RIP Ralph Thomas

Who, I know you're asking? Last surviving player on the 1951 University of San Francisco football team that went undefeated, but turned down an invite to the Orange Bowl vs. Georgia Tech after being asked to leave their Black players - Ollie Matson and Burl Toler - at home. The program then folded.

Matson and Toler both are in Canton, the latter as the first Black official in the NFL, as are teammates Gino Marchetti and Bob St. Clair. The SID, Pete Rozelle, had a nice HOF career post-USF as well.

Gifted link. And a good read.
Ralph Thomas, last living member of history-making USF football team, dies at 94

 

Small world.

His son Mark and I were in the same high school graduating class together in Walnut Creek. Mark was punter and placekicker for our team, while I was the PA announcer. Sadly, Mark has a pretty aggressive form of cancer right now and we're keeping in touch via Facebook.

Mark's mother worked in television and had a weekly interview show on the local cable channel. My mother was a guest on that show, representing the square dance group my parents belonged to.

So there's a bunch of weird interconnections between the Thomases and my family.

The story of that USF team is fascinating. And Ralph went on to have a decent NFL career himself.

 

And USF dropped football after that season because it needed the bowl money it was supposed to receive to keep the program above water.

USF, Santa Clara, St. Mary's, St, Vincent's (LMU), Pacific, Portland, Denver and Gonzaga all had football at one time. The WCC could have a hell of a Division III league if the NCAA would allow it.

 

USF, Santa Clara and St. Mary's all played at Kezar Stadium on Sundays and drew great crowds until the 49ers came along.

 

College football in the Bay Area before World War II was huge. As @HanSenSE said, you had five strong teams, counting the three Jesuit schools, along with Cal and Stanford. And the University of the Pacific in Stockton wasn't far away.

I think there were a few factors. Certainly the NFL/AFL took a direct hit on discretionary spending, and Title IX (plus the cost) probably doomed football for St. Mary's, Santa Clara and UOP. Plus, students at Cal (and to a lesser extent, Stanford) got "woke" around Viet Nam. Playing war on a football field wasn't nearly important as protesting against the real thing.

There are still hundreds of thousands of Cal graduates within a 100-mile radius of Memorial Stadium, and they certainly care who wins the Big Game. But they're just not motivated to spend their Saturday afternoons there when there are dozens of other more interesting things to do. It's just not a religious experience like other parts of the country, not just SEC land.

When my Cal buddy visited Florida, I drove him up to Gainesville and he stood on the grass at Florida Field and gawked at the empty grandstands for several minutes. Imagine if he had been there on a game day.

 

Oh, and Mark Thomas posted a photo of a full-page spread in the Chron on his dad. That's really special.

 

Likewise, college football was huge in the New York City area before World War II. Army, Columbia, Fordham and NYU were national powers, and teams from around the country would go to New York to play them. There are some seasons where those teams barely went on the road because so many national teams wanted the trip to NYC.

After the war, they tried to return to past glory, and mostly failed with the exception of Army until the mid-60s. Then, once it became obvious that times changed, and with the Giants becoming more popular, the schools either de-emphasized football or got rid of it altogether.

 

As I've said before, the NCAA would do a lot of schools a big favor by allowing them to play non-scholarship Division III. It gives waivers so schools like Johns Hopkins, Union, RPI, Edinboro, etc., can play one sport at D1 while maintaining D III stadus.

However, it makes any school playing DI basketball play at the I-AA level. The only true non-scholarship league (Pioneer) is so widely scattered the travel costs are prohibitive. I think some D1 basketball schools would play DIII football if they could schedule regionally, if only to drive male enrollment.

 

Santa Clara was at Div. II when they dropped football and St. Mary's was a I-AA indie. Pacific was still at Div. I in the Big West, but had a dreadful stadium at home (it was later condemned) and was staying alive playing body bag games.

 

Yes, I went to a game at Stagg Stadium in UOP's final season. I had never covered a college game from an outdoor press box before that night.

 

My cousin went there and made financial contributions. Yes, he was the one.