Montlake Memories: The 1950s
Husky Stadium Centennial Celebration
Jeff Bechthold
10/26/2020
With 2020 marking the 100th anniversary of the first football game at what is now called Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium, GoHuskies.com is marking the milestone with a decade-by-decade look back at some of the big events that have taken place –football games and otherwise – at the Greatest Setting in College Football.
September 23, 1950 – Washington 33, Kansas State 7
While there have been numerous upgrades, additions, changes and renovations – large and small – to Husky Stadium over the years, there have been three major projects that brought sweeping changes to the venerable venue since its 1920 opening: the addition of the upper decks in 1950 and 1987, and the large-scale renovation that took place from 2011 to 2013.
The first of those, the completion of the south upper deck, made its public debut on the first day of the 1950 season, when the Huskies, under coach Howard Odell, played host to Kansas State, winning 33-7. That game also featured the first-ever UW Band Day, a tradition that extends to the current era.
Another feature of that particular game was the announcement of an all-time Husky team, presented at halftime. Many of the honored stars were on-hand for the ceremony, including such UW grid legends as Paul Schwegler, Vic Markov, Dave Nesbit, Wee Coyle, Elmer Tesreau, Chuck Carroll and George Wilson.
Quarterback Don Heinrich and fullback Hugh McElhenny, the biggest UW football stars in more than a decade, ruled the day on the field. McElhenny, who would finish the season with a new conference-record 1,107 rushing yards, ran for 177 yards (including a 91-yard touchdown, a new school record) vs. K State.
Heinrich, who finished the 1950 campaign with an NCAA record for completion percentage (60.7) and conference records for pass attempts (221), touchdown passes (14), passing yards (1,846) and total offense (1,807) tossed a school-record four TDs that day vs. the Wildcats. As a team, UW gained 595 yards of total offense – 221 on the ground and 374 through the air, a huge total for that era.
The attendance for the opener (officially 30,245) was surprisingly low, given that the new addition provided at least as much curiosity as a football team that was expected to be very good that season, given the established star power provided by Heinrich and McElhenny. Legend holds that many fans were frightened to sit in the massive new, cantilevered deck, but in truth it was the upper stands that were full, while there were plenty of empty seats in the old, lower horseshoe. Bad weather forecasts and the fact that school was not yet in session probably played the largest role in the low attendance total.
In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the day after, under the headline "New Stadium Swallows Crowd And Steals Show," sportswriter Fergus Hoffman wrote:
"Washington's new corkscrew stadium stole the show Saturday as the Odell Corporation beat Kansas State in the gridiron opener of the Husky season. It was a plain good show from the outside looking in as 30,000 spectators were swallowed up by the tunnels and then spewed into the twin spiral ramps rising to the second level of the new stands. After the game, the thousands of human heads twining their way down the concrete pillars, grinding down the three spirals to the ground, gave an illusionary rotary motion to the scene. Like giant augers boring into the earth, the winding ramps carried their human freight back to the everyday world."
Just one week later, Washington turned in an even more impressive victory, beating powerful Minnesota, 28-13, in front of a new Stadium-record crowd of 49,704. It was the UW's first-ever win over the Golden Gophers, as the Huskies had lost the previous seven meetings against a program that dominated the 1930s.
Later in the 1950 season, the Homecoming game crowd in a 14-7 Husky loss to California set a new attendance record: 55,245. That mark lasted until the 1959 Apple Cup.
October 7, 1950 – Washington 21, UCLA 20
After opening the season with impressive back-to-back victories over the Wildcats and Golden Gophers, Washington, ranked No. 10 by the Associated Press, played its third Saturday in a row at the newly enlarged stadium. In their Pacific Coast Conference opener, the Huskies played host to 13th-ranked UCLA, coached by Red Sanders, in his second season in Westwood.
The game was an evenly-matched, back-and-forth affair throughout. The Bruins scored in the first quarter and the Huskies, on a one-yard run from Heinrich, tied it in the second. In the third quarter, Heinrich threw a 50-yard TD pass to Fritz Apking, but the Bruins answered with a score of their own – but missed the extra-point.
Early in the fourth quarter, UCLA's John Florence scored on a two-yard run to put the Bruins on top, 20-14. After an exchange of punts, Washington got the ball back on its won 15-yard line and proceeded to march down the field. Their methodical drive, which lasted 16 plays, the last of which was a one-yard touchdown run from McElhenny, to knot the score at 20-20. Jim Rosenzweig then booted the conversion through the goalpost, giving the Huskies the lead with just 1:09 remaining.
UCLA notched three first downs on the its ensuing drive, but ended up failing on 4th-and-24 to give the ball back to the UW. Heinrich carried it once to run out the clock and the Huskies were 3-0.
The game had been hard-fought enough that bad blood spilled out after the final whistle. In the following day's Seattle Times, George M. Varnell had this description:
"The University of Washington football team came gallantly from behind to defeat the University of California at Los Angeles here yesterday, 21-20. So tense was the conflict that fists began to fly among the players after the game ended. Players swarmed out from both benches to join the small riot. Coached and police broke it up, but not before a few blows had landed."
It was one of Washington's biggest and most thrilling wins under Howard Odell, the UW head coach who had come to Seattle after a successful six-year run as head coach at Yale (35-15-2). He never achieved similar success at the UW, posting just two winning seasons in five on Montlake. Fired by athletic director Harvey Cassill after the 1952 season, Odell never coached again, opening on a used car lot, doing some TV work and running for both the Seattle City Council (he didn't win a seat) and King County Council (he served from 1957 to 1962).
Odell, who was born in Iowa in 1910 and played football at the University of Pittsburgh, died in Portland, Ore., in 2000, at the age of 90.
August 20, 1955 – New York Giants 27, San Francisco 49ers 17
In the decade and a half between 1955 and 1970, Husky Stadium played host to a total of 12 NFL preseason games. Of course, the Pacific Northwest didn't have professional football until the Seahawks made their debut in 1976, so while preseason games aren't always the most highly anticipated sporting events in cities where pro sports are prevalent, Seattle was a place hungry for as much top-level football as it could get.
The first such game came in August of 1955, and not only did it provide the Northwest's first in-person glimpse of the NFL, it brought home two of the top stars in Husky football history – Don Heinrich and Hugh McElhenny, who just a few years earlier had earned their fame on Montlake.
That Saturday morning, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Mike Donohoe previewed the game:
"Football's glamor guys, the play-for-pay pros, stage a one-day stand in the University of Washington Stadium Saturday afternoon. The San Francisco 49ers meet the New York Giants in a pre-season struggle which is expected to attract as many as 50,000 football filberts to the first professional attraction ever presented in the U.W. sports plant. The head knocking will start at 2 o'clock."
Unfortunately, McElhenny was unable to properly celebrate the homecoming, as he sat out injured for his San Francisco 49ers vs. Heinrich and the New York Giants that afternoon. Heinrich led his team to a 28-17 victory while "The King" watched from the sidelines, in street clothes.
As NFL fans have come to learn, preseason football wasn't the most thrilling version of the game, but fans appreciated the show all the same. Legendary Post-Intelligencer writer Emmett Watson described it like this:
"Professional football turned out to be a fair bargain for 49,000 polite, non-partisan and sun-bathed fans. The first half was worth at least $3.00 and the second half was worth about 75 cents. This proves that Greater Seattle, Inc., which scaled the top price at $3.75, has a neat eye for figures. The game also proved the UW's green sod does not turn brown after a professional trods on it.
"The home-town boy-returns routine was overplayed to the point of embarrassment," Watson continued, "but Don Heinrich bore up nobly. The baby-faced kid threw 12 passes in 25 attempts for 178 yards — a good day in any man's league and Heinrich's best with the Giants."
Along with McElhenny, that Niners squad featured four other future Pro Football Hall of Famers: Y.A. Tittle, Leo Nomellini, John Henry Johnson and Joe "The Jet" Perry. The Giants roster was stacked as well, including stars like Roosevelt "Rosey" Brown, Frank Gifford, Kyle Rote, Charlie Conerly, and a young Tom Landry, who would end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame thanks to his 29-year run as the Dallas Cowboys' head coach.
Heinrich, Chicago-born and Bremerton-raised, returned to the Northwest after his eight-year NFL career, and was a longtime color analyst for television and radio (including for both UW and Seahawks broadcasts) who also published a yearly college football preview magazine. He was inducted into numerous Halls of Fame (including College Football's) and was selected as the starting QB on the all-time UW team that was named in 1990. Heinrich passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1992, just 61 years old.
McElhenny, who went on to earn a spot in both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, among others, played 13 seasons in the NFL. His uniform number 39 is retired by the 49ers. He currently resides in the Las Vegas area and will turn 92 this New Year's Eve.
November 19, 1955 – Washington 27, Washington State 7
John Cherberg's tenure in charge of the Washington football program didn't last very long – just three seasons (1953-55). Born in Florida and raised in Seattle, where he graduated from Queen Anne High School, Cherberg played football at the UW in the early 1930s and eventually joined the coaching staff as an assistant in 1946 under Ralph "Pest" Welch.
Following the '52 season, Cherberg was named to replace Howard Odell. The Huskies finished 3-6-1 in 1953, and 2-8-0 a year later, their only conference victories those two seasons coming against Oregon and Oregon State (twice).
In 1955, Cherberg's Huskies opened the season 4-0, and moved up to No. 12 in the Associated Press poll after a 7-0 win over No. 10 USC, the 300th win in UW football history. But a loss to Baylor the following week, followed by a tie to Stanford, started the downfall, as the Huskies entered their final game of the season, vs. Washington State, with a 4-4-1 record – four losses and one tie had followed those initial four wins. The losses had all been relatively close. In fact, one week before the Governor's Trophy match-up vs. the Cougars, the Huskies had lost at No. 4 UCLA by just two points, 19-17.
The WSC game ("College" was changed to "University" on Sept. 1, 1959) would the last game for Cherberg, but he went out on a high note as the Huskies, behind Credell Green, a halfback from Richmond, Calif., won, 27-7.
Green rushed for 258 yards on 27 carries that cold, muddy Saturday afternoon, setting a Husky Stadium record that would last for more than 50 years (UCLA's Maurice Jones-Drew broke it in 2008). Green's day was the most prolific by any major college back that season, and his 258 rushing yards accounted for all but 84 of Washington's team total offense vs. the Cougars. He scored two of the UW's four touchdowns, both in the third quarter, on runs of 18 and 50 yards.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham wrote of Green:
"Purple and gold were the Husky colors, pink were the coed cheeks, black were the Cougar hopes and Green was the standout star. Neither mud nor wind nor Cougar defense could hog-tie Incredible Green."
"Credell Green's big day made you forget the blocks of the blockers, the linemen who opened the holes, the faking of the quarterback and the other backs who helped spring the ball-packer loose. These all figured," Brougham wrote a few paragraphs later. "But Incredible sent 'em home buzzing like no Washington back has done since Hugh McElhenny."
The game was the last for Cherberg, who would be replaced by College Football Hall of Famer Darrell Royal before the 1956 season. Royal spend just the one year at the UW before moving on to Texas, where he spent 20 seasons, winning 11 conference and three national titles.
Cherberg hung up the whistle and moved into politics. In June of 1956, he announced his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor of Washington, and he won. He then spent 32 straight years in that office, serving under multiple governors from both parties. After opting not to run for another term in 1988, he retired, having served as Lieutenant Governor for more than one-third of the history of the Evergreen State, and longer than any one had ever held that position in any state, as of the time of his death in 1992, at the age of 81. He is buried in Calvary Cemetary, just north of the UW campus, east of University Village.
Green, who was born in Oklahoma and raised in the Bay Area, had two brothers who also made a name for themselves in sports. The eldest, Elijah "Pumpsie" Green, became the first Black player for the Boston Red Sox, the last big-league team to integrate, in 1959. Credell's younger brother, Cornell Green, played basketball (but not football) at Utah State, where he was All-America, and remarkably went on to play 13 seasons in the NFL as a cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys, earning five Pro Bowl selections and a Super Bowl ring.
Credell was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, but didn't play in the NFL. He earned his business degree from the UW and went to work as an accountant for Boeing before starting a construction company. He and his wife, Dorothy, had three children, including Terry, who played football at Idaho under then-head coach Keith Gilbertson. Credell Green passed away earlier this past summer, in Seattle, at the age of 85.
November 21, 1959 – Washington 20, Washington State 0
The final football game played at Husky Stadium in the 1950s was a significant one: a 20-0 win over Washington State to complete a 9-1 regular season and secure a berth in the Rose Bowl, all in front of the largest crowd in Stadium history, officially 55,782.
The expectations for the game were high, given that Washington was playing its best football in years. Washington State also had a good team in '59, and entered the game with a 6-3 overall record, vs. the UW's 8-1.
In the Saturday morning edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, writer Mike Donohue previewed the game:
"Washington's Huskies meet the Cougars of Washington State at UW Stadium this afternoon in the 52d renewal of a gridiron rivalry unmatched for bitterness. This is D-Day for both teams.
"Anything that has happened in the previous nine weeks of the campaign goes by the boards," Donohoe continued. "Everything goes when the whistle blows. Game time is 1:30 p.m. and, regardless of the weather, the greatest crowd ever to see the Huskies and Cougars collide will be sitting in the Stadium. The ticket people expect 52,500."
On the same sport page, columnist Royal Brougham noted: "They'll have to lengthen the bench to accommodate all the Washington coaches today – this is the only game of the year all the brains will be present, with no scouting assignments taking them out of town." Thanks to film exchange (now all online), in-person scouting has long since gone away.
The very same page of the P-I also carried a brief item noting that the Governor, Albert Rosellini, was not taking sides, and would sit between the two University Presidents. The story included the fact that Rosellini had a son at WSU and a daughter at UW.
Star quarterback Bob Schloredt led the way for the Huskies, rushing for 111 yards on 21 carries, while passing for 72 more. Ray Jackson added 74 more yards on the ground and Schloredt, Don McKeta and Joe Jones each scored rushing touchdowns.
The Sunday Seattle Times front page included the top-of-the-page banner headline: "Huskies Win! Cinch Rose Bowl Bid!" above a photo of a jubilant Schloredt, holding a bouquet of roses in the locker room, alongside McKeta.
The story that followed, from sports editor Georg N. Meyers, included some interesting notes and colorful detail:
"It is the first time that a Washington team has won nine games in a season since 1927, the year of birth of Jim Owens, Husky coach." Owens had taken over for the departed Darrell Royal, in 1957 at the age of just 29 years old.
Meyers continued: "The score was a pale reflection of the punishment the Huskies inflicted on their traditional rivals. Under the tepid November sun, Washington's bristling line sealed off Coach Jim Sutherland's menacing running attack to 132 yards and restricted Keith Lincoln, the Palouse Moose, to 47."
On the Times' sports page, another Meyers column included this scenery: "As though reluctant to depart a place of unmatchable satisfaction, most of the 56,000 fans remained in the stadium for nearly ten minutes after the game, cheering Jim Owens and the team hoisting them high in glory ... No Husky ever got a greater ovation – nor deserved it more – than Bob Schloredt."
Washington went on to earn its first Rose Bowl win, routing Wisconsin on New Year's Day in Pasadena, 44-8, in front of more than 100,000 fans. The Huskies would return to the Granddaddy of Them All the following year too, beating No. 1 Minnesota, 17-7
Schloredt, who famously had lost sight in his left eye in a childhood fireworks accident, finished that season as an AP first-team All-America selection and was named the West Coast Player of the Year by UPI. The two-time MVP of the Rose Bowl (in the 1960 and 1961 games; in 1960, he and George Fleming were named co-MVP), Schloredt went on to play in the Canadian Football League. He eventually spent 11 seasons as an assistant football coach for the UW and, in his later years, coached youth softball. A member of the College Football and Husky Halls of Fame, Bob Schloredt passed away in May, 2019.
Owens coached the Huskies to three Rose Bowls, including wins in '60 and '61, along with a loss to Dick Butkus' Illinois squad in the '64 game. He spent most of the decade of the 1960s as the UW athletic director, along with his coaching duties, but eventually gave up the AD job in 1969. Owens, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame as a player, resigned as head coach in 1974, and Don James was hired to replace him. Owens lived until the age of 82, passing away in his longtime home of Bigfork, Mont., in 2009.