Thanksgiving Throwback: Football at St. Mary's

By Brian Magloyoan | St. Mary's Athletics Communications

Thanksgiving is a holiday that can be summarized in three words: family, food and football. This year, as families gather to celebrate the holiday, join us as we look back at the historic, legendary and almost mythical, St. Mary's Football program.

Introduction
The constant growth in popularity of college football has shed the spotlight on a number of "big time" universities. For a moment, the limelight of collegiate football shined brightly on an emerging university located in San Antonio, Texas. Before modern-day San Antonio schools University of Texas-San Antonio and University of the Incarnate Word established their football programs, St. Mary's Football captured the imagination of the country in the early-to-mid-20th century as San Antonio's first college football team.

It has been 75 years since the fabled St. Mary's Football team last stepped onto the gridiron. And over that time, the legend of this program continues to grow with every passing generation.

Hail to the (Future) Chief—The Eisenhower Effect

4402 — U.S. Army Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower on the steps of St. Louis Hall.

In 1909, St. Mary's University, then known as St. Louis College, organized its first football team. Coached by a group of priests, the early years of the program were met with unfavorable results. From 1911-1915, St. Louis College went without a win, losing games by wide margins with scores 50-0 and 80-0 being commonplace.

Enter U.S. Army Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower.

After leading the Peacock Military Academy to a winning season in his first year as head coach in 1915, Eisenhower was named the new St. Louis College head football coach in 1916.
Eisenhower made an immediate impact, leading the squad to a tie in his first game at the helm. The next five games saw even better results as St. Louis College reeled of five consecutive victories, en route to a 5-1-1 record.

"We thought more of him than we did of any other coach we ever had," the team's quarterback, Jim Sweeney, was quoted as telling the San Antonio Express at the time. "We respected him from the time he showed up until he left. He was very frank and honest, and we learned more about honor and discipline from him than we did anywhere else."

A fixture at all the games, Mamie Eisenhower, Dwight's wife, was the team's biggest supporter. She would go on to become the only female in the history of St. Mary's to

4403 — The 1916 St. Louis College Football Team.

be honored with a football letter.
"We fought as much for Mamie and the Douds (her parents who also attended the games) as we did the school," Sweeney said.

Pleased with the way the season had gone, the Brothers gave the Eisenhowers a victory dinner, developing a long-lasting relationship.

"Coming to San Antonio on my birthday is like coming home," the future President of the United States said while visiting the city in 1952. "I guess there isn't a city or a town in the whole world that holds more happy memories for me."

Eisenhower would go on to serve two terms as the 34th President of the United States from 1953-1961.

On the Rise
In 1925, the same year that the "Rattler" was adopted as the school mascot, St. Mary's College played its first season of intercollegiate football.

Led by head coach Thomas O'Donnell and team captain Tom "Buster" Carver, St. Mary's played its first game on Oct. 3, 1925, on the road against Schreiner Institute.

Trailing by a touchdown in the fourth quarter with the ball on Schreiner's 25-yard line, the Rattlers' quarterback, Shorty McCarty, connected with Earl English for the team's first touchdown of the season. The game would ultimately end in a 6-6 tie.

One week later, the Rattlers played in their first home game of the season against Southwestern, winning by a final of 19-0. The triumph marked the first victory of the season for the Rattlers. Over the course of the next two games, the Rattlers' success would continue with victories against the Austin Deaf Mutes on Oct. 17 and Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now known as Texas State) on Halloween. They would outscore their opponents 92-6 in their three victories, finishing the season with a 3-3-1 record.

The Dec. 18, 1925 edition of The Rattler described the success of St. Mary's first collegiate football season as a "team that worked like a well-oiled machine." The student publication also noted the class with which the team carried itself.

"The Rattlers have established a record of clean playing and a spirit of sportsmanship favorably noticed wherever they played. In none of the seven games they played did they show the slightest trace of an ugly spirit."

Following the final home game of the season, Dallas University expressed the same sentiment to The Rattler.

"Never have we played a finer and a cleaner bunch of athletes and never have we been accorded such wonderful treatment, as at St. Mary's."

The Rattlers played their home games on Eagle Field, which is the current location of the St. Mary's School of Law. In 1926, the Rattlers finished with a 2-4-1 record under head coach Paul Daily. The following year, in 1927, the school's name officially changed to St. Mary's University.

In 1928, Jim Kendrick was named the new football coach of the Rattlers. Kendrick played professionally for the Canton Bulldogs of the American Professional Football Association, now known as the National Football League, in 1920. He was teammates with the legendary Jim Thorpe who is well known for winning Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912.

Later that year, on Nov. 18, in front of 4,000 fans at League Park, St. Mary's defeated DePaul University, 16-13.

In 1929, Kendrick resigned as head coach of the football and basketball teams. That same year, Barlow "Bones" Irvin would take over as the head coach of Rattler Football, Basketball and Baseball. In his first season, Irvin led the Rattlers to an impressive 8-1 record behind star player Dutch Daehane, who racked up eleven touchdowns that year.

On Nov. 17, 1929, St. Mary's defeated DePaul 20-12 in Chicago's legendary Soldier Field, the current home of the Chicago Bears of the NFL.

The Depression and Rebirth

In March of 1931, St. Mary's announced the discontinuation of the football program due to the rising cost of expenses caused by the Great Depression. However, football still remained on campus as a club team.

Soon after, Bones Irvin would leave to become the new freshman football coach at Texas A&M as a chapter in St. Mary's history came to a close.

Two years later, in the March 24, 1933 edition of The Rattler, it was reported that the student council made a push for the return of Athletics. Tom Jackson, a student representative, was quoted saying, "It will work up a finer school spirit than any other activity."

The following year, President Rev. Alfred H. Rabe announced that St. Mary's would return to intercollegiate competition in the 1935-36 academic year.

Spearheading the revival of the program was John Clark "Mose" Simms. In a San Antonio Express-News article from the 1980s, Simms "was once described by Dallas sports columnists as 'a tramp athlete, a salesman, a publisher, an oilman, an athletic director and a spinner of fascinating tales.'"

"A graduate of San Marcos Baptist Academy, Simms (loved) sports and had long dreamed of owning his own football team," the article added.

Simms would negotiate a deal with the University where he would field football and basketball teams in return for tuition, dormitory space and books for players.

With Simms at the helm, the Rattlers quickly earned a reputation as a renegade bunch with a mix of players mostly from Texas, with a few out-of-state players as well as a number of student-athletes who had left larger schools.

One of those players was a two-way player by the name of Curtis Sandig. A 5-foot-9, 150-pound running back and defensive back, Sandig was recruited by Simms in a bar while playing dominoes after having left Baylor due to academic issues.

But for Simms, the ultimate goal was to gain national notoriety for St. Mary's.

The Traveling Rattler Roadshow

According to Simms, the best way for St. Mary's to gain recognition across the country was "to make the team as flamboyant as possible."

He began with the team's uniforms.

Despite the school's colors being gold and blue, Simms dressed the players in red, white and blue uniforms in honor of the Texas Centennial of 1936. In addition, the Rattlers would play with a red, white and blue ball during their home games.

"A football team is in the amusement business. You charge for a show and you should put one on," Simms said in 1940. "We do our best to stage an entertaining act, and the red, white and blue uniforms is the costuming end of it."

Struggling to schedule games at home, Simms and the Rattlers would head on the road to play games from New Hampshire to California, often scheduling games while on the road. One week in 1935, the Rattlers played three games in a seven-day stretch throughout California against the University of San Francisco, Santa Barbara State and the San Diego Marines.

In their sixth game of that same season, the Rattlers played against eventual Orange Bowl Champions, the Catholic University Cardinals, in Washington D.C. The Cardinals were favored to win by a large margin, but at the start of the game, the Rattlers stunned the opposition with an onside kick recovery. St. Mary's held tough, ultimately falling to Catholic 7-0.

St. Mary's would place six starters on the All-Alamo Conference First Team the following year: Paul Buchanon, Francis Vivrett, Warren Wylde, Lawrence Vetter, Woodrow Roy and Doug Locke, the Associated Press Little College All-American running back.

Locke would end his playing career at St. Mary's on a high note, scoring four touchdowns against Ouachita Baptist in a 33-14 victory, giving the Rattlers an 8-2-2 record for the season. He would once again be named an All-American after leading the nation in scoring with 160 points and 26 touchdowns that season. He went on to play for the New York Giants in 1938, the same year his No. 38 became the only football number to be retired at St. Mary's.

Sandig would take over for Locke in the Rattler backfield a season later as he would lead the team in scoring.

The coach for the Rattlers at the time was a Harvard graduate by the name of Frank Bridges. With an extended knowledge of the game, he led the Baylor Bears to the Southwest Conference title in 1922 and 1924.

"I officiated high school and college football for 28 years," marveled Homer Burkett to the San Antonio Express years later. "(I) never met a coach who knew the rules better than Frank Bridges."

Trick plays best exemplified Bridges' coaching style and his tenure with the Rattlers. Before facing then-national powerhouse San Francisco, Bridges promised to unveil the "Suzie Q" formation. During the opening kickoff, the Rattlers would stun the opposition, recovering an onside kick. They would ultimately lose the game 31-0.
"The 'Suzie Q' was a made-up deal," Sandig would later say with a smile to the Express-News in an interview.

Following that season, Bridges left St. Mary's, leaving Simms to take over as coach. A media darling, Simms would regularly hold his press conferences in the reporters' favorite bars. The move paid off, as the Rattlers regularly headlined the sports pages in the days leading up to games.

Blue Goose, National Fame and the War That Ended It

In addition to their unique playing attire, St. Mary's became known for their method of transportation. Logging an estimated 50,000 miles over five years, the Rattlers would travel on a 53-seat double-decker bus that Simms painted blue, dubbing it the "Blue Goose" with the words, "St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas. Where sunshine spends the winter," labeled on the side.

The fame and notoriety of the team eventually spanned across the country as the Rattlers were featured in the Oct. 16, 1939 issue of Life Magazine, an issue that cost 10 cents at the time.

4404 — A picture of the "Blue Goose" featured
in the San Antonio Express News
from the 1980s.

"(St. Mary's) is well on its way toward becoming a major football power," the article predicted.

Life Magazine's premonition would ultimately come to fruition. One year after losing 31-0 to San Francisco, the Rattlers would return to The Bay to face the Dons. Once again, St. Mary's was the underdog to one of the most prominent programs in the country in the 1930s.

Against all odds, Simms devised a unique strategy leading up to the game.

"Mose [Coach Simms] wanted us to look bad in front of the San Francisco press," Sandig recalled years later. "So in the days leading up to the game, we practiced in a public park wearing these raggedy, old uniforms."

"He told us to drop passes and fumble," Burkett added. "I was the center and he told me, 'Homer, when you snap the ball, make sure you bounce it back to the quarterback.'"

Associated Press reporter Russell J. Newland would describe the practices as "the most awful display of football maneuvering this writer has watched. (The Rattlers) stumbled over each other's feet, got tangled in their own legs, tried to catch passes with their heads and ran plays in which nobody packed the ball — the center having snapped it back into space."

The Rattlers would shed their ragged practice gear for their trademark uniforms.

4405 — A St. Mary's vs. San Francisco
game program. Considered the
greatest game in Rattler Football
history.

"We went out in our red, white and blue uniforms and beat their ass," Burkett raved. "God, they had a good team. We had no business beating them."

St. Mary's would go on to defeat heavily favored San Francisco 7-6 at Kezar Stadium in what would be remembered as the greatest game in St. Mary's Football history.

Later that season, Sandig ran for 195 yards in a 47-0 thumping of Sul Ross.

The following year, in 1940, the Rattlers would field arguably its best team in history as they finished the season 8-3.

According to legend, that same season, the Rattlers flexed their muscle against the opposition with a 100-point margin of victory.

"I'm telling you, I sat and saw that game, it was in the fall of 1940," then-seventh grader at the St. Mary's School downtown, S. Martin Shelton, recalled. "St. Mary's defeated Randolph-Seal 100-0."

"I remember the Sister saying 'Well, it's a free game, just go on out to Alamo Stadium,'" he added. "I still see it in my mind. Just about every time St. Mary's got the ball, they ran for a touchdown."

Sandig posted a career season, finishing with 770 yards rushing, averaging 7.4 yards per carry and scoring 121 points, which was third-best in the nation that season. He earned Little All-America Honorable Mention honors for his efforts.

"Curtis was our best player," Burkett told the Express News in the 1980s. "He was a fast rascal."

4407 — Curtis Sandig (left) and Homer Burkett pose
for a San Antonio Express News article
in the 1980s.

Sandig would take his talents to the professional ranks with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1942, intercepting a team-high five passes as a rookie.

The 1940 season would be the last under Simms. St. Mary's put together one final team for the 1941 season under the direction of Lloyd Russell. In the last intercollegiate football game in St. Mary's history, the Rattlers fell to Mississippi Southern, 7-0. St. Mary's would discontinue the program after the 1941 season due to the United States' involvement in World War II.

And just like its sudden rise to fame, football at St. Mary's had an abrupt end.

St. Mary's Football has faded into a distant memory, and has turned into an almost mythological fable.

"We put San Antonio on the map, if you want to know the truth of it," Sandig said.

For a brief moment in time, San Antonio, and more specifically St. Mary's, was at the center of the football universe. From the uniforms to the Blue Goose and the traveling road show, the Rattlers defined football in the Alamo City.
"I talk to students at St. Mary's and they don't even realize the school once had a team," Burkett said. "But we did. And it was a damn good one."

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