A Big Win For Big M

Not since the days of Bernie Bierman had Minneapolis cheered so lustily. Led by Fullback Roger Hagberg, here setting off on a 42-yard run for the game's decisive touchdown, Minnesota last Saturday took all the speed Iowa had to offer and simply crushed the Hawkeyes. The Gophers were again the nation's number one team, and the happiest man of all, after bitter years of waiting, was Coach Murray Warmath.

FEVER IN MINNEAPOLIS

Apparently there is such a disease as football fever. It may lie dormant for years, hidden away in yellowing scrapbooks or deep inside the victim's chest. Unlike most epidemics, it does not feed upon the downtrodden It waits, instead, until everything is coming up roses and then it strikes. Last week it hit the state of Minnesota, incapacitating Minneapolis and leaving even St. Paul on the verge of a terrific sneeze.

The Twin Cities on the banks of the Mississippi will have a new big league baseball team next year, and they'll have a team in the National Football League, too. Minneapolis and St. Paul are very enthusiastic about this because they love baseball and they love pro football, but last weekend the transplanted Senators and the football Vikings could have raced down Nicollet Avenue astride giraffes, with Nixon and Kennedy waiting at the finish line to kiss the winner, and no one in Minneapolis would have bothered to look around. The University of Minnesota was playing the University of Iowa. Nothing was ever so important as this.

It was more than a football game, more even than a contest for the Big Ten lead. Iowa was undefeated in six games; so was Minnesota. Iowa was ranked first in the nation in both wire-service polls; Minnesota was ranked second in one, third in the other. Forest Evashevski, the moody magician of Iowa football, was preparing to retire from coaching and he wanted to walk out a winner; Murray Warmath, who had suffered through some of the most miserable seasons in Minnesota history, had been hounded and harried by old Gophers long enough, and he was determined to keep his job. Iowa was fast and deceptive and brilliant; Minnesota was strong and steady and sure.

The 63,255 seats at Memorial Stadium had been sold out for weeks, enabling industrious individuals with little moral character but maximum foresight to collect $100 for a pair of tickets within the 20-yard lines. Eventually the attendance reached 65,610, a stadium record. Not a hotel or motel room was available within 20 miles. More than 30 radio stations in Minnesota, the Dakotas and Iowa were poised to broadcast the game to those who couldn't get in, and an educational outlet in the Twin Cities was commandeered to produce the classic on TV. "We don't give a damn for the whole State of Iowa" rolled inharmoniously out of every bar. And coeds, who had not spoken to football players for years, now kissed them openly, and wept.

There are places where it is possible to win six football games in a row without the populace going berserk, but Minneapolis on Saturday was not one of them. In the '30s the Golden Gophers of Bernie Bierman were the scourge of the Big Ten and the nation. They won six conference championships in the years 1934-1941 and four times were named the best college football team in all the land. But with the beginning of World War II the fortunes of Minnesota faded, and after seven years Murray Warmath has just begun to restore some of the glory. "It takes a long time," he says, "to get a sick horse up."

Warmath, a big man with a tough, homely face and a deep growl for a voice, played football under General Bob Neyland at Tennessee; later he coached at Tennessee under Neyland and at Army under Red Blaik, and he is not accustomed to losing. But he has had to get used to it at Minnesota. He has had good seasons there as well as bad, but the good ones were never quite good enough and the bad ones had a way of turning into nightmares. The 1956 team was knocked out of the Rose Bowl, by Iowa, 7-0. The 1957 team, a preseason Big Ten favorite, was a tragic disappointment. The 1958 team won only one game. And the 1959 team, with superb but inexperienced young players, lost five Big Ten games by a total of 32 points, then lost to Iowa 33-0, and fell into the conference cellar. The team over which Warmath most frequently woke up screaming was Iowa. Warmath beat Evashevski in 1954, then lost to him five straight times.

Yet Minnesota holds a wide edge in the series with 34 victories, 18 losses and one tie. There was a time—after the famed Minnesota fullback, Sheldon Beise, tackled the famed Iowa halfback, Ozzie Simmons, with injurious results in 1934—when every Iowan was convinced that the only purpose of the game, as far as Minnesota was concerned, was to see how many Iowans could be maimed. It became unsafe, therefore, to appear in Iowa City or Cedar Rapids with Minnesota license plates on your car. But then the governors of the two states bet a prize Hampshire hog on the outcome of the 1935 game, and apparently there was just enough of the absurd about playing for a pig to cool everyone off. Today Floyd of Rosedale, a bronze replica of that original old boar, is the annual trophy that goes to the winner, and although Minnesota and Iowa sometimes continue to play rough in attempting to claim him, at least the contest is recognizable as football.

Warmath would rather beat Iowa and Evashevski than anyone else, and he particularly needed to beat them on Saturday. Naturally, as a coach, he has suffered by comparison with the man who brought Iowa from the ranks of the have-nots to the peak of football success with his brilliant tactics, unpredictable strategy and remarkable recruiting ability. Warmath does not consider Evashevski one of his closest friends and he only mutters something about "genius" when the name comes up. But aside from a deep personal desire to triumph over the Iowa man, Warmath needed to win to insure his job.