 As we now have the Los Angeles Rams moving on to campus, it is reminiscent of how Cal Lutheran has had two football tales to talk about from the beginning. The first one is about our visitors. The second is about the home team.
In the very beginning, the visitors were the world champion Dallas Cowboys! How they came to Cal Lu and then stayed for a quarter century is a story in itself!
It began with a visit from Glenn Davis, “Mr. Outside.” In the late 1940's the nation's most powerful collegiate football team was Army. They had two All-American ball carriers. Doc Blanchard, a bull of a man, was “Mr. Inside.” He could run through a brick wall. Glenn Davis was “Mr. Outside.” He didn't run over anybody. He ran around everybody.
In 1961, when his playing days were over, Davis was working for the Los Angeles Times. The Times was going to sponsor the next season's exhibition opener, the Rams and the Dallas Cowboys. Davis' job was to locate a place where the Cowboys could train for the game. And so he brought head coach Tom Landry and Tex Schramm, the managing director of the Cowboys, to T.O. to see if Cal Lu would be suitable. Shortly after my collegiate playing years I once "had a cup of coffee with the Chicago Bears" , so Orville Dahl, C.L.C.'s first President asked me to sit in on the discussions.
When Landry and Schramm arrived, every sentence was an embarrassment! One of the best professional football teams in the country looking for training facilities and Glenn Davis had brought them to a brand new little school that didn't even have a practice field, much less a football field! No gym! No showers. No locker room. Nothing! Not a single blade of green grass!
Glenn Davis apologized., He hadn't done his homework. Tex Schramm apologized to Dr. Dahl for taking up his time. Landry was silent. Through it all, Dr. Dahl was his attractive best. He had both coffee and cold drinks waiting. He listened to their apologies. And when the ruffles settled down he asked, “Just what do you need, Tom,? Tex?”
Startled that he even asked the question, given the lack of everything, Coach Landry began: “Well, of course we need an actual football field, striped and sodden, goal posts at both ends, proper width, you know. And some kind of a gym with dressing rooms, showers, a place to change. That's just a start.”
Dr. Dahl pulled out a plat map and pointed to the unused section of land along Campus Drive, just west of Mountclef Inn, a building being constructed as a future men's dormitory. With a ruler and a to-scale index Orv pointed out that a football field could easily fit into a third of that area. “We have graders to sew seed and plenty of water, and we have almost a year before you'd be needing it. We can put a good field in right here, with wooden bleachers on both sides if you want to have spectators.”
He went on; “What kind of a gym do you need? Can it be a Butler building? Butler buildings can go up and be functional in less than six months. There is room for one here on the eastern end of that open area. You could have it by next summer when the school is on vacation, and when you leave we'll have a basketball court and gymnasium for our students”.
“Besides” he went on, “just east of where the Butler building would go, we're building a dormitory right now, Mountclef Inn. That will be ready in less than three months. Your team would not only have sleeping quarters. The lobby you can use for team meetings.”
You could see the changing emotions on their faces. At first, embarrassment. Then astonishment that Dr. Dahl was even suggesting such a transforming miracle. By the end of the afternoon, enthusiasm! They agreed on a deal. No written contract. Schramm and Orv simply shook hands.
Dallas would look nowhere else. Cal Lutheran would be the place! Despite the fact that at that moment not one single necessary feature was in place, this was where the Dallas Cowboys would call home! It made not only the local news. It went national as well!
What made it all possible was the believability of Dr. Dahl. What emerged was the awareness that he was trustworthy. They could see that if he said it could be done, it would be done.
The Cowboys stayed for twenty-five years. Their presence enabled the struggling young college to survive. For the first decade, finances were a threat. No endowment, unknown to the major philanthropic foundations, suddenly Cal Lu would have summer income! Income on facilities not yet in existence!
And more. Having one of the finest football teams in the nation on the campus would draw both spectators and publicity, strengthen the young school. Fathers would bring their sons to see the pros, the sons would later enroll!
Hundreds of young men came to watch world champions perform. They were able to shake hands with Landry or Don Meredith, or later Roger Staubach. The presence of the Cowboys was a beacon and a magnet. It illuminated a vibrant young institution, and it attracted supporters and students.
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Just as the national championships of the Cowboys brought éclat, luster, and success to the Cal Lu campus, so also the progress of the home team, the emergence of the Kingsmen, a team which also came to national prominence, in a parallel with equal impact. In less than a decade after its founding, that little school which began with only 180 students, none of which were beyond sophomore rank, was a national champion!
It all began in an unusual way. Maynard Midthun was pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Torrance. I knew Maynard from our days at St. Olaf. He was older than me. Had been with Patton's army during the Battle of the Bulge, was later a prisoner of war, and spent the rest of the war in a German prisoner of war camp. Instead of hostility crystallizing, Maynard came to appreciate German military music, and played it often in his church office after he was ordained.
In November of Cal Lutheran's first year, Maynard invited me to come to Torrance and speak to his young peoples' group. I was accepting every invitation which came – thought it was my obligation, since I was the entire Religion Department, to stay in lively contact with our supporting parishes. Along with the members of the Luther League came their sponsoring adults, a young couple, Bob and Helen Shoup.
We talked about Jesus and football. I found out that Shoup, in his first teaching post, had performed a miracle. North high hadn't won more than two or three games, total, in the preceding years before Bob came. His first year there they were league champions.
The next morning I was in Orv's office telling him about Bob. This was a Monday.
Tuesday Orv invited Shoup to come out and visit, and Wednesday we had a football coach! No football team, not yet a field, but a coach! He'd start in the fall of 1962. Start getting paid, that is! So for the rest of that school year, Bob stayed at North high in Torrance, won another championship, but went to work gratis for Cal Lu, setting up a football schedule for the fall of 1962.
Seven games. We won three of them but lost four. I can still remember our first win. We were playing Cal Tech in the Rose Bowl. We were down 7-0 at half time. On the way to the locker room Bob said “We've got them right where we want them! We'll tie it up in the third quarter and win it in the fourth!” Exactly what happened. When we scored and made it 7-6 the extra point loomed large. We all tried to encourage Georgie Engdahl before the kick. Told him, “George, if you miss it you're going straight to hell.” He made it. We won three games that first year. Lost four. It was Coach Shoup's only losing year.
The second year, eight games and we won four, broke even. The third year, nine games and we won five. After that it was uphill, onward and upward, every year.
It was during those years that the magical talisman, the ultimate in inspiration, appeared. The blue slippers. We played Colorado College, their field. I don't know how it came about or why it was seen as important, but it was during that road trip the kids found this pair of blue slippers. Everybody had to rub them. The team was thus transformed, became unbeatable, and the slippers enshrined. A footnote, my pastoral friend from way back in England, the Congregational minister whose wife carved the turkey, was Colorado College chaplain, and had me preach in their famed chapel. Magnificent building, it was a scaled-down model of an English cathedral. The impressive victory, the blue slippers, the majestic cathedral-type chapel and the fact that I preached in it, all these things combined into the conviction that I as well as the slippers were God-given, a source of inspiration, an assurance of triumph. From that time on, I was no longer backfield coach. I was called “The Prophet,” a title which lives on to this day.
The crest, the climax, of that incredible climb, came in 1971. The eight top-ranked teams in the nation were in the playoffs. Then four. Then down to two. Cal Lu and Westminster College in Pennsylvania. It was smash-mouth football the entire first half which ended a 7-7 tie. The beginning of the third quarter, Westminster made a mistake. They scored. We were down 14-7.
But not for long. On the very next kickoff, a skinny-legged kid called Galloway took it on the eight yard line. Forever after he has been known as “All The Way Galloway!” In the waning minutes, again a tie, 14-14, Cal Lu drove down to the Westminster twenty or so, and Mike Sheppard knelt down to hold the ball for a field goal attempt. Instead of a kick, Mike ran to his right, scored the winning touchdown, and the miraculous climb of the little school to national heights was accomplished.
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There can be no serious doubt that this intertwining drama of the two conquering football teams enabled the emerging school at first to survive and later to triumph.
The excitement generated by the Cowboys aroused all of southern California. And that its host campus, Cal Lu, would imitate them and themselves emerge as unbeatable was a fabled triumph which gave the young school not only notoriety but stability as well.
In an indirect but accurate way, it can be said that Bob Shoup's football feats saved Cal Lu. He had all the essential hallmarks of a superior coach. First of all, he was a teacher. Bobby Dillon, our first center, when he first tried out, didn't know how to put shoulder pads on. Two years later, he was all-conference. Bob's teaching method motivated. It lifted a kid to a higher level. The game would be tense, outcome on the line, and an untried kid, under fire, would wobble and make a costly mistake. Woody Hayes might have whacked him on the side of the head. Bobby Knight would throw a chair onto the field. Not Shoup. He'd pull the kid out, put his arm around his shoulder, walk a little way with him talking to him, making it clear that it would have been better if the boy had done this instead of that. Then he would pat him on the back of his helmet and send him back in, assuring him he'd never wobble again now that he knew what to do. No humiliation. No dramatics. Instead, a latent trust. “You can do it. Go back in there and win for us.” I was always amazed. It worked.
Bob could also motivate. Nobody ever did it more effectively. Half time, things not going well, he'd begin with the don'ts, the wrong which had been committed and were not to be repeated. Then on to the better way. With that mechanical procedure out of the way, a little pause, voice would soften, and the tempo would move from sentiment to crescendo. “I want to hear a little leather popping. I'd like to hear some leather popping, some hard hitting leather popping...” By the time Bob reached the third stanza they were steaming, ready to pop leather! We had a small but tall eight foot high fence between the locker room and the playing field when we still used the old field next to the Butler building. Hank Bauer led the team out of the locker room and they didn't run around that fence. They ran right through it. Ready to make leather start popping. After it happened that first time, it became a routine, run through the fence. But the first time we did it was Shoup motivation at white-hot heat.
And Bob was loyal. He loved Cal Lu. And the young men who played for him, infused with that same affection, always gave an extra measure of effort. We were not the only small Lutheran college to win a national championship. Texas Lutheran did it too, just about a year after we did. But there the parallel ends. For the Texas Lutheran coach, his win was a stepping stone. With a small school title in his pocket, he had a resume which won him a coaching position at a larger school, one rung up the ladder. He won there too, and it was deja vu. He used that win too to move into a higher bracket. Ended up coaching a Big Ten team.
Bob Shoup never did that. Cal Lu was never for him a stepping stone. It was a love affair, cemented into place by loyalty. When he won, year after year, other coaching offers poured in. From the pros too. Landry made it clear that if Bob ever wanted to try it in the big show, he, Landry, would make it work. In the ironies of life it was his loyalty which led to the end of his remarkable career. As he beat the schools of our size in our league, Whittier, Laverne, Harvey Mudd, they quit scheduling him. Who wanted to mate with the monster Kingsmen? And so Bob had to schedule the bigger schools, Cal State Fullerton, Riverside, Humboldt and Chico State. Early on, he could always beat them if he only had to play one or two of them a year. But when they were the only teams that would play him, the shine wore thin and Cal Lu replaced him. Only later did the loss, and the injustice, make itself felt. And so they built a statue of him. Put it by the new stadium. Far better, had they kept him on the field.
Those tentative years, when Raymond Olson brought us to the brink of bankruptcy, Bob's efforts also kept us from going down. But to be fair, Bob was not the only one acting as lifeguard, keeping us afloat. You can't mention Bob without speaking of Helen. She was more than a cheerleading wife. She was Bob's roots, his wings, a propeller urging him on and a rudder pointing the way. On Friday nights the entire team ate chili at her house. On Monday after the weekend victory there was no budget for uniform maintenance. Helen washed the jerseys and sewed up all the rips.
And along with Helen, there was Bob Zimmerman. His musical programs were so polished unto perfection that they aroused community support and attracted many young girls (and thus young men too!) to enroll. A quarter of a century after Dr. Zimmerman retired and returned to Oregon, his impressed and grateful students were still awed and applauded at the way he had brought a new dimension of aesthetic appreciation into their lives. They built a statue for Shoup. And named the music hall after Zimmerman. It was an unfortunate oversight that they never named a dorm after Orv. They could have called it “Dahl House.” He deserved it. It was Orville who hired them both.
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A footnote to all this from Don DeMars, the first Senior Class President of the First Graduating Class, that could not play football but certainly experienced the richness that Shoup and Zimmerman and Orville Dahl ...and Jim Kallas, with all of his "classroom brilliance", preaching every Sunday, lecturing at our congregational rallies, writing books which were read and praised across the nation, and backfield coaching with our teams... brought to the early Cal Lutheran phenomenon that assured the churches of the west coast that California Lutheran College was worthy of support.
And now as the Los Angeles Rams arrive to begin this football season,...the story continues.
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