November 30, 1935: The Game That Made Texas Football

November 30, 1935: If, as they say, football is a religion in the State of Texas, then this was their moment of evangelism, when they spread their gospel throughout the land.

Dallas is the largest city in North Texas. Fort Worth is the 2nd-largest. Dallas is home to Southern Methodist University. Fort Worth is home to Texas Christian University, affiliated with a different Protestant sect, the Disciples of Christ. SMU's Ownby Stadium and TCU's Amon G. Carter Stadium are just 40 miles apart, making their schools among the closest major rivals in college football. (For comparison's sake, in the State's biggest football rivalry, Texas and Texas A&M are 104 miles apart.)

Ownby Stadium was named for its benefactor, Jordan C. Ownby. Amon G. Carter was the publisher of the city's largest newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a.k.a. the Startle-gram. Left his fortune, his daughter Ruth Carter Stevenson spent much of it to found Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum Museum of American Art, the most popular museum dedicated to art about the American West.

As with any other pair of big cities that are relatively close -- such as Minneapolis and St. Paul, Tampa and St. Petersburg, San Francisco and Oakland, etc. -- Dallas and Fort Worth don't like each other, despite all that they have in common. Fort Worthers think Dallasites are stuck-up, what with their nouveau riche money in oil, banking and insurance. Dallasites point to the fact that Fort Worth is known for its stockyards, and think of Fort Worthers as their country cousins, bumpkins.

From 1916 to 1921, interrupted by serving in World War I, Leo Robert Meyer, nicknamed Dutch because he was of German descent and people tended not to be able to tell the difference between "Dutch," from the Netherlands, and "Deutsch," the Germans' name for themselves, played end for TCU.

In 1923, he was named an assistant coach for them. In 1934, he was named head coach, and would remain so until 1952. He also coached baseball there, on and off, from 1926 to 1957; and basketball from 1934 to 1937. He was also their athletic director from 1950 to 1963, and lived until 1982, age 84.

In 1981, TCU graduate Dan Jenkins, the college football expert for Sports Illustrated, wrote an article for their College Preview Issue about growing up in Fort Worth as a TCU fan. He was just about to turn 7 when this game was played, but seemed to remember it well. He also claimed to remember Dutch Meyer once telling his players, "Football is a game played by men! Not by a bunch of damn sissies and city slickers from Dallas!"

And how did the "men" play for the Horned Frogs of TCU in 1935? Pretty well: They came into the game 10-0, their defeated opponents including Texas, Texas A&M and Arkansas. They were led by a quarterback named Sammy Baugh. Slingin' Sammy was the greatest passer Texas had ever seen -- maybe the greatest anybody had ever seen to that point.

And how did the "bunch of damn sissies and city slicers from Dallas" play for the Mustangs of SMU that year? Equally well: They came into the game 10-0, their defeated opponents including Texas, Arkansas, and UCLA at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. They had a game at Texas A&M yet to come. Their best player was halfback Bob Wilson.

They were coached by William Madison "Matty" Bell, who had also played end, although not at the school he was coaching now, but at Centre College in Kentucky. He had been TCU's head coach from 1923 to 1928, with Meyer on his staff. So perhaps Meyer was taking this personally.

So the rivals came into the game undefeated, with the championship of the Southwest Conference on the line. It could have even been for the National Championship, because the Rose Bowl was talking about inviting the winner. Four weeks earlier, Notre Dame had beaten Ohio State in a game that was called "The Game of the Century" by some people. But in Texas, this game was called "The Game of the Century." NBC decided to broadcast it live on radio to the entire country. A crowd of 36,000 packed into Carter Stadium to watch it in person.

The only scoring in the 1st quarter was an SMU touchdown. The Mustangs scored again early in the 2nd quarter. But Baugh led the Frogs on a touchdown drive, and the half ended 14-7 SMU. It remained that way through the 3rd quarter, but Baugh led a touchdown drive early in the 4th quarter, and the game was tied.

With 9 minutes left to play, and a 4th down and long to go, Bob Finley faked a punt and threw to Wilson, who took the ball in for a touchdown. The extra point was missed, so SMU's lead was 20-14, giving TCU fans hope of winning, 21-20.

With the clock winding down, Baugh took the Horned Frogs down the field, and got to the SMU 35-yard line. But on the final play, he threw into the end zone, and his receiver was too well-covered, and SMU's 20-14 lead held. SMU's band played "California, Here I Come."

Grantland Rice, the nation's leading syndicated sports columnist, covered the game, called it "one of the greatest football games ever played." It is credited with elevating the Southwest Conference to the college football equivalent of "major league" status. In 2017, The Dallas Morning News ranked it the greatest game ever played between the 2 rivals. However, having taken place in the age of radio, it tends to get passed over in "Game of the Century" discussions in Texas, in favor of the nationally-televised 1969 game between Texas and Arkansas.

SMU still had to play Texas A&M, but beat them, after which they were, indeed, invited to the Rose Bowl. But they lost it to Stanford. TCU went to San Francisco to play their last scheduled regular-season game, beating Santa Clara University. They were invited to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, and beat Louisiana State.

TCU, in spite of their loss to SMU, were named National Champions by the Williamson System. SMU, in spite of their loss to Stanford, were named National Champions by the Dickinson System, the Houlgate System, and, retroactively, by the Berryman System and the Sagarin Ratings. The University of Minnesota were selected as National Champions by United Press (UP, forerunners of United Press International or UPI), the Billingsley Report, the Boand System, the Helms Athletic Foundation, the Litkenhous System, the Poling System, and retroactively by the College Football Researchers Association and the National Championship Foundation.

This system didn't work too well. For the 1936 season, the Associated Press (AP) began polling the sportswriters who covered college football. Usually, they got it right. UP/UPI, which polled the nation's head coaches, usually named a National Champion, and it usually matched the AP's selection. On the occasions when it didn't, their selection was usually justifiable, if not the better choice. Still, this system proved unsatisfying. The Bowl Championship Series made things better, and the current College Football National Playoff system better still, but there have been flaws in every system yet tried.

Baugh went on to a great career with the NFL's Washington Redskins, and was a charter inductee into the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. TCU won a legitimate National Championship in 1938, with another great quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner Davey O'Brien. But for the rest of the 20th Century, they tended to struggle, before a revival in the early 21st Century.

None of SMU's players did much in the pros, but they had a better record over the next few decades than TCU. In 1982, they nearly won the National Championship with their "Pony Express" backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James. But their cheating on top of cheating led them to become the 1st, and still the only, college football program ever to receive the NCAA's "death penalty," in 1986. They started play again in 1989, and they've been what college basketball fans call a "mid-major" school ever since. But then, so have TCU.

Carter Stadium still stands, with significant modernization. Ownby Stadium was demolished in 1998, and Gerald J. Ford Stadium was built on the site. Again, the new stadium was named for its funder. He was not related to Gerald R. Ford, the 38th President of the United States -- although that Gerald Ford was an All-American football player in 1935, a center at the University of Michigan.

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November 30, 1935 was a Saturday. Comedian and director Woody Allen was born on this day.

These other notable college football games were played that day:

* Army beat Navy, 28-6 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* Georgia Tech beat Georgia, 19-7 at Grant Field in Atlanta.

* Mississippi beat Mississippi State, 14-6 at Hemingway Stadium (now Vaught-Hemingway Stadium) in Oxford, Mississippi.

* Louisiana State beat Tulane, 41-0 at Tulane Stadium.

* Washington University beat crosstown rivals Saint Louis University, 26-0 at Walsh Memorial Stadium.

* Columbia beat Dartmouth, 13-7 at Baker Field in Manhattan.

* And Princeton beat Yale, 38-7 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.

Actually, most of the big rivalries that weekend were played 2 days earlier, on Thanksgiving Day: Fordham beat New York University 21-0 in front of 72,000 at Yankee Stadium, Pittsburgh and next-door neighbors Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon) played to a 0-0 tie, Kentucky beat Tennessee, Missouri and Kansas played to a 0-0 tie, Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State, and Utah and Utah State played to a 14-14 tie.

And, most important from the Lone Star State's perspective, for if football is a religion there, then this is its holy war: Texas A&M beat Texas, 20-6 at Kyle Field in College Station.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 3 NHL games played that day:

* The New York Americans beat the Boston Bruins, 2-1 at the old (but then still relatively new) Madison Square Garden.

* The Montreal Maroons beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat their arch-rivals, the Montreal Canadiens, 8-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to Yorkshire, and played Huddersfield Town to a draw, 0-0 at Leeds Road in Huddersfield.