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Message: [QUOTE="Orangedontrhyme, post: 4881697, member: 459"] 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] ... [/QUOTE]

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