Oregon’s First Natty: Don’t Sweat 2010 – Oregon Already Won The Natty. In 1917.

Oregon’s First Natty: Don’t Sweat 2010 – Oregon Already Won The Natty. In 1917.

Originally posted on CampusAttic.com on October 16th, 2013

“Win a Rose Bowl this century then pop off!”

That was the standard I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I response from jealous that they’re not Ducks Pac-12 fans, which has now changed to “Win a National Championship then pop off!” after, ya know, Oregon won a Rose Bowl. Only one severely flawed aspect of that childish retort…the University of Oregon arguably already won a national championship–in the 1916-17 football season.

This argument certainly comes with a huge asterisk (but so too do the championships claimed by UCLA and Washington in later years), but there’s valid reasons to consider Oregon’s victory over Penn in the 1917 East-West Tournament Game (later known as the Rose Bowl) as the national championship.

The 1916-17 Oregon Webfoots. ©University of Oregon Libraries – Special Collections and University Archives

The first is obvious, at the time the East-West Tournament game–then in only its third such contest–it was the first and only postseason game in college football. It was first played in 1902, then wasn’t renewed until 1916. In 1921 the Rose Bowl was built several miles away, moving the annual game from Tournament Park in Pasadena (now on the Cal Tech campus) to the new stadium. This is why the Rose Bowl is often referred to as “the Grandaddy of Them All”, it’s the founding game, the first bowl.

The overall point of the game, organized as the highlight of the annual Rose Tournament by a Pasadena land owner, was to get the best college football team from the west and the best team from the east to face off in Pasadena to determine which team was truly the top in the country…like, say, what would be considered a national championship? (let’s just disregard for a moment that the real reason for the game’s inception and its accompanying Tournament of Roses parade was to convince east coast wealthy families to purchase land in Pasadena)

Oregon’s Shy Huntington makes a tackle in the 1917 East-West Tournament game. ©University of Oregon Libraries – Special Collections and University Archives

The January 1st, 1917 game between Oregon and Penn, the third East-West Tournament game, was thought to be no contest. So boastful was Penn’s coach that he invited Oregon’s coach Hugo Bezdek to come watch practice, even showing the Oregon coaches a special trick play Penn had been working on. But the underdog Oregon team dominated, winning 14-0, including a touchdown scored using the special trick play Penn’s coach had shown to Bezdek.

As the only postseason game of its era, doesn’t that then justify claiming it as a national championship game? If the game was billed as the best of the west and east, and the west won, does it not determine the winner as being the best in the country–deserving of national title consideration?

Well, polls may say otherwise, after all the whole point of the BCS system implemented in 1998 was to create a true national championship game, something sorely lacking prior to it, leading to split national championships based on differing polls. Even though bowl games have existed since 1902 (the first year of the East-West Tournament Game), declaring an official #1 had exclusively been the result of final polls, not necessarily bowl game results. Creating the BCS was supposed to end the arguments of who was the real #1 when some team got screwed out of the championship due to politics, name recognition, or the dreaded “East Coast Bias.”

Oregon coach Mike Bellotti lifts the 2002 Fiesta Bowl trophy, but should it have been the national championship trophy instead? (Kval.com)

As we all know, the BCS failed miserably in this regard. Repeatedly. Almost every year there was a third team left out, the argument of who should have won vs. who actually did. Teams got into the title based on reputation over teams with better records, old guard teams with name cache getting a boost in the polls over better overall teams simply because of past accomplishments, the SEC by far benefiting the most from this unsavory trend.

Oregon fans and beyond alike can point to 2001 as a prime example of this, when the Pac-10 champion Ducks were prevented in the BCS formulas from playing in the national championship in favor of a Nebraska team that finished in third place in its own conference. As it was proven on the field, Oregon was the superior team over a two-loss Colorado team, and Nebraska barely put up a fight against Miami. Fans never got to see the game they deserved to determine the true #1, Oregon vs. Miami.

It wouldn’t be the only time a team finishing third in their own conference got a shot at the title, such as the LSU-Alabama “rematch” title game in the 2011-2012 season. After the 2001 debacle the rules were supposed to be fixed to prevent a team that couldn’t even win their own conference from then playing for the national title, but the human polls and bias inevitably still reared its ugly head throughout the BCS era.

The BCS formula has been tweaked and trashed, and is now being scrapped for a playoff system (starting in the 2014-15 season), which may or may not be better…time will tell. Before all the BCS and playoff talk though, it was purely polls (though bowl results play a big part in the final polls), the opinions of sports writers and coaches with their own agendas voting on who they thought should be #1. This led to many injustices, split titles, and a lifetime of hypothetical arguments. The 1978 national championship should be split between Alabama and USC…even though USC decidedly beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL that season? Ok, if you say so, pollsters.

Looking back specifically on the 1916 season, there were multiple contenders that could make claim of the proper #1 ranking, however at the time no AP poll existed. The NCAA did release a records book though, giving a split national championship to Pittsburgh and Army in the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book. Even though it’s in the record books as a split title, only Pitt claims 1916 as a national title. Maybe Army recognizes that they didn’t earn it on the field, therefore don’t deserve the title. Esprit De Corps!

The 1916 Pittsburgh team-picked as co-national champions by the NCAA. (tiptop25.com)

So on paper Army and Pitt are it, when it comes to 1916. But did they earn it on the field? Technically, no. Did they play in the only postseason game (and therefore logic would dictate the true national championship game) of the year? No. So then shouldn’t Oregon make at least some small claim to being, as the common phrase goes, “The People’s Champ?” Perhaps, though it could also be argued that neither Penn nor Oregon were the best teams from their respective regions…again, hypothetical arguments abound.

Oregon team captain and 3rd team All-American selection John Beckett. ©University of Oregon Libraries – Special Collections and University Archives

In 1916 the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was in its first year of existence, with only four official charter members–Washington, Oregon, Oregon State, and California. In the 1916 season Oregon finished 7-0-1 overall, Washington 6-0-1, the tie for both teams coming against each other. Washington had not lost a single game since 1907, so to tie the Huskies (played November 4th, 1916 at Kincaid Field on the Oregon campus) seemed a victory in itself.

Yet despite Oregon having one more victory on the season, in-conference Washington was 3-0-1, Oregon only 2-0-1…Washington had “earned” the conference title by beating Cal twice, a team that finished 0-3 in the conference. Though to remove the green-colored glasses for a moment, Oregon had also used at least one ineligible player during the season, resulting in Washington being given the conference title, so perhaps a little tit-for-tat leaves that argument void.

But wait, if Washington won the PCC, why did Oregon play in the East-West Tournament game and not the Huskies? Well, in 2001 it was Nebraska ahead of Oregon in the national championship because of human polls, i.e. sportswriter bias and coaches polls based on Nebraska’s reputation. In 1916, it was a matter of…logistics.

Traveling for teams was an expensive and difficult process for universities in an era before commercial air travel. While Washington had won the PCC on a technicality, Oregon was geographically closer to Pasadena than Washington. A shorter train trip meant Oregon was selected to go to the East-West Tournament Game over Washington. Here’s where we’re supposed to feel bad for Washington for being left out…well don’t, they got their revenge on Oregon through political maneuvering in later years (Google “1948 PCC voting” to really get the blood boiling).

Even though it was a shorter train trip for Oregon than Washington, it still came with its own financial hardships. The UO student body actually had to sell the student co-op (bookstore) in order to pay for the team’s trip south to Pasadena, the university wouldn’t cover the full expenses. While the team fought in sunny Pasadena, updates were relayed back to Eugene to eager fans by way of telegraph to Hellig Theater, the first radio broadcast of a football game still being years away.

If basing teams head-to-head in a strictly hypothetical matchup, the best comparison (like all polls), there are several teams deserving consideration.

Pittsburgh claims nine national championships, including 1916.

TEAM                 W    L   T
Army                  9      0     0
Tulsa                10      0      0
Washington       6      0      1 (tied Oregon)
Oregon               7     0      1 (tied Washington)
Colgate               8     1      0 (defeated Brown)
Brown                 8     1      0 (lost to Colgate)
Pittsburgh          8     0      0 (defeated Penn)
Penn                   7      3      1 (lost to Oregon)
Ohio State          7     0      0

Keep in mind, this was an era where east coast bias was at ridiculous proportions. Think it’s bad how much love the SEC gets today? CBS broadcasters and SEC media honks today gushing about Johnny Football this or that would have been considered west coast homers back in this era for even acknowledging west coast football teams even existed. It was thought to be impossible for any west coast team, especially one from Oregon, could even begin to compete with a team from the east. Any team.

Yet the on-field results speak for themselves. As Mike Bellotti famously stated when asked if he was disappointed his Oregon team wasn’t selected to play in the 2001 championship, “to win it, ya gotta be in it.” For as much as Pittsburgh deserves the title, they weren’t in it, if considering the East-West Tournament Game as the postseason national title game.

If comparing common opponents, Pittsburgh and Penn did play during the season, Pittsburgh coming out on top 20-0. 

Their victory over Penn is larger than Oregon’s 14-0 win over the common opponent, but it’s also comparing regular season and postseason games. Consider once again the previously mentioned LSU-Alabama series in 2011-12 and their regular season matchup, a snoozefest hyped as “the game of the century” resulting in a 9-6 victory for LSU, but the national championship rematch was a blowout 21-0 Alabama victory. The postseason game is the one that counts to determine the title, not the regular season contest.

If a proper national championship game had existed in the era, Oregon likely would not have been in it, instead facing off Pittsburgh and Army or Pittsburgh and Colgate. Penn wasn’t the best team on the east coast, and Oregon may not have been the best in the west, but those were the teams selected to play in the big game, and at the end Oregon were crowned champions.

This isn’t meant to take anything away from Pittsburgh’s remarkable 1916 season, one in which they outscored their opponents 255-25. Tulsa ran away with the scoring title that season, amassing an astounding 566 points through 10 games, but doing so against hardly equivalent competition. Give Pittsburgh their due, they were undefeated, beat four quality teams in 1916, and were led by multiple All-Americans. But so was Oregon, tying a Washington team that hadn’t lost a game in nearly a decade (perhaps solely resulting in a 0-0 tie thanks to Kincaid Field being reduced to a massive mud bog by fall rains), and possessing their own All-American candidate in John Beckett.

When it came time for the only postseason game in the country to pick its best teams from the east and the west, perhaps they got it wrong. Penn wasn’t the best team from the east, that was either Pitt or Army or Colgate, but it was Penn that made the trip. Same for Oregon, maybe Washington was better despite the 0-0 tie, but Oregon made the trip. It wouldn’t be the first time that geographic location benefited one team over the other–looking at you, two-loss 2007 LSU team, winning the national championship at the Sugar Bowl.

To win it ya gotta be in it, so if that saying holds true then Pittsburgh may have their name in the record books, but perhaps Oregon too could be considered as owning a share of that #1. However this is of course all hypothetical and contradictory to the NCAA’s official decision, and splitting a championship three ways is starting to get a little ridiculous…but so too has every single national championship awarded since the creation of college football until the BCS’ implementation, and now the pending playoff structure, though that will probably get muddied somehow too.

Oregon proved it on the field, so to the 1916-17 Oregon Webfoots I say congratulations on your national championship.

Is that fair? No, probably not.
But then again, neither was 2001.

Sign at the 2002 Fiesta Bowl – Oregon vs. Colorado. Oregon won 38-16.