An Interview with W. Thomas Porter, Author of A Football Band of Brothers
he 1960 Huskies, who will be honored en masse Saturday when the Dawgs play #1 USC, lost only one game and beat #1 Minnesota in the Rose Bowl, the only time the UW's beaten a #1 team.
Husky historian W. Thomas Porter recently finished a book about that 1960 team, A Football Band of Brothers: Forging the University of Washington's First National Championship.
It's quite a tale--Husky coach Jim Owens, who'd coached under legendary taskmaster Bear Bryant, ran his players through drills so intense some of them spent weekends in the hospital. He taught a tackling technique designed to concuss opposing players.
If a modern-day coach tried Owens' tactics, he'd be fired by sunset, and probably get sued. But the players Porter interviewed (and he interviewed 29 of them) all say Owens' tactics improved their play, brought them together as a team, attracted better recruits to Washington, and laid a foundation for success that many enjoyed after college, both as players and as regular folk.
We emailed Porter some questions, he emailed back answers.
Coach Owens never replicated the success of the '59 and '60 teams--do you think his coaching style just became outdated, or other teams mimicked his techniques, or what?
Owens had great success during the period of one platoon football which changed to free substitutions and two platoons in 1965. Owens did not like two platoon football. He believed the game should be played with one platoon. His major reasons for success before 1965 was his emphasis on team unity, defense, conditioning, expectation of players to pay the price for success, and the punting game.
From 1959 (the breakout year) through 1964, his teams went 44-16-3, won three conference titles, appeared in three Rose Bowls (1960, 1961, 1964), won two (1960 and 1961), and a national championship in 1960. From 1965 [ED: when two-platoon football started] to 1974, Owens’ last year, his record was 49-53-2, and his last two teams were 7-15.
Only the Sixkiller years from 1970-1972 were very competitive -- they were 22-10 and finished second in the conference in 1970.
Owens taught a devastating tackling style--I got the sense that maybe the NCAA banned it sometime later? Is that right?
The use of the helmet to block and tackle was another innovation of Owens and his staff. The conventional football coaching technique in those days was to have a player use his shoulders to hit his opponent. If you missed with your shoulder just a little bit, you would have a difficult time executing the block or tackle. If you used your helmet and face mask, you had less of a chance to miss the opponent.
The helmet was not only used for blocking and tackling but for punishing an opponent. Husky center Dick Dunn said, “If you get a clear shot at a running back or a quarterback hung up in a pile, you were instructed to spear him helmet on helmet. You put a stop to whatever he was trying to do and he might not get up. We were also encouraged to block anybody still standing. You could be ten yards from the end of the play that was nearly over. If the whistle had not blown and an opposing player was nearby, you just flattened him.”
Lineman Ben Davidson remembers a game with UCLA in Los Angeles where three Bruins were lying on the field after one play. “When that happened, we had the game won. They didn’t want any part of us after that.”
The rules eventually changed to penalize players who intentionally led with their helmets. In 2005, spearing was banned meaning “no player shall use his helmet (including the face mask) to butt or ram an opponent or attempt to punish him. There shall be no spearing.”
Why do you think Owens' former players have such affection and appreciation for a man whose training techniques, by today's standards, were abusive? Was it something about that generation that they welcomed such strong authority?
The players during the Owens’ era, particularly those from 1957 to 1964, really respected their coaches. They recognized that the coaches’ philosophy and methods and teaching were paying off. They understood the personalities of the various coaches and how each worked to develop individual and team skills to reach outstanding performance.
Players, in those days, did not question authority and what the coaches were doing to drive them to succeed. They respected their coaches and others in authority and were committed to hard work, team unity and success, and not individual recognition and glory. They were willing to take directions.
Do you see any similarities between Owens' coaching style and Ty Willingham's? Any stark differences?
Don James, who followed Owens as the head football coach in 1975, remarked, "Those teams (1959 and 1960) laid the foundation for Husky football.” When you talk today about the Husky football tradition Coach Willingham is trying to instill today—endurance, passion, pride, tenacity and toughness and listening and learning—I would think that Coach Owens would see some great similarities between him and Coach Willingham.
What are your own personal memories from the time of the 1959 and 1960 teams?
I first saw a Husky team coached by Owens in 1958 when I was an MBA student at Washington. They lost 12-7 to Rose Bowl bound California led by quarterback Joe Kapp. After I graduated I attended the USC game in 1959. It was a bright, crisp fall day in mid-October. It was a classic matchup—power plays, stirring defense, momentum shifts, great strategy, artfully executed plays, a minimum of errors, and victory in the balance until the final seconds. After the Huskies went up 15-14 with ten and a half minutes to go, USC engineered a nine-play, 80-yard drive to win the game 22-15.
Of course, everyone living in Seattle on January 1, 1960, remembers the 1960 Rose Bowl when Washington went up 17-0 against the favored Wisconsin before the Badgers had a first down. They thrashed Wisconsin 44-8 and recorded the Huskies’ first Rose Bowl victory. A distant observer of the game on national network television called Owens after the game. It was Bud Wilkinson, Owens’ former coach. After congratulating his pupil on the stunning victory, he said, “It would be hard to find a club anywhere, anytime, that played a 60-minute period any better than that time that day.”
I also remember seeing on television the reception at Sea-Tac when the Huskies landed. Seattle was simply in love with the players on that team. Keith Jackson, KOMO’s Sports Director said the reception was “like we won the war. It was the first time in my life that I fully realized how a college football team could pick up an entire state and region and revitalize it.”
In 1960, I attended the Navy game, the only one Washington lost that year. In the final seconds, Navy kicked a field goal that cleared the bar by the length of a salmon to give the Middies a 15-14 victory. Navy featured the 1960 Heisman selection.
I remember all the injuries to many of the Huskies’ first unit and all the close games during the last seven games of the season -- a 10-8 win over UCLA, 30-29 over Oregon State, 7-6 over Oregon and a 8-7 victory in Spokane against the Cougars. As a staff member of Touche Ross [ED: Now Deloitte & Touche], I was on assignment with a client in Coeur d’Alene for two weeks before the WSU game and came back through Spokane to attend. It was a very chilly day made colder by a bitter wind. Early in the fourth period, the Cougars scored to lead 7-0. The Huskies scored late in the fourth quarter, scored a two-point conversion in the waning moments for the victory and another trip to the Rose Bowl.
Clearly, the 1959 and 1960 teams had a very significant impact on the Seattle community. Their 20-2 record over that two-year span ranks at the very top of Husky football. The 1959 team was the first to be admitted to the Husky Hall of Fame. More players from those teams have been individually inducted in the Husky Hall of Fame than from any other two teams in Husky history.
Many readers of my book and people who attend speeches I have been giving, have told me about the very fond and vivid memories of seeing those teams play and how they represented the University and community. Others tell me about the stories their dads and grandfathers passed on about those great teams.
