May 22, 2006

The 1951 USF football team had it all. An undefeated record. A top-20 national ranking. Nine future NFL players, including three who would reach the Hall of Fame. A sharp P.R. man named Pete Rozelle promoting the squad.

And two African-Americans.

That last part, in a segregation-era America, explains the only thing the Dons didn't have: a bowl bid.

Being an integrated team was a sin in the eyes of the Southern bowls and is why one of the greatest teams in college football history was shunned by the Orange Bowl and other postseason games.

The team was honored at Friday's USF commencement ceremony, in essence, for a game the Dons never played because they wouldn't even consider taking the field without their two black stars -- Ollie Matson and Burl Toler.

``Everybody was talking about the Orange Bowl, but in order for us to be invited we would have had to leave Ollie and Toler home,'' said Vince Tringali, 78. ``We never would have done that.''

A steep price was paid for the team's refusal to compromise its principles. The program desperately needed the revenue that would have come from a bowl bid. Weeks later, the school dropped football.

``It seems so crazy when you think today about something like this happening,'' Tringali added. ``But the reality was racism stuff happened regularly back then.''

Something else crazy was the talent on that USF squad. Matson, future 49er Bob St. Clair and Battle of the Bulge veteran Gino Marchetti all would later be enshrined in Canton. They are the only three college teammates ever to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And in a time when athletes played both ways, nearly all the starters played in the NFL.

Their taskmaster coach was Joe Kuharich, who during a training-camp heat wave the previous season put oatmeal in the water to discourage players from drinking too much. In '51, he had a team so good that Cal and Stanford both avoided playing the small Jesuit school. So the Dons scheduled two games against San Jose State as well as the Camp Pendleton Marines and San Diego Naval Training Center.

But there were good wins, too, including a 32-26 victory over Fordham in New York City. Rozelle drove legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice to the game, just to make sure he saw Matson -- the nation's leading rusher that year -- and perhaps put him on his All-America team. (Rice did.)

Kuharich told the players that the Orange Bowl -- which invited Santa Clara two years earlier -- was scouting the Dons. When they defeated Loyola 20-2 in Pasadena in the season finale to run their record to 9-0, the players figured they were shoo-ins.

``We thought we were going,'' said Bill Henneberry, the backup quarterback and student body president. ``We celebrated the whole way back on the train. But when we got to the Third and Townsend station, there were only a few students. That's when we found out we weren't going.''

Baylor was invited to play Georgia Tech instead of USF. The stated reason the Dons didn't get a bid was their soft schedule. But San Francisco sportscaster Ira Blue reported that Gator Bowl President Sam Wolfson said his bowl, and the Sugar and Orange, decided to avoid teams with ``Negro'' players.

Years later, defensive back Joe Scudero told Sports Illustrated: ``What I think we should've 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.''

It's unclear if the Orange Bowl ever made a formal offer contingent on the Dons keeping Matson and Toler home.

``I remember Kuharich mentioning that they wanted Ollie and Burl to stay back,'' Tringali said. ``But they were the heart of our team and we were not leaving them behind. In my time at USF, I never heard one statement, not even one innuendo, about race. We had a real camaraderie.''

Henneberry, 75, doesn't recall race being discussed much after the snub. But looking back, maybe what happened was an example of the insidiousness of that time's prejudice -- some things were simply understood.

``I've heard St. Clair say that we just never thought about things like this, and he's right,'' said Henneberry, later USF's director of athletic development. ``Bob's point was that we were almost all Bay Area guys, and we never had any problems because we grew up all together. Maybe he's right that we were naive.''

Kuharich became coach of the NFL's Chicago Cardinals right after the season, and on Dec. 30 - even before that Orange Bowl was played -- the program was shuttered. USF was $70,000 in the red, and Henneberry believes the $50,000 from a bowl bid might have prolonged the program.

Matson won two medals at the 1952 Olympics and became such a big NFL star that he once was traded for nine players. Toler, the team's star defender, injured his knee in an all-star game and never played in the NFL. But he was the league's first black official -- working for Rozelle, the NFL commissioner.

Ten players attended Friday's ceremony, where the squad received an honorary degree. But many of the stars couldn't make it, including Matson, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

``We never understood how good we were until later, when we realized that we had been lining up every day with All-Pros and Hall of Famers,'' Tringali said. ``If this team had been at Notre Dame, they would have a monument, right next to Knute Rockne.''

But they are remembered as winners in something more important than any bowl.

Contact Mark Emmons at memmons@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5745.

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