No Mulligans
December 15, 2005 02:15 PM | General
December 15, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – If only there were mulligans in football. It’s now been 51 years since West Virginia lost 42-19 to Georgia Tech in the 1954 Sugar Bowl and there is hardly a day that goes by that quarterback Fred Wyant doesn’t think about that game.
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| Quarterback Fred Wyant led West Virginia to the 1954 Sugar bowl as a sophomore.
WVU Sports Communications |
The key plays are still etched in his mind.
“The first play we have the ball we start off and score (Tommy Allman 60-yard run) and they called the play back for holding,” Wyant said. “The second play we’re either offsides or in motion. So we start off the game going from scoring a touchdown to being first and 30.”
West Virginia was in uncharted waters playing in the Sugar Bowl. It was the school’s first major bowl appearance against a Georgia Tech team coming off a 24-7 Sugar Bowl victory over Mississippi the previous year.
“Let’s face it, Georgia Tech was good. They weren’t a slouch team we were facing,” said Wyant, now 72.
The Yellow Jackets, then known as the Engineers, won eight, lost two and tied one against a schedule that featured No. 2 Notre Dame, No. 17 Auburn, No. 18 Duke and a No. 11-ranked Alabama team that played in the Cotton Bowl.
Coach Bobby Dodd had a consensus All-American in center Larry Morris and a terrific quarterback in senior Pepper Rodgers. Georgia Tech was a unanimous choice for the Sugar Bowl. West Virginia was not.
In fact, when the Sugar Bowl selection committee picked the Mountaineers over such notable programs as Texas, Texas Tech and Kentucky, some accused Dodd of influencing the committee into picking a team he could easily defeat. According to longtime sports writer Mickey Furfari, a sports columnist from the New Orleans Times-Picayune refused to cover the game because he didn’t think West Virginia was a worthy choice.
Critics pointed to West Virginia’s weak schedule that included wins over Waynesburg, Washington & Lee, George Washington, VMI and a 1-9 North Carolina State team. Big victories over Pitt and Penn State weren’t that big in the eyes of southerners who have always considered eastern football second-rate. Oddsmakers listed Georgia Tech a 13-point favorite going into the game.
If there was a cause for West Virginia, Wyant said he wasn’t aware of it. “Being young it wasn’t something that I paid that much attention to,” he said.
West Virginia coach Art “Pappy” Lewis chose to take his team down to Biloxi, Miss., two weeks prior to the game. It was the first time anyone at the bowl could ever remember a coach doing that since Frank Leahy took his Boston College team down two weeks early and wound up beating Tennessee, 19-13, in 1941.
In addition to the 42 West Virginia players making the trip were the players’ wives (11 of them were married).
“We had a tremendous time,” Wyant said. “We had a curfew but we were out every night – I’m not talking about drinking – but dancing, going to places and going to the beach. We were allowed to eat whatever we wanted. No one had ever been to one of those before.”
“Georgia Tech was experienced and they knew how to win,” recalled Sam Huff. “We were there to have a (heck) of a good time.”
Lewis had two-a-day practices in Biloxi with the idea of getting his team prepared for the heat they were going to face in New Orleans. As it turned out, the thermometer in Biloxi never reached 50 degrees the entire time the team was there.
“The second week we practiced all of the time in the cold and then we go to New Orleans and we stay in an Army barracks. The guys on the second floor roasted and the guys on the first floor froze to death. The next day the temperature went from us working out in 40-degree weather in Biloxi to whatever it was in New Orleans,” Wyant said.
The game featured teams with contrasting styles. West Virginia, with linemen Huff, Bruce Bosley, Bob Orders, Gene “Beef” Lamone, and Ralph Starkey, was big and physical. Running back Joe Marconi (214 pounds) was bigger than Georgia Tech’s starting line. The Mountaineers ranked fifth in the country in rushing offense and fourth in the country in rushing defense.
With the switch back to one-platoon football in 1953, Lewis’ Mountaineer team was built to run the ball with Wyant, Marconi and Bobby Moss in the backfield, and they were geared to stop the run on defense with Huff, Bosley, Lamone and Orders up front.
“We had 21 out of 22 starters from two-platoon my freshman year returning and they came back and changed the rules,” Wyant said. “So there were 10 guys that were used to playing every game that didn’t play. You couldn’t get them into a game. You almost had to die to get out of a game.”
Wyant recalls it also being an era when quarterbacks called their own plays.
“We’re driving down the field at the end of the game against South Carolina and I went by the sidelines and I said, ‘Coach is there anything you want called?’ He said, ‘Nope, you’re doing great,’” Wyant laughed.
Meanwhile, Georgia Tech was a much smaller and quicker team that employed a sophisticated “Spread T” formation relying on passing, pitchouts, laterals and deception. Bobby Dodd also had a 9-3 advantage over West Virginia in assistant coaches; Lewis only had three assistants to cover his entire roster in line coach Russ Crane, backfield coach Ed Shockey and assistant line coach Gene Corum.
Quentin Barnette was the team’s freshman coach.
“They were all great coaches but three doesn’t make up for nine,” Wyant said.
The key to West Virginia upsetting Georgia Tech was not getting behind early. So when the Mountaineers trailed 20-6 at halftime, the die was cast.
“After the fact, you look at the statistics from the game and you can say we didn’t have a good pass defense. But you had to see the passes that they were catching,” Wyant said.
Pepper Rodgers completed 16 of 26 passes for 195 yards and three touchdowns. Backups Wade Mitchell and Bill Brigman added 73 more yards to give Georgia Tech 268 total yards through the air.
“Of those 16 Rodgers completed, 14 of them they were falling out of bounds, diving … they made some miraculous catches,” Wyant said.
Trailing by just eight, 14-6, in the second quarter, Wyant believes a critical moment in the game came when Marconi (later an all-pro running back with the Chicago Bears) couldn’t secure a fourth-down pass that would have gone for a certain touchdown.
“If Marconi doesn’t miss that pass we’re right back in the game,” said Wyant.
West Virginia fumbled four times and also threw three interceptions. Georgia Tech forced the Mountaineers to scrap their running game.
“We didn’t think we couldn’t run against them,” said Wyant. “But when we got behind two or three touchdowns … we weren’t a pass-oriented team because we had so many great running backs.”
Sam Huff had many wonderful moments during his hall of fame football career, but he admits West Virginia’s performance in the Sugar Bowl was one he will never forget.
“I’ll never get over it. Never,” Huff said recently.
“We had a great football team. We won 31 games. We beat Penn State three years in a row. Then we went to the Sugar Bowl and we embarrassed ourselves.”
“Of all the games I’ve played in sports that one was the most disappointing,” added Wyant.
A year later, West Virginia was right back in contention for another major bowl bid. But the Mountaineers lost 13-10 at home to Pitt and only beat Virginia by four points in Charlottesville to end the season with an 8-1 record. Some believe West Virginia’s disappointing performance in the Sugar Bowl may have played a role in the Mountaineers not receiving a major bowl bid that year.
Wyant scoffs at that notion.
“All we’ve got to do is beat Virginia in the last game of the year by two touchdowns and we go to the Cotton Bowl. We only beat them, 14-10,” he said. “We didn’t get a bowl bid my junior and senior years because there weren’t any.”
1954 Sugar Bowl Scoring Summary
GT – Hensley 21 pass from Rodgers (Rodgers kick)
GT – Durham 2 pass from Rodgers (Rodgers kick)
WV – Williams 5 run (kick failed)
GT – Hair 12 pass from Rodgers (kick failed)
GT – Rodgers 18 FG
GT – Hardeman 23 run (kick failed)
WV – Marconi 1 run (Allman kick)
GT – Ruffin 43 run (kick failed)
WV – Allman 1 run (kick failed)
GT – Teas 9 run (Turner kick)
1954 Sugar Bowl Individual Statistics
Rushing: WV – Anderson 13-57, Moss 5-36, Norman 9-32, Williams 3-29, Marconi 5-28, Stone 4-25, Allman 8-23, Dugan 2-15, Papetti 2-6, Starkey 1-2, Nicholson 1-0, Wyant 4-minus 30, Total 57-223; GT – Ruffin 3-58, Turner 3-32, Teas 9-32, Hardeman 3-31, Humphries 2-21, Rottenberry 2-15, Hunsinger 2-5, Matteson 2-2, Rodgers 4-minus 13, Brigman 4-minus 13, Total 34-170.
Passing: WV – Anderson 3-3-0-49-0, Wyant 4-15-2-29-0, Total 7-18-2-78-0; GT – Rodgers 16-26-2-195-3, Brigman 3-4-0-61-0, Mitchell 1-5-0-12-0, Total 20-35-2-268-3.
Receiving: WV – Papetti 3-51, Hillen 2-14, Allman 2-13, Total 7-78; GT – Hensley 4-73, Davis 4-42, Turner 3-37, Hair 3-29, Teas 2-42, Hardeman 1-20, Ruffin 1-12, Menger 1-12, Durham 1-1, Total 20-268.
Attendance: 71,666
