Before anyone gets overly excited, 71-7 isn’t a prediction for the final score of the upcoming Alamo Bowl game to be played in San Antonio on December 30. Rather, it is the score of the first ever meeting between the University of Texas Longhorns and the Oregon Ducks. That game happened during the 1941 season and is at the center of an interesting story of what was, what almost was and what was about to be.
https://www.hornsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/11-17-41-Life.jpgThe 1941 Texas Longhorn team was a powerhouse squad coached by D.X. Bible that finished the season 8-1-1 and finished the season ranked No. 1 by four separate ranking systems. The team featured not only Malcolm Kutner, the Longhorns’ first All-American athlete, it also featured Jack Crain, Pete Layden and Noble Doss, the school’s second, third and fourth All-Americans. Entering the month of November, the team was 6-0 and ranked No. 1 in the nation (the first Longhorn team to ever be ranked No. 1 by the Associated Press poll). Early in the month, Texas suffered a 7-7 tie against Baylor (after which the tower was lit half white, half orange) and then a 14-7 loss to TCU, giving up a game-winning touchdown to TCU with eight seconds left in the game. These set-backs knocked the team down to a No. 10 ranking, but a 23-0 defeat of Texas A&M in late November found the Longhorns ranked No. 4 in the nation, with only a final home game against the Oregon Ducks standing between the ’Horns and their first ever bowl berth, a projected match-up against the Oregon State Beavers in the 1942 Rose Bowl. (It was before the 1941 game against then No. 2 ranked Texas A&M, who Texas hadn’t beaten in Austin since 1922, that the UT students went to Austin fortuneteller Madame Augusta Hipple for the suggestion to burn red candles to place a hex on the Aggies, this being the origin of the Hex Rally.)
By late November, pressure was building on Rose Bowl officials to finalize the selection of the teams so all involved to make necessary travel arrangements. Oregon State had barely beaten Oregon during the season (12-7), and Rose Bowl officials were concerned that if they extended an invitation to Texas to play on New Year’s Day and Texas were to then lose their last regular season game to Oregon, the allure of a Texas-Oregon State bowl match-up would be greatly diminished. The officials asked Texas to cancel its game with Oregon, but Coach Bible refused to do so partially out of concern for the image of the University should they refuse to honor a signed contract and partially because 20,000 servicemen were expected to be attending the season ending game (Memorial Stadium held just over 40,000 spectators at the time). The Sugar Bowl had been courting Texas, but backed away when they learned Texas was considering playing in Pasadena (they instead picked Fordham and Missouri). The Orange Bowl extended a bid to the Longhorns, but that was declined in hopes of working out an arrangement to play in the Rose Bowl (the Orange Bowl would eventually match TCU against Georgia).
During the week leading up to the Texas-Oregon game, Rose Bowl officials decided it was safer to select Duke, instead of Texas (Duke went on to lose to Oregon State 20-16). Coach Bible was livid. He made it known that in the future he wouldn’t accept any bids from any bowl games whatsoever. Bible then set about showing the Rose Bowl officials what they had missed out on and the team proceeded to demolish Oregon 71-7 (that loss stood as the worst loss in the history of the Oregon program until they were thrashed by the Washington Huskies 66-0 in 1974 and today remains their second worst loss).
As Bible and the team were celebrating their resounding victory, little did they realize the world they knew was about to change and football would never again be quite as important. The 1941 Texas-Oregon game was played on December 6, 1941. At the exact time the game was being played in Austin, 1,400 miles away in Washington, D.C., the U.S. military had been intercepting a 14-part Japanese message, and by the end of the game they had 13 parts deciphered, indicating an attack on U.S. military forces was imminent. The next morning, the final part, that instructing Japanese diplomats to break off relations with the American government would be deciphered. The 20,000 servicemen who had been watching the Longhorns play in Memorial Stadium would, along with the rest of the nation, find themselves drawn into World War II.
In reaction to being at war with the Japanese, the government almost immediately prohibited large, public gatherings on the west coast. The first significant event affected by this ban was the 1942 Rose Bowl game. Initial plans were to simply cancel the game, but it was decided instead to play the game at the venue of the visiting team and the game was moved to Durham, North Carolina. Had Texas been selected to play against Oregon State, the 1942 Rose Bowl would have been played in Austin, Texas. After the 1942 Battle of Midway, threat of Japanese attack to the west coast ceased to be a practical concern, and the 1943 Rose Bowl game was played again in Pasadena.
Starting in 1947, the Rose Bowl game would feature the champions of the Pacific Coast Conference against the champion of the Big 9 Conference. This match-up survived until 2002 when the BCS format matched Miami (FL) against Nebraska. Coach Bible’s declaration to never accept a bowl bid didn’t even last a season as Texas accepted the school’s first bowl bid to play in the 1943 Cotton Bowl Classic against Georgia Tech. Texas is currently 2-0 in Rose Bowl appearances (2004, 2005). Against Oregon, Texas is 4-1-0. In the last match-up between the two teams, on December 30, 2000, in the Holiday Bowl, Oregon, quarterbacked by Joey Harrington, defeated Texas, lead by quarterback Chris Simms, 35-30.
Note: The Nov 17, 1941, Life Magazine featuring the Texas Longhorn football team can be found starting here (beginning on page 110).
