Big Surge On The West Coast

The thunder coming out of the West these recent weeks is not the hoof beats of The Great Horse Silver, nor does it have any connection with The Great Coast Storm. Rather it is the sharp running of college football teams as they batter, block and tackle opponents from other parts of the country with vengeful fury. After some years of getting slapped about by intersectional rivals, most notably the Big Ten, the West Coast is fighting back. Its list of successes this young season is impressive. Stanford has a win over Michigan State. Washington has beaten Illinois and tied Purdue, a result the outplayed Boilermakers were eager to settle for. Southern California ( USC) whipped Duke and SMU, then shut out Iowa at Iowa, the first time that's been done since 1952. But the game that truly revealed the present stature of West Coast football was UCLA's stunning 9-7 upset over first-ranked Ohio State a fortnight ago. When the list of the nation's top teams appeared a few days later, three Coast teams—Washington, USC and UCLA—were included in the first eight. Never before had three West Coast teams been ranked so high.

Nor is the new power of the West Coast confined strictly to the ranked teams. Oregon, Oregon State and Washington State have admirable wins over Utah, Iowa State and Wyoming. Even in defeat Coast teams have looked impressive. California, the weakest link in the Coast chain, gave stiff fights to Missouri, Pitt and, this week, Duke before losing. Oregon, which had Texas shaking its head for three quarters before the Webfoots finally gave in 25-13, all but left Rice for dead Saturday night as a dozen fast backs tore off 345 yards on their way to a lopsided 31-12 win that was easier even than the score indicated.

Of the three top-ranked teams on the Coast, Washington would appear to be the strongest and have the best chance of going to the Rose Bowl. The Huskies are so quick and tough they demoralize the opposition. The line averages only 208 pounds, but it is led by 235-pound Ray Mansfield who fights like a wounded grizzly bear. There are half a dozen shifty backs on the team, the neatest of whom is Charlie Mitchell. But good as Washington is, it is hard to imagine the team finishing the season undefeated, for there are too many good teams on the Coast. Oregon State, for instance, with the remarkable Terry Baker at quarterback, almost upset Washington last week. A touchdown run by Mitchell with less than three minutes to play saved the game 14-13. Both USC and UCLA, with their stout defenses, will be hard to get past. USC appears to have the better offense, with two fine quarterbacks in Pete Beathard and Bill Nelson, but UCLA can counter with Kermit Alexander, the best all-round back in the West. Even Oregon, paced by the fast and rugged Mel Renfro, showed in its performances against Rice and Texas that it is capable of giving Washington a scare. There are, in fact, no soft touches on the West Coast.

The rise of the West Coast as a football power can be accounted for in a number of ways—none more important than the influence of Jim Owens, the 35-year-old coach of the Washington Huskies. It is Owens who shapes the football thinking on the West Coast. He favors rangy, fast linemen, and now there are rangy, fast linemen from Washington State to USC. He stresses conditioning, and the others have followed suit. UCLA had Ohio State's tongue hanging out in the fourth quarter, a rare trick.

"Everyone on the Coast looks up to Washington and Owens," says Marshall Shirk, a 1961 all-conference tackle at UCLA. "The other schools try to copy the things Washington does."

Owens is not particularly surprised by the West Coast successes this season, regarding them simply as the natural result of long hours and sweat.

"We're doing the same things at Washington we've done for years," he says. "We've usually had a good record here, but there have always been a couple of weak teams. Now all the teams are tough. I suppose it's conference pride more than anything else."

Owens came to Washington in 1957 at a time when there was no conference pride and, for that matter, practically no conference at all. The old PCC was disintegrating in an earthquake of bitterness, mistrust and vindictiveness involving undercover payments to athletes by groups such as the Young Men's Club of Westwood Village and the Greater Washington Advertising Fund. Washington, UCLA and USC had all been fined and banned, thus preventing them from winning conference championships for periods up to three years. The ban, of course, meant no Rose Bowl participation and that, in turn, made the recruiting of players by those schools next to impossible. It was during these dark hours that Jim Owens arrived.

Owens had played at Oklahoma under Bud Wilkinson and had coached at Kentucky and Texas A&M under Bear Bryant and so he brought with him a singular devotion to hard work, although his methods were hardly as severe as those of a more recent Bryant aide, Kentucky's Charlie Bradshaw (SI, Oct. 6). His players learned to run through their drills with full-speed vigor, often practicing harder and with less mercy than they showed in actual games. Washington, they say on the Coast, never hits as viciously as it does in practice, and that is true.

Owens' first two seasons at Washington were disappointing, but in 1959 the team won 10 and lost only one, capped by an eye-opening 44-8 victory over Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. The following year Washington was again 10-1 and again it whipped the Big Ten—Minnesota—in the Rose Bowl. Jim Owens had given the West Coast two straight victories over the Big Ten but, more important, he had restored its pride.