Monday Night, March 6, 1967, AFH
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@approxinfinity No. They didn't actually take the buses to the drive-in. However, just the suggestion shows how different and basic college football was 60 years ago. It was truly an amateur sport. Remember, it had been only since 1952 that Kansas hired a high school coach to revise (unsuccessfully) its football program.
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Here's another adventure to remember. Please note how "times have changed" in so many ways.
The âFamousâ POPP Buttons
My mis-adventures as a Jayhawk student continued the following fall during football season, and it had to do with the Kansas State Wildcats. Vince Gibson had been hired as their coach the previous season (1967) following a 21-game losing streak. Boasting and bloviating, Vince Gibsonâs battle cry was Purple Pride and âWe gonna win.â He painted everything he could purple. It was annoying, to say the least.
Flashback: When I was a sophomore in high school, the week before the KU vs MU football game, my algebra teacher came to class wearing a yellow button with black letters that read AHAB. I innocently asked him what the button meant. Without a pause, he said simply âAll Hawks Are Bastards.â (Even at my age then, I was surprised that the school let him wear that button in class.)
I remembered that button when, in the fall of 1968, I created the POPP button. Red letters on blue, it stood for Piss On Purple Pride. Feeling my own Jayhawk pride, my interest in making some extra money, and my entrepreneurial spirit, I ordered 2,000 buttons. Having worked on the University Daily Kansan as a journalism student, it was easy for me to design and place advertisements in the UDK. I had posters made up and placed the buttons, on consignment, in every bar on campus. They were sold for $1 each, with the bar keeping 50% of the proceeds. Sales were apparently picking up as game day approached. On Thursday before the game, Chancellor Wescoe tracked me down and called me to his office in Strong Hall. He asked if I was selling these buttons (which, of course, he knew I was). Then he asked me what it meant. I said that it meant Pounce On Purple Pride. He said he didnât believe it. I stood by what I said it meant. (âThatâs my story and Iâm stickinâ to it.â) He disagreed and suggested that I needed to stop selling the buttons if I wanted to graduate. (Would / Could that happen today?) Accepting the threat, I did so. I had sold enough buttons that I just about broke even. Even so, imagine what a chancellor would do today. Nothing, for fear of being sued, I suppose. My how times do change! -
@JoJoAndMe It's surprising that the Chancellor would even occupy two brain cells on the topic of a button, let alone track down the student and have a 1 on 1 conversation. That's amazing.
Also love to hear from a fellow UDK alum! (I was there 86-88).
Did Willie work there way back in the day (I think his name was Bill Thomas?). He was an employee-- an older fellow who was very friendly to the students. He was a liaison with the KU printing services and set the ads on the old cold type system among other things. Not sure if that system was in use pre-70?
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@bskeet Don't recall a Willie. Sorry, but spent plenty of time in Flint Hall in the advertising sequence after I discovered I wasn't going to be an architect!
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Let's keep it goin'. Who remembers Nolan Cromwell?
The 1970s werenât a lot of fun for KU Football, but there was at least one highlight, in my opinion. That was the move of Nolan Cromwell from defensive back to quarterback, and it proved how important coaching still is.
Cromwell was an incredible athlete from tiny Ransom, Kansas. (pop. 260 at the 2020 census) Cromwell earned recognition as the Wichita Eagleâs Kansas Player of the decade for the 1970âs. Cromwell was all-state in football and basketball. In his freshman and sophomore years, he played free safety for Coach Don Fambrough. In 1974, the team finished 4-7, and Fambrough was fired . . . again! The next year, new Head Coach Bud Moore moved Cromwell to quarterback and ran the wishbone. KU beat Oklahoma 23-3 in Norman when the Sooners were ranked #1 in the AP poll. Cromwell rushed for a TD in that game. The Jayhawks finished 7-4 and then lost to Pitt in the Sun Bowl.
During the 1976 season, the Jayhawks were 5-1 and ranked #10 in the country when Cromwell suffered a season-ending knee injury. The âHawks finished 6-5. In spite of his shortened season, Cromwell earned Big 8 Conference Offensive Player of the Year honors.
Cromwell went on to play 11 years as a defensive back for the Los Angeles Rams, was a four-time Pro Bowler and a participant in Super Bowl XIV.By the way, do you know what a Sooner is? By definition the Sooners were the cheaters in the first Oklahoma Land Rush. Do you know what a Boomer is? They were the cheaters in the second Oklahoma Land Rush.
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@JoJoAndMe glad Cromwell didnt have to sacrifice his soul for 7 years of prosperity (like Oliver Cromwell)
Cool stories!
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Coach Don Fambrough is a University of Kansas Legend! No one cared more or gave more to the University post World War II. This Texan had played football at the University of Texas when the war broke out. But during the War, Fambrough played football with a number of football players from Kansas who convinced him to enroll at KU. He played guard on the 1948 Orange Bowl team and became a life-long Jayhawk, coaching the Jayhawks football team â twice!
Where, when and how he learned his disdain for the University of Missouri, I am not sure, but he did once say, âI donât hate anyone, but I truly dislike the University of Missouri. I disliked âem when I played âem. I disliked âem when I was an assistant coach. I disliked them when I was head coach. I dislike âem now, and I always will.â
I did a little research and found what might be the reason for Fambroughâs disdain. In 1947, KU enjoyed one of its most successful seasons in program history, earning an 8-1-2 record, a co-Big Eight Conference championship and a 1948 Orange Bowl bid and victory. As spring practice began the following year, KU had five players, including Fambrough, who were about to play their final season. However, former MU coach Don Faurot wanted to change the World War II exemption rule that had allowed for freshmen eligibility. Two weeks after spring practice, Faurot, then MU athletic director, called an emergency session of the Big Six Conference. Conference officials eventually sided with Faurot, and made the exemption retroactive, meaning Fambroughâs expectation of a senior season had been dissolved by the Tigers, and his playing career was over. Kansas lost its top two quarterbacks and the entire left side of its offensive line as a result.
Coach was well known for his pre-game speech for the KU â MU game. Even when he was not coaching, Fambrough was often invited into the KU locker room before the game to fire up the team. (I once had an audio tape of one of his pre-game speeches; but I loaned it out, and it was never returned. Lesson learned!)
Coach Fambroughâs annual speech went something like this: (Delivered in a gruff, gravely voice) Now boys, yâall need to know how this game got started. Years ago, a drop-out from the University of Missouri gathered up his low-rent buddies. They were nothinâ but a bunch of no-good, hard-drinkinâ thugs. By God, they rode horseback over to Lawrence [Fambroughâs voice is rising.] where they killed our men, even our boys. They raped our women! . . . then the burned the whole DAMNED TOWN!
Today is not a day when you give 100%. Today is a day when you give 110% every down, every play! Every Kansan who ever lived is counting on you today. Go out and beat those DAMN Tigers!
Itâs a shame, in my opinion, the City of Lawrence, Kansas, could not find a way to re-name Missouri Street to Fambrough Street as it leads south into Memorial Stadium. -
I was alive and in Topeka for the 70s. Cromwell was amazing. Didnât he letter in several sports? Just a freak athlete as I recall.
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@JoJoAndMe helluva speech. Hard to imagine mustering the kind of energy we might need against Arizona this year that a rivalry speech like that could conjure up
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@approxinfinity Glad you are enjoying my posts.
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In an effort to distract thought from this year's basketball team, here's another "look back." The '80s is an era that is difficult to write about. Itâs difficult because I was as close to the program as anyone could be who was not on the University payroll. I saw first-hand how difficult it was to compete in athletics without the support of the Universityâs administration. (Gene Budig)
In the early 1980âs, I joined a local KU support group in Kansas City called the Hawks Club. The main purpose was to sell KU football season tickets. Heading into the 1984 season, I had become president of the Hawks Club and took the leadership position seriously. As a club, we sold the most season tickets ever. My involvement in the Hawks Club was my first opportunity to get close to the program and the players. My son, Jason, was a budding little league quarterback and placekicker. In the spring of 1983 I met Bruce Kallymeyer, the K.U. placekicker. That summer, Bruce volunteered to work with Jason. Because Bruce was from the Shawnee Mission area, I drove Jason across town to Shawnee Mission East to meet on their football field. Bruce was 20 minutes late, apologizing because he had been helping to complete the harvest of his parentsâ asparagus crop! Opening up a big net bag full of footballs, Bruce and Jason kicked, and I shagged balls! I wanted to pay Bruce for his time, but he was adamant about not jeopardizing his eligibility. Bruce, by the way, kicked 78.6 percent of his career field goals and in 1981 set the K.U. single season record of 85.7%.
A year later, we worked with kicker Dodge Schwartzberg. His dad was president of Lawrence Paper Co. In 1985 the K.U. kicker was Chase Van Dyne, again from Shawnee Mission. Jason had a chance to work with Chase, too. That winter, at halftime of a K.U. basketball game, Chase spotted us and came up to our seats to say âHi.â I was so often impressed with the quality of young men on the K.U. football teams.
Unrelated to KU, but a good kicking story is one involving Jan Stenerud, the All-Pro kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs who had retired in 1985 after finishing his career with Green Bay and then Minnesota. While on a business trip to Green Bay, I stopped by a Packers practice and was standing outside a chain link fence. Jan was off kicking by himself. I yelled, âHey, Jan, Iâm from KC.â He walked over to the fence and said, âWhat the heck are you doing here?â We had a brief conversation. Back in K.C. the following summer, I was in Janâs office to buy a kicking tee from him for Jason. (Jan had developed and was selling his own branded tee.) Jason was a left-footed kicker, and Jan didnât have in stock a standard left-footed tee. So he gave me a taller, non-legal, 3â high tee saying, âThe refs will never notice. Heck, I wore baseball cleats on my plant foot in Green Bay and the refs never noticed!â And the high school refs never notice Jasonâs 3â tee!
