“BOOLAH BOOLAH” and “TEOFILO SAYS 'SE ACABO'”
#908/#907
908. YALE BULLDOGS VS NOTRE DAME FIGHTING IRISH
OCTOBER 17, 1914
YALE FIELD
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.48
DRAMA—7.13
STAR POWER—8.10
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.73
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.88
LOCAL IMPACT—6.35
TOTAL: 42.67
“BOOLAH BOOLAH”
Once upon a time Notre Dame was considered the cream of “western football.” This of course was in the days of Ivy League dominance of pigskin (culturally and historically if not necessarily on the field), when the sport was still moving past its deadly era of ultraviolence (when football was nearly banned after collegians kept dying on the field).
The Irish had not lost a game since 1910, including the famous 35-13 win over Army that put Western football on the map, and were unbeaten under new coach Jesse Harper. They brought a 25-game unbeaten streak (22-0-3 in that span) into the 1914 season, and weren’t challenged in their first two games, one a 56-0 whitewash of Alma College, the other an incredible 103-0 beatdown of something called Rose Polytechnic. So yes, they had not lost for 27 games in a row, but the 1914 version of the Irish was totally untested when they came to New Haven on Saturday, October 17, 1914 to play Yale for the very first time.
Yale was coached by a new man on the sideline, Frank Hinkey, among the greatest players in Eli history, having been a four-time All-American. The Skull and Bonesman wasn’t especially secretive when it came to his football tactics. He believed in tough play and running the ball with his consensus All-American fullback, the strong and quick Harry LeGore, usually behind star tackle Bud Talbot. Famed sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote that he wouldn’t have traded Harry LeGore for Red Grange. “Harry never had a poor game in his life,” said Rice. Yale was 3-0 on the young season when the Irish took the overnight train east, having creamed Maine, Virginia and Lehigh, giving up just three points total in the games.
Yale played its games at Yale Field, but just across Derby Avenue a colossal new home was under construction. The Yale Bowl would be a great leap forward in the combination of sport and spectacle, and soon 70,000 fans would fill the place to capacity—just not that afternoon. Despite the best efforts of every carpenter within miles with a toolbelt and a dream, the new stadium wasn’t quite ready in time for Notre Dame’s visit. So the Irish and Bulldogs tangled in front of roughly 12,000 fans at Yale Field instead. A bitter chill hit the campus overnight, and hay was spread on the field to keep it from freezing.
“Silent Frank” Hinkey may have believed in running the ball first and foremost, but he also knew the vaunted Notre Dame defense would be stacked against LeGore, who played without a helmet, leaving his curly hair flowing in the breeze (in the era some players wore leather helmets, some wore just the insert, so it looked like a white bandanna, and many went au natural). So Hinkey broke out a new offense for the game, one that featured “a wide variety of passes,” according to the Hartford Courant, “forward, lateral and backward, hidden and open, long and short.” It was a bow to the highly successful Notre Dame style, one pioneered by their brainy assistant coach, Knute Rockne. The Irish were “famed for deceptive open play and forward passes, which has them feared by every big eleven in the West,” noted the Times. The paper also pointed out that “a lot of money, bet by enthusiastic Westerners, went down with Notre Dame.”
Score one for the Eastern sharps. Yale embarrassed the rubes from Indiana. After a scoreless first quarter, LeGore scored the contest’s first touchdown on a play that mystified the Irish, a reverse that saw him “quick as a flash snatch the ball from his [teammate’s] hands and sweep over the line.” Notre Dame passed its way down inside Yale’s ten-yard line, but were stopped just on the stroke of halftime.
Yale then dominated the third quarter. Carroll Knowles ripped off a brilliant 33-yard touchdown run to make it 14-0 (LeGore, who did all the placekicking and punting, kicked the extra point). LeGore then totally discombobulated the Irish when he threw a long touchdown pass to put the game out of reach, and the Bulldogs kicked sand in the face of the Westerners with a late score to make the final 28-0, Yale.
Notre Dame’s streak was over. “I sat on the sideline at New Haven that Saturday and saw a good Yale team captained by Bud Talbott with a crack fullback named Harry LeGore leading the attack,” wrote Rockne in his memoir. “They made Notre Dame look like a high school squad.”
AFTERMATH
The emotionally spent Yale team should have taken the following Saturday off, but alas, a game with Washington & Jefferson was scheduled, one Yale lost in a stunner, 13-7. They won the rest of their games until their arch-rival eleven from Harvard came to New Haven for the delayed grand opening of the Yale Bowl, and ruined the afternoon for the Elis, blowing out Yale in a shocker 36-0.
Notre Dame went 6-2, losing as well to its arch-rival, Army, 20-7. Harper coached until 1917, when he stepped down to return to his native Kansas and become a rancher. Rockne took over, and turned Notre Dame football from Western power to national icons. Ironically, the plane crash that killed Rockne in 1931 happened in Bazaar, Kansas, close to Harper’s ranch.
WHAT THEY SAID
“It was the most valuable lesson Notre Dame ever had in football.”
—Knute Rockne
FURTHER READING:
Notre Dame’s Team Surprised By Yale (Unbylined), The New York Times
907. CUBA VS USA
NATIONAL TEAM BOXING DUAL MEET
OCTOBER 12, 1978
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.48
DRAMA—8.31
STAR POWER—8.84
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—6.65
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.35
LOCAL IMPACT—5.05
TOTAL: 42.68
“TEOFILO SAYS ‘SE ACABO’”
One of the greatest heavyweights of all time was hardly ever seen by western fight fans. Cuban great Teofilo Stevenson won three gold medals, but due to the communista system he fought under Stevenson was never permitted to show his skills in the commercial ring. He fought strictly as an “amateur” over his 20-year, 332-fight career—Teofilo made plenty of money over that stretch, but the bulk of it went to the Cuban state.
Stevenson was 6’5” with fearsome power, but slicker than the standard giant of the era, such as George Foreman. Fight fans clamored constantly for the opportunity for the likes of Foreman or Joe Frazier or (especially) Mohammad Ali to take on Stevenson, but the Castro regime consistently dangled the idea without ever truly wanting to follow through. They preferred the Aura of Teofilo remain intact.
Said aura was bolstered by dominant outings en route to the 1972 and 1976 Olympic gold medals, the latter being a lone buffer against what was a superb American boxing team led by Sugar Ray Leonard. Stevenson was a national hero in Cuba, probably the greatest athlete ever to spring from that island of excellent sportsmen and women. In the aftermath of the ’76 gold, efforts to match him with Ali intensified. Promoter Bob Arum offered $5 million to Cuba for a series of fights pitting Ali and Stevenson across the globe, with $1 million going to Teo.
“What is a million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?” Stevenson responded. Nevertheless, interest in the potential superfight continued to be strong.
It was in this context that Teofilo led the Cuban team to a dual meet against the USA boxing team, one held at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, October 12, 1978. The American squad was a far cry from the one that had taken the Montreal Games by storm. The Cuban squad crushed them, 8-3 in the meet. It was so one-sided that even the usual jingoistic judging from ringside couldn’t affect the obvious superiority of the Cuban fighters.
Stevenson was the main draw, and he was besieged as he walked the City streets before his fight. One young fan asked him in a squeaky voice, “Do you think you can beat Ali?”
“I’ll try,” Stevenson responded. “Do you think I can beat him?”
“No,” said the honest youth.
All he had to do on that night at MSG was defeat American heavyweight Jimmy Clark, a pre-law student at West Chester State College in Pennsylvania, but that proved surprisingly difficult. While Teo, just 26 years old, was seemingly in his prime, especially when contrasted with late-era Ali, there were whispers in Cuban fight circles that Stevenson was past it. “There is a fear in Cuba that Stevenson has lost something,” an insider told Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated. “This was not the first fight lately he has not looked like himself.” The two heavyweights had fought in Havana six months earlier, and Clark nearly won that fight, though the Cuban judges had Stevenson’s back. In the MSG rematch Clark crowded the ponderous Teo, jabbing relentlessly, not giving the gold medallist any room to unwind his feared overhand right.
“He jabs too much,” Stevenson complained. “It’s an honor to box him,” was Clark’s take.
After two rounds, any honest onlooker had Clark well ahead, although this fight too had a pair of Cubano judges who wouldn’t rule against Teo in exchange for their gross weight in fine local cigars or any other bribe. Nevertheless, Stevenson summoned his greatness late in the fight (amateur matches are only three rounds). Clark knew he was well ahead, and only a big right hand could stop him. So he focused in on the starboard side.
Which was when Teo caught him with a left hook that Clark never saw, and dropped him to the seat of his pants. Clark wasn’t hurt, and popped back up, but blood was in the water, and the predator shook off his lethargy. Stevenson rushed in and caught the slowed American with a classic monster right to the point of the chin, and the life drained from Clark’s eyes.
“I looked at him and all I saw was emptiness,” said one of the Cuban judges. “I said ‘se acabo—it’s over.’”
Referee Bob Surkein stepped in and called the fight. “When that horrible right landed,” Surkein said, “Clark's eyes turned into his head. I'd never seen that happen before. I grabbed him and helped him over to his corner. He didn't even know I had stopped the fight.”
Stevenson had won again, by knockout.
AFTERMATH
Stevenson never did fight Ali, alas, thanks to various factors, most of them political. The younger Cuban’s power and age would surely have provided an aging Ali issues had they fought in the late-70s, but in their respective primes one would have to favor the incredible speed and movement of the Louisville Lip. Teofilo consoled himself by winning his third gold medal in the Moscow Games of 1980. He was one of the few athletes who doubtless would have captured the title had the boycotting nations competed, though perhaps Clark would have found the third time charming.
In 1984 Cuba reciprocated in boycotting the LA Games, but Stevenson had demolished Tyrell Biggs, the ’84 gold medallist, earlier in the year, breaking three of Biggs’ ribs in the process. Cuba also sat out the 1988 Games in Seoul, and Stevenson would have been favored to win his final competition, even at the age of 36. That he only won three Olympic golds instead of five hardly takes away from Teofilo’s greatness—he is considered the greatest amateur fighter in boxing history.
Stevenson died in 2012 at the far too young age of 60.
WHAT THEY SAID
“I’ve had six, seven, maybe eight offers to box Ali. People ask me about the money…I tell them: I practice sports because I like it…In the United States, there are some boxers who, because of economic necessity, have to use boxing as their means of livelihood. In your system, that’s not wrong.”
—Teofilo Stevenson, to the Cox News Service in 1978
FURTHER READING:
“But Cuba, Si U.S., No” by Pat Putnam, Sports Illustrated
VIDEO: