USF Football 60 Years Later

Sixty years later and it is still an amazing story!

It was not a surprise when I saw the name of Ollie Matson on the brim of the University of Phoenix Stadium while waiting for the start of the 2012 Fiesta Bowl.  The Glendale Stadium is also the home for the Arizona Cardinals and Matson started his great NFL career with the Cardinals when they were located in Chicago. Four years ago on January 2, 2008  the Fiesta Bowl honored the Undefeated, Untied and Uninvited 1951 University of San Francisco Dons a team which Matson was an All-American.

The 1951 Dons have been called the best college football team ever. They certainly had the talent but never had the opportunity to prove such a bold claim. USF had 38 players assigned numbers on the roster, nine of which made the NFL. Five of the nine made All Pro and three Ollie Matson, Bob St.Clair and Gino Marchetti, voted the best defensive end in first 50 years of the NFL, are in the NFL Football Hall of Fame along with USF Athletic Publicist Pete Rozelle who was NFL Commissioner during the time of pro football's greatest growth.

USF was invited to the Sugar Bowl game as long as they did not bring their two African American players. During that period teams from the deep south did not play integrated teams. USF refused the invitation and did not receive another bowl bid which is the major reason given why during my freshman year USF terminated football at the end of the 1951 season.

USF dropped football because they lacked the money to continue since the teams in the Pacific Coast Conference such as Stanford and California would not schedule them. If the BCS existed in 1951 the Dons would have not even been considered for a bowl because of weakness of only a nine game schedule which included two games against service teams, two against San Jose State, a major game in New York against Fordham, Santa Clara, Idaho, Loyola and I can remember being part of the overflow crowd of 41,607 that witnessed the big game of the year at Pacific Memorial Stadium in Stockton against the previously undefeated College of Pacific Tigers which USF won 47-14.

1950 game program

There was plenty of speculation about the reasons USF was not scheduled by Pacific Coast Conference teams.

One very popular argument was that teams were afraid to play USF because by the end of 1950 season it was obvious they would be tough to beat in 1951. The Dons record in 1950 was 7-4  which however included losses to the Stanford Indians 55-7 and to the Rose Bowl bound California Bears 13-7 in the 'Mud Bowl' a game that thrilled hundreds of seagulls in the pouring rain at Strawberry Cannon.

Although neither Stanford nor California teams were integrated at the time race was never considered a factor. They both scheduled and played other teams with African American players and UCLA a member of the PCC had baseball immortal Jackie Robinson playing football for them in the late 1930's.

Columnists speculated that the PCC wanted the independents eliminated. The press had to live with both Stanford and California so this possibility was easily denied although history shows that actions speak louder than words.  In a short three year span of time a great era of college football was ended when the Galloping Gaels of St. Mary's (1939 Cotton Bowl, 1946 Sugar Bowl), USF and the Santa Clara Broncos (Sugar Bowl 1937, 1938, Orange Bowl, 1950)  all dropped major college football.

The birth and success of the San Francisco 49ers in 1946 contributed to the competition for the entertainment dollar and the big three independents schools lost their decades of monopoly for Sunday afternoon football at Kezar Stadium..

Input usf football 1951 into your computer search for many additional articles and videos on the Dons.

Homer Sweeney

Sources:
Undefeated, Untied and Uninvited
History of the Fiesta Bowl
University of California Football Programs
Stanford University Football Programs
St. Mary's and Santa Clara Bowl Records