by Paul R. Spitzzeri
It was a strange day yesterday for NCAA Division I college football, as four top-eleven ranked teams were upset—all by unranked squads. Alabama, the nation’s number one school, was shocked by Vanderbilt, 40-35; Arkansas stunned #4 Tennessee, 19-14; tenth-ranked Michigan was beaten 27-17 by Washington; and our local USC Trojans, coming in to the contest at #11, were bested by Minnesota 24-17.
There were high hopes for the Men of Troy in this 2024 campaign and the team falls to 3-2, and 0-2 in the Big Ten, so we’ll see what the squad can do at home against fourth-ranked Penn State next Saturday. This post takes us back nearly a century to 1928 when USC, under Coach Howard Jones compiled a 9-0-1 record including a 4-0-1 showing in the Pacific Coast Conference as some observers handed the Trojans a mythical national championship.
The featured artifact from the Museum’s collection here is a program for the 6 October contest at the Los Angeles Coliseum against the Oregon State Aggies (the school was only recently know as the Oregon Agricultural College and later adopted the name of Beavers). The visiting squad, coached by Paul Schissler, had a good 1928 campaign, compiling an overall record of 6-3, though it was tied for sixth in the conference, and opened its season on 29 September against the Cal Aggies (now the University of California, Davis) winning on its field, 14-0.
The Trojans, meanwhile, began its season at home against the Utah Agricultural College (now Utah State and whose coach Dick Romney was from a prominent Mormon family that included the son of a first cousin, Mitt Romney) and stormed to a 40-12 victory. In 1927, however, USC and Oregon State met in Los Angeles and the home team barely escaped with a 13-12 win, so the Aggies were looking for an upset.
The 2 October edition of the Los Angeles Times included, in a piece by sportswriter Braven Dyer, a scouting report from Newell “Jeff” Cravath, a graduate of Santa Ana High School and the center and captain of the Trojan squad during his three years there from 1924-1926. After two years as an assistant to Jones, Cravath coached the University of Denver team for three seasons, followed by an assistant stint at Chaffey College in the Inland Empire. He returned to an assistant’s role under Jones at USC from 1933-1940 before leading the University of San Francisco team for a season.
After Jones’ death, Cravath took over becoming the first alumnus to coach the Men of Troy and, in nine seasons from 1942-1950, compiling a 54-28-8 record including two Rose Bowl wins, although there were also two losses in that New Year’s Day classic—the first suffered by the Trojans. He worked for a couple of years at the Santa Anita racetrack and then ran a ranch in El Centro in the Imperial Valley, where he died at age 50 after a car crash.
In his report, Cravath stated that “Oregon State is two touchdowns stronger than last year” and added that “those babies are tough . . . they tackle like a ton of bricks,” while, having painted USC quarterback Don Williams’ name on a tackling dummy, “they think that they’ll win the ball game if they stop Don.” He praised the Aggie backfield and, returning to Los Angeles, ran the Trojans through a quartet of plays he discerned from the Oregon State victory over the Cal Aggies.
The same day’s Los Angeles Express ran a headline blaring “JONES MAKES STARTLING GRID CHANGES” as columnist Hugh Pinney noted that the “University of Southern California has never taken an early season game as seriously as the one coming up” against the veteran Aggies squad with “dark horses to spring at every turn.” With the backfield utilizing a setup mastered by Notre Dame, a perennial powerful USC opponent, it was noted that Oregon State felt this was the “big game” for its season and it was said that, in Corvallis, the mantra was “get over the Trojans and the rest will be easy.”
Among Jones’ moves was to shift Captain Jess Hibbs from tackle to end where he could be a triple threat—opening running room for the backs, as well as stepping back to punt or “run with the agate” himself. The Trojan coach, meanwhile, was quoted as uttering, “we haven’t showed anything yet and I’m going to see if we can’t Saturday” before making his offensive line changes, which also included two new starters at the tackle positions.’
Bynner Martin of the Los Angeles Record and its edition of the 2nd wrote of the Aggies that “they’re coming out of the north like a conquering band of Vikings . . . and they are coming with a determined purpose bolstered by the hope that only a near victory can give.” That score of 13-12 was apparently painted on the walls of the locker room at Corvallis after the 1927 contest and was a motivation “which Beaver followers hope will result in a smashing triumph.”
As to “The Thundering Herd,” as the Trojans were known, Jones was said to be “not confident and neither is he satisfied,” while the changes in the O-line were to be tested in scrimmages before the contest. The following day, Martin spotlighted Hibbs, an All-American from 1927, observing that “the price of being good in your particular line is usually more duties and responsibilities,” so that victory for USC “against the beefy Beavers rests upon Hibbs’ broad and capable shoulders.” The columnist also noted that the game was considered a toss-up.
Paul Lowry in his Times column, “Rabbit Punches” of the 3rd and under the header of “Nail the Trojans!” wrote that “there is evidence abroad that the Oregon State gridiron heroes of Corvallis, Or., are laying for Mr. Howard Jones’ U.S.C. pigskin experts and expect to clean up at the Coliseum next Saturday.” Lowry repeated the statement of Cravath about the perceived toughness of the Aggies, but “demon exploitation expert,” Art Taafe, Oregon State’s publicity director, countered that “he knows they are” tough and “twice as good as they were last year.”
The columnist reminded readers that Oregon State would have won the prior year’s contest but for two dropped passes on the Trojan goal line and a quarterback fumble on his own goal line handing the Men of Troy an easy touchdown. Lowry added that, with all of the Aggie vets, there were a pair of new sophomore backs, Henry Hughes of Honolulu and Coquelle Thompson, nicknamed “Chief” and who was the namesake son of a prominent tribal member at the Siletz Indian Reservation on the Oregon coast. Notably, there were nine players on the Oregon State roster from greater Los Angeles, three of whom were starters: tackle Fred Schell from Redondo Beach, end Russell Striff from Los Angeles and halfback Carl Metten from Pasadena.
Martin of the Record recorded that the 33 “big, husky and smiling” members of the Oregon State squad disembarked from the train at Glendale and were driven to the luxurious Huntington Hotel in Pasadena prior to a workout at the Coliseum before the contest. The Aggies were deemed “confident, almost cocky” and “in the pink” by the team trainer from two-a-day workouts for the prior couple of weeks and ready to “shoot the works.”
Meanwhile, Jones and his players “polished off their training” and, the columnist remarked, “never looked better . . . following a week of intensive drill with new plays formulated by Jones” along with practicing with the reconstituted line. With the quarterbacks Don Williams of USC and Maple for the visitors, “a free-scoring tussle is expected” with a combination of “fast running plays combined with passing attacks.” Martin ended by commenting that the home team was favored by about a touchdown.
Sid Ziff of the Express of the 6th stated the game was of such importance that “the football championship of the Pacific Coast Conference hangs in the balance” with the Aggies, should the team be victorious, expected to “defeat much easier opposition to come and walk off with the title.” He added that Jones did not scout Oregon State in 1927 and the result was a near-upset, so he was determined to be in much better preparation this time around.
In his column, “The Inside Track,” Ziff featured the Aggies coach stating that Schissler “is an exponent of the radical school of football” as “nothing is too extreme for [him] to attempt” and “he often succeeds with his daring moves.” An example was an on-side kick against the University of Oregon that was something of a trick play, while “at times [Oregon State] kicks the ball from the side lines instead of in midfield in order to break up a possible run-back.” While these were considered too risky to try against “The Thundering Herd,” Ziff cautioned that the visitors “will undoubtedly spring something unorthodox before the afternoon draws to a close.”
The game, however, proved to be no contest. In coverage in the edition of the 7th, the Times‘ Lowry wrote that,
[The] University of Southern California trampled all over Oregon State in winning the first Pacific Coast Conference struggle of the season before a big crowd of 51,000 persons at the Coliseum yesterday afternoon. The score—19 to 0—was as convincing as the play of the Trojans, who showed marked improvement over their performance against the Utah Aggies a week ago.
The Staters came south with the intention of taking the Trojans into camp and avenging their 13-to-12 defeat of last year, but they never had a ghost of a chance at any stage of the struggle.
He continued that, while the visitors “put up a bitter defense,” it could not stop Williams “and the U.S.C. power plays or combat the “aerial offense” of the home squad. The Men of Troy scored a touchdown in the opening period and followed with two more in the third quarter, but, more importantly, “the threat of the Oregon State offense never carried closed [closer] than the U.S.C. 30-yard line at any stage of the game,” despite eleven first-downs to the Trojans’ fourteen. Long passes were so telegraphed that “the Trojans simply camped under the ball and batted it down.”
There was only one instance of a possible loss of the shutout when Aggie QB Maple took a kickoff after the Trojans’ final score and blasted up the middle for 43 yards as a flying tackle from Lloyd Thomas preserved the blanking of the visiting team. It was during this drive that Oregon State got to the 30-yard line, but two of those long throws were slapped away, including one by Thomas “who played a whale of a game the whole day.”
Meanwhile, with Hibbs at right end, U.S.C. quickly exploited that advantage after recovering an Aggie fumble on the 36-yard line and with Williams carrying the ball four of five plays including a 16-yard run and then a 12-yard scamper for the first score of the contest. “Dynamic Don” was also feted for his excellent punting in place of Hibbs, who had a back injury but still played at end despite hurting his foot during the contest.
The Trojans second score came on the recovery of a blocked punt, though the extra point attempt failed. As the third quarter neared its end, the Men of Troy struck again after another punt was blocked and the team had only to march 32 yards, 23 of which was on a pass, before Williams bounded through the left guard spot to score, though his extra point kick was blocked by the Aggies. A 4th quarter pass looked to be another U.S.C. touchdown but it was called back because of a penalty.
In the last several minutes of the game, the Trojans brought in African-American fullback William “Bert” Ritchey (1908-1995), who came from San Diego, where he scored 20 touchdowns in 10 games, and was also a member of the U.S.C. track-and-field squad. He was declared ineligible for the season after showing great promise in spring practice, but three weeks before the Oregon State contest, he was allowed to join the team, though Jones told the athlete that “he had no use for negroes” and accepted him “because you can’t hurt us here” by being on another team.
As the Black-owned California Eagle noted in its edition of the 12th that Ritchie “has practically been unknown, until he got his big chance in the last ten minutes of the last quarter” and the paper added,
Now every Daily [newspaper] in the west had something to say about how the black successor to Brice Taylor [a Trojan player in 1924-1925 and an All-American that last season] was thrown into the game when a lot of the Trojans had been crippled and although far ahead still at the critical time when the staters fighting with backs to the wall were dangerous enough to turn victory to defeat.
The Eagle noted that Ritchie caught a 5-yard pass and ran three times for nine yards, leading Record sports editor Stub Nelson to declare that Ritchie “looked like a whale of a player,” while Lowry wrote “the colored flash, looked so good that it’s going to be hard to keep him off the team” and that he “looked like a whiz.”
The Times of the 9th added that Ritchie as “a potential star” was such a presence at the game that he “stuck out like the [recently completed] City Hall” as “his tackling was terrific and his ball-packing dynamic.” It concluded that it would be no surprise if a spot in the backfield was opened for him because “he looks too good to sit on the sidelines.” Ritchie played for the Trojans in 1929 and left USC to return to San Diego, where his father had been a prominent baseball player on an African-American team and his brother, John, played seven years in the Pacific Coast League in the 1940s and 1950s. Significantly, there would not be another Black player for the Trojans after Ritchie until 1952.
Ritchie, however, became a prominent professional in later life, working for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and as a social work before embarking on a nearly three decade career with the city police department. He used his U.S.C. experience as a chemistry student to establish a forensics laboratory, which was among his signal law enforcement achievements. Moreover, he studied law at night and, after retiring from the police department, went into practice.
The program has great Art Deco graphics, a feature by Taaffe on the Aggie squad, the Pacific Coast Conference, and a piece on the Men of Troy. As for the 2024 campaign, we’ll see how U.S.C. fares in the tough Big Ten, while Oregon State won a double-OT thriller yesterday against Colorado State and is 3-1 with its only loss to #3 Oregon.
Since the introduction of NIL rights in 2021, college football players have begun to catch up with professional athletes, openly earning substantial income through endorsements, sponsorships, and promotional deals tied to their personal brands. As the NFL and NCAA have entered their peak seasons after the summer, I now often reflect on issues of inequality. When I pass by sports bars and see crowds gathered around big screens, cheering for players whose earnings dwarf their own by more than 100 times, I can’t help but have mixed feelings.
I understand that athletes’ extraordinarily high incomes are an economic phenomenon, driven by market demand and indirectly by sports gambling. However, this always raises questions about fairness, particularly when comparing talents and contributions. The success of sports players largely stems from their natural-born physical advantages such as height, speed, and strength; and their contributions to society don’t necessarily surpass those of scientists, doctors, educators or writers. But the reality is, we’re talking about the entertainment industry, and most people in our society merely enjoy being entertained by relatively mindless pastimes. As long as players have audiences and followers, they have market value, and the market value dictates everything.
Still, I believe taxation could help address this inequality. Currently, most high-earning sports players face tax rates around 50%, including a federal rate of 37%, state taxes (up to 13.3% in California), and local taxes (such as 3.876% in New York City). To better balance this disparity, I personally believe these rates could be raised to 75% or higher.