Jack Trice
October 6, 1923: It's a big day in college football. The University of Minnesota hosts Iowa State University at Northrop Field in Minneapolis. Iowa State's lone black player, Jack Trice, gets hurt on the 2nd play of the game, breaking his collarbone. He insists he is all right, and stays in the game. But in the 3rd quarter, he tries to tackle a runner, falls, and 3 Minnesota players trample him. He is taken to a hospital, but doctors don't think his life is in danger, and he is released as fit to travel back to Iowa State's campus in Ames. But he has suffered internal bleeding, and dies 2 days later at age 21.
Trice was from the Cleveland area, and in 1979, 56 years after the fact, that city's major paper, The Plain Dealer, investigated his death. A surviving Iowa State teammate, Johnny Behm, said, "One person told me that nothing out of the ordinary happened. But another who saw it said it was murder."
In 1997, Iowa State's home field was named Jack Trice Stadium. It is the only stadium in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly known as Division I-A) named for a black person. A statue of him stands outside.
The stadium's dedication game wouldn't come until the next season, October 18, 1924, when Grange would put on a legendary show in a win over Michigan. The Chicago Bears played their home games at Memorial Stadium in 2002, while the original Soldier Field was torn down and the new one built in its place.
Also on this day, College Field opens on the campus of Michigan State College in East Lansing, but not with a game. The school would be renamed Michigan State University on its Centennial in 1955; the stadium, Macklin Field in 1935, Macklin Stadium in 1948, and Spartan Stadium in 1957. John Macklin was their football coach from 1911 to 1915.
It opened with 14,000 seats. By the time Clarence "Biggie" Munn was coaching the school's 1st great team in the early 1950s, it seated 51,000. When Hugh "Duffy" Daugherty coached its great team of the mid-1960s, it had peaked at 76,000. Today, it seats 75,005. It switched to artificial turf in 1969, and has kept it.
Also on this day, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which had opened on the preceding May 1, hosts a football game for the 1st time. The University of Southern California hosts Pomona College, and wins, 23-7.
The USC Trojans have used the Coliseum as their home field ever since. Their nearby rivals, the University of California at Los Angeles, played home games there from 1933 to 1981. The UCLA Bruins now play home games at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which, due to the Trojans' success, has often seemed like a secondary home field to them.
The Coliseum has also been the leading professional football venue in Southern California. In the NFL, the Los Angeles Rams played there from 1946 to 1979, and again from 2016 to 2019; the Los Angeles Raiders from 1982 to 1994; Super Bowl I in 1967 and Super Bowl VII in 1973; and the postseason Pro Bowl from 1951 to 1972, and again in 1979.
Other pro football teams using the Coliseum: The Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949, the Los Angeles Chargers of the American Football League in 1960, the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League from 1983 to 1985, and the Los Angeles Xtreme of the XFL in 2001.
It has hosted the U.S. national soccer team 20 times, starting in 1965; and Mexico's team 61 times. In 1967, the only season of play for the United Soccer Association, it hosted the Los Angeles Wolves, who won that league's title. It also hosted the city's entry in another league starting that season, the Los Angeles Toros of the National Professional Soccer League. After that year, the two leagues merged to form the North American Soccer League, whose Los Angeles Aztecs used the Coliseum as their home field in the 1977 and 1981 seasons.
The Los Angeles Dodgers used the Coliseum as their 1st home field after leaving Brooklyn, while waiting for Dodger Stadium to be built, from 1958 to 1961. Their home games in the 1959 World Series against the Chicago White Sox attracted over 92,000 fans, the highest-attended competitive games in Major League Baseball history. An all-time record crowd for baseball, 115,300, attended a preseason game between the Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox on March 29, 1958, honoring the Dodgers' 50h Anniversary in Los Angeles.
And, of course, the Coliseum was the main venue for the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympic Games, and will be again in 2028.
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October 6, 1923 was a Saturday. These other noteworthy college football games were played:
* Army beat Florida, 20-0 on The Plain in West Point, New York.
* Navy beat Dickinson College, 13-7 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.
* Maryland beat Pennsylvania, 3-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.
* Notre Dame beat Lombard, 14-0 at Cartier Field in South Bend, Indiana.
* The University of Washington beat Willamette, 54-0 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. They would play Navy in the Rose Bowl, and it would end in a 14-14 tie.
* And in New Jersey, Princeton beat Johns Hopkins, 16-7 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton; and Rutgers beat Villanova, 44-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick.
In a regular-season baseball game, Ernie Padgett of the Boston Braves, in only his 2nd major-league appearance, pulled off an unassisted triple play in a doubleheader sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies, at Braves Field in Boston. It is the 1st such play in National League history. The Braves won the opener, 5-4 in 14 innings; and won the nightcap, 4-1 in a game called after 5 innings due to darkness.
Born in Philadelphia in 1899, the infielder would only last 5 seasons in the majors, and died in 1957 in East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.
* The Brooklyn Robins -- as the Dodgers were known during the managerial tenure of Wilbert Robinson, 1914 to 1931 -- beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 4-3 at Ebbets Field. Jack Fournier's grounder into a fielder's choice got Gene Bailey home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.
* The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-1 at Yankee Stadium. Babe Ruth went 3-for-4 with an RBI, but no home run.
* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Cleveland Indians, 6-3 and 7-6 at League Park in Cleveland.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-1 at Redland Field (later Crosley Field) in Cincinnati.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the St. Louis Browns, 12-3 at Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Ty Cobb, by this point the player-manager of the Tigers, went 1-for-3 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs. George Sisler did not play for the Browns.
* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.
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