The Opening Kickoff Read online

  After Wisconsin’s Hereward Peele was knocked out of the game with a wrenched knee, the paper claimed these observations from Plotke: “There is a fine young fellow condemned to live out his life with one leg—a hopeless cripple. If I can prevent one suffering mother’s heart from breaking—I shall feel myself well repaid for a year’s labor in getting my football ordinance into force. Some day I shall be put in history with Garibaldi and George Washington.”

  Finally, Plotke had seen his fill. “O, this is terrible! Take me away! Take me away! I can’t bear the sight any longer,” he purportedly exclaimed. Then “[h]e covered up his face with his hands and did not look out again on the hilarious throng until well on his way to a carriage.” As upset as Plotke was after viewing the spectacle, his was the minority opinion.

  The buildup to the contest had begun almost immediately after the Badgers’ win over Minnesota two weeks before, with the Daily Cardinal reporting, “Never has there been so intense an interest in football circles as at present.”

  Wisconsin had played one game in the interim, an 11–0 win over Beloit, a small in-state college near the Illinois border. Though the score was a bit underwhelming, most Wisconsin rooters quickly dismissed any calls for concern. It seemed reasonable to assume that the team hadn’t been properly focused due to its impending showdown with the Maroons. Additionally, O’Dea had battled a sore leg for much of the week, though he managed a goal from the field in the second half and punted marvelously, repeatedly sending the ball “over the heads of the baffled collegiate.” His performance once again drew headlines. O’Dea’s Day Again, proclaimed the Milwaukee Sentinel, while the Daily Cardinal agreed that O’Dea’s Kicking was a Feature of the Game.

  The Badgers departed for Chicago in the early afternoon of Friday, November 12, accompanied by several coaches and trainers as well as the eighteen-member university band. After a trip of a bit more than five hours, they arrived in the city and headed straight for the Victoria Hotel in the south portion of the Loop, where they checked in and had dinner. After the meal the team enjoyed a variety show from the boxes of the Chicago Opera House.

  While the Badgers were relaxing downtown, a little farther south some of the Maroons were, well, acting like college kids. Herschberger and one of his teammates got wrapped up in an egg-eating contest. The Chicago star consumed a startling total of thirteen. Sadly, history does not tell us whether that was enough to win the contest. But that battle had a huge impact on the more important one the next day, as Herschberger had to be held out of the lineup due to a severe stomach ache. He was, Chicago coach Amos Alonzo Stagg recalled many years later, “of no use to us.”

  After about fifteen minutes of scoreless play, the Badgers struck. Wisconsin blocked a Chicago punt, Harvey Holmes scooped it up, and then raced 45 yards for the touchdown, which gave the Badgers a 4–0 lead. A bit later in the half, O’Dea, in the brilliantly metaphorical words of the Middleville (Michigan) Sun, “composed as a woman cutting biscuits from soft dough,” nailed a dropkick, reported variously at between 40 and 50 yards, though definitely “one of the longest . . . ever made on the Chicago field.” That put the Badgers up 9–0. Shortly thereafter, O’Dea showed off his punting prowess, as he boomed a 75 yarder. Just before the half, O’Dea proved he was more than just a great kicker, returning a punt 47 yards, deep into Chicago territory. The Badgers eventually punched in a short touchdown, with Peele carrying it across the goal line. They led 13–0 at halftime.

  While O’Dea’s exploits had stolen the show, the Badgers also shined on defense. Wisconsin was surprisingly strong at the ends, purported before the game to be one of its weaknesses. The Maroons’ speedy backs were unable to get outside and eventually were relegated to simply trying to run straight into the line, where they had their most success. They did manage a late touchdown and safety, due in large part to two Wisconsin fumbles, but the game was never in doubt in the second half.

  As for Herschberger, the previous night’s feeding frenzy turned him into a spectator. The Chicago students yelled to put him in after halftime, and Stagg nodded his approval. The Maroons’ star took off his sweater and began to put on his jersey, but, after a brief consultation with one of Chicago’s trainers, he thought better of it. The sweater went back on, and Herschberger spent the rest of the game watching dejectedly from the sidelines.

  The November sky began to darken as the game dragged on, until it became virtually impossible to distinguish the players from one another. With Wisconsin leading 23–8 and time still left in the game, the fans began to encroach on the field. Within moments the gridiron was “a jumble of mixed up players and crowding spectators. It was a sight, unique and strange to see from the grand stands, and it stopped the game. The Chicago team left the field. It had enough.”

  As the Maroons and their fans departed dejectedly, the Wisconsin contingent began its celebration. A young Badger supporter, crimson ribbons flapping in the light breeze, made his way up the flagpole by the bleachers, knife between his teeth, and cut off a University of Chicago flag that had been flying throughout the game. The young man slid down and hid the flag under his overcoat. “Some students in Madison,” the Milwaukee Sentinel predicted, “will doubtless be richer by a treasure which the Chicago men . . . will regret perhaps almost as much as they do the game.”

  When the team returned to the Victoria Hotel, it was greeted in the lobby by a huge throng of supporters. Coach Phil King addressed the masses, and then he and Captain Jeremiah Riordan were hoisted on the crowd’s shoulders and paraded around as the group howled with delight, singing “Hot Time” and belting out Wisconsin yells. The celebration continued long into the night, with Badger players and fans taking over the third and fourth floors of the Victoria, making “the walls resound with ‘U rah-rah Wisconsin’ as though there was no one else in the house.”

  That was mild compared to the scene back in Madison, though, where the sounds of horns and firecrackers pierced the night, while a mass of undergraduates marched through the city performing university yells. The celebrating students eventually convened on the lower campus, where they built a bonfire fueled by whatever scraps they could find, including “all the loose wood at Ladies’ hall.” Despite the contributions from the women, the wood supply was depleted quickly. Hoping to keep the conflagration going, a group of revelers attempted to tear down the fencing around the construction site of the new library, before being fought off by a dozen or so night watchmen.

  The papers the next day left little doubt as to who was responsible for the Badgers’ win. The Tribune’s account began with one word, “Outclassed,” but quickly turned its focus to O’Dea. “Pat O’Dea did it,” the paper stated, adding, “one man’s toe settled the struggle.” The Milwaukee Sentinel agreed, saying, “O’Dea’s punting was the most brilliant feature of the day.”

  King and Riordan both said afterward that they thought the final margin should have been even larger than it was, actually expressing some dissatisfaction with Wisconsin’s play. The Badgers’ self-critique didn’t sit well with Stagg, who challenged Wisconsin to return to Chicago at some point over the next few weekends for a rematch, offering up a massive $5,000 guarantee. Riordan quickly shot down the idea, saying, “Would Princeton play Yale a second game if she defeated her Saturday? Certainly not and there is no precedent for such a move.”

  Of course, there was also the issue of whether football would remain legal in Chicago. The city council gathered to vote on Plotke’s ordinance the Monday after the game, and while the Tribune’s coverage might have led one to believe it had a reasonable chance at passage, the truth was quite the opposite. Mayor Harrison was a strong proponent of the game, and he vehemently opposed the measure. All of his cabinet members and several other leading aldermen shared that perspective. Additionally, a coalition of aldermen from predominately Irish wards united against the bill, fearing that it would also prohibit Gaelic football, a favorite of their constituents.
Seeing the writing on the wall, and hoping to avoid the embarrassment of an overwhelming defeat, Plotke asked to have the measure moved to a committee, with hopes that it would die there. The opposition blocked that move, demanding that the ordinance be brought to a vote. It was defeated 57 to 5. The local football world turned its attention back to the fight for the Western championship.

  Only one intercollegiate contest still remained for the Badgers. They were slated to face Northwestern on Thanksgiving Day in Evanston. To fill the nearly two-week void between games, though, King scheduled a contest against a group of Wisconsin alumni, the first-ever such matchup, but an event that would become a bit of a tradition during the next decade.

  In a game that was dismissed as “little more than a farce” by the Daily Cardinal, the alumni prevailed 6–0, handing the lackadaisical and disinterested Badgers their first loss of the season. The defeat, though, would have no impact on the Western championship, which focused only on games between conference schools. In fact, speculation ran rampant that King had actually wanted the varsity to lose in order to protect them from overconfidence heading into the Northwestern game. “King suspected letdown,” the Milwaukee Journal claimed, “so he ‘framed’ the varsity with the officials in the alumni game and the decrepit old grads won by a touchdown. Then King soundly berated the team as a bunch of quitters.” With those words ringing in their ears, the Badgers used the loss as motivation and turned their attention to Northwestern.

  By this point, O’Dea, the relative unknown at the outset of the season, had become the clear focus of the Badgers team, and on the day before the game, the Milwaukee Journal ran a lengthy piece profiling the Wisconsin star. “The present season in the west will be remembered for one feature more than for any other one thing—the brilliant career of Pat O’Dea of the University of Wisconsin team,” the Journal asserted. “He has put new life into his team and treated spectators to kicking that is not surpassed in the country for its length and beauty.”

  The article then gave a bit of O’Dea’s background, including the untrue story of his “saving a woman from drowning” during his youth in Australia. It provided details on his Australian Rules Football career, where he was “recognized as a star of the first magnitude,” but also focused on other athletic accomplishments. “Just before coming to the United States,” the paper reported, “O’Dea rode the winning horse in the greatest annual steeple chase race in Melbourne. But this sport did not meet with the approval of his parents and he gave it up.”

  The writer observed that “O’Dea does not look the athlete he is. He is tall, thin and lanky, but there is not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body.” Appearances aside, O’Dea’s skill was immediately apparent to anyone entering his room, as the walls were lined “with more ribbons and medals than a prize dog at a bench show.”

  After outlining the Aussie’s accomplishments in the 1897 season, the paper concluded by describing his unusual style. “A feature of O’Dea’s punting is his ability to kick the ball while on a dead run fully as far and as true as when standing still. This he does by a peculiar side movement.”

  As it turned out, though, there were not many opportunities for O’Dea to showcase that style in the game against Northwestern. The conditions were nothing short of brutal. An almost continuous downpour over the previous couple of days relegated the field to a glorified mud pit. The muck prevented the Badgers from executing their normal kicking game, which, as it turned out, they didn’t really need. Henry Cochems plowed through the Purple for three rushing touchdowns, and Wisconsin cruised to a 22–0 win. Meanwhile, a bit farther south, Chicago handed Michigan its first loss of the season. Those two results combined to make the Badgers the undisputed Western champs.

  The team remained in Chicago for a celebratory Thanksgiving dinner. Not surprisingly, the turkey disappeared quickly. They had plenty to be thankful for. It was a season that had seen the Badgers outscore their opponents 210–14—including an 84–8 margin against their three highest profile opponents: Minnesota, Chicago, and Northwestern. “Wisconsin has a clear and unquestionable title to the western championship,” said Everts Wrenn, a well-known official. “In my opinion the Badger team is by all odds the strongest team in the West this season.” Northwestern coach Jesse Van Doozer agreed, saying, “if any team can claim the championship, that team is Wisconsin. In general form, they are superior to all the others.”

  The impact of the Badgers’ season was felt throughout the state, with the Chippewa Falls Herald seeing it as a bit of a turning point in how the school would be viewed by the youth of Wisconsin. Students who may not have known about the university before, the paper said, might now be inclined to continue their studies in Madison. “Hereafter the game will be stoutly defended by the people of the Badger state and earnest prayers which will be constantly offered up by its numerous admirers will be for a continuance of the development of such formidable football weapons as the wonderful leg of Pat O’Dea.”

  As O’Dea and his teammates left the Chicago area to head back to Madison, representatives of the seven Western Conference schools gathered the day after Thanksgiving at the Chicago Beach Hotel, near the University of Chicago campus, to discuss football’s future. The day ended with a surprising announcement. “Resolved: That this conference unanimously favors such a modification of the rules now governing football as will make the game less rough.”

  Under the headline No More Slugball, the Tribune hailed the decision as “a step which will startle the whole football world.” Though light on specifics, which were to be determined by a subcommittee headed by Stagg, the report mentioned that mass plays would be done away with, that linemen would no longer be allowed to move into the backfield to block, and that open-field play would be emphasized. “It is the most spectacular, most exciting and greatest college game we have,” said one anonymous member of the committee, “but it cannot be continued as at present.”

  Particularly noteworthy was the fact that the first steps toward reform had been taken by the Midwestern schools. “It violates all traditions and precedents,” the Tribune noted, “for the East has owned the game from its beginning.” Another committee member, again quoted anonymously, said, “We shall pay no attention to what the East does. We are big enough and strong enough out here to take care of the thing and are glad to take the initiative in a much-needed reform.”

  While it all sounded good, the reality turned out to be something altogether different. Eastern officials denounced the schools for their “impertinence.” With an eye on future games against Eastern teams, Wisconsin withdrew its representative from the subcommittee, so as not to offend the establishment. Looking to placate the Midwest, Yale’s Walter Camp reached out to Stagg in the spring of 1898 and invited him to join the Eastern rules committee, though scheduling conflicts prevented him from actually participating for several years. By January 1898, the promised changes had failed to materialize, leading the Tribune to ask with exasperation, “What has become of their reform? What are they doing?” The short answer: nothing. The schools were continuing on exactly the same course. One needed only to glance at their balance sheets to understand why.

  Chapter Twelve

  “There’s Money in It”

  “Money, money, money seems to be the cry,” Caspar Whitney wrote in his 1894 book, A Sporting Pilgrimage, “it will be the curse, if indeed not the downfall, of honest university sport.” By the 1890s money had indeed become an integral part of the football story. In 1892 a company called Vitascope, which manufactured an early form of the movie camera, offered $25,000 for the film rights to the Harvard–Yale game. The proposal was turned down, since it would have necessitated playing the game on a 55-yard field due to the limitations of the cameras. Even without the Vitascope money, the 1894 game between the two schools netted $119,000, more than $3 million in today’s currency. There was clearly money to be made in college football.

  While the re
venues tied directly to the game were growing, schools increasingly began to see football as a valuable public-relations tool—a means of publicizing their university and energizing alumni, which, of course, had further financial implications. With more publicity and highly engaged alums came an increase in donations.

  No school grasped the PR power of football more than the University of Chicago. Noted economist James Laurence Laughlin, a member of the Chicago faculty, somewhat snidely referred to the school as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” with President Harper playing the role of “The P. T. Barnum of education.” In that metaphor, it’s fair to say that the football team quickly evolved into Harper’s circus. And just two years after the school opened its doors, that circus took to the road.

  After an 1894 season that had seen the Maroons play a stunning eighteen-game schedule, eight of which came against other four-year colleges, Stagg happened upon the idea of a postseason trip to the Pacific Coast to play a number of games, including at least one against Stanford. The newly founded California school was coached by Stagg’s mentor, Yale’s Walter Camp, who headed west to work with Stanford’s team at the end of the Elis’ season. Stagg’s justification for the trip: money and publicity.