The Opening Kickoff
Page 15
Meanwhile, in Madison, rumors continued to swirl that Maybury and Cochems had indeed profited from athletics. In July the university athletic council started to hear whispers that the two men had earned cash prizes at a track meet in the summer of 1895. The meet in question had taken place in the small Wisconsin town of Spring Green, not far from Madison.
In response the university dispatched three investigators, who spent several days in Spring Green deposing witnesses. They reached a disappointing and startling conclusion. “So far as they could see,” university president Charles K. Adams admitted, “there was no reason to doubt that Maybury and Cochems had been present at the meet, had played for money, had received money, and had played under assumed names.” As it turns out, the men had been fingered by fellow Wisconsin students, who said they had recognized Maybury and Cochems and actually spoken with them at the meet. Stagg had been right all along. Maybury and Cochems were ineligible.
Cochems, who was slated to be the football captain in the 1898 season, quickly admitted his culpability. He forfeited his position on the team and headed east to enroll in Harvard Law School. After some initial resistance, Maybury confessed as well. It was a confession that elicited some sympathy. The Wisconsin star said he had been left little choice, as he needed the money to help pay for his education. Unfounded rumors began to swirl that the university might rescind both men’s undergraduate diplomas, which they had already earned. While Wisconsin took no such measures, its punishment of the players was swift, strong, and severe. Maybury and Cochems were banned from future competition, their records were vacated, and the university recommended that the faculty take whatever further disciplinary action it felt was appropriate against them.
In addition, Wisconsin issued a very public apology to all the schools that Maybury and Cochems had competed against during the past few seasons, assuring them that, had it been aware of the Spring Green meet, it would have declared the two men ineligible years before. “Painful as it is to relate these facts, I feel driven to the necessity of revealing them, since, by persistent misrepresentations, the university seems called upon for its defense. We cannot ignore the record without ignominy,” Adams said. He added, “If I am to be convinced that intercollegiate athletics cannot be carried on without a sacrifice of absolute truth, honesty, and fair play, I shall be as earnestly in favor of their absolution as I have hitherto been in favor of their encouragement and support.”
Having made its confession, Wisconsin next set about repairing its rift with Michigan, Illinois, and Chicago. The school crafted a letter to Harper and his university, asking Chicago to consider renewing athletic relations between the schools. Adams personally mailed the note from the post office in Madison and eagerly awaited a response.
Reaction in Chicago was mixed. On one hand, some believed that the Maroons ought to continue their boycott of Wisconsin, with the logic being that, were they simply to resume the series right away, the Madison school would not have suffered any material damage for its failure to manage the situation properly from the outset. Plus, Chicago didn’t need Wisconsin. “We can get all the football we want,” the Chicago Tribune said, paraphrasing the school’s stance, “so why should we care what happens [with Wisconsin]?” Others felt it was best to just let bygones be bygones, contending that Wisconsin had done all it could do in the matter and had acted properly throughout given the information at its disposal. Either way, the Tribune reported that Wisconsin’s declaration had “produced more of a sensation in local athletic circles than any occurrence in years.”
Ultimately, those in favor of reconciliation prevailed. In a September 28 meeting at a Chicago hotel, the universities patched up their differences and joined together again as members of the Western Conference. Wisconsin and Chicago quickly scheduled a game for November 12. As part of the new conference agreement, the schools announced their belief that the rules governing amateurism were inadequate and proposed a committee to revisit the issue and come up with new solutions. Like many of the earnest and presumably well-intentioned declarations of the late 1890s, it sounded better in theory than it turned out to be in practice.
The dismissal of Maybury and Cochems had major on-the-field repercussions in Madison, as both men were expected to be among the stars of the Badgers’ team. O’Dea was quickly elected the captain to replace Cochems, but that choice was far from a guarantee of success. O’Dea’s skills, the Milwaukee Sentinel wrote, were beyond question. The Aussie, it noted, “has kicked his way into the hearts of . . . Wisconsin people who annually back the team with enthusiasm and ready cash.” The issue, the paper contended, wasn’t O’Dea’s talent—it was his leadership skills, as he had “never been tested in an executive position.”
Unfortunately, the team didn’t have many other choices. Only three players from the previous season’s squad would be returning to play for the Badgers. A run of bad luck cost the school several other key candidates, as a few players they had been counting on either failed to enroll or were talked out of playing by their parents. Expectations were low for the two-time defending Western Conference champions. “There is much discussion in university circles owing to a gloomy outlook for a creditable football team,” the Chicago Tribune reported.
As the first big game against Minnesota approached, the situation reached the point of near-crisis, focusing more on the quantity of the “football material” than the quality. The Badgers simply needed more players. For a variety of reasons, eight men had quit the team during the early portions of the season. “There are men, leaders in athletics of this institution,” the Daily Cardinal reported, “who advocate the cancelling of all games and the disbanding of the team.” While the eligibility issues and defections were obviously part of the explanation, there was still much debate on campus over how exactly the Badgers had gotten themselves into this predicament.
“If this dearth of football material is due to an overconfidence acquired from two years of unbroken success it is high time this delusion was destroyed. Unbiased football critics pronounce our chances of winning from Chicago to be dubious in the extreme,” the Cardinal asserted. “If you have ever played football, if you think you can play football, if you are strong enough to play, it is your duty to report to Coach King. . . . WE MUST HAVE MORE CANDIDATES OUT FOR PRACTICE.”
O’Dea reinforced that notion, telling the paper, “What we want is more candidates out on the field, and when they come out to stay out; not come out for one night, then quit.” It was precisely those quitters that King targeted when he said, “The varsity squad can use all the new men who will come out, but it needs most of all the return of those men who have been out at various times and who know the formations and signals.”
It was a terrible time for a team to lose its star, but that’s precisely what happened next to the Badgers. O’Dea cracked his ribs in practice, and the team announced that he would not be able to play against Minnesota. While Wisconsin’s most familiar face was sidelined, some newer ones helped ensure that the game would actually be played. Thirty-two students came out for practice on Thursday night, a dramatic increase over the numbers from earlier in the week. Several of the newest players filled key roles in the Badgers’ easy 29–0 win, a margin that, truthfully, was far more reflective of Minnesota’s weakness than Wisconsin’s strength. Still, the crisis had been averted. “That was a truly critical period in the history of football at Wisconsin,” the Cardinal observed the following week, “but the method of arousing that lethargy proved most effectual.” Now, the team could focus on its biggest match of the year—the showdown with Chicago, which loomed just two weeks away.
As that game drew nearer, it became clear that the antipathy that had surfaced between the two schools during the past summer still remained. It manifested itself in a borderline-comical sequence of protests and counterprotests regarding eligibility, which filled the pages of the Chicago and Wisconsin papers in the days leading up to the game.
As that case played out, others surfaced. Wisconsin inquired about the amateur standing of Chicago’s Orville Burnett, though the school did not file an official protest. Chicago countered by questioning the status of Wisconsin’s Harvey Holmes. The Times-Herald reported that Minnesota’s coach, Jack Minds, had evidence that Holmes had wrestled professionally, but he and King had made a side deal before the Minnesota–Wisconsin game. King agreed to keep Holmes out of the game if Minds kept the information to himself.
Wisconsin’s team manager, John Fisher, was moved to comment on the affair, and told the Times-Herald that Holmes had already revealed the details to Wisconsin’s athletic board: “The public was given to understand,” said Fisher, “that the bouts were for a purse of $200, with a side bet of $300, but Holmes claims that the advertised purse was a ‘fake’ for the purpose of drawing spectators.” Or maybe Fisher didn’t say that at all. The next day, the same paper ran another story directly contradicting that tale. “Manager Fisher of the Wisconsin football team flatly denies that he ever had an interview while in Chicago in which he is said to have stated that Holmes had wrestled with professionals.”
Meanwhile, the Chicago athletic board heard three cases regarding the allegations against Ewing, Burnett, and the school’s captain, Walter Kennedy. Another case, that of Walter Cavanagh, was set to be heard later in the week. Chicago was also said to be standing by Clarence Rogers, whom Wisconsin contended had run out of eligibility after playing for Beloit.
In hindsight, the details of who was being accused, what they were being accused of, and whether or not the accusations were accurate aren’t that important. It was all difficult to get to the bottom of in 1898, let alone more than a hundred years later. What the back-and-forth finger-pointing frenzy does show is the inadequacy of the procedures that were in place to enforce the eligibility rules. It is also further evidence of the underlying hostility between the schools, a rivalry that continued to call their future as athletic opponents into question. And while they may have been hiding behind accusations of professionalism, it’s fairly clear that neither program was truly “pure,” which leads one to conclude that the dispute was really about something else. And that something else, of course, was money.
“Some of the influential members of the Midway institution have made the assertion that Wisconsin and Chicago would not meet in any dual contests for the next ten years,” the Times-Herald wrote just days before the Wisconsin–Chicago game. “Stagg seems to hold the whip hand,” it continued. “Future contests are more to the advantage of the Badgers than to Chicago. The Badgers need the money more than do the Maroons, but the more radical students at the University of Chicago are bound to have revenge for what they call indiscriminate protests and slurs on practically every member of the Maroon team.”
In the end the protests turned out to be a massive waste of everyone’s time. Only one player, Chicago halfback Gordon Clarke, was kept out of the game. He actually quit the Maroon team in the days leading up to the showdown after admitting to having coached at Tarkio University in Missouri for pay several years before. Though such an arrangement had not been illegal under the amateurism rules in place when Clarke took the money, those guidelines had been changed to ban anyone who had ever been compensated for coaching. Learning he was being investigated by Wisconsin, Clarke went to Stagg, revealed his story, and withdrew from the team.
The rhetoric continued to escalate as game day drew nearer. While Chicago’s anger revolved around the protests, Wisconsin’s target was Stagg. The Chicago coach was still reviled in Madison for his comportment after the game the year before, when he had been less than gracious in defeat. The Cardinal published a song written by a law student that took numerous potshots at Stagg. It described the Wisconsin team marching into Chicago, and continued:
And each one would pick out a man
No matter what his name,
For they all knew Stagg was a sham
And his men were just the same.
They carried him off the field on a slat
When the slaughter had all been done.
He stood on a barrel and said, “for a’ that”
Again the poorer team won.
The Milwaukee Sentinel took a more intellectual approach, though the message was similar. “How can a university faculty which would not tolerate Maybury and Cochems expose its amateurs to association with Prof. Stagg? He is a professional athlete who does more professing than the majority of that class,” it contended. “He bluffs like a prize fighter in the presence of defeat and hangs up cash offers for an extra game on occasion which would tempt world’s champions in any line.” The Sentinel concluded by asking a question about college coaches that has been repeated in various forms ever since, “Do the college faculties expect the eager and ambitious students to be more pure and high-minded than their instructors?”
The presumption of dishonesty extended to game preparations. Two days before the showdown, reporters arrived at Chicago’s practice to find the field empty. Concerned that Wisconsin might be spying on the Maroons, Stagg had herded the team off on buses to practice in a secret location.
His paranoia was not unfounded. Weeks later, before their showdown with Michigan, the Maroons’ practice was disrupted when the team noticed that a pile of hay alongside the field appeared to be moving. As the players ran toward the mysterious heap, a man in an overcoat and cap emerged and tried to run away. The players caught him and demanded an explanation, but the interloper wasn’t talking. “I’ll wager it’s a spy,” Walter Cavanagh exclaimed. “The players wanted to use him for a football, but Stagg objected,” the Chicago Chronicle reported of the incident, “and the man was ejected forcibly from the grounds and then chased several blocks, when he boarded a street car and disappeared.”
Lost in all the Chicago–Wisconsin suspicion and bickering was the fact that many were expecting an outstanding game. “It will be Herschberger against O’Dea. There will be twenty other men in the center, but they will be mere satellites,” the Times-Herald proclaimed on game day. “The game should furnish the greatest kicking duel in the history of American football. Never before have two such giants of the pigskin met on the gridiron.”
But the weather did not cooperate. Chicago was pummeled by heavy rains throughout the week leading up to the game. One local paper described Marshall Field as a “swamp” and “a mud hole,” noting that Chicago’s team had been forced to spend some of its practice time inside the gymnasium due to field conditions.
Stagg did all he could to try to get the grass ready for the game. “His first device was to pour oil over the worst spots and set fire to it,” the Chicago Chronicle reported. “The scheme did not work to perfection and the coach ordered the mud removed and sand drawn. This morning the field will be gone over with a steam roller.” Unfortunately, all of that work only exacerbated the problems. In a last-ditch effort to make the field playable, Chicago spread pine shavings the morning of the game and simply hoped for the best.
The showdown did not go well for O’Dea and company. In front of a crowd of 9,000, including several thousand Wisconsin supporters, the significantly larger Maroons pulled out a 6–0 win, ending their two-game losing streak against the Badgers. Chicago scored in the first ten minutes of the game and held on from there in a contest that, by all accounts, was free of much in the way of interesting play.
The great kicking game that many had so eagerly anticipated never materialized due to the brutal field conditions. “Pat O’Dea was there, but his leg was crooked. Herschberger was there, but his leg had a slant,�
� the Times-Herald reported the next day. “A pair of heroic limbs had gone wrong.”
Stagg’s behavior was clear evidence of just how much the game meant to him. “The coach stooped along the side lines all through the game, scarcely noticing anyone beside him, while at the most inopportune moments . . . he would jump to his feet, pull off his cap, and yell like a maniac as he saw his men accomplishing some little trick of play which he had taught them,” the Daily Inter Ocean reported.
The Badgers accepted the painful defeat with dignity. “We were clearly outclassed,” King said afterward. O’Dea agreed. “Chicago deserves the victory for it was earned by straight, hard football,” he said, though he did mention the mud pile that was Marshall Field, saying, “I could do almost nothing on the ground in the condition it was in. The shavings seemed to clog my cleats, making a slip more certain than if no attempt had been made to make the field passably good.” The national press took notice of the Badgers’ sportsmanship, with Caspar Whitney noting in Harper’s that “she took defeat far more handsomely than Chicago did in the previous year.” Still, the underlying bitterness was a huge part of the story. “It was asserted on almost every hand,” the Times-Herald reported, “that the two universities will be strangers to each other in athletics for the future.”
Back on campus, the loss served only to further the O’Dea legend. He was repeatedly praised for his composure, particularly given that he was goaded by the Maroons throughout the game, with a Chicago player, Theron Mortimer, eventually getting ejected after he intentionally kicked O’Dea.