Bobcat History Lesson: UNC
10/26/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Just over a half-century ago, Montana State's football team boarded a train for Greeley, Colorado, to face the Colorado State Teacher's College in a game of football. The game of October 12, 1956, was played at night, a rarity at the time but the second nocturnal contest the Bobcats would play that year.
In the onslaught that Montana State's 1956 season would become, with the powerful Bobcats steamrolling through an unbeaten season and a share of the National Championship, that game offered a moment of normalcy. The Bobcats won 13-0, an exciting contest by all accounts and the closest game the team would play all season. A couple of bright young stars shone for MSC that night. Charley Jackson, the lightning-quick defensive lineman who was the school's first African American to play as a full-time player, set up the first touchdown with a fumble recovery. Freshman quarterback Dave Alt marched the team down the field on a 72-yard touchdown drive for the second.
While Montana State's last trip to Greeley provides an ample jumping off point in examining this newly-revived series, one of the most memorable of the 22 contests played between the former Rocky Mountain Conference rivals came six years earlier. Montana State and the Colorado State Teachers were programs headed in opposite directions when the Bobcats and Bears met in Greeley on October 13 in Greeley. The school now known as Northern Colorado was 4-0, and as The Montanan reports, the Bears were "undefeated in four starts and well on their way to clinching the RMC crown," when the Cats came calling. The "fired up Montana State aggregation" entered the game looking for its first win.
Former Oklahoma A&M star John Mason had cut his teeth as an assistant at Colorado during the Whizzer White years, and led Colorado Mines to a Rocky Mountain Conference title some years before. He left the coaching profession to sell sporting goods, but couldn't pass on the chance to lead Montana State's fortunes at the dawn of the 1950s. The 1950 season was Mason's first year, but he didn't see the showdown in Greeley. He spent the game in his hotel room with an illness.
In Mason's stead, assistant coach Glen White and legendary Bobcat trainer Gordon Herwig led the forces. Doc Herwig recalled many years later the team arrived at the Colorado State campus in motor coaches, and without its head coach administered a serious whipping on the Bears.
The Bears scored first on a late second quarter touchdown, but after the intermission "the blue and gold machine started functioning." Halfback Jim Brown scored on "a 35-yard jaunt around end," to get the Cats on the board, then got busy in the air. According to the Montanan, "halfback Brown oiled his slinging arm and found end Don Grabow with two air-mail packages good for six points each."
The Bobcats blitz was complete, an 18-7 comeback win that got the team into the win column. That win stands not only as MSC's only win of 1950, but as the only win of the John Mason era. His Bobcats finished 1950 1-8, and limped to an 0-7 season in 1951 before an energetic young easterner named Tony Storti showed up to lead Montana State to previously unknown heights. Storti's first loss as Montana State's head coach? A 47-0 trouncing in Greeley in 1952, which marks the last Bears win against the Bobcats in Greeley.
In the onslaught that Montana State's 1956 season would become, with the powerful Bobcats steamrolling through an unbeaten season and a share of the National Championship, that game offered a moment of normalcy. The Bobcats won 13-0, an exciting contest by all accounts and the closest game the team would play all season. A couple of bright young stars shone for MSC that night. Charley Jackson, the lightning-quick defensive lineman who was the school's first African American to play as a full-time player, set up the first touchdown with a fumble recovery. Freshman quarterback Dave Alt marched the team down the field on a 72-yard touchdown drive for the second.
While Montana State's last trip to Greeley provides an ample jumping off point in examining this newly-revived series, one of the most memorable of the 22 contests played between the former Rocky Mountain Conference rivals came six years earlier. Montana State and the Colorado State Teachers were programs headed in opposite directions when the Bobcats and Bears met in Greeley on October 13 in Greeley. The school now known as Northern Colorado was 4-0, and as The Montanan reports, the Bears were "undefeated in four starts and well on their way to clinching the RMC crown," when the Cats came calling. The "fired up Montana State aggregation" entered the game looking for its first win.
Former Oklahoma A&M star John Mason had cut his teeth as an assistant at Colorado during the Whizzer White years, and led Colorado Mines to a Rocky Mountain Conference title some years before. He left the coaching profession to sell sporting goods, but couldn't pass on the chance to lead Montana State's fortunes at the dawn of the 1950s. The 1950 season was Mason's first year, but he didn't see the showdown in Greeley. He spent the game in his hotel room with an illness.
In Mason's stead, assistant coach Glen White and legendary Bobcat trainer Gordon Herwig led the forces. Doc Herwig recalled many years later the team arrived at the Colorado State campus in motor coaches, and without its head coach administered a serious whipping on the Bears.
The Bears scored first on a late second quarter touchdown, but after the intermission "the blue and gold machine started functioning." Halfback Jim Brown scored on "a 35-yard jaunt around end," to get the Cats on the board, then got busy in the air. According to the Montanan, "halfback Brown oiled his slinging arm and found end Don Grabow with two air-mail packages good for six points each."
The Bobcats blitz was complete, an 18-7 comeback win that got the team into the win column. That win stands not only as MSC's only win of 1950, but as the only win of the John Mason era. His Bobcats finished 1950 1-8, and limped to an 0-7 season in 1951 before an energetic young easterner named Tony Storti showed up to lead Montana State to previously unknown heights. Storti's first loss as Montana State's head coach? A 47-0 trouncing in Greeley in 1952, which marks the last Bears win against the Bobcats in Greeley.
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