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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4249754, member: 289"] 1967 [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tiptop25.com/champ1967.html[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_NCAA_University_Division_football_rankings[/URL] [URL="http://www.tiptop25.com/fixing1967.html"]Fixing the 1967 AP Poll[/URL] The most intriguing team of 1967 was not a national championship contender. Dee Andros’ Oregon State team opened with a 13-7 win over a Stanford team that went 5-5. Then they played Arizona State, a rising power under Frank Kush who was 1-0 on their way to an 8-2 season and a #20 national ranking. The first of those ‘2’ was a 21-27 loss to the Beavers in Tempe. Andros’ team then blew out a 1-8-1 Iowa team, 38-18 to go 3-0. Then they stumbled badly, losing to a 5-5 Washington team 7-13 and a 6-4 Brigham Young team 13-31. Then they traveled to play an undefeated #2 ranked Purdue team who had opened the season by upsetting defending national champion Notre Dame 28-21 and had just beaten the school who would win the 1968 national title, Woody Hayes’ Ohio State team b y a whopping 41-6 in Columbus. But the busy beavers pulled off another road upset, 22-14. After blowing out 2-8 Washington State, 35-7 they then faced consecutive home games against undefeated #2 ranked UCLA, with Heisman trophy winner Gary Beban followed by undefeated #1 ranked Southern California, featuring the next season’s Heisman winner, one Orenthal James Simpson, who was re-writing the rushing record book. The Beavers tied the Bruins, 16-16 and beat the Trojans in a rainstorm 3-0 before finishing their season with a 14-10 win over 2-8 Oregon. If they hadn’t lost that Washington game, they’d have gone to the Rose Bowl. Under the rules at the time, they couldn’t go anywhere else. Nonetheless, they should be remembered as a team that played three teams ranked #2 or higher and didn’t lose to any of them. The 1967 USC-UCLA game is my choice for the best college football game ever, partially because it was a great, dramatic game and partially because this one game had more on the line than any game ever played. It was for: - bragging rights in the city of Los Angeles - the Pac 8 title - a Rose Bowl birth - the national championship - the Heisman trophy. Both teams were superbly talented and probably had more track stars on their roster than any two teams that have ever played each other. As Vautravers describes, Beban threw for 300 yards despite being helped off the field multiple times with injured ribs and OJ shook off an injury of his own to rush for 177 yard, the last 64 on a twisting run through the entire defense that won his team everything listed above but didn’t get him the Heisman, which went to Gary. But the unsung hero was 6-8 Bill Hayhoe, a “guy with a name like the president of the Van Nuys Jaycees”, who blocked three kicks by the Bruin’s Zenon Andrusyshyn, a “guy with a name like a Russian poet”, per Sport’s Illustrated’s classic article about the game: [URL="https://vault.si.com/vault/1967/11/27/all-the-way-with-oj?msclkid=6df99722c50211ec9e36bdd83d8f706b"]All the Way with O.J.[/URL] [MEDIA=youtube]GFtmH9ACyfo[/MEDIA] Vautravers erroneously says that Beban didn’t play in the next week’s game, a 32-14 whipping by Syracuse, in which Rick Cassata “performed as if he were the Heisman Trophy hopeful”. That 8-2 bunch was the last really good team of the Ben Schwartzwalder era. [URL="https://vault.si.com/vault/1967/12/04/footballs-week?msclkid=f8c9fb3bc50211ec80c8497d954ead91"]FOOTBALL'S WEEK[/URL] The Rose Bowl was an anti-climactic 14-3 win over a Cinderella Indiana team whose coach had turned back into a pumpkin. (No, I didn’t mean Coach John Pont.) The Trojans wound up 10-1, having out-scored their opponents 258-87. Two other teams matched the Trojan’s 9-1 regular season record. They were two traditional powers emerging from a fallow period: Tennessee and Oklahoma. After their great Coach Bob Neyland retired after the 1952 season, the Volunteers went through three different coaches in 11 years during which they went 64-44-5, not bad if you’re Vanderbilt but not the Tennessee standards. Then they hired Doug Dickey, who went 4-5-1 in his first year, (1964) but improved to 8-1-2 in his second year, including a 7-7 tie with national champion Alabama. Then in 1966, they lost by a point to the 11-0 Tide, 10-11, 3-6 to 9-2 Georgia Tech and 7-14 to 8-3 Mississippi before beating Syracuse 18-12 in the Gator Bowl. The big breakthrough came in ’67 when they opened with a 16-20 loss to Beban’s UCLA team in the Coliseum, then ripped off 9 wins in a row, including 24-13 over Alabama, the same score over Georgia Tech and 20-7 over Mississippi to win the SEC. They outscored their opponents 249-115 and were ranked #2 in the final regular season poll in the final season before the AP made post-bowl polls a regular thing. Oklahoma’s decline had begun under their famous coach, Bud Wilkinson, who went 114-10-3 from 1947-58, then slipped to 31-19-1 in his last five years. Then he ran for the Senate from Oklahoma and lost to Fred Harris. His line coach, Gomer Jones took over and coached like the was Gomer Pyle, going 9-11-1 in 1964-65. Under Jim Mackenzie they showed signs of live with a 6-4 record in 1966 but then the 37-year-old Mackenzie shockingly died of a heart attack. His assistant, Chuck Fairbanks took over and pulled the team up to the 9-1 level in 1967. They lost an early 7-9 game to a 6-4 Texas team but otherwise rolled, outscoring their opponents 264-68. The Big Eight was mediocre but the Sooners beat the second-best team in the conference, Colorado, 23-0. Then in the other great game 1967, Oklahoma downed Tennessee 26-24 in the Orange Bowl, surviving a last second field goal, even though they didn’t have Bill Hayhoe. The Sooners had a 19-0 halftime lead but gave up 17 unanswered points before a pick six provided the winning margin. [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Y0j4x8-Ws"]1968 Orange Bowl Oklahoma vs Tennessee No Huddle[/URL] There was one other 10-1 team: Wyoming, who was the closest thing then to what Boise State has been in this century. From 1949-1969 they had the fifth best record in major college football at 151-52-9. But their schedules never warranted their contention for the national championship, despite running the regular season table in 1950, 1956 and 1967 and going 9-1 in 1949, 1959 and 1966. Their high watermark was 1967, when they reached a #6 national ranking and got invited to play Louisiana State in the Sugar Bowl. The Cowboys stormed to a 13-0 halftime lead only to have the 6-3-1 Tigers rally to win 20-13. If Wyoming had held on to win that game, I’d have included them in the playoffs. But they didn’t and this is going to be the Trojans vs. the Sooners. Southern California vs. Oklahoma Southern California beat Washington State 49-0 who lost to Oklahoma 0-21 = +28 for Southern California Southern California beat Texas 17-13 who beat Oklahoma 9-7 = +6 for Southern California Southern California beat Notre Dame 24-7 who beat U of Miami 24-22 who lost to Colorado 21-31 who lost to Oklahoma 0-23 = +14 for Oklahoma Southern California beat Indiana 14-3 who beat Kansas 18-15 who beat Missouri 17-6 who lost to Oklahoma 0-7 = +18 for Southern California Southern California beat UCLA 21-20 who beat Tennessee 20-16 who lost to Oklahoma 24-26 (three great games!) = +3 for Southern California Result: +41/5 = Southern California wins the national championship by 8. [/QUOTE]

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