1954 College Football National Championship

Ohio State 1954

Hayes was a "colorful" coach with a severe anger management problem that periodically led to suspensions and/or fines, culminating in the 1978 Gator Bowl, where he punched a Clemson player in the face for the "crime" of intercepting a pass that sealed a loss for OSU. Hayes was fired, and that punch is still what he is best remembered for. But sportsmanship was never his bag: In a 50-14 win over rival Michigan in 1968, Hayes directed his team to go for 2 in the closing minutes.

And punching players was always his bag: he punched and slapped his own players rather frequently. Glen Mason, who played and coached for Hayes, once said, "I think if you spent four years at Ohio State and Woody didn't hit you, you felt cheated." But the important thing, as far as OSU fans are concerned, is that Hayes won a whole lot of football games.



Ohio State's 10-0 campaign in 1954 was led by Hall of Fame halfback Howard "Hopalong" Cassady (pictured above at left), a consensus All American who finished 3rd in the Heisman vote. The next season, he would repeat as a consensus AA and win the Heisman. He set a number of school career records, including rushing yards (2466), all-purpose yards (4403), and points (222). The school claims that as a defensive back, he never had a pass completed against him in four years. He went on to a 9-year pro career.

Guard Jim Parker (pictured above at right) also ended up in the Hall of Fame, or should I say "Halls": as in college and pro. He would be a nonconsensus AA in 1955, and a unanimous AA in 1956 and Outland Trophy winner. He went on to an 11 year career with the Baltimore Colts, winning 2 NFL titles and being named All-Pro ten times.

End Jack Dugger was a nonconsensus AA this season.

Ohio State's Season

Ohio State opened with a 28-0 romp over Indiana (3-6), but they struggled quite a bit more to get by California (5-5) at home the next week. The game started well enough, with Cal fumbling away the ball on the 3rd play of the game, and Hopalong Cassady swooping in for a 26 yard touchdown run soon thereafter. Another fumble set up another Buckeye touchdown in the 2nd quarter, and it was 14-0. Cal quarterback Paul Larson sparked their comeback, first setting up a touchdown with a 68 yard kickoff return to close the gap to 14-7 at the half, then hitting 3 straight passes to set up another touchdown in the 3rd quarter. Larson was also the goat, though, as he missed the second extra point try, leaving Cal down 14-13, and then he tossed an interception that Cassady returned 29 yards for a touchdown to make the final score 21-13. Cassady finished the game with 109 yards rushing, 50 receiving, and 2 touchdowns.

Ohio State won another romp 40-7 at Illinois (1-8), then survived a tremendous effort from Iowa (5-4, #14) at home the next week. Iowa struck first in this one, halfback Earl Smith returning an interception 67 yards for a touchdown and a 7-0 opening quarter lead. Ohio State answered with touchdown drives of 61 and 72 yards to lead 14-7 at the half. Earl Smith struck again for Iowa, returning a punt 75 yards for a tying touchdown. Ohio State answered again, driving 64 yards for a touchdown and a 20-14 lead. Iowa completely dominated the 4th quarter, but they couldn't score. They drove 76 yards, but missed on a pass to a wide-open receiver in the end zone, then drove to the OSU 5, where they were stopped inches short on 4th down.

That brought Ohio State to their biggest game of the year, their homecoming game against 4-0 Wisconsin. OSU came into this game ranked #4, Wisconsin #2. Wisconsin hit a 34 yard touchdown pass to lead 7-3 at the half, and they were driving for more late in the 3rd quarter when the game turned on an 88 yard Hopalong Cassady interception return for a touchdown. Wisconsin fell apart after that, fumbling twice and failing badly on a fake punt to set up 3 more touchdowns for OSU in the final quarter. Wisconsin then scored against the reserves to make the final score 31-14. The Badgers finished the season 7-2, and I have them ranked #7 for the season. The Buckeyes moved past UCLA and Oklahoma to #1 in the next AP poll.

As happens so often, Ohio State followed their best performance of the season with their worst, sleepwalking to a 14-7 win at Northwestern (2-7). UCLA passed them back up in the following AP poll. OSU bounced back with a 26-0 home win over Pittsburgh (4-5) and a 28-6 win at Purdue (5-3-1, #15), after which they edged past UCLA to regain the top spot of the AP poll, where they would remain to the end. The Buckeyes totaled 407 yards rushing against Purdue, led by Hopalong Cassady's 165.

Next up for Ohio State was their regular season finale hosting archrival Michigan (6-3, #12). Michigan marched 68 yards to a touchdown after the opening kickoff to take an early lead. The Buckeyes lost their top scorer, halfback Bob Watkins, early in the game, and struggled to move the ball after that, but a long interception return set up a touchdown pass that knotted the game up 7-7 at half, despite Michigan's 198-42 advantage in yards gained from scrimmage.



In the 4th quarter, OSU stopped Michigan inches short of their goal line (Michigan partisans griped for years afterward that the last plunge was actually a touchdown, and that they got "homered"), then proceeded to drive 99 1/2 yards for a 14-7 lead, Hopalong Cassady supplying 52 of the 99 1/2 on one run. Cassady intercepted a pass to launch a 61 yard clinching drive, scoring the touchdown in the final minute of play (as shown in the painting at the top of the article) to make the final score 21-7. Michigan's yardage advantage was whittled down to a closer 303-254 by the end. Woody Hayes was carried off the field by his team, the fans descended and tore down the goalposts (as pictured above), and the Buckeyes would have a nice rest before their next game in the Rose Bowl.

The Rose Bowl

Unfortunately, because of the well-intentioned but ultimately idiotic "no repeat" rule most conferences had in place for bowl games in the 1950s, Ohio State would not be facing #2 UCLA in the Rose Bowl, but mediocre Southern Cal instead (8-4, #25), a terrible and completely useless matchup for a #1 team, especially since UCLA had already capped their season by destroying the Trojans 34-0. UCLA had played in the Rose the year before, and would appear there again following the 1955 season. The "no repeat" rule had 10-0 Oklahoma sitting at home as well, since they had played in the Orange Bowl the previous season.



The game was played in a heavy rainstorm and deep mud, but OSU slogged their way to a 20-7 win, outgaining USC 360 yards to 206. Southern Cal's one touchdown came on an 86 yard punt return. Never the diplomat, Woody Hayes spent his post-game time with the press grousing about the bands marching on the muddy field at halftime and musing that half a dozen Big Ten teams would have beaten the Trojans. He was right about that.

UCLA 1954

UCLA owns the most NCAA national championships of any university in the country, but 1954 is UCLA's one and only mythical national championship in football. The head coach was Hall of Famer Henry "Red" Sanders (pictured), a Vanderbilt graduate who had coached there 1940-1942 and 1946-1948, going 36-22-2. He then went 69-19-1 at UCLA 1949-1957 and won 3 straight PCC titles 1953-1955. Just before the 1958 season, he died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hotel room with a prostitute.

Overall, Red Sanders was 102-41-3. He, not Vince Lombardi, coined the phrase "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." By this point in time, most of the nation had moved to the T-formation, but Sanders was a holdout, still running the old-fashioned single wing at UCLA.

UCLA fielded six players who would make a first-team All American list during their careers, twice as many as Ohio State fielded. However, unlike OSU, UCLA has put none of them in the Hall of Fame

UCLA's Season

UCLA opened with a pair of cupcakes, routing San Diego Navy 69-0 and Kansas (0-10) 32-7 on the road. Next up was their biggest game of the year, hosting Maryland (7-2-1, #10) on a Friday night. Maryland was the defending AP poll "champion," though they had then lost the Orange Bowl to Oklahoma, and coming into this game they were ranked #6, UCLA #4. UCLA converted a Maryland fumble into a touchdown dive by fullback Bob Davenport to open the scoring at 6-0, and they stopped Maryland at their 2 yard line late in the first half to preserve that lead into halftime.

Maryland finally drove 63 yards for a touchdown early in the final quarter to take a 7-6 lead. Later, they punted out of their end zone to just their 15 yard line, and UCLA drove from there for another Bob Davenport touchdown and a 12-7 lead that would hold up as the final score, though UCLA would first have to halt a Maryland drive inches short of a first down at the UCLA 19 yard line.

Like Ohio State, UCLA followed up their biggest win of the year with their worst performance of the year, and like Ohio State, it was a road trip to a team that won just 2 games in 1954. UCLA got off to a great start at Washington (2-8), and despite seeing drives end at the UW 10, 4, and 1 yard lines, the Bruins forged a seemingly safe 21-0 lead, including 2 more touchdowns from Bob Davenport. Washington quarterback Bobby Cox led a furious rally against UCLA's substitutes, tossing 3 touchdown passes over the final 20 minutes, but UW missed one of their extra points to just fall short, 21-20. Washington coach John Cherberg and Red Sanders are pictured below shaking hands after the game (Sanders on the right).



UCLA was never threatened again, winning their next 5 games by an average score of 47-1. The only notable opponent in that stretch was archrival Southern Cal (8-4, #25), whom they plastered 34-0 at home in their finale. UCLA returned 5 interceptions for 167 yards in that game, and scored 27 points in the 4th quarter.

Oklahoma 1954

Oklahoma had gone 11-0 in 1949, and I consider them to be an MNC for that season, and they finished #1 in the AP poll in 1950, but then lost in the Sugar Bowl

Oklahoma's Season

But it turns out that that is not quite how it actually went down. Here's a nice article on this story by Berry Tramel, published at NewsOK.com in 2012. Tramel found out what really happened from Crouch's teammates, and the gist of it is as follows. On the play, the field judge signaled touchdown, but the linesman signaled incomplete. As they discussed it, Crouch was actually arguing that he caught it cleanly. Several TCU players had seen the ball bounce before it got to him, and one of them, tackle Ray Hill, walked up to Crouch as he was arguing, punched him, and said that he didn't catch it. Crouch then admitted that yes, he hadn't cleanly caught the ball. So yes, he admitted it, but not of his own accord.

After an off week, Oklahoma struggled to win again, this time against archrival Texas (4-5-1, #23). Oklahoma fumbled the ball away 5 times again, and one of those, on the opening kickoff, set up a short touchdown drive for Texas and a 7-0 lead. Oklahoma answered with 2 touchdown drives to wrest away the lead 14-7 early in the 2nd quarter. That held up as the final score, though Texas drove to the Oklahoma 10 yard line late in the game.



That sent Oklahoma into conference play, and their conference was incredibly weak in the 1950s, about the power level of today's Sun Belt aside from the Sooners. Still, Oklahoma had even more trouble at 7-2-1 Colorado (unrated) than they'd had against Texas. Colorado took a 6-0 lead that held up until the 4th quarter. They halted one Sooner drive at their 1 yard line, but Oklahoma later drove 88 yards to a touchdown to take the lead 7-6. Halfback Tommy McDonald threw a 39 yard pass that set up an insurance touchdown that made the final score 13-6.

Ohio State vs. UCLA vs. Oklahoma

• Ohio State beat #25 Southern Cal 20-7 in the Rose Bowl, and UCLA beat them 34-0 at home, but it must be noted that the Rose Bowl was played in heavy rain and mud.
• UCLA beat 0-10 Kansas 32-7, and Oklahoma beat them 65-0, both on the road.

Awards Ceremony

Grading the Selectors