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Post-War Talent Boom
With all the football talent returning from the war, and many former football players having access to extra years of eligibility due to wartime eligibility rules, college football was sharply transformed in 1946. A bidding war broke out for the services of the best available players, and the South was a particularly active purchaser of football talent. But in hindsight the most notable purchaser was Oklahoma, a nobody before the war that was about to become an elite football power overnight. How? Cold, hard cash. For players.
Francis Wallace published an article in the November 9th Saturday Evening Post, "Football's Black Market," that exposed the sordid scene and made quite the splash. According to the article, eight war veterans who had played for Tulsa's 1944 team (8-2, #7) were purchased by Oklahoma, and Oklahoma would continue buying top recruits for decades afterward. But Oklahoma was not alone.
Former Illinois star Buddy Young received 25 offers, but chose to return to Illinois for several thousand dollars. Shorty McWilliams, a halfback at Army in 1945, was alleged to have been offered $15,000, a car, a job, and a post-graduation job to transfer to an unnamed team (presumably Mississippi State, where he did transfer). Army initially refused to allow the transfer, citing knowledge of the impropriety, but they ultimately let him go."
"Oklahoma's history as a football power began in 1946. Prior to that, they rarely made waves nationally. They had been ranked in the 1938 and 1939 AP polls, and had there been an AP poll top 25 1901-1935, they likely would have been rated 3 more times. So in 45 seasons prior to 1946, they were top 25 just 5 times. After 1946, however, they became a top 25 fixture, and in fact they are probably the top football program 1946-present. How did they become such an overnight sensation out of nowhere? Cold, hard cash, of course.
The coach in 1946 was Hall of Famer Jim Tatum. He only stuck around that one season, but that was okay, because the school had really wanted to hire his assistant, Bud Wilkinson (at right in photo), in the first place. Also in the Hall of Fame, Wilkinson ascended to head coach and led Oklahoma to the top of the college football world. Tatum's 1946 recruiting class featured 9 players who would make All American lists during their careers. Oklahoma was a major player in the "black market" of football talent returning from the war. Recruits were matched up with "sugar daddies" who gave them money and bought them clothes. This was a system that Oklahoma continued, more or less, through the 1980s, despite the periodic affliction of NCAA penalties for cheating along the way."
www.nytimes.com
