For In Motion, I'm Curt Parker.
While the 2005 Nittany Lions may have been 2 seconds from perfection,
they are part of a long list of Penn State football teams that have been noteworthy.
One such group was the 1947 team, both for their accomplishment on and off the gridiron.
Now this was one of the great teams in Penn State's history,
they set records back then that still haven't been broken, defensive records.
And the problem is, that a lot of great, the problem why Penn State's '47 team doesn't get more national recognition
is because Notre Dame had a great team, Michigan had a great team,
they were all loaded with, these weren't kids, these were 25, 26 year old men, they'd been through the ropes.
The team went unbeaten. They set defensive records that still haven't been broken.
They're the number four team in the country. They can't go to the Rose Bowl, which wasn't segregated,
they can't go to the Sugar Bowl, they can't go to Miami, they're still basically segregated.
Ordinance there that they couldn't play, black players could not play with white players.
There was a hitch to that, that if the other team agreed to play, that you could bring the black players to play.
The school let it out early that our, we're on record, as we all go, or none. And so that's what we put out.
And it was up to the southwestern conference to, among themselves, determine what they're gonna do.
And what happened was Matty Bell, the coach of the SMU team, agreed to play Penn State,
and play against the black players. But that didn't end there. Dallas was still a segregated city.
And as a segregated city, white players and black players could not eat or room together.
Officials from SMU came up with a rather unique solution for the time.
So there was an airbase nearby. And so, the school arranged with the government
that we would stay at the airbase. And we had practice facilities and rooming facilities.
With all the surrounding issues put at bay, the focus now turned toward the game: The Cotton Bowl.
Higgins really wanted to win this game, and he probably over trained the kids,
and they went down there and he really worked them hard, and they got really ticked off.
And there are a lot of stories about what happened down there, but they did some things that,
they jumped fence, let's call it, and took off, and went into town, and they partied a little bit,
'cause they were just being, they were living under a military barracks,
and some of these guys had been in the military, thought they gave it up a few years ago, so they got irritated.
Some say that it was the discriminatory element, and/or the heightened level of practice
exerted by coach Higgins, that lead to a lackluster performance given by the Nittany Lions
that resulted in a 13-13 tie. But it was obvious that something greater happened.
Nobody really congratulates, says you know, it wasn't us that broke the color line in the Cotton Bowl,
it was SMU, that's really the truth when you look down to it.
As for Wally, he graduated, got married, and went on the the NFL,
where he played several seasons for the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Cardinals.
In fact, he was a record holder for most kick returns yards, and highest average per return in a game.
But after all the triumphs of his life, he still remembers what it means to be Penn State.
You always feel as being a part of them, being connected with them,
because you went through Penn State. I'm very proud to say I'm a Penn Stater.
And it gets people's attention.
For In Motion, I'm Curt Parker.
This page was last edited on 12 February 2024, at 01:04