What I think we should have done," says teammate Joe Scudero, "is send Ollie and Burl to one of those Bowls and leave the rest of us at home.  Hell, the two of them could've beaten most of those Southern schools by themselves."  The school's best football team was to be its last.

I have been trying to think of a more recent back that compares to Matson.  The one that I keep coming back to is one I would rather avoid because of the non-football images he brings, O.J. Simpson.  Matson and Simpson actually carry a connection in that both played at San Francisco high schools and at City College of San Francisco.  Like Simpson, Matson had great size, speed, and open-field running ability.  Matson displayed his speed at the 1952 Helsinki games, earning a bronze in the 400 and a silver in the 1600 relay.  Drafted by the Chicago Cardinals in the first round, he had the misfortune of combining his enormous talents with a horrible team.  The Cardinals were almost comical in the '50s.  With Matson in the lineup,  the Cardinals would punctuate the laughter with some brilliance.  In 1959, Pete Rozelle, as General Manager of the Los Angeles Rams, traded 9 players to the Cardinals for Ollie Matson.  He finished his career with the Lions and the Eagles.  Retiring after the 1966 season, Matson never played on a team that reached the post-season.  "I had all the records, but gee whiz, that didn't mean anything to me.  I wanted to be on a team where I could go to a championship."

I have long been intrigued by this part of my father's life and this USF football team.  The one thing that has always struck me has been the complete lack of bitterness and anger from anyone from this team.  "Unbeaten, Untied, and Uninvited" is a slogan that has followed the team.  As Matson said in 2001, "I think we were the best team of any college or university in the country that year.  It was just unfortunate that we ran across all those situations."

RIP Ollie Matson.