It’s Samford, not Stanford

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

Samford (not Stanford) is the opposition for The Citadel on Saturday.  What do we know about Samford?

Well, we know that Samford is located in a Birmingham suburb.  We know the sports teams at Samford are called the Bulldogs, just like The Citadel’s.  We know that the football team plays its games at Seibert Stadium, and that it is coached by Pat Sullivan, who once won the Heisman Trophy.  We know that a long time ago, Bobby Bowden coached there, winning 31 games that count toward his career wins total, which makes a lot of Penn State fans angry.

We also know that Samford was once called Howard, but when it became a university, it changed its name in part to avoid confusion with Howard University in Washington, DC, and now everyone just gets it confused with Stanford instead.

The Citadel and Samford have met once before in football, in 1989, and apparently neither sports media relations department is sure what the score was.  The Citadel’s game notes list scores of 35-16 and 35-17 in different parts of the first page of the release, while Samford’s notes mention the score twice as well — 35-16 in one instance, and 36-16 in the other.

The score was 35-16.  Trust me, I was there…

It was the first game played in Johnson Hagood Stadium after Hurricane Hugo damaged the stadium, and decimated much of the surrounding area, in September of 1989.  A crowd of 15,214 (!) watched a reasonably entertaining game that saw The Citadel take control in the second half, outscoring Samford 14-0 in the third and fourth quarters.  The Citadel, in full wishbone mode, only attempted two passes, completing one of them for 16 yards.  The military Bulldogs rushed 69 times for 402 yards, with both Jack Douglas and Tom Frooman (three touchdowns on the day) rushing for over 100 yards.  Raymond Mazyck added 92 yards, and Kingstree legend Alfred Williams chipped in with 55 of his own.  Samford had a much more balanced attack, with 148 yards passing and 141 yards rushing, but lost the time of possession battle by almost 10 minutes and also committed both of the game’s turnovers.  Samford would go on to finish the season with a 4-7 record.

It would be the last victory of a surreal season for The Citadel.  The campaign included two games played at Williams-Brice Stadium following the hurricane.  The first one of those, against South Carolina State, was shaping up to be much-hyped contest, but wound up as almost an afterthought.  However, I believe it’s still the only football game The Citadel has ever played to have been featured in The Nation.  The other game at Williams-Brice, against Western Carolina, resulted in the final tie in the school’s football history.  The Citadel started the season 4-0, including a win at Navy in which the winning score was set up by a Middie punt that went for -5 yards (the winds from the remnants of the hurricane had something to do with that).  However, the almost inevitable slide after Hugo blew through left the Bulldogs with a final record of 5-5-1.

Back to this year’s game.  When the season began, I suspect most supporters of The Citadel were penciling in Samford as a probable win.  It’s now anything but, as the Bulldogs (Charleston version) have struggled to run the ball on offense and have struggled stopping the run or pass on defense, particularly on the road.  In three road games The Citadel has allowed an average of 42 points and 477 yards of total offense.

Samford has been surprisingly competitive in the conference so far, winning at Western Carolina easily while giving Elon (at Elon) all it wanted and acquitting itself well in an 11-point loss to Appalachian State.  Samford running back Chris Evans has rushed for over 100 yards in all three conference games, including 166 yards against Western Carolina.  He’s averaging a shade over 120 yards rushing per game.  Evans transferred to Samford from UAB.

Samford has an odd turnover statistic.  In its three wins Samford has turned the ball over eight times.  In its three losses Samford has turned the ball over only twice.

Defensively, Samford has been pretty good against the run, but has allowed significant passing yardage, including 307 yards to Armanti Edwards of Appalachian State (3 TDs) and 291 to Scott Riddle of Elon (2 TDs, one of which went for 91 yards).  Edwards had a 76% completion percentage as well.  Division II West Georgia also had success throwing the ball against Samford.

If The Citadel is to win this game, it must contain Evans.  The best way to do this is control the ball, which won’t be easy (Samford leads the SoCon in time of possession).  Bart Blanchard needs to play with confidence and authority (which he didn’t do against Furman), Andre Roberts needs to break off at least two big plays, and one of the running backs must step forward.  The defense has to get some takeaways, too.  In seven games so far, The Citadel has only forced nine turnovers (two interceptions, seven fumbles).

It’s going to be tough.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow afternoon.

Filed under: Football, The Citadel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Kurt Warner and the Curse of the Cardinals (Part 2)

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

The Cardinals are the oldest NFL franchise, as the club’s origins can be traced back to 1898 and the Morgan Athletic Club of Chicago. The franchise nickname came about when founder Chris O’Brien bought used jerseys for his team from the University of Chicago. The jerseys, a maroon color when new, were faded to what O’Brien called “Cardinal red”. In 1906, the club disbanded; it would re-form in 1913. It would briefly suspend operations due to World War I (and the great flu epidemic of 1918), but by 1919 it was back and in 1920, O’Brien paid the $100 entrance fee to join what would eventually become the National Football League. Initially, the team was known as the Racine Cardinals, after the street where the club was based, Racine Avenue (the club had also been known as the Normals, for Normal Park in Chicago). However, a franchise in Racine, Wisconsin, joined the NFL as well, so the team became the Chicago Cardinals. The Cardinals and the Chicago Bears are the NFL’s two “original” franchises (the Green Bay Packers joined the league in 1921).

In 1921, O’Brien signed the great John “Paddy” Driscoll to the team for $300 per game, three times what he paid to enter the league. Driscoll was a do-everything sort of player (who also coached the team). The club played its home games at Comiskey Park throughout its time in Chicago, except for a brief three-year period in the mid-1920s.

In 1925, the Cardinals were fighting for the NFL championship. At that time, there was no playoff; the team with the best record in the regular season was acknowledged as the champion. The Cardinals were 9-1-1 when they played the Pottsville Maroons on December 6. The Maroons were 8-2 and the game would almost certainly decide the champion. Pottsville upset the Cardinals at Comiskey, 21-7.

The Cardinals had completed their regularly scheduled games, but in those days schedules were, shall we say, flexible, and the team quickly scheduled two extra games. The Cardinals weren’t as much interested in winning the league just for its own sake as they were getting a guaranteed game against Red Grange and the Chicago Bears (which would have been an option for them based on existing contracts and would have been a financial bonanza). O’Brien had trouble finding teams that had not already disbanded for the season, but he managed to get a game with the Hammond Pros, which fielded a decent team, losing to the Cardinals 13-0.

It would be the game against the Milwaukee Badgers that would cause the Cardinals no end of grief. Milwaukee didn’t have nearly enough players available to field a team, so one of the Cardinal players, Art Folz, recruited some kids from a local Chicago high school to join the Badgers for the game, telling them it was a ‘practice game’ and wouldn’t affect their amateur status. The Cardinals won 59-0 in a game so farcical that O’Brien decided not to charge admission. According to a local newspaper, “Touch football would have seemed rough compared to the exhibition staged.”

NFL president Joe Carr would force the Badgers out of the league and also fined the Cardinals $1000, putting O’Brien on probation for a year. He ordered the game stricken from league records, and Folz was banned for life from the league.

Meanwhile, Pottsville had taken advantage of consecutive wins over the Frankford Yellowjackets and Cardinals to lay claim to the NFL title, setting up a big-money game at Shibe Park in Philadelphia with a team of Notre Dame All-Stars. This was a game originally set up by the Frankford owner, who at the time had anticipated his own squad playing in the game. In an effort to stop Pottsville from playing in the game, he asserted that territorial rights gave his club and only his club the right to play at Shibe. Pottsville played the game anyway (winning 9-7), noting that the territorial rights were not in writing. It didn’t matter. Carr suspended Pottsville, voiding its title. However, O’Brien apparently agreed not to claim the championship for his own club, based on its own irregularities, and in return for this the Cardinals did not have to pay the $1000 fine handed down by Carr. Basically, there was no 1925 NFL champion. If there had been, it realistically would have had to have been Pottsville, which won fair and square on the field.

O’Brien would sell the team in 1929 to a doctor named David Jones. In 1932, Jones sold the team to Charles Bidwill Sr., for $50,000, and the franchise has been in the Bidwill family ever since.

Charles Bidwill was, according to author Dan Moldea, “a bootlegger, gambler, racetrack owner, and associate of the Capone mob.” Nice. Of course, lots of NFL owners back then had connections to gambling, including Tim Mara, Art Rooney Sr., and Bert Bell (who was also an NFL commissioner). The Rooney family still does (as do the Bidwills). Bidwill had been a minority owner of the Bears before buying the Cardinals. He owned the team for 15 years, until his death in 1947, and the team was, for almost all of those years, terrible, with records of 2-6-2, 1-9-1, 5-6, 6-4-2, 3-8-1, 5-5-1, 2-9, 1-10, 2-7-2, 3-7-1, 3-8, 0-10, 0-10, 1-9, and 6-5.

(That second 0-10 season actually came as part of a ‘combo’ team, as the Steelers and Cardinals played as one team that year due to travel restrictions brought about by World War II. It was called Card-Pitt — or, more sarcastically, “Car-Pet”.)

Just before he died, though, Bidwill had signed collegiate star Charley Trippi for $100,000. Led by Trippi, the Cardinals would go 9-3 during the 1947 regular season and then beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-21, at Comiskey Park to win the NFL championship. That game is the only home postseason contest in Cardinals history. The Cardinals would lose to the Eagles the following season in a title-game rematch. The franchise has not managed to reach even a conference championship final since. Following those great years, however, the Cardinals would soon resume their losing ways, all under Charles Bidwill’s widow, Violet, having losing records in nine of ten seasons before eventually relocating.

Violet Bidwill Wolfner (she had remarried) moved the Cardinals to St. Louis in time for the 1960 season. Even though there was already a baseball team in St. Louis called the Cardinals, the NFL Cardinals elected to retain the franchise nickname, thus leading to the team being known as the “Football Cardinals” around town. (That’s also how receptionists for the NFL club answered the telephone.) After the 1961 season, Mrs. Wolfner died, and the club was left to Charles “Stormy” Bidwill Jr. and William “Bill” Bidwill. I have not been able to get confirmation, but apparently her will was contested by her second husband. During the fight over the family fortune, the Bidwill brothers found out for the first time that they had been adopted.

The Cardinals actually were competitive for a few years in the 1960s, just missing out of the playoffs on a couple of occasions. During this time, however, the two brothers could not agree on how to divide authority. Stormy Bidwill elected to take control of the family’s gambling interests, and ceded control of the Cardinals to his brother Bill. Some observers have suggested that the wrong brother wound up with the Cardinals.

The Cardinals have been almost uniformly bad ever since Bill Bidwill ascended to the top, other than a period in the mid-1970s when Don Coryell coached the team. Even then, the Cardinals were unable to win a playoff game in two postseason appearances. In 1982 the Cardinals made a 16-team playoff “tournament” following a players’ strike that reduced the regular season to nine games, but lost in the first round. In 1984 the Cardinals had one of the all-time great offenses, featuring Neil Lomax, Ottis Anderson, Roy Green, and Stump Mitchell, but somehow managed to miss the playoffs, going 9-7 and losing the last game of the season to the Redskins when a last-second field goal attempt went awry. The Cardinals would finally make the playoffs again in 1998, actually winning a game at Dallas, before losing to Minnesota. Since then the Cardinals have not had a winning season. In fact, that 1998 season (in which the Cardinals were 9-7) is the only winning season the franchise has had since 1984.

Oh yes, about the curse: remember all the controversy and goings-on in 1925? Well, soon after Charles Bidwill Sr. bought the club, the Cardinals began claiming that NFL title for that year as their own (although the official NFL record book would state the Cardinals had been “proclaimed” the ’25 champs until the 1985 edition, when it began listing them as official champions). Pottsville and its supporters have fought for their claim to the crown for decades, but the NFL owners have twice by vote refused to acknowledge the merits of their claim, first in 1963 and again in 2003. This was due to the influence of Bill Bidwill, who has zealously guarded the title designation for his club, basically because other than 1947, it’s all the Cardinals have – and, say those who believe in the curse, it’s all the Cardinals will ever have. It’s not like the Cardinals have come close since winning the ’47 title, either, with only five playoff appearances in the last 60 years, and that one solitary playoff victory.

Myself, I doubt the Cardinals are cursed. I think it’s more a case of the Bidwills being cheap (as opposed to thrifty) and not really caring much about winning, not as long as the cash cow known as the NFL keeps pumping out milk.

—

That’s the franchise for which Kurt Warner plays. It’s a tough burden. The Cardinals’ entire history is rotten, but one winning season in the last 23 years? It’s not impossible to lead the Cardinals to the playoffs – after all, Jake Plummer did it – but it’s not quite the same thing as stepping behind center for the Cowboys, either. Not by a long shot.

I think having success with the Cardinals could push Kurt Warner’s Hall of Fame candidacy over the top, even with his relatively short run of greatness, because it would be an almost unique chip to have. He would be a Super Bowl MVP and a two-time league MVP with a great story (from the Arena Football League to the National Football League, from stockboy to Super Bowl champ) AND he would have topped it off by leading the hapless Cardinals to glory.

Since it’s the Cardinals, though, good chance it never happens…

—

A good portion of the information about the 1925 NFL season comes from David Fleming’s book about the Pottsville Maroons, Breaker Boys.

Filed under: Football | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Kurt Warner and the Curse of the Cardinals (Part 1)

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

The next month is going to be a big one for the Arizona Cardinals.  At 4-2, and playing in the pathetic NFC West, the Cardinals will have an opportunity to all but lock up a playoff spot, with three of the games against its lackluster division opponents.  However, we’re talking about the NFL’s most historically inept franchise, so it would probably surprise no one if the Cards managed to lose at least three of those games.

The next month is also an important one for Kurt Warner, in my opinion, because I think he has a chance to greatly enhance his candidacy for the Pro Football Hall of Fame if he can lead the Cardinals to the playoffs (especially if the Cardinals were to win a game or two once they got there).   Here are some relevant numbers for Warner:

2 MVP awards

Super Bowl MVP award

3 Pro Bowls

52-39 record as a starting QB

164 TDs, 105 INTs

93.8 career passing rating

I’m not sure any quarterback has ever had a career like Warner’s.   He basically came out of nowhere at age 27 to put up three brilliant seasons in a row, winning 35 games and a Super Bowl as a starter in those three years.  However, other than that he’s really only had two other seasons as a starting quarterback in the NFL (21 combined starts in those two years), with one of those being last year, at age 36.  Generally Hall of Fame quarterbacks don’t start so late and don’t spend a significant part of their careers as backups.  52 wins as a starter doesn’t compare to most of the guys with busts in Canton, even those with delayed or interrupted careers; for example, Roger Staubach won 85 games as a starter, Steve Young 94, and Warren Moon 102.  Of the “modern era” QBs in the Hall, I think the one with the fewest starter wins is Joe Namath, with 63.

There are many fine non-Hall quarterbacks with lots of starter wins and a healthy winning percentage, like Phil Simms (95 wins), Ken Stabler (96), and Joe Theismann (77).

Among current quarterbacks with solid winning records, there are Hall of Fame locks like Brett Favre (163 career starter wins), Peyton Manning (108) and Tom Brady (86).  Donovan McNabb is plugging away with 76 career wins, and Brad Johnson (if you still count him as current, after that game against the Rams) has 71.  Matt Hasselbeck has 58.  Then there is Ben Roethlisberger, who already has 44 at age 26!  He’s younger than Warner was when Warner debuted in the league.

What I’m trying to say is that to this point Kurt Warner doesn’t have a lot to offer as part of a Hall of Fame resume other than that one three-year stretch – but that was one incredible stretch.  He’s kind of the Terrell Davis of quarterbacks.

As of right now, I don’t see him getting in the Hall.  However, a season of success with the Cardinals could change that.  Because, you see, it’s not like he would be making a run with a franchise that you might expect to win every now and then.  He would be making it with the Cardinals.

I want to delve a little deeper into Cardinals history (curses included), which I think is rather interesting, much like a train wreck can be interesting, but that would make for a very long post.   What I’m going to do is break this up into two parts, and the Cardinals history (along with some concluding thoughts about Warner) will be in Part 2.  I’ll post that either later tonight or sometime tomorrow.

Filed under: Football | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »