FOREVER CHANGED
Army introduced Sooner football to America
George Lynn Cross sat in the superintendent’s box of Michie Stadium on Sept. 28, 1946. The OU president sat to the left of West Point superintendent Maxwell D. Taylor. To Taylor’s right sat another president. Harry Truman.
The Sooners were playing mighty Army, winner of 19 straight games and a gridiron force bigger than present-day Alabama.
OU football was but a blip on the national stage. The 1938 Sooners had made the Orange Bowl and finished fourth in the AP poll. Otherwise, to the Eastern Press that was the ESPN of its day, Oklahoma was the name of a musical, not the name of a football power.
And when heads of state and education converge, they do what we all do. They talked football. The group around Cross asked about the Sooners, and truth was, Cross didn’t know. OU had a new coach in Jim Tatum. A new formation in the T, learned by Tatum and Bud Wilkinson from Don Faurot during military football in World War II. New players, by the dozen, brought in by Tatum.
But Cross stuck up for his school.
“I don’t think the Army backs will run against the Oklahoma line as well as they have against other opponents ... Oklahoma has a pretty fair line,” Cross said he told the West Point delegation, according to his book, Presidents Can’t Punt. Cross detected veiled amusement on the faces of his new friends.
By the middle of the first quarter, the amusement was gone. So was Oklahoma’s status as a sleepy school on the prairie.
“General Taylor leaned over to me and said, ‘You know, Oklahoma does have a pretty
fair line,’” Cross wrote.
By halftime, Truman, too, was glowing about the Sooner line. The score stood 7-7, and Army’s 19-game winning streak seemed in jeopardy.
The Cadets prevailed. They used two big plays — a blocked punt and a defensive touchdown
— to bolt away from the Sooners and win 21-7. But powerhouse Army had been given its closest game since 1943.
OU football forever was changed.
Army plays on Owen Field this Saturday. Only the fourth meeting in the series. The Sooners won games in Norman in 1959 and at Yankee Stadium in 1961. By then, OU was starting to fade from the Wilkinson dynasty of the ‘50s, and Army long was the juggernaut from the ‘40s. In the 21st century, the Sooners are a powerhouse again, while Army football is a relic, a symbol of greatness from an earlier time.
But in 1946, the Cadets were the power; the Sooners were the equivalent of a mid-major.
“Oklahoma was given little chance to win the ballgame or even to make a good showing,” Cross wrote. Oklahoman sports editor Hal Middlesworth picked Army to win 33-0.
The Cadets were led by their Mr. Inside (Doc Blanchard) and Mr. Outside (Glenn Davis) combination. Davis and Blanchard finished 2-3 in the 1944 Heisman Trophy voting. Then Blanchard won the 1945 Heisman, with Davis second. In 1946, Davis would win, with Blanchard fourth. Army had won the national championship in both ’44 and ’45.
But Tatum was a program-changing coach. He had brought in war veterans that immediately fortified the Sooner roster with talent and maturity. The ’46 Sooners sported some of the magic names in OU history. Darrell Royal. Joe Golding. Jack Mitchell. Jim Owens. Wade Walker. Buddy Burris. Plato Andros. Stan West. John Rapacz.
And the Tatum era began with a game at Army.
The Sooners flew to West Point on two DC-3 planes, the first time ever an OU football team used air transportation. Tatum famously placed a full lineup of players and half the coaching staff on each plane, figuring if one of the DC-3’s went down, the game could go on, apparently not realizing such a tragedy would cause the game to be canceled.
The eight-hour flights went smoothly. The Sooners landed midafternoon on Friday and checked into the Thayer Hotel. Longtime OU sports information director Harold Keith wrote for the Oklahoman, “Army hospitality has been perfect in every detail. The Sooner players and coaches have not wanted for entertainment and have been given the run of the place. Army’s snug little Michie Stadium, a ballyard that opens out upon a picturesque lake, back of which can be seen the Catskill Mountains ... is ringed from all sides by forests of trees.”
On Saturday morning, Cross and Truman reviewed the West Point cadets. In the superintendent’s box were three Oklahoma congressmen, including Lyle Boren, father of eventual OU President David Boren.
The crowd numbered 25,500 that day, with about 1,500 OU fans in attendance.
The Sooners found fortune when Blanchard didn’t play, having been afflicted the week before by a calf injury during a 30-0 rout of Villanova.
Truman was late to the game, which was delayed for his benefit. The highstrung Tatum later would accuse Army of intentionally causing Truman’s tardiness, just to bother the Sooners.
The game was hard-hitting. Defense dominated. OU completed just two passes, both late in the game. Army completed only five. The Sooners outrushed Army 12983 in yards but lost five fumbles.
OU took a 7-0 lead when Homer McNabb blocked a punt and recovered the ball in the end zone. Army forged a halftime tie when quarterback Arnold Tucker completed three straight passes, the latter for a TD to Henry Foldberg. By then, even Truman was glowing about the OU line.
The Sooners lost it on two big plays. A blocked punt set up Army’s 15-yard touchdown drive. Then Tucker returned a disputed lateral about 90 yards for a touchdown.
“The final score was Army 21, Oklahoma 7, but it didn’t begin to describe the bruising battle two great lines put on for 25,500 heart-in-mouth fans,” Middlesworth wrote.
The fiery Tatum had become so agitated after
Tucker’s final touchdown that when he noticed injured Sooner Charley Sarratt soaking his injured ankle in a bucket of ice water, Tatum pulled Sarratt’s foot out of the bucket, took a big swig of water and then put Sarratt’s foot back in the bucket.
“I was skeptical of this story, but a half-dozen or so witnesses declared that it was true,” Cross wrote. “As the season wore on and I had several opportunities to observe firsthand his excitable behavior, the incident seemed less surprising.”
Tatum was combustible. He would last only three months on the job. Tatum butted heads with OU administrators, who had become enamored with the youthful Wilkinson anyway. Tatum took the Maryland job.
But the foundation had been laid. The roster infusion. The T formation. The connection of Wilkinson with Oklahoma football.
And all were introduced to the nation in that game at Army, with the most prominent American sports media in attendance. The New York papers. The Philadelphia papers. The Newspaper Enterprise Alliance.
“The Sooners received excellent treatment from the Eastern press; the consensus was that the Oklahomans had contributed two touchdowns to the Army cause and that, except for those errors, the final score might well have been a tie,” Cross wrote.
By season’s end, OU was ranked 14th in the AP poll. Two years later, the Sooners were in the Sugar Bowl. Two years after that, national champions.
Army had introduced Sooner football to the rest of America.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at (405) 760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman. com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok. com/berrytramel.