67 Years Later, Tulane Prevails

For Pasadena native Shav Glick, the Liberty Bowl between undefeated Tulane and Brigham Young rekindled memories of his first football game: the 1932 Rose Bowl in which Tulane came west in search of its first perfect season. Here is his account:

What connection can there be between a Christmas present in 1931 and a New Year’s Eve Liberty Bowl game in 1998?

An undefeated Tulane team played in both of them. In the 1932 Rose Bowl, the Green Wave lost to USC, 21-12, in a game for the national championship.

On a sunny, 40-degree Thursday 67 years later, Tulane did better on its second chance for a perfect season by defeating Brigham Young, 41-27, in a game that showcased senior quarterback Shaun King, who accounted for 385 yards--276 passing and 109 running.

Tulane finished with a 12-0 record, with only Tennessee, which plays Florida State in the Fiesta Bowl on Monday, also undefeated among Division I-A teams.

But where does the Christmas present come in?

Have you ever thought about the most memorable one in your life? Odds are it came when you were a youngster.

For me, it was Dec. 25, 1931. I was 11. It was during the Depression, a time when gifts were most likely a shirt, underwear, some socks--sometimes old ones that had been darned--and if you were particularly fortunate, a sweater.

That’s the way it was in the Glick household in Pasadena until my dad stood up and said, “Wait, I think there’s something else on the tree,” and fetched an envelope with my name on it.

Inside were tickets to the Rose Bowl game between USC and Tulane. It would be the first football game I had ever seen.

Some youngsters receive a glove, skates or golf clubs when they are very young, and a career is started. In my case, those precious tickets--$3 each--led to a sportswriting career that is never-ending.

Watching the Tulane-BYU Liberty Bowl game brought back a flood of memories from that 1932 game. It’s funny, but it’s much easier to recall names from years back than it is to remember who played for the Trojans a year or two ago. Or even this year.

Faded clippings were not needed to recall Arbelbide and Sparling at ends, Brown and Smith at tackles, Baker and Stevens at guard, Williamson, the captain, at center, and a backfield of Shaver, Pinckert, Musick and Mallory, with Mohler in reserve.

Of course, it was easier to know players back then. For one, they played both ways, often going 60 minutes. And there was no transferring to other schools when one’s feelings were hurt, or leaving for the pros after a junior year.

The USC team that year had stunned Notre Dame with 16 points in the final quarter to snap a Fighting Irish win streak, 16-14. Old-timers still rate that win among the four or five greatest in Trojan lore.

There was no television then, there were no Dodgers, Angels, Lakers. There wasn’t even Santa Anita or Hollywood Park. UCLA was still that little school that only recently had moved from downtown Los Angeles to Westwood.

The Trojans were it in Southern California.

When the USC team returned home after a long train ride, players appeared at local theaters with movies of the game. I remember going to the Colorado theater where Tom Mallory, a hometown boy who years later coached Jackie Robinson at Pasadena Junior College, appeared on stage with Tay Brown and Orv Mohler, a couple of teammates.

So it was that a record crowd of close to 85,000--the Rose Bowl was enlarged after the ’31 game--came to see the Trojans face Tulane with the national championship on the line.

USC was favored, but the Green Wave had an impressive cast, headed by All-American end Jerry Dalrymple and triple-threat back Don Zimmerman.

We lived on the east side of Pasadena, surrounded by long-gone vineyards. On New Year’s Day, we skipped the parade and went to my grandmother’s--she ran a boarding house at the corner of Delacey and Union streets--and walked down the hill to the Rose Bowl, probably the most exciting walk I ever took until walking down the aisle with my wife.

Most intriguing are the contrasts between the 1930s and the 1990s.

The obvious ones are color, size and commercialism.

There were no faces of color when Tulane, a Southern school in New Orleans, met USC. The only place blacks and whites mingled then were in bread lines and when unemployed workers marched on Washington.

Seventeen of Tulane’s 22 starters here were African American this time. One of them, King, was the game’s MVP. Another, cornerback Michael Jordan, was defensive player of the game.

It was a 79-yard interception return by Jordan for a touchdown that gave Tulane the lead for the first time and changed the tempo of the game before a crowd of 52,192. BYU never seemed to recover from the blow, giving up three more touchdowns before rallying late in the fourth quarter to make the score more respectable.

“Tulane’s interception for a touchdown was huge,” BYU Coach LaVell Edwards said. “We were doing some good things until that point. After that we couldn’t run the ball, and the pass protection broke down.”

It was a different era in the ‘30s, a time of racial and ethnic insensitivity. Tulane’s leading runner in that Rose Bowl was named Wop Glover.

Players are much bigger today. The heaviest man in Tulane’s starting Rose Bowl lineup, guard John Scafide, weighed 219 pounds. Only one other was more than 200. In this year’s offensive lineup, eight of the 11 were more than 200, topped by guard Jerry Godfrey at 283. And defensively, six were plus-200, with tackle Dennis O’Sullivan at 281.

Corporate names were unthinkable then. Now the Liberty Bowl is officially the AXA Equitable Liberty Bowl, and even the Rose Bowl has succumbed, now being “presented by AT&T.;”

That has not slowed escalation of ticket prices, however. With the Rose Bowl going for $110 today, the Liberty Bowl was something of a modern-day bargain with all tickets $30.

Every seat in the Rose Bowl cost $3 in 1932.

One constant between the two seasons is that when Tulane is undefeated in the regular season, the head coach moves on. In 1931 it was Bernie Bierman, who announced before the Rose Bowl game that he had accepted a job at Minnesota. This year it was Tommy Bowden, who left the Green Wave for Clemson.

Bierman, however, stayed and coached the team in Pasadena; Bowden left after the regular season. Chris Scelfo, who coached the Liberty Bowl win Thursday, was not hired until Dec. 7, but he talked most of Bowden’s assistants into remaining for the bowl game.

Scelfo, who came from Georgia, where he was an assistant, refused to be drawn into a discussion of how Tulane’s 12-0 record should rank with Tennessee, Florida State, UCLA or Arizona.

“It’s not a fair question,” he said. “Football games must be decided on the field, not off it.”

King, who directed a no-huddle offense that ran up 528 yards against the nation’s fifth-best defensive team, said he felt his team “should be ranked in the top five.”

Tulane, with a comparatively weak schedule, was No. 10 before Thursday’s win.

“We had something to prove today,” King said. “Hopefully, we answered some of our doubters. I’d love to play Tennessee, and I think it would be a good game.”

Sixty-seven years ago, it was dark when the family returned home from the Rose Bowl to find a tiny kitten crying at the back door, apparently having been abandoned. It stayed for 12 years.

We named it Dalrymple.