The 1951 University of San Francisco Dons football team has always been of great interest to me. My father was a student at the small Jesuit college when they played their final season of intercollegiate football. The beginning of my passion for football history can be found in my father's stories of the USF Dons football team of 1951. Having just finished Kristine Setting Clark's Undefeated, Untied, and Uninvited, I visit that great team once again. Clark's title says a lot. The Dons won all nine of their games in 1951. Only Fordham tossed anything close to a scare into the Dons. That was a one score game, 32-26. Of the other eight games, only a tough College of Pacific team scored more than ten points against the Dons defense. That game was 47-14 and pushed USF to 13th in the AP top 20 poll. The national media was slow to give USF any props. Fullback Ollie Matson led the nation in rushing and scoring yet made the All-America team as an afterthought. At defensive back. The props fell to a trickle when it came time for bowl bids. There were nowhere near as many bowl games in 1951 as there are today. A handful really and pretty much all were located in the South. That proved to be a problem as two of USF's best players, Matson and Burl Toler, were black. The Orange Bowl wanted a west coast team to match up against Georgia Tech and there were early assumptions that USF would be that team. USF might have been that team if they would come to Miami without Matson and Toler. Real nice policy. That wasn't even a consideration for the very close-knit Dons football team. Halfback Joe Scudero even threw out the option of sending only Matson and Toler, seeing as those 2 could defeat any other team's best 22. The University of San Francisco Dons might have been one of the greatest college football teams to step on a college football field. They couldn't step on one final college football field to face one of the top teams in the nation because racist bowl selectors didn't want two of their players on that field. The undefeated, untied Dons were uninvited. Even the Pacific team that lost to USF by 33 points was invited to the Sun Bowl.
Clark's book, an NFL Films video, and a Clark-inspired push by Bay Area politicians to have the team honored at the White House has brought the team more attention in the last decade than the previous five decades. They'll probably never get the respect that they deserve. Despite that, there's no doubt about the talent on that roster. I can remember flipping through my father's yearbook in awe. The Dons were building a pretty terrific basketball team at the time with Bill Russell and K.C. Jones but I was mostly interested in that football team. It was incredible.
3 players inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame
Fullback Ollie Matson
Lineman Gino Marchetti
End Bob St. Clair
Matson and Marchetti, both inducted in their first year of eligibility-1972, were the first college teammates inducted together. Matson also won a silver and bronze at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
Pete Rozelle graduated from USF in 1950 and became the Dons Athletic Publicist in 1951. Rozelle puts the USF representation in the Pro Football Hall of Fame at four.
No college team has ever had three college teammates, or four with Rozelle, inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Many on the Dons football team, as well as my father, have said that linebacker Burl Toler was the best player on the team. He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns. He never got a chance to play in the NFL. He injured his knee in the 1952 College All-Star Game. Toler did take part in NFL games for 25 years as an official. In 1965 he became the first African-American official in the NFL. He worked three Super Bowls, including Super Bowl I.
Six other 1951 Dons played in the NFL
Quarterback Ed Brown
Tackle Mike Mergen
End Merrill Peacock
Halfback Joe Scudero
Guard Lou "Red" Stephens
End Ralph Thomas
Brown and Scudero joined Matson, Marchetti, and St. Clair as Pro Bowl selections.
Two players from the 1950 Dons team had NFL careers.
Halfback Roy Barni
Guard Dick Stanfel
Stanfel earned five Pro Bowl selections and later earned significant Hall of Fame consideration.
If you had this kind of talent on Notre Dame or Oklahoma from that era of football, there would be no end to the attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment