1959 Syracuse Football Film - Undefeated National Champions

[SWC75]

1959 team highlight film, narrated by the "Voice of the orange" at that time, the legendary Bill O'Donnell. The quality is terrible, but it's the only thing I've ever seen that covers the whole season. At 26:52 is a black and white film of the 1960 Cotton Bowl - the most extensive record of that game I've seen, going on for another 30:48. The narrator of that is not shown. The play at 41:10 was ruled a fumble before he got to the end zone and a touchback. It's a touchdown. We should have won more comfortably than we did.

 

[Dinkyspond]

Can't believe all the INTs and pick 6s. It seems like they had a pick 6 every game.

 

[Dinkyspond]

1959 team highlight film, narrated by the "Voice of the orange" at that time, the legendary Bill O'Donnell. The quality is terrible, but it's the only thing I've ever seen that covers the whole season. At 26:52 is a black and white film of the 1960 Cotton Bowl - the most extensive record of that game I've seen, going on for another 30:48. The narrator of that is not shown.

great find SWC

 

[Cuseregular]

Ha awesome, thx swc that was great. Was going to post pictures of my 1959 Ernie Davis and team signed national championship ball but couldnt do it.

Anyway, watching that, besides Ernie the Player I was most impressed with was WR Fred Mautino, and sarette was a good daul threat guy and man our D was stout. And holy cow there were a lot of pick sixes that season!

 

[IthacaMatt]

OMG, thank you for posting this! I've already downloaded it. I absolutely love watching the blocking and the backfield formations. This is FOOTBALL.

What a treat that was! The whole Cotton Bowl game vs. Texas. Texas had a very tough defensive line. I loved watching our defense jump around so much, between a 5-3 and a 6-2, with 3 DBs (2 corners and a safety). Loved watching the line play. Unbalanced lines with full house T, wing T, short-side runs, counters, sweeps.

The kicking games were generally awful back then compared to today, in part because the fields were in such poor condition. So many 2 point conversions! So much fun to watch!

 

[IthacaMatt]

Ha awesome, thx swc that was great. Was going to post pictures of my 1959 Ernie Davis and team signed national championship ball but couldnt do it.

Anyway, watching that, besides Ernie the Player I was most impressed with was WR Fred Mautino, and sarette was a good daul threat guy and man our D was stout. And holy cow there were a lot of pick sixes that season!

Yeah, seeing Mautino was a revelation. Art Baker was a tough fullback, and Easterly was quite a change of pace at QB; I thought he ran the option really well.
Hearing the announcers talk about somebody's 2nd or 3rd string being in the game reminded me of something my step-father used to say about the '59 Orangemen - "Their second string was better than most other teams' first string players, and their third string was damn near as good as the other two platoons." It was really something to see these 2nd string RBs ripping off 30 and 40 yard runs against tired opponents. They were our "shock troops". What a great watch that was!!

 

[SWC75]

OMG, thank you for posting this! I've already downloaded it. I absolutely love watching the blocking and the backfield formations. This is FOOTBALL.

What a treat that was! The whole Cotton Bowl game vs. Texas. Texas had a very tough defensive line. I loved watching our defense jump around so much, between a 5-3 and a 6-2, with 3 DBs (2 corners and a safety). Loved watching the line play. Unbalanced lines with full house T, wing T, short-side runs, counters, sweeps.

The kicking games were generally awful back then compared to today, in part because the fields were in such poor condition. So many 2 point conversions! So much fun to watch!

Passing games were more limited then but running games and the defenses facing them were far more sophisticated than anything I see today. And yet that team lead the nation in touchdown passes! (Admittedly a lower bar to clear than today.) They led in points scored, yards gained, rushing yards, TD passes, rushing defense and total defense. Their ratio of yards gained to yards surrendered is the all time beat, (451-96) and it's not even close to being close.

Kicking games were limited by the surfaces but also the fact that this was one-platoon football: teams played both ways and there were rules limiting substitutions so your kicker was the guy of the 11 guys out there with the strongest leg, kicking straight ahead. No soccer-style specialists. A lineman named Al Gerlick barely kicked a chip-shot field goal to beat Pittsburgh on the last play in 1957. Ben was in his 9th season as coach here and that was the first field goal his teams had ever made here - because it was the first one they'd ever tried. Extra points were an adventure, too, which is why Ben welcomed the 2 point conversion rule. You see a lot of games where we scored 6, 12 or 18 points back then.

 

[SWC75]

Yeah, seeing Mautino was a revelation. Art Baker was a tough fullback, and Easterly was quite a change of pace at QB; I thought he ran the option really well.
Hearing the announcers talk about somebody's 2nd or 3rd string being in the game reminded me of something my step-father used to say about the '59 Orangemen - "Their second string was better than most other teams' first string players, and their third string was damn near as good as the other two platoons." It was really something to see these 2nd string RBs ripping off 30 and 40 yard runs against tired opponents. They were our "shock troops". What a great watch that was!!

For decades, football players played both ways, just as basketball, baseball, lacrosse and soccer players do. Then came WWII. The best players were in the service. They used the GI Bill, (and other inducements) to attend college in the late 40's, giving coaches unusual depth. Fritz Crisler at Michigan decided to put his best offensive players on offense and his best defensive players on defense and substituted all 11 players depending on who had the ball. He won two national championships dong that and other schools followed. In 1953, in a fit of nostalgia, the NCAA decided to bring back the old days by forcing teams to play one platoon football. They used a variation of the baseball rule about players not returning to games, saying that once a player left the game, he could not return to it until the next quarter. Teams created first teams and second teams that played both ways. The first team would play most of the first quarter, give way to the second team, who would play into the second quarter, allowing the first team to return. The second half would go the same way. Some schools that had really good depth, (rosters then were about half the size they are now), created a third team that might begin the halves or be used to substitute for injured players, be a goal line unit, etc.

 

[SWC75]

Can't believe all the INTs and pick 6s. It seems like they had a pick 6 every game.

Does the one at 4:43 remind you of anything?

 

[CA Monk]

Those were (will be?) the days my friend.

 

[RCDICK44]

Yeah, seeing Mautino was a revelation. Art Baker was a tough fullback, and Easterly was quite a change of pace at QB; I thought he ran the option really well.
Hearing the announcers talk about somebody's 2nd or 3rd string being in the game reminded me of something my step-father used to say about the '59 Orangemen - "Their second string was better than most other teams' first string players, and their third string was damn near as good as the other two platoons." It was really something to see these 2nd string RBs ripping off 30 and 40 yard runs against tired opponents. They were our "shock troops". What a great watch that was!!

I Remember they used to call the First String the # 1 team in the country and the Second String the # 2 team in the country.

 

[Orangedontrhyme]

The 1959 film brings back memories.

As I have mentioned before, as a high school senior one year away from SU enrollment, I attended all the 1959 home games and the Boston U away game, and saw on TV the away UCLA game and the Cotton Bowl against Texas. It was a thrill to be a fan of a #1 team, and a team that so dominating the stats that some at the time considered it to be among the greatest teams ever.

I remember the "Sizable Seven" (averaging a whopping 211 lbs) and the "Fearsome Foursome."

I remember the heralded "scissors play," fascinating to watch and so very successful.

I remember the second team being almost as good as the first, and better than the first at the UCLA game.

I remember the special "rain pants" worn for inclement weather; we seldom lost wearing these pants.

I remember Richard "Whitey" Reimer, light weight halfback (160s) mentioned once in the film, and a TD he scored in one of his years, that I saw on TV. As he was crossing the goal, he got clobbered and fell senseless still clutching the ball for the TD. The TV camera focused on his limp body lying there holding the football, perhaps the greatest TD that I ever saw for the drama that it was. Whitey's high school was Fork Union Military Academy. If you went there and were asked where you went to high school, and you replied "Fork U," you could get a nasty response.

I remember the Cotton Bowl vs Texas. Ernie Davis had a bad leg, and he seemed to show it, running with a hitch when he caught the early pass and went for the TD.

It was undefeated #1 SU vs #4 one-loss (to TCU) Texas. But everybody wanted a Sugar Bowl game against #2 one-loss (to #3 LSU 7 to 3) Mississippi. And Ole Miss had formidable stats like SU. For instance, SU averaged 38.9 points per regular season games and Miss 32.9. SU averaged allowing 5.9 and Miss 2.1. But one problem. Syracuse had African Americans and neither Mississippi nor LSU would pay SU because of that. But Texas agreed to. Ole Miss and LSU played a Sugar Bowl rematch, with Ole Miss winning.

Texas had a terrific halfback, Rene Ramirez, who was a Mexican American. Perhaps it was easier for Texas to agree to play SU because both teams were ethnically mixed. Ramirez was a spectacular guy in high school, 4 sport athlete, drum major, and valedictorian. If both Davis and Ramirez had their nicknames and ultimate fame for the game, yet to come, it would have been billed as the Elmira Express vs the Galloping Gaucho.

Unfortunately, the game had bad moments when it was reported that Texas was harassing SUs black players, with ethnic slurs. Two years later, lineman John Brown, who lived across the hall from me in the Sadler 2 dorm, narrated or gave commentary at Sadler to a film of this Cotton Bowl, maybe it was the film shown here. John mentioned the racial talking by Texas, and when Texas was confronted with this, they complained that SU was saying bad things to Mexican American Ramirez. We chuckled at that because it just did not seem that SU would do such a thing, considering the circumstances, and John indicated a similar thought.

I felt we'd have another 1959 afterwards, but [sigh] ...