by Dave Revsine
Equally telling is the lack of a consensus in the reporting of Richards’s game-winning run. While the distance of the dash was reported in every game story, and the general conclusion was that it covered 65 yards, there were certainly some dissenting opinions. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s headline spoke of Richards’ 70 Yard Run, while the Daily Cardinal—the only paper to specifically mention the punt distance—wrote of the game-winning play, “Richards grabs the ball and runs around the end 95 yds for a touchdown.” Obviously, a significant variation from what others had reported.
There are all kinds of possible explanations for the discrepancies. Though there were yard markers on the sidelines, the numbers weren’t painted onto the field like they are today, so it was easy to lose track of the spot where a play originated. The typed play-by-play accounts that today are part of the postgame box scores didn’t exist. With the limits in technology and the many steps it took to get a game story from a stadium into a newspaper, simple issues like typos can’t be ruled out.
There may be something else at work, too. The lack of video evidence put a tremendous amount of power in the hands of newspaper writers. It was a time when myth could quickly become reality. We all know what the greatest athletes and sports moments of the last half-century looked like because we can watch them whenever we want. We don’t need a reporter to describe “The Miracle on Ice,” Michael Jordan’s flu-ridden NBA Finals performance against the Jazz, or even Bill Mazeroski’s 1960 World Series–winning home run. That wasn’t the case in 1899, or many years later when writers discussed the events of that bygone era.
As has certainly become obvious by now, O’Dea was truly great. There are too many independent accounts stating so to believe otherwise. Yet, it’s also obvious that, like any athlete, there were some days when he was better than others. But people want to talk about having witnessed phenomenal athletes at their greatest moments. So, if twenty or even forty years after the fact, a writer decides to reflect on the time he saw a superstar in action, why not stretch the truth a little? Why not pretend that the kick that happened in warm-ups actually occurred in the game? After all, it makes for a better story. It adds to the legend. And it was the legend, both on the field and off, that defined O’Dea.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that these inconsistencies aren’t relevant. After all, there is a massive difference between an 80-yard punt and a 117-yard one, just as a kick in a driving blizzard is more impressive than one made in placid conditions. But given the unanimous praise heaped upon his punting by the reporters who covered the Yale game, it does seem fair to conclude that, however far his kicks traveled, O’Dea’s punting that day was truly remarkable. In summarizing the Elis’ performance, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote of O’Dea’s “immense superiority” over his Yale counterpart McBride, who would be named a first-team All-American at the end of the season. “It must be borne in mind, however,” the paper pointed out, “that O’Dea is an exceptional punter and when compared with any other standard . . . McBride . . . [is] considerably above average.” The New York Herald reached a more sweeping conclusion, saying simply, “The game conclusively proved that, in ‘Pat’ O’Dea, Wisconsin has the greatest kicker who ever played football.”
O’Dea aside, conclusions regarding what the Badgers’ performance meant for Western football as a whole were less uniform. As we’ve seen, there were some who dismissed them as a one-man team. The general consensus, however, was that Wisconsin had helped earn its region a measure of respect. “The West is working hard to take the football supremacy away from this part of the country, where it has remained ever since the first pigskin was kicked by an intercollegiate toe,” the New York Sun concluded.
As would be expected, the strongest opinions came from the West. Wisconsin manager Fisher said that, in playing Yale so close, Wisconsin has “clearly shown there is practically no difference between the east and the west.” The Chicago Times-Herald saw it as a milestone game. “A tottering tradition has been completely overthrown,” the paper proclaimed. After all, it reasoned, in previous years, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton had beaten one another more soundly than the Elis beat Wisconsin. Therefore, there was no more difference between Yale and Wisconsin than there might have been in a given year between any of the Eastern powers. “Admit that Yale has the better team, and the proof of the collapse of the tradition is still convincing.”
In a conclusion that would certainly resonate with today’s college football fans, the Times-Herald stated that the only way to really resolve the debate was with a playoff of sorts. “The final game of the year,” the paper predicted, “will be fought out between the strongest team of the West and the strongest team of the East.”
Chapter Fifteen
A Premature End
Upon returning home from New Haven, Pat O’Dea dropped a bombshell. This would be his last year playing for the Badgers. Though, under the rules of the time, he was still eligible to participate in intercollegiate athletics for another season, he had decided to call it a career.
Today’s sportswriters would call it a “quality of life” decision. “Every year I have worked hard in the interests of Wisconsin, keeping in training steadfastly,” O’Dea told the Milwaukee Sentinel. “Now I am tired of it and desire to enjoy my last year in the university prior to graduating instead of working hard to condition myself for athletic contests.”
O’Dea outlined the many sacrifices he had made to participate in football—everything from eschewing pastries and sweets to missing out on the social aspects of college life. A Milwaukee Journal reporter, oblivious to O’Dea’s reputation as a ladies man, noted sympathetically that the football star “had no time to call on girls.” The story of the impending retirement of “the greatest punter and drop-kicker college athletics has ever known” made national news, appearing in newspapers as far-flung as Dallas, New Orleans, and Boston.
Though the Sentinel reported that O’Dea planned to practice law in either Milwaukee or Madison after graduation, speculation began that he would succeed King, who, several papers reported, might step down from his position as Wisconsin’s coach. “In all these years,” the Minneapolis Journal said of O’Dea, “he has not drawn any pecuniary benefit from his labors in helping to bring Wisconsin into the foreground of western football history, and now there is an opportunity to, in a measure, recognize his services in giving him a remunerative position it seems that that should be done, if he desires it.” O’Dea shrugged off talk of succeeding his coach, saying respectfully, “all I know now I have learned from Phil King.” He did note, however, that he would like to help the team in some capacity, perhaps as a kicking coach.
There was still the matter of finishing his final season, though. It was a season that seemed unlikely to include a showdown with archrival Chicago. Tired of Stagg’s heavy-handedness on financial issues, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois announced a joint boycott of the Maroons in March of 1899. The three state universities said they would not resume relations with Chicago unless the school agreed to an even split of gate receipts and gave its opponents the right to choose the location for half of their matches with the Maroons. In other words, the schools demanded financial equality with Chicago. “We decline to compete with universities of our own rank which are unwilling to admit the principle that intercollegiate contests are established primarily for the sake of sport and not for financial gain,” Wisconsin manager John Fisher said.
O’Dea articulated a similar position. “I should like to play Chicago before my football career is ended,” he said, “but a game cannot be arranged unless Stagg accedes to the conditions comprised in Manager Fisher’s statement.” But the concept of sharing equally was one that Stagg had long scoffed at as “socialistic philanthropy.” In a letter to University of Chicago president William Rainey Harper, frustrated Wisconsin president Charles Adams complained that negotiations with Stagg were marked by an “assumption of superiority” on the
part of the Chicago coach.
Reluctant to give up the lucrative Chicago market, Wisconsin and Michigan scheduled a Windy City game for Thanksgiving Day. It was to be played at West Side Park, then home of the Chicago Orphans, the city’s National League baseball team, which, within a few years, would come to be known as the Cubs. The contest would be the first meeting between the two schools since 1893. As former Badgers star “Ikey” Karel noted, like Wisconsin, Michigan had “had enough of Stagg and Staggism.” In response to the boycott, Stagg turned eastward, lining up games against three solid opponents—Cornell, Pennsylvania, and Brown, the latter of which would visit Chicago on Thanksgiving afternoon. Stagg believed that a battle between his eminently popular local team and an Eastern opponent, even a second-tier one, would prove to be a bigger draw than a game between two out-of-town teams. That hubris, as it turned out, would cost him dearly.
Wisconsin had two more games scheduled against conference foes before the big showdown with Michigan, and those two games provided two of the most memorable moments of O’Dea’s career.
The first came in the Badgers’ matchup with Illinois on a windy November day in Milwaukee. Early in the game, after O’Dea had punted deep into Illinois territory, the Illini quickly kicked back to the Badgers. While the ball was in the air, O’Dea yelled to his teammate William Juneau, “fair catch, Bill, fair catch!” Juneau did as he was told, raising his hand and, in accordance with the rules of the day, digging in his heel to mark the spot of the catch. He grabbed the ball near the sideline at Wisconsin’s 53-yard line, meaning he was at a sharp angle 57 yards away from the goalposts. The rules at the time in college football, as they still do in the National Football League to this day, allowed a team making a fair catch to immediately attempt a field goal from the spot of the catch—an uncontested kick that the defense cannot rush. Given the circumstances, no one expected O’Dea to invoke the rule. The game referee reportedly turned to the Aussie and quipped, “I think you’re crazy if you’re trying to score in this wind.”
And, yet, that’s exactly what O’Dea was trying to do. Juneau assumed the position for holding a placekick attempt. He lay down on his stomach and extended his right arm, placing a fingertip on top of the ball. Taking the wind into account, O’Dea lined up for the attempt. “I aimed the ball for a spot between the goal posts and the sideline to allow for the drift,” he later recounted. A twenty-year-old named Robert Zuppke, later a Hall of Fame football coach at Illinois, had paid the princely sum of a nickel to watch the game from a nearby rooftop. “It was a mighty boot,” Zuppke recalled. “The ball soared far above the goal posts, almost squarely between them, and sailed on above the crowd in the stands and landed outside the park.”
It was the longest successful placekick in college football at the time, officially credited at 57 yards, though, thanks to the angle and the fact that the ball flew well beyond the posts, it was estimated to have traveled roughly 75 yards. Reaction to the kick was overwhelming. One Illinois assistant coach called it “the prettiest piece of football I have ever seen,” while another said simply, “O’Dea’s kick was wonderful.”
And unlike many of O’Dea’s hyperbole-aided efforts, the contemporaneous accounts tell the same story that was relayed many years later. For instance, an article in an Ann Arbor newspaper described the kick this way. “O’Dea established a new world’s record by a goal kick which was little short of marvelous. Juneau made a fair catch on Wisconsin’s 53 yard line near the edge of the gridiron. From this point O’Dea made a place-kick scoring a clean goal at a distance of 57 yards, and that too, from near the edge of the field.”
The Badgers won the game 23–0, holding the Illini to just one first down in the process, prompting the Chicago Tribune to remark that “Illinois’ offense was about as helpless an article as ever happened on a football field.” It was a group, the paper remarked, that at times was “seized with intense stupidity” and at others seemed “to have not the slightest idea what to do.” The Badgers, on the other hand, were clicking, taking a 6–1 mark into their game at Minnesota.
That contest was only marginally closer, and once again, O’Dea was the story. Early in the second half, the Badgers’ captain fielded a Minnesota punt on Wisconsin’s side of midfield. He then executed a move that another future Hall of Fame coach, Gil Dobie, who was playing for the Gophers that day, always maintained was “the greatest individual play he ever saw.” Dobie saw some good plays, by the way. He later coached sixty-one games at the University of Washington and didn’t lose a single one of them.
As O’Dea caught the ball, Dobie was bearing down on him, in perfect position to make the tackle. He dove at O’Dea, who sidestepped him beautifully. “After eluding me,” Dobie remembered, “O’Dea ran toward the sideline. He did not kick until several Minnesota players were almost upon him. The boot was therefore at a difficult angle, made harder by the fact that O’Dea, a right-footed kicker, was running to his left.” Oscar Erickson, a Badger freshman athlete at the time, remembered the kick similarly, recalling, “It is safe to say the ball covered all of 70 yards. I have had my share of athletics as player, coach and spectator, but that play as a spectacle will always stay with me.”
And much like the kick against Illinois from the week before, the accounts of the time jibe nicely with the legend. The Minneapolis Journal’s description of the play in its game story read, “The ball flew straight to O’Dea 10 yards beyond center and with Gil Dobie right under it. Great was the surprise of the Minnesota men to see O’Dea dodge an attack from Dobie and then deliberately kick a drop from the center of the field. A nicer kick could not have been made and Wisconsin had a score, 5–0.” The kick is officially listed as a 60-yarder, the second longest of O’Dea’s career. The Badgers won 19–0. They were still unbeaten against Western foes heading into their Thanksgiving Day showdown with Michigan in Chicago.
As the appointed 11:00 hour for kickoff of that game came and went, Stagg fidgeted uncomfortably in the stands. He had decided to drop by the West Side grounds to work off some of his nervous energy as he awaited the mid-afternoon kickoff between his Maroons and Brown, but if anything, the scene was making him more agitated.
Stagg had come early, in part, to exchange what were almost certainly strained greetings with the management of the Michigan and Wisconsin teams. Though both schools were still boycotting Chicago, he harbored hopes of talking the winner into playing a championship game the following weekend. None of the three teams had lost to a Western squad all season, and the fan bases were unhappy that, due to the boycott, they would not get a clear-cut champion.
As upsetting as that prospect was to Stagg, it was the size of the crowd that really disturbed him. The wooden bleachers were absolutely packed with Wisconsin and Michigan supporters, who had poured in by the trainload and taken over the Windy City. Stagg had hoped that the Wisconsin–Michigan game would prove less attractive than a game between the Wolverines and his Maroons, who had played the last six Thanksgiving Days in Chicago. As was clear from the throng in the stadium and the many thousands who snaked through the streets and vacant lots outside trying to get in, he had miscalculated.
The final attendance that day was estimated (not all that precisely) at between 13,000 and 22,000. Whatever the number, it was the largest crowd ever to see a football game in the West, and Stagg knew it would dwarf the attendance at Marshall Field that afternoon, which ended up numbering less than 8,000. He had hoped that fans would be able to attend both games, but as the minutes ticked away, it became more and more apparent that wouldn’t be possible. Though management attributed the delay to the throngs who were backed up at the ticket windows, there was a small part of Stagg that wondered whether it was aimed at him—an attempt to further diminish his turnstile count.
Brass bands from the two schools filled the void, marching around the field to entertain the fans, who responded with tin horns and even an occasional cowbell. When the two teams f
inally emerged at 11:30, the wooden stands shook with the sounds of music and cheering, as fans waved banners and streamers decorated in school colors. The field ran sideways across the baseball lot, with one goalpost placed right around the spot where first base would be and the other in left center field.
The fans had all paid handsomely for the right to be in the ballpark, with ticket prices ranging between $1.00 for general admission and $10.00 for the boxes, which were arranged under a covered grandstand behind the home plate area. Each school ended up netting $6,000—making it the most lucrative gate ever for a football game in Chicago. It was a number that showed just how far the sport had come in the Midwest during the 1890s. When the two schools had last met, six years earlier in Ann Arbor, the attendance totaled 360. After Wisconsin’s team had returned to Madison back then, it was forced to ask the student body to chip in cash to pay off the debt from the journey.
As always, the pregame hype and attention had centered on Wisconsin’s star kicker. The Wolverines’ strategy, the Milwaukee Journal reported on the morning of the game, “will be to keep Pat O’Dea so far away from their goal that he will be unable to use his famous kicking leg to advantage in scoring.” The Badgers, the paper said, “will play a defensive game, making its effort to keep Michigan away from the danger line and trusting to Pat O’Dea for the rest.” The Chicago Tribune asserted that the Badgers might be overly reliant on their great kicker, noting that Wisconsin “depends so much on O’Dea that the offensive work has suffered.” Michigan captain Allen Steckle concurred, saying simply, “O’Dea is our greatest fear.”