SWC75
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On three occasions we have been faced with the central question of the 1946 season, the others being 1966 and 1973. The first two times, the polls went one way, the third time the other. If two teams beat everybody except a tie with each other, how do we compare them with a third team that won all their games?
Army still had Blanchard and Davis and were still a very powerful team. But they were rather like the St. Louis Cardinals in baseball. The Cardinals dominated during the war years, playing against diluted opposition. They won 106 games, (in a 154 game seasons) in 1942 and beat the Yankees in 5 games in the World Series, the first time the Yankees had lost the series in 16 years. In 1942 they went 105-49 and won the pennant by 18 games but lost to the Yankees in the Series. In 1944 they again went 105-49 and won the pennant by 14 ½ games, beating the other St. Louis team, the Browns, in the Series. Stan Musial was in the Navy in 1945 and they didn’t win the pennant, (but finished second with 95 wins without Stan). They came back in 1946 to win the pennant and their third world series in five years over the Red Sox. But that 1946 team didn’t win 105 or 106 games. They won a more modest 98 games, (with Stan) and beat the Dodgers out by 2 games. They remained a strong contender after that but didn’t win another pennant or series until 1964. Playing against post-war opposition was a very different deal than wartime opposition.
Army had been 9-0-0 in both 1944 and 1945, outscoring their foes 504-35 and 412-46, respectively. In 1946 they went 9-0-1 but out-scored their foes only 263-80. They were a great team but the competition improved and their numbers went from historically great to very good. Instead of beating Michigan 28-7, as they did in 1945, they beat them 20-13. Instead of beating Duke 48-13, they beat them 19-0. Instead of beating Villanova 54-0, they beat them 35-0. Instead of beating Pennsylvania 61-0, they beat them 34-7. Instead of beating Navy 32-13, they beat them 21-18. And, in the most anticipated game ever played, instead of beating Notre Dame 48-0, they tied them 0-0.
And they were not the only great team. That Notre Dame finished 8-0-1 and out-scored its opponents 271-24. And Georgia, who had Charley Trippi back from the war, went 11-0-0, outscoring its opponents 392-110. UCLA had its first really good team, going 10-0-0 during the regular season and outscoring its opponents 313-72. Their fans demanded Army as a Rose Bowl opponent. But the Cadets didn’t do bowl games so they had to settle for Illinois, the Big Ten champs with a modest 7-2 record, in the first game of the famous Big 10-Pacfici Coast Rose Bowl contract. Illinois won the game 45-14, eliminating the Bruins form any consideration for that year’s national championship.
There were no more military teams except the service academies. They would resurface briefly during the Korean War, (the 1952 Syracuse team lost to Bolling Field in their opening game that year), but they didn’t plague the college football scene like they did in WWII. But the war continued to have a profound impact on the sport. Firstly, the deck was reshuffled as far as talent to a considerable extent. The key to success, it seems, was to have coached service ball because then you would know all the best players and have developed a relationship with them. The two most successful coaches of the period were Frank Leahy in college, (four straight undefeated seasons) and Paul Brown in the pros, (4 losses and 4 championships in four years). Ironically the Cleveland Browns’ coaching job, (they were originally to be called the Panthers). Both men convinced large numbers of service stars to come play for them and, as a result, dominated their respective levels of the sport. Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated’s Dr. Z, always considered the 1947 Notre Dame team the greatest of all time because 46 of the 47 players on their roster later played pro football. That was because Leahy knew who the best players were from coaching them or against them in the service. But other coaches had the same connections and used them to help their teams, too.
Then there is what I call the “double class” situation. Schools had the players who would normally be in school at this time: they were 17-22 years old. But they also had what was essentially their ‘big brothers’ who would have bene in school during the war but were in the service because of the war. Now they were getting out of the service but going to college, (often on the GI Bill).Those guys were as old as 23-26 years old and physically and mentally mature with an added layer of toughness and discipline the war gave them. I’ve done a lot of reading about this period over the years and any school that had a good team in the late 1940’s tended to regard that team as their best team to date and for years afterwards. For example, Bud Wilkinson’s most famous teams at Oklahoma came in the mid 1950’s when they won 47 consecutive games and two national championships. Their most prolific team was their 1956 team that out-scored their opposition 466-51in 10 games and beat Notre Dame 40-0, Texas 45-0 and Nebraska 54-6. But Bud always considered his 1949 team, which went 11-0-0 (399-88) to be his best because he had all those ex-servicemen as seniors that year. It’s probable that the best college teams of the late 1940s were better than any college teams of the 1950’s and even the 1960’s. This era was a battle of true powerhouses for the national title.
Some details of that famous 0-0 game, from “Football’s Unforgettable Games” by Harold Classen and “Wake Up the Echoes” by Ken Rappoport:
Notre Dame was full of players who had fought in actual battles like Iwo Jima and the Battle of the Bulge and listened to Army’s 59-0 and 48-0 demolitions of the wartime Notre Dame teams on Armed Forced radio. Those scores were seared into the minds of the Notre Dame players during practice. “Running in formation, the Irish would stop every so often and bellow “Fifty-nine and Forty-eight….This is the year we retaliate.” Notre Dame students had formed something called SPATNIC, the “Society for the prevention of Army’s Third National Championship”, which sent ‘hate mail’ to West point. Notre Dame had many players form their 1943 national champions, supplemented by players Leahy had recruited from service ball, including Emil Sitko, star of the great lakes team that ahd beaten them that year, George Connor who played on that Holy Cross team that had walloped #1 Boston College in 1942 and George Strohmeyer, who had played for Texas A&M. Fourteen 1946 or future All-Americans played in the game, (see below). Some $5 million dollars in 1946 money was bet on the game and scalpers were getting wealthy as well. The Notre Dame fans in New York, the “Subway alumni”, were quite nasty, calling the Cadets “draft-dodging sons of b-----s”. Red Balik later gave this reason for ending the series: “The game has provided a form of psychological hatred detrimental to the best interests of the Army and it could hardly tolerate a condition that bred such ill will for the service and the Military Academy.”
“Strong defenses took command immediately. Army got nowhere and punted. Moments later Sitko fumbled when he hit the line and Cadet right tackle Goble Bryant recovered at the Irish 24. Davis went into motion and took a pass from Tucker good for six yards to the 18. Army then turned to the mighty Blanchard for three hammer-like thrusts. On fourth down the Cadets were inches shy of the 14.”
“Another exchange of punts and early in the second quarter the West Pointers were in possession on the Irish 46. Davis took a Tucker handoff, feinted a run and fired a pass down the sideline to Blanchard, who made a leaping, two-hand catch over his head. Defender Mike Switsowicz hit Blanchard, immediately spinning him out of bounds at the 21…..trying to sweep the Notre Dame left side, Davis was hurled for a five yard loss. A Davis pass failed. When he tried a lateral, he was trapped back to the 37 and had to punt.”
Gerry Cowhig, Irish co-captain who had played in 1942, brought the kick back seven yards to the 12. After faking both a handoff and a lateral, Lujack turned up the middle on an old-fashioned bootleg play for a first down. Massed blocking perfectly executed enable Cowhig to take a pitchout and circle left end for another first down at the 36. Lujack passed and his end, Bob Skogland, outwrestled Davis for the ball at the Army 41. (Billy) Gompers made nine off tackle. Lujack sent Cowhig around end again. Jerry turned the corner, cut back in and appeared to be going all the way. Tucker, however, made a last-ditch save, buckling Cowhig on the 12 after a 20 yard advance. The yards came harder for the Irish. A flat pass to Cowhig was held for two yards. Gompers burst through for 6 yards to the four. Lujack tried a quarterback sneak but made only a yard. Lujack called for speedster Gompers on a sweep. Foldberg hand-fought two blockers, drifted wide and spilled his man for no gain.”
“Near the end of the half, Notre Dame’s Brennan fumbled with Army recovering. Three Cadet passes missed against an alert Irish secondary.”
“(Johnny) Mastrangelo alertly pounced on an Army fumble at the Cadet 35 early in the third quarter. When two rushing plays got nowhere, Lujack went to the air. Tucker replied with a miraculous, acrobatic interception on the 10 yard line, returning the ball 32 yards along the sideline.”
“Late in the game, with the ball on the Army 37, the big Army back, (Blanchard), broke around end and headed for the sideline completely in the clear. Lujack cut across the field to meet him and roared down the sideline. Lujack closed in, hit Blanchard right at the ankles and both went down hard at the Notre Dame 37.” A Terry Brennan interception ended the threat and neither team came close to scoring after that.
The newspaper headlines read “Much Ado About 0-0”. Notre Dame had 10 first downs to Army’s 9 but the Cadets gained 224-219 yards for the Irish. No two teams ever deserved to be tied more than they did.
Strangely Texas was atop the first AP poll on October 7th. The top 11 teams were undefeated at that point, with Army #2, Notre Dame #3 and Georgia #8 with Michigan, UCLA, Alabama and Pennsylvania ahead of the Bulldogs. Army beat Michigan 20-13 that week and moved into the first place spot, which they held until the final poll. Alabama lost 0-12 to Tennessee the following week, which propelled the Vols ahead of Georgia in the following poll. But then they lost to Wake Forest 6-19 and Texas lost to Rice 13-18. The next week, Penn lost to Princeton 14-17. That left us with a “big four” effective November 4th that remained in the top four positons the rest of the season: Army, Notre Dame, Georgia and UCLA, (whom the Bulldogs passed that week after beating Alabama 14-0). Then came the famous 0-0 tie between Army and Note Dame. Army remained at the top after that tie and the big four kept winning the rest of the season. But in the final poll, the writers moved Notre Dame to #1 and Army to #2. Both had played arch-rivals, Army barely beating a 1-7 Navy team 21-18 while the Irish thumped a 5-3 Southern California team 26-6. It was at that point that Notre Dame finally assumed the #1 spot and, since it was the final poll, they were national champions. Notre Dame had 104½ first place votes to 52½ for Army, (one writer must have had them as co-champions), while Georgia had 23 and UCLA 2.
Neither Army or Notre Dame played bowl games in those days. Georgia went to the Sugar Bowl to play #9 North Carolina, (8-1-1) in the battle of the “Charlies”: Georgia’s Charley Trippi and UNC’s Charlie “Choo-Choo” Justice. Neither scored but Trippi out-rushed Choo-Choo 77-37 and threw a 67 yard TD pass in a 20-10 Georgia victory that gave them a perfect 11-0-0 record, something no one else could claim after UCLA became Pasadena road-kill. (This exactly parallels this situation we would have 20 years later: two teams that tied each other ranked 1-2 and did not go to bowls while the #3 team did and added to their perfect record.)
A Sugar Bowl Classic match in New Orleans between University of Georgia and Unive...HD Stock Footage
Notre Dame led the nation in both rushing (340ypg) and total (441ypg) offense and in scoring defense (2.7). That made them pretty hard to beat. They were also 5th in rushing defense (84ypg). Georgia was second in passing offense (174ypg) and first in scoring (37ppg) Army was 10th in rushing (224ypg). Trippi was 9th in the nation in rushing (744 yards), and 4th in scoring (14TDs, 84 points). Doc Blanchard scored 10TD (62 points) and Glenn Davis 13TD (78 points). Arnold Tucker of Army was second in interceptions with 8. Glenn Davis won the Heisman with 792 points. His teammate Blanchard had won the year before and finished 4th with 267. Trippi finished 2nd with 435. Notre Dame QB Johnny Lujack, who would win the next year, was third with 379 votes. Blanchard and Davis scored 97 TDs in their career at Army, a total w=that would not be exceeded until 2007 when Reggie Bush and LenDale White of USC totaled 99 in their careers. Blanchard and Davis played a total of 54 games between them, (not 54 different games, obviously), while Bush and White played 78 games.
Notre Dame played 9 teams, all major college, and out-scored them 271-24 (30-3). Four teams had winning records and the combined won-loss record of the nine teams was 41-40-4, (.506).Their PDR was 1.11: they were the bets team their first 8 opponents played. They beat USC 26-6. Stanford had beaten the Trojans 21-0, the only thing separating the Irish from a perfect 1.000. They beat Illinois’5th ranked Rose Bowl champs 26-6, tied second ranked Army 0-0, Nobody else was in the final Top 20.
Army played 10 teams, all major college, and out-scored them 263-80 (26-8). Seven teams had winning records and the combined won-loss record of the ten teams was 55-35-3 (.611). Their PDR was 2.00, thanks to being the 8th best team vs. Navy. They were the best team vs. 7 of their 10 opponents. They beat #14 Oklahoma 21-7, #6 Michigan 20-13 and #13 Pennsylvania 34-7 besides tying the Irish, 0-0.
Georgia played 11 teams, all major college, and out-scored them 392-110 (36-10). Four teams had winning records and the combined won-loss record of the eleven teams was 51-53-2 (.490). Their PDR was 1.73. They were the best team six of their opponents had played. They beat #11 Georgia Tech 35-7 and #9 North Carolina 20-10.
Both Army (21-18) and Notre Dame (28-0) played Navy. Other than that and the 0-0 tie between Army and Notre, they had no other common opponents and neither had a common opponent with Georgia.
Army had two Heisman Trophy winners in fullback Doc Blanchard (1945) and halfback Glenn Davis (1946). They also had quarterback Arnold Tucker, who finished 6th in 1946. His back-up was another Arnold, Galiffa, who would finish 4th in 1949. Notre Dame also had two Heisman winners: quarterback Johnny Lujack (1947) and end Leon Hart (1949). Halfback Emile Sitko finished 7th in 1948 and 8th in 1949. Georgia’s Charley Trippi finished 2nd in 1946. (Note: freshmen could still play for the varsity in 1946 and would thus still be around in 1949.)
The 1946 season was the beginning of the Outland Trophy, awarded to the nation’s best lineman. Notre Dame’s George Connor won it in 1946 and Bill Fischer in 1948. Army’s Joe Steffy won it in 1947, meaning that the 0-0 game featured not only 3 Heisman Trophy winners but also three Outland Trophy winners.
Notre Dame had 7 Hall of Famers on its roster: Lujack, Hart and Sitko as well as tackles George Connor and Ziggy Czaroboki, guard Bill “Moose” Fischer and end Jim Martin. Army had five: Blanchard, Davis, Tucker, Galiffa and end Barney Poole. Georgia had two: Trippi and quarterback Johnny Raich, (who later coached the Oakland Raiders’ first Super Bowl team).
Notre Dame’s All-Americans included Lujack and Connor both in 1946 and 1947. “Moose” Fischer in 1947-48 and Sitko and Hart in 1948-49. Army had Blanchard and Davis along with end Hank Foldberg. Tackle Joe Steffy would be a 1947AA and Arnold Galiffa would be in 1949. Trippi was Georgia’s only AA player.
I could list all the Notre Dame players who played pro football. Instead I’ll refer you to this page:
Notre Dame Players/Alumni | Pro-Football-Reference.com
Click on the heading line above the dates, (just after Yrs), even though there’s no title there. Then scroll do to the dates from 1947, (when 1946 seniors would have entered the pro game), through 1950, (when 1946 freshmen would have become pros) and count the names. There are 53 of them!
Army has only 6 such players:
Army Players/Alumni | Pro-Football-Reference.com
But that’s kind of deceiving because these guys had military commitments. Glenn Davis graduated n the spring of 1947 but didn’t play pro ball until 1950. Arnold Galiffa didn’t play pro ball until 1953. Foldberg and Poole are on the list. Shorty McWilliams wasn’t on the 1946 team and neither was Bob Summerhayes. Many of their players opted for military careers like Doc Blanchard and so never played pro football.
Georgia had 18 future pros per their page:
Georgia Players/Alumni | Pro-Football-Reference.com
Again, that’s too many to list. Trippi, who starred for the Chicago Cardinal’s 1947 champions, is the big name here.
All three teams were recognized by NCAA recognized selectors: Notre Dame by AP, Berryman, Billingsley, Boand, DeVold, Dunkel, Helms, Litkenhous, the National Championship Foundation and Polling; Army by Boand, Football Research, Helms, Houlgate and Polling, (not three co-championships with ND), and Georgia by Williamson. Of the non-NCAA sanctioned selectors I found on the internet, Time Travel, Sorenson, Taylor and Wilson all chose Notre Dame. Waits has them as co-champs with Army. Dolphin, Howell and Square Gear chose Army. All fo them had Georgia third except Sorenson, who had them 5th, behind not only Notre Dame and Army but also Illinois and Michigan. Bill Libby, the author of “Champions of College Football”, picked Army and chose Notre Dame and Army as co-champs, as did Lamont Buchanan, who wrote “The Story of Football” in 1952. Robert Leckie, who wrote a book with the same title in 1965, preferred the Irish. ”College Football’s 25 Greatest teams” by the Sporting News (1988) rates the 1944-45 Army teams together as #2 all-time but don’t have the 1946 in their Top 25. Yet they have Notre Dame’s 1946 as #5 all-time.
Richard Vautravers can’t decide who should be #1 and makes Army, Notre Dame and Georgia tri-champions:
1946 College Football National Championship
His comments on the “black market” for talent after the war are interesting, particularly his contempt for Oklahoma and their rise to power. More on that later.
Army has the advantage of being two time defending champs and the toughest schedule. If a boxing champion suffers a draw, they don’t lose their title. And they were ranked #1 from the second poll until the second to last, (7 weeks in a row), only to be moved down not because they lsot but because their game against an arch-rival was closer than expected. But there’s still the question of how they acquired their talent: not in a black market but by having the government actually draft players to play for them or by convincing players that they could spend the war at West Point and avoid combat. That seems actually worse than a black market.
Notre Dame has the most of everything: Award winners, All Americans, future pros, (by a large margin.) They were the first of four straight undefeated teams, three of which would AP national champions. Their freshmen would complete their careers without ever losing a game. The beat Navy 28-0 while Army only beat them 21-18. But they also had the weakest schedule and how can you say they were better than Army if they couldn’t beat them?
Georgia is the team with the perfect record. How do we know they were worse than the other two? They had 8 players back from their 1942 team that claimed a national title and were the best team in the SEC and the south in general. They didn’t have any drafted players and, while they may have dipped into the black market, nobody did it more than Notre Dame. The Bulldogs seem almost clean by comparison.
So….Who’s #1 for 1946?
Army still had Blanchard and Davis and were still a very powerful team. But they were rather like the St. Louis Cardinals in baseball. The Cardinals dominated during the war years, playing against diluted opposition. They won 106 games, (in a 154 game seasons) in 1942 and beat the Yankees in 5 games in the World Series, the first time the Yankees had lost the series in 16 years. In 1942 they went 105-49 and won the pennant by 18 games but lost to the Yankees in the Series. In 1944 they again went 105-49 and won the pennant by 14 ½ games, beating the other St. Louis team, the Browns, in the Series. Stan Musial was in the Navy in 1945 and they didn’t win the pennant, (but finished second with 95 wins without Stan). They came back in 1946 to win the pennant and their third world series in five years over the Red Sox. But that 1946 team didn’t win 105 or 106 games. They won a more modest 98 games, (with Stan) and beat the Dodgers out by 2 games. They remained a strong contender after that but didn’t win another pennant or series until 1964. Playing against post-war opposition was a very different deal than wartime opposition.
Army had been 9-0-0 in both 1944 and 1945, outscoring their foes 504-35 and 412-46, respectively. In 1946 they went 9-0-1 but out-scored their foes only 263-80. They were a great team but the competition improved and their numbers went from historically great to very good. Instead of beating Michigan 28-7, as they did in 1945, they beat them 20-13. Instead of beating Duke 48-13, they beat them 19-0. Instead of beating Villanova 54-0, they beat them 35-0. Instead of beating Pennsylvania 61-0, they beat them 34-7. Instead of beating Navy 32-13, they beat them 21-18. And, in the most anticipated game ever played, instead of beating Notre Dame 48-0, they tied them 0-0.
And they were not the only great team. That Notre Dame finished 8-0-1 and out-scored its opponents 271-24. And Georgia, who had Charley Trippi back from the war, went 11-0-0, outscoring its opponents 392-110. UCLA had its first really good team, going 10-0-0 during the regular season and outscoring its opponents 313-72. Their fans demanded Army as a Rose Bowl opponent. But the Cadets didn’t do bowl games so they had to settle for Illinois, the Big Ten champs with a modest 7-2 record, in the first game of the famous Big 10-Pacfici Coast Rose Bowl contract. Illinois won the game 45-14, eliminating the Bruins form any consideration for that year’s national championship.
There were no more military teams except the service academies. They would resurface briefly during the Korean War, (the 1952 Syracuse team lost to Bolling Field in their opening game that year), but they didn’t plague the college football scene like they did in WWII. But the war continued to have a profound impact on the sport. Firstly, the deck was reshuffled as far as talent to a considerable extent. The key to success, it seems, was to have coached service ball because then you would know all the best players and have developed a relationship with them. The two most successful coaches of the period were Frank Leahy in college, (four straight undefeated seasons) and Paul Brown in the pros, (4 losses and 4 championships in four years). Ironically the Cleveland Browns’ coaching job, (they were originally to be called the Panthers). Both men convinced large numbers of service stars to come play for them and, as a result, dominated their respective levels of the sport. Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated’s Dr. Z, always considered the 1947 Notre Dame team the greatest of all time because 46 of the 47 players on their roster later played pro football. That was because Leahy knew who the best players were from coaching them or against them in the service. But other coaches had the same connections and used them to help their teams, too.
Then there is what I call the “double class” situation. Schools had the players who would normally be in school at this time: they were 17-22 years old. But they also had what was essentially their ‘big brothers’ who would have bene in school during the war but were in the service because of the war. Now they were getting out of the service but going to college, (often on the GI Bill).Those guys were as old as 23-26 years old and physically and mentally mature with an added layer of toughness and discipline the war gave them. I’ve done a lot of reading about this period over the years and any school that had a good team in the late 1940’s tended to regard that team as their best team to date and for years afterwards. For example, Bud Wilkinson’s most famous teams at Oklahoma came in the mid 1950’s when they won 47 consecutive games and two national championships. Their most prolific team was their 1956 team that out-scored their opposition 466-51in 10 games and beat Notre Dame 40-0, Texas 45-0 and Nebraska 54-6. But Bud always considered his 1949 team, which went 11-0-0 (399-88) to be his best because he had all those ex-servicemen as seniors that year. It’s probable that the best college teams of the late 1940s were better than any college teams of the 1950’s and even the 1960’s. This era was a battle of true powerhouses for the national title.
Some details of that famous 0-0 game, from “Football’s Unforgettable Games” by Harold Classen and “Wake Up the Echoes” by Ken Rappoport:
Notre Dame was full of players who had fought in actual battles like Iwo Jima and the Battle of the Bulge and listened to Army’s 59-0 and 48-0 demolitions of the wartime Notre Dame teams on Armed Forced radio. Those scores were seared into the minds of the Notre Dame players during practice. “Running in formation, the Irish would stop every so often and bellow “Fifty-nine and Forty-eight….This is the year we retaliate.” Notre Dame students had formed something called SPATNIC, the “Society for the prevention of Army’s Third National Championship”, which sent ‘hate mail’ to West point. Notre Dame had many players form their 1943 national champions, supplemented by players Leahy had recruited from service ball, including Emil Sitko, star of the great lakes team that ahd beaten them that year, George Connor who played on that Holy Cross team that had walloped #1 Boston College in 1942 and George Strohmeyer, who had played for Texas A&M. Fourteen 1946 or future All-Americans played in the game, (see below). Some $5 million dollars in 1946 money was bet on the game and scalpers were getting wealthy as well. The Notre Dame fans in New York, the “Subway alumni”, were quite nasty, calling the Cadets “draft-dodging sons of b-----s”. Red Balik later gave this reason for ending the series: “The game has provided a form of psychological hatred detrimental to the best interests of the Army and it could hardly tolerate a condition that bred such ill will for the service and the Military Academy.”
“Strong defenses took command immediately. Army got nowhere and punted. Moments later Sitko fumbled when he hit the line and Cadet right tackle Goble Bryant recovered at the Irish 24. Davis went into motion and took a pass from Tucker good for six yards to the 18. Army then turned to the mighty Blanchard for three hammer-like thrusts. On fourth down the Cadets were inches shy of the 14.”
“Another exchange of punts and early in the second quarter the West Pointers were in possession on the Irish 46. Davis took a Tucker handoff, feinted a run and fired a pass down the sideline to Blanchard, who made a leaping, two-hand catch over his head. Defender Mike Switsowicz hit Blanchard, immediately spinning him out of bounds at the 21…..trying to sweep the Notre Dame left side, Davis was hurled for a five yard loss. A Davis pass failed. When he tried a lateral, he was trapped back to the 37 and had to punt.”
Gerry Cowhig, Irish co-captain who had played in 1942, brought the kick back seven yards to the 12. After faking both a handoff and a lateral, Lujack turned up the middle on an old-fashioned bootleg play for a first down. Massed blocking perfectly executed enable Cowhig to take a pitchout and circle left end for another first down at the 36. Lujack passed and his end, Bob Skogland, outwrestled Davis for the ball at the Army 41. (Billy) Gompers made nine off tackle. Lujack sent Cowhig around end again. Jerry turned the corner, cut back in and appeared to be going all the way. Tucker, however, made a last-ditch save, buckling Cowhig on the 12 after a 20 yard advance. The yards came harder for the Irish. A flat pass to Cowhig was held for two yards. Gompers burst through for 6 yards to the four. Lujack tried a quarterback sneak but made only a yard. Lujack called for speedster Gompers on a sweep. Foldberg hand-fought two blockers, drifted wide and spilled his man for no gain.”
“Near the end of the half, Notre Dame’s Brennan fumbled with Army recovering. Three Cadet passes missed against an alert Irish secondary.”
“(Johnny) Mastrangelo alertly pounced on an Army fumble at the Cadet 35 early in the third quarter. When two rushing plays got nowhere, Lujack went to the air. Tucker replied with a miraculous, acrobatic interception on the 10 yard line, returning the ball 32 yards along the sideline.”
“Late in the game, with the ball on the Army 37, the big Army back, (Blanchard), broke around end and headed for the sideline completely in the clear. Lujack cut across the field to meet him and roared down the sideline. Lujack closed in, hit Blanchard right at the ankles and both went down hard at the Notre Dame 37.” A Terry Brennan interception ended the threat and neither team came close to scoring after that.
The newspaper headlines read “Much Ado About 0-0”. Notre Dame had 10 first downs to Army’s 9 but the Cadets gained 224-219 yards for the Irish. No two teams ever deserved to be tied more than they did.
Strangely Texas was atop the first AP poll on October 7th. The top 11 teams were undefeated at that point, with Army #2, Notre Dame #3 and Georgia #8 with Michigan, UCLA, Alabama and Pennsylvania ahead of the Bulldogs. Army beat Michigan 20-13 that week and moved into the first place spot, which they held until the final poll. Alabama lost 0-12 to Tennessee the following week, which propelled the Vols ahead of Georgia in the following poll. But then they lost to Wake Forest 6-19 and Texas lost to Rice 13-18. The next week, Penn lost to Princeton 14-17. That left us with a “big four” effective November 4th that remained in the top four positons the rest of the season: Army, Notre Dame, Georgia and UCLA, (whom the Bulldogs passed that week after beating Alabama 14-0). Then came the famous 0-0 tie between Army and Note Dame. Army remained at the top after that tie and the big four kept winning the rest of the season. But in the final poll, the writers moved Notre Dame to #1 and Army to #2. Both had played arch-rivals, Army barely beating a 1-7 Navy team 21-18 while the Irish thumped a 5-3 Southern California team 26-6. It was at that point that Notre Dame finally assumed the #1 spot and, since it was the final poll, they were national champions. Notre Dame had 104½ first place votes to 52½ for Army, (one writer must have had them as co-champions), while Georgia had 23 and UCLA 2.
Neither Army or Notre Dame played bowl games in those days. Georgia went to the Sugar Bowl to play #9 North Carolina, (8-1-1) in the battle of the “Charlies”: Georgia’s Charley Trippi and UNC’s Charlie “Choo-Choo” Justice. Neither scored but Trippi out-rushed Choo-Choo 77-37 and threw a 67 yard TD pass in a 20-10 Georgia victory that gave them a perfect 11-0-0 record, something no one else could claim after UCLA became Pasadena road-kill. (This exactly parallels this situation we would have 20 years later: two teams that tied each other ranked 1-2 and did not go to bowls while the #3 team did and added to their perfect record.)
A Sugar Bowl Classic match in New Orleans between University of Georgia and Unive...HD Stock Footage
Notre Dame led the nation in both rushing (340ypg) and total (441ypg) offense and in scoring defense (2.7). That made them pretty hard to beat. They were also 5th in rushing defense (84ypg). Georgia was second in passing offense (174ypg) and first in scoring (37ppg) Army was 10th in rushing (224ypg). Trippi was 9th in the nation in rushing (744 yards), and 4th in scoring (14TDs, 84 points). Doc Blanchard scored 10TD (62 points) and Glenn Davis 13TD (78 points). Arnold Tucker of Army was second in interceptions with 8. Glenn Davis won the Heisman with 792 points. His teammate Blanchard had won the year before and finished 4th with 267. Trippi finished 2nd with 435. Notre Dame QB Johnny Lujack, who would win the next year, was third with 379 votes. Blanchard and Davis scored 97 TDs in their career at Army, a total w=that would not be exceeded until 2007 when Reggie Bush and LenDale White of USC totaled 99 in their careers. Blanchard and Davis played a total of 54 games between them, (not 54 different games, obviously), while Bush and White played 78 games.
Notre Dame played 9 teams, all major college, and out-scored them 271-24 (30-3). Four teams had winning records and the combined won-loss record of the nine teams was 41-40-4, (.506).Their PDR was 1.11: they were the bets team their first 8 opponents played. They beat USC 26-6. Stanford had beaten the Trojans 21-0, the only thing separating the Irish from a perfect 1.000. They beat Illinois’5th ranked Rose Bowl champs 26-6, tied second ranked Army 0-0, Nobody else was in the final Top 20.
Army played 10 teams, all major college, and out-scored them 263-80 (26-8). Seven teams had winning records and the combined won-loss record of the ten teams was 55-35-3 (.611). Their PDR was 2.00, thanks to being the 8th best team vs. Navy. They were the best team vs. 7 of their 10 opponents. They beat #14 Oklahoma 21-7, #6 Michigan 20-13 and #13 Pennsylvania 34-7 besides tying the Irish, 0-0.
Georgia played 11 teams, all major college, and out-scored them 392-110 (36-10). Four teams had winning records and the combined won-loss record of the eleven teams was 51-53-2 (.490). Their PDR was 1.73. They were the best team six of their opponents had played. They beat #11 Georgia Tech 35-7 and #9 North Carolina 20-10.
Both Army (21-18) and Notre Dame (28-0) played Navy. Other than that and the 0-0 tie between Army and Notre, they had no other common opponents and neither had a common opponent with Georgia.
Army had two Heisman Trophy winners in fullback Doc Blanchard (1945) and halfback Glenn Davis (1946). They also had quarterback Arnold Tucker, who finished 6th in 1946. His back-up was another Arnold, Galiffa, who would finish 4th in 1949. Notre Dame also had two Heisman winners: quarterback Johnny Lujack (1947) and end Leon Hart (1949). Halfback Emile Sitko finished 7th in 1948 and 8th in 1949. Georgia’s Charley Trippi finished 2nd in 1946. (Note: freshmen could still play for the varsity in 1946 and would thus still be around in 1949.)
The 1946 season was the beginning of the Outland Trophy, awarded to the nation’s best lineman. Notre Dame’s George Connor won it in 1946 and Bill Fischer in 1948. Army’s Joe Steffy won it in 1947, meaning that the 0-0 game featured not only 3 Heisman Trophy winners but also three Outland Trophy winners.
Notre Dame had 7 Hall of Famers on its roster: Lujack, Hart and Sitko as well as tackles George Connor and Ziggy Czaroboki, guard Bill “Moose” Fischer and end Jim Martin. Army had five: Blanchard, Davis, Tucker, Galiffa and end Barney Poole. Georgia had two: Trippi and quarterback Johnny Raich, (who later coached the Oakland Raiders’ first Super Bowl team).
Notre Dame’s All-Americans included Lujack and Connor both in 1946 and 1947. “Moose” Fischer in 1947-48 and Sitko and Hart in 1948-49. Army had Blanchard and Davis along with end Hank Foldberg. Tackle Joe Steffy would be a 1947AA and Arnold Galiffa would be in 1949. Trippi was Georgia’s only AA player.
I could list all the Notre Dame players who played pro football. Instead I’ll refer you to this page:
Notre Dame Players/Alumni | Pro-Football-Reference.com
Click on the heading line above the dates, (just after Yrs), even though there’s no title there. Then scroll do to the dates from 1947, (when 1946 seniors would have entered the pro game), through 1950, (when 1946 freshmen would have become pros) and count the names. There are 53 of them!
Army has only 6 such players:
Army Players/Alumni | Pro-Football-Reference.com
But that’s kind of deceiving because these guys had military commitments. Glenn Davis graduated n the spring of 1947 but didn’t play pro ball until 1950. Arnold Galiffa didn’t play pro ball until 1953. Foldberg and Poole are on the list. Shorty McWilliams wasn’t on the 1946 team and neither was Bob Summerhayes. Many of their players opted for military careers like Doc Blanchard and so never played pro football.
Georgia had 18 future pros per their page:
Georgia Players/Alumni | Pro-Football-Reference.com
Again, that’s too many to list. Trippi, who starred for the Chicago Cardinal’s 1947 champions, is the big name here.
All three teams were recognized by NCAA recognized selectors: Notre Dame by AP, Berryman, Billingsley, Boand, DeVold, Dunkel, Helms, Litkenhous, the National Championship Foundation and Polling; Army by Boand, Football Research, Helms, Houlgate and Polling, (not three co-championships with ND), and Georgia by Williamson. Of the non-NCAA sanctioned selectors I found on the internet, Time Travel, Sorenson, Taylor and Wilson all chose Notre Dame. Waits has them as co-champs with Army. Dolphin, Howell and Square Gear chose Army. All fo them had Georgia third except Sorenson, who had them 5th, behind not only Notre Dame and Army but also Illinois and Michigan. Bill Libby, the author of “Champions of College Football”, picked Army and chose Notre Dame and Army as co-champs, as did Lamont Buchanan, who wrote “The Story of Football” in 1952. Robert Leckie, who wrote a book with the same title in 1965, preferred the Irish. ”College Football’s 25 Greatest teams” by the Sporting News (1988) rates the 1944-45 Army teams together as #2 all-time but don’t have the 1946 in their Top 25. Yet they have Notre Dame’s 1946 as #5 all-time.
Richard Vautravers can’t decide who should be #1 and makes Army, Notre Dame and Georgia tri-champions:
1946 College Football National Championship
His comments on the “black market” for talent after the war are interesting, particularly his contempt for Oklahoma and their rise to power. More on that later.
Army has the advantage of being two time defending champs and the toughest schedule. If a boxing champion suffers a draw, they don’t lose their title. And they were ranked #1 from the second poll until the second to last, (7 weeks in a row), only to be moved down not because they lsot but because their game against an arch-rival was closer than expected. But there’s still the question of how they acquired their talent: not in a black market but by having the government actually draft players to play for them or by convincing players that they could spend the war at West Point and avoid combat. That seems actually worse than a black market.
Notre Dame has the most of everything: Award winners, All Americans, future pros, (by a large margin.) They were the first of four straight undefeated teams, three of which would AP national champions. Their freshmen would complete their careers without ever losing a game. The beat Navy 28-0 while Army only beat them 21-18. But they also had the weakest schedule and how can you say they were better than Army if they couldn’t beat them?
Georgia is the team with the perfect record. How do we know they were worse than the other two? They had 8 players back from their 1942 team that claimed a national title and were the best team in the SEC and the south in general. They didn’t have any drafted players and, while they may have dipped into the black market, nobody did it more than Notre Dame. The Bulldogs seem almost clean by comparison.
So….Who’s #1 for 1946?