It Was a Whole Different Ballgame for Chapman in ‘30s : Induction: Ernie Chapman, thought to be the school’s only three-year football letterman still living, joins its Athletic Hall of Fame.

No doubt things were different when Irvin (Ernie) Chapman played college football.

Shoulder pads? Not exactly. Just a bit of leather fitted on the shoulders. Solid helmets? Sorry, only more leather to soften blows to the head. Facemasks? No way. Players didn’t need those to save face.

Don’t even ask about the forward pass. Truth is, when Chapman played college football from 1929 to 1932, the game was about as far from the football of today as Pop Warner is from the NFL.

But what makes Chapman’s experience unique is that he played the sport for California Christian College, the precursor to Chapman University, in the final year the school fielded a team. Although the Panthers didn’t win a game that season or in either of Chapman’s other two on the varsity, the players weren’t depressed.

“We had a lot of fun,” Chapman said. “Both sides were out to have fun. It was different then.

“It was a whole different purpose, I guess, than it is today. It was more to play than to win. You like to win but that wasn’t as important as the companionship and the relationship with the other schools.”

If anyone is suited to assess the changes that have occurred since he played football at Cal Christian, it’s Chapman, who has witnessed and participated in the growth of the institution renamed after his father, Charles C. Chapman.

Tonight, Chapman, thought to be the school’s only three-year football letterman still living, will be inducted into the Chapman Athletic Hall of Fame. He and professional baseball player Don August (Class of ‘84) will be honored at a banquet at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange.

The Chapman family has been linked to the institution since Charles Chapman donated $400,000 in 1920 to help with the creation of a Christian college in Southern California. Charles Chapman, a Fullerton businessman who was mentioned as a Republican gubernatorial candidate and a possible running mate in President Calvin Coolidge’s 1924 campaign, was the first chairman of the board of trustees after Berkeley Bible Seminary moved to Los Angeles in 1920 to become California Christian.

Three years after graduating summa cum laude in 1933, Ernie Chapman was appointed to the board of trustees of the college, which had since been renamed Chapman College. He has served on the board since then, witnessing the 1954 move from the Los Angeles campus he attended to its present site in Orange and the school’s metamorphosis from a college of fewer than 300 students to the 2,200-student university of today.

Chapman, who will turn 81 on Valentine’s Day Friday--it is also the 16th anniversary of his marriage to his wife, Edythe--remains active in business, civic and church affairs.

Once mayor of Fullerton and a two-term city councilman, Chapman is still a member of one of the city’s redevelopment districts. He also serves on the national board that makes investments for the ecumenical Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and remains active in the Fullerton Kiwanis Club and the national YMCA.

Chapman also runs the family citrus business, Placentia Orchard Co., which once grew “Old Mission Brand” Valencia oranges on the family ranch near the present site of Cal State Fullerton. Chapman figures he usually works 50 to 70 hours per week.

“If somebody’s hiring you, they tell you’re going to retire, but in the family business you can keep going,” he said. “My father went to 91, my older brother to 95.”

The family relocated the citrus operation to Yucaipa in the 1950s after a tree disease wiped out the Valencias and it was clear that housing--not agriculture--would be Orange County’s growth industry. Now the company produces mostly grapefruit, sold mostly to Japan, at a premium because they are grown without the use of chemical pesticides.

Big-time college football, played predominantly on the East Coast in the early 1930s, had certainly not found its way to Cal Christian. Often, Ernie Chapman remembered, the Panthers didn’t have enough players for two full teams for scrimmages. Never were there more than 24 players on the team.

The practice field, now a parking lot for Los Angeles City College on Vermont Avenue, wasn’t big enough for even one set of goal posts--drop kicks would have landed in the street.

Even so, the Panthers put in daily 2 1/2-hour workouts. They were grueling enough for Chapman to sometimes lose 10 pounds from his 6-foot, 215-pound frame.

At Fullerton High School, from which he graduated in 1929 as one of three valedictorians, Chapman played football, water polo and was on the swim team. It wasn’t until his senior year, however, that he grew big enough to play on the varsity football team.

Without the benefit of weight training or other modern methods, he continued to bulk up until be was the biggest lineman on his college team.

In his last two seasons at Cal Christian, Chapman played left tackle--on offense and defense. Back then, everyone played on both sides of the ball. The offense of the day was the single wing and that usually meant three running plays to the right--right at Chapman when the opponents had the ball.

“I was the biggest linesman and I was the one then that they all picked on,” Chapman said. “They might put two men on me to try to get me out of the way.

“If you get two players of ordinary size, they can push one back. What you do is hit low and try and get a pileup that would block it there, and if they put two on one, somebody else is free.”

It was a rough 60 minutes of football, but Chapman remembered only a couple times that he was injured. Once a teammate’s cleat punctured his lip and he had to leave the game to get it stitched up. Another time he collided with an opponent as they both dived for a fumble.

“We hit in the air and I landed on the ball,” Chapman said. “It knocked us both out. But they didn’t come and grab the ball and try to take it away from me. I was on it and that was it.”

It was a more sportsmanlike age of football--Chapman said no one tried to cause fumbles by stripping the ball away, and he wonders why players are allowed to try to pull the ball away nowadays.

“If I tackled somebody, the two of us were on the ground and that was it,” Chapman said.

Players weren’t allowed to leave their feet to hit above the waist and any use of the hands away from the body was considered holding.

“I’m not an aggressive type of person,” he said. “I never did any boxing or that kind of thing, but I did enjoy the body contact of football. I have four grandsons and they’re all now in college and none of them ever played football in high school or college. Their mothers didn’t want them to. They were afraid that they’d get hurt and I guess it’s a different game today.

“When I watch a high school game down at Newport Harbor or occasionally a homecoming at Fullerton High School, they hit a lot harder than we did or that I remember we did.”

Cal Christian usually got hit hard on the scoreboard. Playing established teams such as Whittier, Fresno State, Redlands and Pasadena Junior College, Cal Christian was usually outmatched. Although Chapman helped the freshman team to four victories in seven games, in his three years on the varsity the Panthers tied three games and lost 17.

Most of the games were on the road. And although a few home games were held across Vermont Avenue on the campus of the southern branch of the University of California, which later moved to Westwood and became UCLA, the Panthers didn’t have a large following.

“It was hard to get much of the student body,” Chapman said. “In fact if they all went, it wouldn’t have made much of a rooting section. There were only 300 in the school maximum.”

In the spring of 1933, as the Great Depression intensified in California, the school dropped the football program. There was no outcry from the students, Chapman said, as everyone knew sacrifices had to be made.

In the late 1970s, football was briefly resurrected as a club sport at Chapman and Ernie Chapman was on the bench--as the team’s mascot. The club was disbanded by the college’s administration after two years, and the Panthers’ 12-7 loss to Ventura Junior College in the fall of 1932 is considered the last official intercollegiate football game played by the school.

The 1933 yearbook gave the eulogy after the season:

“Fighting against tough breaks all season and struggling to overcome a serious handicap in lack of reserves, this loyal band of Panthers gave their utmost and built a team that will go down in history as the most representative of the true Cal-Christian spirit.”

Today, Ernie Chapman has the ruddy-brown look of a man who doesn’t spend much time in an office. And unlike many his age, that glow wasn’t gained on the golf course. The Chapman family owns the Alta Vista Country Club in Placentia and operates two others in Orange County, but Chapman has no time for the sport.

“There isn’t a single member of the family who plays golf and we’ve got three golf courses,” he said. “It takes too much time. We see these people who play a game of golf and sit down in the afternoon and play bridge.

“How do they do that?”

Chapman would make time for tennis but he hasn’t recovered enough from rotator cuff surgery 1 1/2 years ago to be able to play. He also is waiting for clearance from his doctor to start jogging again after hip-replacement surgery.

It’s clear Chapman doesn’t intend to give up his active life. He waits for the day when he can play tennis again with his wife, who plays four days a week at the John Wayne Tennis Club in Newport Beach.

But he doesn’t have much free time to think about it, what with his business and civic duties. Perhaps, at the banquet honoring him tonight, he’ll have more time for reflection.

“It never occurred to me that anybody thought about going back 50 years,” Chapman said. “I appreciate the recognition. The trustees are kind of kidding me on it and I’m curious at this point how many will be there, because the trustees as a whole do not attend many of the sports events.”

Maybe tonight will be different.

Notes

Tickets remain for the banquet tonight at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange. Jack Kemp, U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development, will be the speaker. The partially tax-deductible fee is $100 per person with proceeds going to the university’s scholarship fund. For information call (714) 997-6691.