Courtesy: Duke Photography

Blue Devils Lost The Game But Won In Every Other Way

By Jim Sumner, Blue Devil Weekly

DURHAM, N.C. - Duke has hosted more than its share of big-time athletic events.  ESPN practically lives in Durham during the basketball season and has helped turn Duke-Carolina hoops into the college equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys. Wade Stadium was the site of some huge international track meets in the 1970s and NCAA championships have been held at Duke in several sports.

But all of these events pale compared to January 1, 1942, when the granddaddy of them all came to Duke. The Rose Bowl.

It took events of cataclysmic significance to bring the Rose Bowl to Duke. Oregon State and Duke had already agreed to meet in Pasadena when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into World War II. Eventually the country would reach a consensus on the role sports would play during the war, but it took awhile. 

The Rose Bowl was first held on New Year’s Day, 1902, almost two years before the Wright brothers made their first flight. After a hiatus, the game returned for good in 1916 and quickly became the highlight of the football season, the measuring stick between eastern and western football. Wallace Wade’s Alabama team went to Pasadena in 1925 and beat Washington, an upset that proved that southern football had come of age. Wade took his famous Iron Duke team to the 1939 Rose Bowl, where Duke suffered an agonizing last-second loss to Southern Cal. Wade was anxious to go back and avenge that loss.

Would he have the chance? Both Duke and Oregon State continued to practice in the days following Pearl Harbor. But there were questions from the beginning. From the comfortable perspective of the 21st century, the idea of the Japanese attacking the Rose Bowl seems preposterous. But that wasn’t the case in December 1941. The stunning effectiveness of the December 7 assault sent the United States into something approaching hysteria.

On December 8 President Franklin Roosevelt warned Americans that the attack “can be repeated at any one of many points in both oceans and along both our coastlines and against all the rest of the hemisphere.” This was pretty sobering stuff for the hundreds of thousands of folks who were planning on congregating at Pasadena for the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl game.

There were other concerns. The New Year’s festivities would use resources that many felt could be put to better use. Besides, maybe it was a frivolous waste of time for the country to be concerned with such things during a period of national emergency.

On December 13, Lieutenant General John DeWitt made the decision. DeWitt was commander of the United States Fourth Army, the man in charge of the military for the West Coast. He ordered the parade and game cancelled. The reasons given were national defense and civilian protection. DeWitt consulted with California Governor Culbert Olson. The governor elaborated on the cancellation. “The congestion of the state highways over a large area, incident to this tournament and football game and its serious obstruction to their use in defense work, the concentration there of a large police force, now needed for defense services, the unusually large gathering of people known to the enemy, exposing them to the dangers now threatening, requires that plans for the holding of this tournament and football game be abandoned.”

Oregon State wasn’t so sure. The school had never played in the Rose Bowl and desperately wanted to play in this one. School athletic spokesman Bud Forrester blasted DeWitt’s decision. “I wonder if General Dewitt intends to lock up all the department stores where people might gather, or restaurants, churches and all the public meetings.” Oregon State athletic director Percy Locey drove to San Francisco to meet with DeWitt but the general told him that if necessary he would “call out the troops to stop it.”       

There were numerous offers to move the game. The Chicago Tribune offered to host the game in Soldier Field, but the realities of a Midwestern winter made this a non-starter. Washington, Memphis and other cities suggested hosting the game, usually in conjunction with fund-raising for the American Legion or some other part of the war effort.

But Duke was working behind the scenes to bring the game to Durham. Wade and the university got their ducks in a row. North Carolina Governor J. Melville Broughton agreed that the game would not hamper the state’s military preparedness and promised to help the effort. Duke contacted Oregon State on December 14 and formally offered to host the game. Oregon State quickly agreed. The Rose Bowl Committee and the United States Army signed on.  .

Duke had barely more than two weeks to pull off a logistical task that would ordinarily take months. The first step was to increase the stadium’s seating capacity of 35,000. Duke went to UNC, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest to borrow bleachers for temporary seating. The open end of the horseshoe was to be closed in and bleachers were placed around the top of the stadium. Eventually seats would be found for 56,000 people. North Carolina offered the Carolina Inn to the Oregon State team. New grass was planted.

Students changed their holiday plans. Facilities had to be established for droves of national media. NBC would broadcast the game on its national radio network, led by play-by-play announcer Bill Stern.  Five newsreel companies filmed the game for commercial distribution.

Tickets were a concern. They had to be printed, sold and distributed.  Tickets went on sale December 16 for $4.40, the same as Pasadena.  Working through box office, mail and telegraphic money order, the entire run was sold out within two days. By game time scalpers were getting $25 for seats between the 40-yard-lines. Durham’s hotels and roads were full for days.

There was controversy. Duke generally made some segregated seating for games available for African Americans but did not do so for the Rose Bowl. Claiming that a Duke official had said that Duke would sell tickets to the Japanese before selling them to blacks, the Carolina Times, Durham’s black newspaper, headlined DUKE ATHLETIC OFFICIALS BAR NEGROES FROM BOWL GAME BUT WILL ADMIT JAPS.  Red-faced, Duke found an extra 140 tickets for Durham’s African American community, even though the game had been announced as a sellout. 

Oregon State left Corvallis by train on December 19 and arrived in North Carolina on Christmas Eve. The guests were inundated with so much Southern hospitality — parties, receptions, tours and introductions to southern barbecue — that coach Lon Stiner joked that it was conspiracy to weaken his team. 

The weather was mild and agreeable for most of the run-up. Governor Broughton bragged on North Carolina’s climate, promising good weather for the game and turning over his roofed seat to the working press.

So, of course the game-day weather was miserable. Temperatures hovered in the 40s, a chilling rain alternating with fog. One writer filed his report from Duck, North Carolina. At least one fire was started in the stands. Thousands of North Carolinians showed up in their Sunday best, only to find out the hard way that the weather wasn’t impressed.

Oregon State came into the game with a 7-2 record. Both losses — to Southern California and Washington State- — were early in the season. Oregon State had earned its way into the Rose Bowl with a 10-0 upset over powerful Stanford and a season-ending 12-7 win over arch-rival Oregon. 

But Duke was undefeated and playing at home. The Blue Devils were the nation’s second highest scoring team, with 311 points in nine games. Their closest games were a pair of 13-point wins. Center Bob Barnett, tackle Mike Karmazin and back Steve Lach were All-Americas. Lach and Tom Davis each rushed for over 500 yards. Ironically, Duke’s starting quarterback, Tommy Prothro would later serve as head coach at Oregon State from 1955 through 1964, with great success.

Duke was ranked second in the AP poll, behind Minnesota, which didn’t play in a bowl game that year. Oregon State was No. 12. Most observers made Duke around a two-touchdown favorite. Stiner warned anyone who would listen that his team was being underrated.

Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the distractions of hosting the nation’s most prestigious college athletic event, maybe it was Oregon State. But Duke was sloppy. The Devils fumbled away the opening kickoff, the first of their seven turnovers — three fumbles and four interceptions. Oregon State couldn’t capitalize on that first fumble but they did draw first blood.

Late in the first period, the Beavers took a 7-0 lead on a 15-yard run by star halfback Don Durdan and the subsequent extra point. Lach got the equalizer in the second period on a short run.  Duke almost went ahead before intermission but a dropped pass kept the score at 7-7.

Oregon State regained the lead in the third quarter when Bob Dethman hit George Zellick with a 32-yard touchdown pass. The extra point made the score 14-7. Again Duke fought back, mainly on the back of Lach and his 39-yard run on a reverse. Fullback Winston Siegfried scored from a yard out and it was 14-14.

Then came the backbreaker. Late in the third period Dethman hit Gene Gray with a 68-yard bomb. Gray caught the pass around the Duke 30, slipped a tackle and outran the Duke secondary. It was the longest pass in Rose Bowl history. The extra point was missed, leaving the score 20-14. 

Desperate for the go-ahead score, Duke dominated the final period. Three times the Devils drove deep into Oregon State territory, and three times they came up empty. Duke tacked on a late safety when Durdan was tackled in the end zone, but it was too little, too late. The game ended when Oregon State intercepted a Duke pass, for a 20-16 final.

This was the most points given up by Duke since Tennessee beat the Devils 25-2 in 1931, Wade’s first season in Durham. Duke outgained Oregon State 310 yards to 302 and picked up one more first down, illustrating how closely matched the two teams were. Lach ended his Duke career with 124 yards rushing on 12 carries. 

Wade wasted little time in visiting the Oregon State locker room and congratulating the victors. Wade and Stiner said nice things about each other’s team, Duke hosted a final reception for the visitors, and it was over. Later Stiner stated his belief that Duke would have won the game had it been held in Pasadena, while Wade lamented that the time he spent on administrative details hurt his ability to get his team ready.

Wade enlisted in the United States Army shortly after the conclusion of the season and served in the European Theater as an artillery officer. He came back to Duke after the war but never regained his pre-war success. Duke got its first bowl victory under Eddie Cameron, who took over the program in Wade’s absence. Duke defeated Alabama 29-26 in the 1945 Sugar Bowl. Wade never did win a bowl game at Duke.

The Rose Bowl was back in Pasadena for good in 1943. By then the Japanese were on the defensive and nobody thought that a football game was a waste of precious resources. The 1942 Rose Bowl game in Durham remains a singular event, a reminder of a grim period in American history when football was a brief diversion from the life-and-death reality of total war.