U of M

I guess I was vaguely aware that the University of Minnesota was actually an institution of learning, but as a 10-year-old, I believed its main purpose was to field athletic teams. Prescient. And I was pretty much unaware that there were collegiate sports besides football, basketball and baseball.

Giel

Nagurski

I was an avid follower of the Minnesota Gophers football team ("Golden" Gophers was later, an attempt to beautify a rodent mascot). The Gophers had a legacy of national championships under Bernie Bierman in the 30’s and 40’s, even a Heisman winner in Bruce Smith in 1941 and legendary players like Bronko Nagurski, Gordy Soltau, Bud Grant, Paul Giel, Bob & Pinky McNamara. (Aside - how does someone get a nickname of Pinky in the McCarthy era 50’s?). 

Stephens

Hollis

In the 50’s & 60’s, under Murray Warmath, the Gophs were often Big 10 contenders. Warmath, a crusty Tennesseean, was an early recruiter of black athletes, among them Sandy Stephens, Bill Munsey, Bobby Bell & Carl Eller. In 1960, Minnesota, ranked 3rd in the country faced #1 Iowa in a game that featured for the first time - at least for the Big 10 - two teams with black quarterbacks, Stephens and Wilburn Hollis. (Interestingly, the first black played in the SEC in 1967 and not until 1971 at Alabama.) Minnesota won that game and were declared National Champions but lost to Washington in the Rose Bowl. The next year the Gophs returned to Pasadena, defeating UCLA on January 1, 1962 for their only Rose Bowl win. No appearances since - a 53 year drought.

Minnesota football was almost never on TV so I “watched” the games through the sound of Ray Christianson’s voice on WCCO - and the 'Murray Warmath Show', a weekly TV show with film clips from about 10,000 feet of the previous week's game. I would never miss the Saturday afternoon game day radio broadcast. I suppose I have my great Uncle Dave to thank for this, since he had pictures of those glory years national championship teams on the hardware office wall and I had similar hopes for this current team. On fall Saturdays, it was me, Ray, leaves and smoke. In '57, standard procedure was to rake the leaves onto the curbless gravel of Drury Ave and light them afire. That pleasant, burning leaves smell wafted Lowry on fall Saturdays.

Memorial Stadium & Williams Arena

In the '50's, Minnesota wiped the field with The Ohio State and were often favored over Michigan. But for me the most important game of the year was always Minnesota vs. Iowa and the battle for the pig - Floyd of Rosedale. More importantly, this was for family bragging rights. My mother was from Iowa and had several siblings there and an Iowa win meant eating humble pie. (Of course, we never indulged in the sin of pride when Minnesota won.) In ‘56, Minnesota, going into the Iowa game, was favored to win the Big 10 and go to the Rose Bowl. In those days, Orange, Sugar, Cotton & Rose were about it for bowl games. It was the Rose Bowl or nothing for the Big 10, always facing the Pac 8 champ. But the Hawkeyes shut out the Gophers at Memorial Stadium and went on to win the ‘57 Rose Bowl. Agony.

In the winter, we had basketball and the same Ray Christianson voice on the radio. The basketball team played in "The Barn", the ancient Williams Arena. But with predominantly Minnesota kids, the Gophs were usually stuck in the middle of the Big 10. Minnesota teams did not challenge until black players like Lou Hudson, Archie Clark, Mel Northway arrived on the scene. When I was at Augsburg in the 60's, I had a friend who was a Gopher trainer & occasionally I got to sit on the end of the Gopher bench with my eyes at floor level because of that raised floor. Strange experience watching a basketball game looking at knees and ankles. Interestingly, in the 50's, the Gophers seemed to be the farm team for the Minneapolis Lakers NBA team, as several graduates quickly transferred to the pro ranks: Whitey Skoog, Dick Garmaker, Bud Grant, Chuck Mencil - and Vern Mikkelson from Hamline University! The NBA did not have quite the panache of today’s game, with games played in the Minneapolis Armory or the Minneapolis Auditorium.

Minnesota baseball was a lot harder to follow because the games were not broadcast on radio, so I had no recourse but the Sunday Peach section of the Minneapolis Star. (The sports section was printed on peach colored newsprint, making it easy for me to pick it out of the big bundle.)  Under Dick Siebert, Minnesota fielded teams that regularly went to the College World Series and won it all in 1956. Paul Giel, Jerry Kindall & Dave Winfield went on to play in the Majors. Major League Baseball was my 1st love (see Baseball episode) but it drew me in at any level.

Actually, I loved all sports. I was up for almost any sporting event: Lowry Town Team baseball, Glenwood football and basketball, freezing at the ski jumping competitions on the Glenwood Hill, a Miller's game at Nicollet Park ... you name it.

I am still an avid, albeit much more cynical, fan of college athletics. It's obvious that NCAA Division I football and basketball is all about $$ and regularly exploits athletes. 

Time to walk the talk. Support those Division 3 teams!