Hall of Fame
Undefeated, Untied and Uninvited
Football did not start auspiciously in 1892 for the then Grey Fog football team at the then Saint Ignatius College: they lost their very first game. Sixty years later, many were praising the team as the finest in the nation. Under Head Coach Joe Kuharich, they had nine consecutive victories and were the only football team in school history to go undefeated. From this sensational squad, one player was named consensus All-American, ten members were drafted by the pros, five made Pro-Bowl appearances, and three are in the NFL Hall of Fame, the most from any single team. Pete Rozelle, who was the Team Publicist, went on to become Commissioner of the NFL for 29 years.
Joe Kuharich started his first Head Coaching job in at USF in 1948. He attended Notre Dame and was a star Guard for the Irish, and played professional ball with the Chicago Cardinals before the war. He started his coaching career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was one of the youngest coaches in the country and is remembered for his brilliant coaching. Despite a nickname of “Barracuda,” he instilled loyalty, respect, and integrity in his USF players.
Kuharich delegated his recruiting to his assistant Brad Lynn, who had little to offer players beyond tuition, and room and board in the former ROTC barracks. Only a few players on the team were considered promising football players in high school. Burl Toler and Red Stephens had not even played high school football. Marchetti was a high school dropout who had played only sparingly.
In 1951, the football program was in financial difficulty at USF, losing $70,000 a year. Saint Mary’s teams had become nationally famous but the school dropped the program the previous season for financial reasons. Attendance at Kezar Stadium for the USF games had declined 80% since the arrival of the 49ers in 1946. Other Bay Area teams with better records, Stanford and Cal-Berkeley were stiff competition. Kuharich patched a schedule together that included San Jose State, Camp Pendleton Marines and San Diego Navy men. The only teams with a football reputation on the schedule were Fordham, Santa Clara, College of the Pacific, and Loyola-Marymount.
As the 1951 season began, Kuharich was blessed with a solid crew of returning veterans who had finished the 1950 season with a 7-4 record. He hoped to get the program back on track financially, but the difficulty was attracting attendance, not winning games. But he had a roster loaded with All-American talent. The team boasted Quarterback Ed Brown, pass receiver Bob St. Clair, Joe Scudero, Gino Marchetti, Ollie Matson, and Burl Toler. Neither Cal-Berkeley, Stanford nor USC could find time in their schedules to meet the 1951 team, which was considerably stronger than the 1950 one they beat. Kuharich devised a public relations strategy to highlight Matson. When he informed the team, there were no objections. Matson was not only a conspicuous talent, but he was popular with the other team members. Scudero told Sports Illustrated: “None of us gave a damn about All-American anyway, and neither did Ollie.” Matson was a world-class sprinter, a top running back, and equally tough on defense. When opponents taunted him with racial insults, he responded by tackling them.
Kuharich was a stickler for conditioning and fundamentals, but a private man off the field. He had a gift for instilling loyalty, and when he coached at Notre Dame in 1959 on a sabbatical, he brought three former players with him as assistants: Scudero, Stanfel, and Red Stephens. Kuharich held his football training camps in Corning, CA, a small town north of Sacramento known for its summer heat. On one afternoon, the temperatures reached 112 F’, and the team huddled in any shade they could find. Dons Quarterback Bill Henneberry said to Sports Illustrated: “We all went through it, and we all paid the price together. When he talked, the grass stood on end.” Kuharich trained his team as if they were playing Notre Dame every week. Scudero said: “We’d break our necks for each other.” Marchetti said to Sports Illustrated: “If I put together all the miles I ran that year, I could’ve have gone from San Francisco to New York and back again.” Guard Vincent Tringali told Sports Illustrated: “Everything I’ve done since I played for that man has been easy.”
The season opened on September 21, 1951 at Kezar Stadium where the Dons beat San Jose State, 39-2. Then it was on to Boise, which ended with a Dons 28-7 victory. Next, the Dons beat the Pendleton Marines and San Jose State. Fordham University was next on the schedule. It would be at the Fordham game that the East Coast press would see Matson's All-American talent. Rozelle had spent the week courting the New York sportswriters that the team was something special, but was secretly concerned that the 18-hour flight would handicap them. Sports Illustrated reports he told Matson: “If you don’t do well in New York, you can forget all about doing All-American. Now is the time to show people back there we’ve got some football players out here.”
Matson dropped the opening kickoff, but recovered and retrieved the ball at the six-yard line and ran through the Fordham team for a 94-yard touchdown. "Pete told my dad that he had his heart in his throat when Ollie fumbled that kickoff," said Kuharich's son, "but then Ollie took it [94 yards] for a touchdown (NFL.com)." The next day Harold Rosenthal wrote in the Herald Tribune that Rozelle “should have his stripes removed” for not revealing they had this extraordinary runner.
USF went on to defeat San Diego Navy, Santa Clara, College of the Pacific and Loyola-Marymount, beating them with double-digit spreads. At the end of the 20-2 victory over Loyola-Marymount, the Dons waited expectantly for a bid to a bowl game. On the train from Los Angeles back to San Francisco, they played music and drank beer, and ran out of beer at Santa Barbara. Guard Vince Tringali played ukulele and linebacker Dick Columbini played accordion as the players sang. Henneberry told Sports Illustrated: “Ollie told me he’d had offers to go to other schools around the country, but he’d chosen USF because no place was friendlier, no place made him feel so wanted. It was like a speech after the last battle.”
Considered the best college team in the country, the Don eleven, which included African-Americans Ollie Matson and Burl Toler, would not be participating in post-season play. At the time, when an integrated college football team was uncommon, a bowl bid was denied due to racial prejudice. According to sportscaster Ira Blue, the Orange, Sugar, and Gator bowls chose not to invite any integrated teams. When the Orange Bowl offered a bid if the team played without Matson and Toler, the close-knit team declined to play without them. At the station in San Francisco, they heard the news that Georgia Tech and Baylor would be playing in the Orange Bowl. Scudero told Sports Illustrated: “What I think we should have done is send Ollie and Burl to one of those bowls and leave the rest of us home. Hell, the two of them could’ve beaten most of those Southern schools by themselves.” St. Clair said: “We were not used to that type of prejudice. For a bowl committee to suggest we leave a couple of guys at home was an insult to us. Burl and Ollie were our brothers (The Chattanoogan).” Matson made Look Magazine’s All-American Team, as a defensive back.
Not only was the lack of a bowl bid a disappointment to the group of athletes, it was also a tragedy to the spirit of sporting fair play. The lack of post-season revenue, which would have been $50,000 dollars from the Bowl, forced the school to shut down its financially strapped football program in 1952. Anticipating the inevitable, Kuharich took a Head Coach position at the NFL Chicago Cardinals. The Foghorn wrote: “Time did what no opponent could do.”
In 15 years as a coach, Kuharich had two winning teams, but never matched his success at USF. He coached for the Chicago Cardinals, and then the Washington Redskins. He won Coach of the Year Honors in 1955, and moved to Notre Dame, and resigned in 1963. He became Coach and General Manager of the Philadelphia in 1964 with an unusually long-term contract of 15 years, but he was fired after 5 years when the ownership changed.
Matson, Marchetti, and Toler all went on to play in the 1952 College All-Star Game again NFL-Champion Rams. Matson had just won a silver medal in the 400x4-meter relay, and a bronze in the 400 meters at the Olympic Games in Helsinki.
Sports Illustrated reported that for a decade or more, it was a rare NFL game that didn't involve several USF alumni. Once, at halftime of a Colts-Packers game in Milwaukee, the Colts' Marchetti rushed up to rookie Line Judge Toler and held him in a warm embrace. Toler was touched by the gesture but was at the same time conscious of a possible breach in decorum. "Gino," he protested, "you can't do this. What will the Packers think?"
Toler was the All-Star Game’s MVP, but shattered his right knee in a blind-side block. He had been drafted into the NFL, but never played football after that. He returned to USF and got a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration, and became San Francisco’s first African-American Secondary School principal, and Director of Services for San Francisco Community College District. He became the first African-American to serve as a field official when he was appointed to Head Linesman in 1965, and in 1980, he was the first African-American official in Super Bowl history. He officiated until 1990, and then served as an NFL game observer for the League, for eight years.
Brown played 13 years with the NFL, and 8 years with the Chicago Bears who drafted him while he was still serving in the Korean War with the United States Marine Corps. He was a Pro-Bowl player in 1956 and in 1957. After his retirement from football, he moved to a farm in San Luis Obispo, CA, and ran his own business.
Scudero played with the Toronto Argonauts, and 6 years in the NFL with the Washington Redskins. He retired from football when a hamstring injury ended his career, and became an actor. He was a veteran of the USF College Players, and appeared in several TV and stage productions, notably on Gunsmoke and Dragnet, before entering public service, serving as Special Assistant to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp. He maintained his interest in Philosophy and Theology, and attended many religious retreats.
St. Clair played 11 years with the 49er's as a Tackle, and played in the Pro-Bowl 5 times. He entered politics and served as the Mayor of Daly City for six years, and a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors for eight years.
Red Stephens played six years for the Washington Redskins, winning Honorable Mention All-Pro status for six seasons.
Thomas served in the military after USF, and was twice on the All-Army Team, before he played three years in the NFL with the Cardinals and the Redskins.
Mike Mergen played one year for the Cardinals under Kuharich, and then went into police work. Nine members of the 1951 team became educators or coaches in high schools and colleges.
The roster was: Greg Hillig, Vince Tringali, Hal Sachs, Bob Weibel, George Carley, Red Stephens, Ralph Thomas, Merrill Peacock, Bill Henneberry, Ed Dawson, Jim Kearney, Jim Whitney, Joe Scudero, Bob St. Clair, Ollie Matson, Gino Marchetti, Burl Toler, Ed Brown, Mike Mergen, Vince Sakowski, John Thiel, Dick Huxley, Dan Boggan, Bob Shaeffer, John Dwyer, Barry McLaughlin, Larry Slajchert, Leo Madden, Thomas Montero, Jim DeBernardi, Monti, Bill Dando, McMahon, Dick Columbini, Roy Bruna, Walt Roland, Tim Moriarty, and Harmon Welsh.
