The Opening Kickoff

by Dave Revsine

  In class on Monday, O’Dea received a bouquet of roses from Dean Bryant of the law faculty. In the note, addressing the “champion football kicker of the world,” Bryant wrote: “I honor the man who can take defeat like a man. I am proud of an athlete who comes out in true sportsmanlike manner and admits frankly that his opponent defeated him because of his superior ability under the existing conditions.” Bryant concluded that, despite all the adulation, O’Dea “has not allowed his head to be turned by self-consciousness, begotten of praise.”

  If anything, the defeat seemed to galvanize the Badgers, who got right back on the practice field to prepare for their Thanksgiving Day showdown with Northwestern. The 47–0 rout, highlighted by O’Dea’s record-setting “champagne kick,” helped vault the Aussie from a regional to a national celebrity. “It was the most notable drop-kick goal of this season,” Caspar Whitney marveled in Harper’s Weekly, “and one of the most remarkable performances of its kind in football annals.”

  There was some debate over the actual length of the kick. Most reports settled on 60 yards, but there were a few contemporaneous accounts that claimed it was a bit farther, with Whitney, for instance, writing that O’Dea had “sixty-two yards to cover.” Wisconsin’s record book lists the kick at 62 yards, still the longest field goal in the school’s history. There was certainly no debate over the significance of the achievement, though. The Times-Herald’s assessment was typical, saying that O’Dea “by that single act has immortalized himself in the annals of football.”

  The Northwestern game was the last of the year for the Badgers, who finished with a mark of 9–1, though seven of the wins came against minor opponents. O’Dea truthfully hadn’t had a great season. He was injured for one of the Badgers’ three biggest games and played poorly in a second. But the remarkable kick against Northwestern seemed to overshadow much of that reality. The capper came when the Aussie was named to Walter Camp’s All-American second team. It was a monumental achievement. The All-American team had been selected by Whitney starting in 1889 before Camp later joined him. None of the nearly two hundred spots on the first or second teams had been occupied by non-Easterners until O’Dea and a few others broke through in that 1898 season. “There is not yet equality,” Whitney wrote in Harper’s upon revealing the team, “it would be unreasonable to expect it—but the West is no longer the unthinking pupil of the East.”

  The establishment’s interest in Western football as a whole and O’Dea in particular had been piqued. They’d get a chance to satisfy their curiosity in person in 1899.

  Chapter Fourteen

  East vs. West

  The bleary-eyed Wisconsin football players stumbled slowly through the predawn blackness on their way to the Madison train station. It was approaching 5:00 a.m. on Monday, October 16, 1899. A forty-hour train trip awaited them. Later that week they would play the most anticipated game in school history—a chance for the Badgers to show the world that Western football had finally caught up to the Eastern game. As they arrived at the depot, the Wisconsin players were stunned by what they saw. Even at this early hour, a crowd of several hundred supporters had gathered to see them off. If they hadn’t figured it out already, the Badgers now fully grasped the enormity of what lay before them. They were on their way to Connecticut to battle powerful Yale.

  While there had been an actual championship on the line when they played for the Western title in previous years, the game against the Elis was about much more. It was a referendum on Western football as a whole and, to a certain extent, a referendum on Pat O’Dea’s skills—a chance for the Eastern media to judge whether or not he had truly been worthy of his All-American selection at the end of the previous season. Put simply, the teams and players in the West were considered inferior to those of the traditional powers—and not just athletically. When Michigan played Harvard in 1895, the Boston Herald described the men from Ann Arbor as “crude blacksmiths, miners and backwoodsmen.”

  In an article he penned for Outing magazine previewing the 1899 season, Walter Camp discussed the perceived chasm in the game between the East and West. “Football has now reached a point in this country where there are certain classes,” Camp wrote, “and those classes are becoming more and more well-defined, and for a team to get from one class into another is almost like changing caste in India.”

  The top class, Camp wrote, was made up of four schools—Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Penn. Just beneath them were a couple of other Eastern schools—Cornell and West Point. And after that was a hodgepodge of colleges—Brown, Wesleyan, Carlisle, and others. Michigan, Chicago, and Wisconsin, Camp contended, “form a class by themselves and they are going to have an opportunity of bettering that class in certain of their contests this year,” with Michigan and Chicago each scheduled to face Penn, and the Badgers taking on Yale.

  The Maroons had earned the West some respect the previous season, traveling from Chicago to Philadelphia and giving the Quakers a good game—leading at the half before falling 23–11. Still, playing a team competitively and actually beating them were two very different things, and Camp contended that “there are few football enthusiasts on the Eastern seaboard who have given any consideration to this rivalry that is springing up or regard these matches with the Middle West teams as anything more than practice,” though he seemed to be coming to the realization that this was a dangerous attitude to take. “Sooner or later,” Camp concluded, “some of these teams will overcome a crack Eastern team. The interesting question is, ‘How soon?’ ”

  The hope in Madison was that the Badgers would be the team to pull off that monumental win. It was “an epochal occasion for those of us who were youngsters out in the Middle West at that time,” New York Times sportswriter William Richardson remembered many years later. A local internal revenue collector named J. G. Monahan wasn’t above resorting to superstition to help the Badgers, presenting the team “with 21 rabbits feet, all shot in dark of the moon in a graveyard” to protect them against bad luck.

  Given the remarkable early morning crowd, the Badgers felt it simply wouldn’t be right to board the train without addressing their fans, so Coach King got up and delivered a few impromptu thoughts. He was followed by O’Dea, who declared, “We are off to do our best. If the spirit of this crowd stays with the team, we shall surely come back winners.” The throng erupted in cheers. Moments later, with a traveling party of twenty-four players and six coaches on board, the train pulled out of the station and headed east. Their arrival was eagerly anticipated in Connecticut, thanks to the presence of the Kangaroo Kicker. The New Haven Evening Leader said of O’Dea, “The interest which his advent in the East has aroused is as great or greater than the excitement which has been caused by the anticipation of the game itself.”

  O’Dea’s star had risen exponentially since his remarkable kick against Northwestern the year before. He had become a full-fledged celebrity. On campus he got the royal treatment. While his teammates walked to practice, a particularly wealthy classmate sent his family’s phaeton, a kind of sporty carriage, to transport Pat to the team’s daily workout.

  O’Dea had his fair share of female admirers as well. After big games his mailbox was jammed with letters from flirtatious women. The Aussie did all he could to impress them. In the 1890s in Madison, nothing got a young coed’s attention more than renting a private carriage for a trip around the small city, and O’Dea quickly developed a reputation as “one of the greatest hirers of carriages the town ever knew.” Seemingly every day, he would telephone the local stables and, playing up his irresistible Australian accent, loudly demand, “This is Pot O’Dea. Send up a carriage right away!” One friendship even made it into the gossip pages, as it linked perhaps the two best-known Australians in the United States, O’Dea and Dame Nellie Melba.

  In the late 1890s, there were few women in the entire world as famous as Melba. She was born Helen “Nellie” Porter Mitchell just outside of Melbourne in 1861,
eleven years before O’Dea, and she had left for Europe in the 1880s, determined to find success as a soprano. She assumed the stage name Nellie Melba, as a tribute to her hometown of Melbourne.

  For the next five decades, she dazzled audiences worldwide, thanks to what was, according to the New York Times, “one of the loveliest voices that ever issued from a human throat . . . simply delicious in its fullness, richness and purity.” She sang for the tsar of Russia, the king of Sweden, the emperor of Austria, the kaiser of Germany, and the queen of England. She had a highly publicized and scrutinized affair with the duke of Orleans, a well-known claimant to the French throne. She even had foods named after her—peach melba and melba toast. And as a result of her Australian connection with Pat O’Dea, Melba had a close friendship with the Kangaroo Kicker.

  The press followed their interactions closely. In February 1899, the New York World noted that two famous Australians had been “chumming together” in Chicago. “They are Melba and Pat O’Dea, the famous football player. O’Dea and Melba, who was then Nellie Mitchell, knew each other in Melbourne,” the paper explained.

  Weeks later the St. Paul Globe wrote an expansive piece on their friendship under the headline Melba and Pat O’Dea—How the Great Wisconsin Footballist Withstood the Prima Donna’s Appeal. It documented how Melba had “failed signally in an earnest plea, calculated to rob American football of one of its particular stars.” The great singer, the paper reported, “sought by every means to secure his promise that he would never again risk his life and limb in what she called ‘this brutal football game you are playing here in America.’ ” O’Dea, readers were told, “stood firm” against Melba’s rantings over “the heinous conduct of which she had heard in frightened letters from Melbourne, where O’Dea was almost daily reported as carried from the field as good as dead.” The Aussies argued for two days, the Globe claimed, but Melba couldn’t get O’Dea to cave. He would play again in the fall of 1899.

  The Badgers had prepared for their October 21 matchup against Yale with three other games—topping Lake Forest, Beloit, and Northwestern by a combined total of 119–0. As always, O’Dea grabbed the headlines. Against Beloit, he ran 100 yards for a touchdown. In the win over the Methodists, as Northwestern was known at the time, O’Dea showed off one of the skills he had been honing all summer, his ability to spin and curve his punts. The Chicago Tribune spoke glowingly of the performance. “Once when Wisconsin punted the ball out from its twenty-five yard line,” the Tribune reported, “Captain O’Dea tried his new twister, which goes high and then comes down almost in direct perpendicular. It was a puzzler for the Methodists and the Badgers got it on a fumble.”

  Though the 38–0 winning margin was impressive, the consensus afterward was that the Badgers were not, with the Tribune pointing out that the final score was “made only by the wonderful punting of Captain O’Dea.” Northwestern had moved the ball effectively throughout the first half before seeing a number of drives fizzle out due to blocked kicks, and observers were harsh in their criticism of Wisconsin’s defense. The Chicago Times-Herald said the Badgers “fell down sadly at times on defense,” while the Tribune termed the Badgers’ tackling “a disappointment,” adding that “the Northwestern players all unite in saying unless it is greatly improved in the next week Yale will push the Badgers all over the field.”

  It is certainly possible that the looming Yale game may have impacted Wisconsin’s effort. Northwestern simply wasn’t a very good team—they would lose to Chicago 76–0 later in the season. It was clear within the first ten minutes of the game that Northwestern was outclassed, and perhaps the Badgers simply let up, knowing that they were going to get a win and that the more important contest was still a week away.

  Fantastic kicking aside, that mentality was apparently reflected in O’Dea’s play, with the Times-Herald saying he “did not play hard and appeared to be saving himself.” The Sentinel elaborated on that opinion. “O’Dea saved himself in every possible way, neither hitting the line hard nor attempting to make open runs in the field,” the paper told its readers, adding, “This was owing to his fear of being disabled before the Yale game . . . [as] an injury at this late day would be disastrous.”

  King said afterward that his team showed “every fault known,” and O’Dea, to a great extent, agreed, saying, “The play in the first half was very poor and continued so in part of the second.” He did conclude on an optimistic note, though, commenting, “Toward the end we had the first team work of this year and with two or three more practices we will be in much better condition to meet Yale.”

  Despite the criticism of their most recent performance, spirits were high as the Badgers rolled toward Connecticut. The team passed its time singing college songs and belting out the Wisconsin varsity yell. In an effort to stay loose, they also got off the train whenever the opportunity arose and took a few minutes to run around. They arrived in Hartford just before midnight the following day. The plan was to practice in Connecticut’s capital city for three days before heading down to New Haven on Saturday morning.

  After spending a rainy Wednesday morning touring Hartford, the Badgers headed to the practice field at Trinity College that afternoon. Due presumably to the Hartford school’s rivalry with Yale, the Badgers were well received, with some Trinity students even going so far as to toss a couple of their New Haven counterparts off the field in an effort to prevent them from spying on Wisconsin. The efforts were only moderately successful. The spies climbed a tree outside the practice field and watched the proceedings through binoculars.

  From that vantage point, the Yale men saw a group that the Chicago Tribune described as “an unusually fast, snappy team.” The paper raved in particular about O’Dea, whose “kicking was a revelation to the onlookers.” Coach King was less impressed, telling the Tribune that the men had not done well, as they were still feeling the aftereffects of the long journey. In addition, he was concerned about injuries. Center Nathan Comstock hurt his wrist in the workout, hampering his ability to snap the ball.

  Still, reports of Wisconsin’s strength were trickling down to New Haven, and Yale captain Malcolm McBride sprang into action, “scouring the country to find coaches to assist the team in its emergency.” In addition to Camp, eight others were cited as being among those who helped the Elis through their practices during the course of the week. After overseeing Yale’s Thursday practice, Camp was asked what he thought of the matchup. He “modestly declined even to hazard a guess.” The Daily Cardinal concluded, “That Yale fears defeat there cannot be a shadow of a doubt.” The Chicago Chronicle agreed. It reported that Camp’s team was particularly focused on blocking kicks, an attempt to neutralize what obviously was perceived as Wisconsin’s greatest strength.

  Meanwhile, back in Madison, interest was at an all-time high. Arrangements had been made to chart the game in two different locations—the Library Hall and the local opera house. The band was slated to perform at the former building, while, thanks to continuous reports from Western Union, those on hand would be able to follow the game on a huge piece of canvas, which would be on display at the front of the room.

  The technology at the opera house, though, promised to be even more exciting, as for the first time in the West, fans would have an opportunity to watch a football game on “Arthur Irwin’s Patent Veriscope Board.” Irwin was a former professional baseball player, who, at the time, was serving as the manager of the Washington Senators, and while he was best known as the man who had helped popularize the fielder’s glove, he didn’t confine his ingenuity to baseball. Irwin’s board was a giant mock-up of a football field, with a ball suspended from a cord and propelled by pulleys. Beneath that was a scoreboard that displayed all the information needed to follow the game. A local newspaper editor was hired to announce the play-by-play as it came in. King himself sang the praises of the device, calling it “a great ‘Educator’ of football.” The promoters of the event had sold thirteen hund
red seats in advance.

  The Badgers got a special pep talk after supper on Thursday courtesy of King and a couple of former players. “They were told that every time the Yale yell was given they had only to brace themselves and know that although their own rooters were not present they were back in Wisconsin yelling hard for the Cardinal; and that in fact the entire West would be waiting anxiously but with confidence the result of the game,” the Daily Cardinal reported. After a light practice Friday focusing on signals and the kicking game, the Badgers boarded a train on Saturday to head to New Haven.

  Unfortunately, the train ride was not without incident. O’Dea jammed his hand in a car door, breaking his finger, though Wisconsin didn’t announce that he was injured until after the game. O’Dea joined a list of wounded players for the Badgers that included Comstock and the quarterback, George Wilmarth. The injury Comstock suffered in Wednesday’s practice turned out to be a fractured wrist, which was now encased in a plaster cast. Wilmarth, meanwhile, had dislocated his shoulder in practice and was wearing a leather harness that hampered his movements.

  The banged-up Badgers arrived at the train station in New Haven just before 1:30, greeted at the depot by a crowd of rooters. Music, cheering, and confidence filled the air.

  “I’ve got fifty here to put up on O’Dea’s men,” a Badger supporter yelled, trying to be heard above the din.

  “What are you betting on? Even money on victory?” a young Yale student replied incredulously.

  “Of course I’m betting on victory. Nothing less,” the Wisconsin fan shouted, unsure whether to up the ante or go after the young man, whose lack of respect for the Westerners was evident in his manner.

  It briefly looked as if a fight might break out, but the man’s friends calmed him down “and assured him that it was Yale over-confidence and nothing else that led the callow youth to disparage Wisconsin.”