November 25, 1951: The football team of the University of San Francisco defeats Loyola University of Los Angeles, 20-2 at the Rose Bowl in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California, in an unusual Sunday college football game. This completes an undefeated season.
It turns out to be the last football game that USF ever played. There could have been one more, but they took a noble stand, and refused to play it.
USF was founded in 1855, as a private Catholic (Jesuit) school. Its founder, Father Anthony Maraschi, made it a sporting school from the beginning, organizing baseball games for its first students. In 1907, they organized their earliest intercollegiate teams, and developed rivalries with nearby Catholic schools: Santa Clara University, outside San Jose; and Saint Mary's College of California, in Moraga, in the East Bay.
Their teams were called the Dons. California was founded by the Spanish, in whose language "Don" refers to a wealthy landowner, equivalent to the English term "Lord." The feminine version is Doña.
The San Francisco Dons had done well in some sports, but not football. But in 1951, they came out of nowhere. Under head coach Joe Kuharich, several players blossomed: Running back Ollie Matson, offensive tackles Bob St. Clair and Louis "Red" Stephens, defensive end Gino Marchetti, and linebacker Burl Toler.
They opened the season on September 21, at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, a facility they shared with the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. They beat San Jose State, 39-2. They went to Boise, and beat the University of Idaho, 28-7. They beat the Marines team from Camp Pendleton, outside San Diego, 26-0 at Kezar. They went down the Peninsula, and beat San Jose State, 42-7. They were 4-0, but not yet getting noticed outside California.
That would change on October 20. At Triborough Stadium (later Downing Stadium) on Randalls Island in New York's East River, they beat Fordham University, 32-26. That got the attention of the New York media, and now, they were getting noticed coast-to-coast. By October 26, they were ranked Number 20 in the country.
They beat the team from the San Diego Naval Base, 26-7. They beat Santa Clara by the same score. They went to Stockton and beat the University of the Pacific, 47-14. Finally, on November 25, they went to the Rose Bowl, and beat Loyola University of Los Angeles, the school now known as Loyola Marymount, 20-2. The Dons were 9-0, and ranked Number 13 in the country.
The Orange Bowl Committee invited them to play in the Orange Bowl game, at what was then named Burdine Stadium, but was renamed the Orange Bowl in 1960. But there was a problem: The game was in Miami. In Florida. A Southern State. A segregated State. The Dons could only accept the bid if they left their black players at home.
They refused: They would play with their black players, like Matson and Toler, or not at all. And so, there was no bowl game for the undefeated Number 13 team in the country.
It got worse: Two days after their last game, on November 27, the University disbanded the football program, due to a lack of funding. There was a brief revival at the NCAA Division II level from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, but, as far as major-college football was concerned, it was all over for the University of San Francisco.
The 1952 Orange Bowl was played on New Year's Day, January 1, between 2 teams from segregated Southern States. Georgia Tech, of Atlanta, beat Baylor, of Waco, Texas, 17-14.
Ollie Matson went on to a Hall of Fame career, mostly with the Chicago Cardinals. Bob St. Clair played his pro career with the San Francisco 49ers, meaning that, for his entire football career -- high school, college and professional -- he played his home games at Kezar Stadium. He was also elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So was Gino Marchetti, Captain of the Baltimore Colts teams that won the 1958 and '59 NFL Championships.
Red Stephens played 6 seasons with the Washington Redskins, who had hired USF's Joe Kuharich as head coach, and later served as an assistant coach under Kuharich, who was hired to succeed Frank Leahy at the University of Notre Dame.
Kuharich coached the Philadelphia Eagles from 1964 to 1968, and it was a disaster: He was a prude, and traded his team's hard-partying quarterback, Sonny Jurgensen, to the Redskins for the straight-arrow Norm Snead. Jurgensen went to the Hall of Fame, having thrown more touchdown passes than any quarterback in the 1960s; Snead threw more interceptions than any in the decade.
Fans wore "JOE MUST GO" buttons to Eagle games, and, at the infamous '68 season finale, when the Eagle fans booed a man in a Santa Claus suit during a halftime Christmas pageant, a fan hired a plane to fly over Franklin Field, trailing a banner reading, "JOE MUST GO."
Kuharich died in 1981, little lamented even in San Francisco. Stephens followed in 2003, Matson in 2011, St. Clair in 2015, Marchetti in 2019.
USF has had some athletic success since 1951. Their basketball team, coached by Phil Woolpert and led by Bill Russell, won the National Championship in 1955 and '56, launching a 60-game winning streak, then the longest streak in college basketball history. The soccer program has also been very successful, winning 5 National Championships in the 1930s, and 4 more from 1966 to 1980.
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November 25, 1951 was a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. These NFL games were played that day:
There were 4 games played in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Boston Celtics, 70-68 at the old Madison Square Garden.
* The Baltimore Bullets beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 81-74 at the Baltimore Coliseum.
* The Rochester Royals beat the Fort Wayne Pistons, 74-63 at the Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester, New York.
* And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Milwaukee Hawks, 72-59 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.
And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:
* The New York Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1 at the Old Madison Square Garden. Yes, The Garden hosted both the Knicks and the Rangers on the same day.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 4-1 at the Boston Garden.
* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-2 at the Chicago Stadium.
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