Sports74 Gold: College Football '73

[EDIT 11/30/2023: Introducing the "football" label]

[EDIT 12/31/2023: Changing title]

[EDIT 2/9/2024: Changing title again]

Every three weeks, I will post a newly expanded version of the retrospective from 2013-14. This is the first in an 18-part series, featuring not just the greatest hits, but the greatest misses. What follows is a generous sampling of the season that ended with the bowl games of 1973 and '74.

Notre Dame defeats Alabama 24-23 in the Sugar Bowl. The AP declares the 11-0 Fighting Irish champions, but the coaches' poll sticks with the 11-1 Crimson Tide.

Penn State defeats LSU 16-9 in the Orange Bowl. Nittany Lions halfback John Cappelletti wins the Heisman Trophy as well as its less prestigious parallel, the Maxwell Award. The consensus All-American running back has 1,522 yards on 286 rushes and 17 rushing touchdowns.

Ohio State wins the Rose Bowl 42-21 against USC. The Buckeyes actually tie for the Big Ten championship with archrival Michigan, but a 6-4 vote among the conference schools' athletic directors determines Ohio State will play in Pasadena. Wolverines coach Bo Schembechler says "petty jealousies were involved."

Buckeyes offensive tackle John Hicks wins the Outland Trophy for best interior lineman and the Lombardi Award for best overall lineman. Hicks is also the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy.

Alabama's Bear Bryant is named Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association. The FWAA gives Johnny Majors of Pittsburgh that honor, as the Panthers improved from 1-10 in '72 to 6-5-1, including a Fiesta Bowl loss to Arizona State, in '73.

Tom Osborne coaches Nebraska for the first of what will prove to be 25 years (finishing the initial campaign with a 19-3 Cotton Bowl win against Texas). The Cornhuskers go 9-2-1, as they had the year before, having slipped from going undefeated in '70 and '71.

Barry Switzer begins his 17 years as Oklahoma head coach. Steve Davis begins a three-season, 32-1-1 run as Sooners QB.

This is the first season as Pitt head coach for Majors and the first of four years on the Panthers for running back Tony Dorsett, both of whom will help the team win a national title in 1976.

The consensus All-American quarterback is Dave Jaynes of Kansas with 196 completions for 2,349 yards and 14 touchdowns. His marks in the Big 8 (172 completions, 2,131 yards, 13 touchdowns) are tops in the conference.

The passing leader and total offense leader is Jesse Freitas of San Diego State (Pacific Coast Athletic Association, 9-1-1) with 227 completions in 11 games. He throws for 2,293 yards and 21 touchdowns, and his total offense is 2,901 yards.

Mark Kellar of independent, 6-5 Northern Illinois is the leading rusher in the University Division with 1,719 yards in 11 games. In second and third place for that stat are Dorsett (1,670) and Cappelletti (1,591).

Jay Miller of 5-6 Western Athletic Conference member Brigham Young University gets 22 catches in a game Nov. 3 against New Mexico. This is a record that will stand until 1994. Miller is the receptions leader for the season with 100 in 11 games. He has 1,181 yards and 8 TDs.

During the Texas-Texas A&M game Nov. 22, Aggies center Ricky Seeker isn't on the field when he's needed with seconds to go before halftime. Seeker expected the team to try a field goal and use a different center for that, but he was wrong. Texas leads 21-7 at halftime and wins 42-13.

Florida State goes 0-11, with its players having been subjected to "The Room" prior to spring practice. Head coach Larry Jones would have players do drills and fight as they bent to avoid chicken wire just four feet above the floor. Twenty-eight players quit the team, and at the end of it all, FSU is on probation and Jones is no longer the head coach.

This is the University of Kentucky's first year at Commonwealth Stadium.

In the College Division (as opposed to the University Division), the first-ever Division II champions are the Bulldogs of Louisiana Tech. The first-ever Division III champions are the Tigers of Wittenberg University.

In the Senior Bowl, a postseason all-star game, Lynn Swann of USC (Pac-8 leader with 37 receptions) catches the winning touchdown pass for the North. The Pittsburgh Steelers will pick the consensus All-American in the first round of the '74 draft.

From passer rating to pantyhose commercials, the NFL in 1973 is coming Nov. 17.

Coming to Your Town

In three weeks begins an expanded version of this sports retrospective, full of winners and losers, milestones and useless stats, spectacular worldwide events and obscure championships.

Sports74 is about to go gold.

Here's a compilation to start your quest for musical accompaniment, nine timeless rock tracks that just happen to have been some of the hit records of the year on which we're focused. It's not in stores or from K-Tel, only on this unlisted playlist.

Preliminary Schedule

10/27/23   Coll. Football '73

11/17/23   NFL '73

12/08/23   Hockey '73-74

12/29/23   Miscellaneous

01/19/24   Pro Basket. '73-74

02/09/24   Coll. Basket. '73-74

03/01/24   American League

03/22/24   National League

04/12/24   Baseball Misc.

05/03/24   Track, Horses, Autos

05/24/24   Golf, Tennis, Boxing

06/14/24   Soccer

07/05/24   WFL and CFL

07/26/24   International

08/16/24   Coll. Football '74

09/06/24   NFL '74

09/27/24   Hockey '74-75

10/18/24   Basketball '74-75

11/08/24   Bibliography

EDIT 11:41 p.m.: Made to better fit a mobile phone screen.

EDIT 12-25-24, 6:42-3 a.m.: Introduced "music" label.

FIBA World Championship

 With FIBA's Basketball World Cup beginning today, here's a look back at how it was in 1974.

Puerto Rico hosted 13 other teams from across the globe. Of these teams that gathered in three Puerto Rican cities, eight advanced to the final round. All teams that won medals finished 6-1, points scored divided by points allowed breaking ties (or so USA Basketball says).

The Soviet Union featured Aleksandr Belov, the man who "scored" the "basket" that "won" the gold medal two years prior. That team's leading scorer in 1974 was a future two-time Olympian, Aleksandr Salnikov, who scored 38 points in the last game July 14. Salnikov made his first international tournament appearance that summer, but Modestas Paulauskas (a Lithuanian) was one of the five players from the 1972 Olympic team, as were Sergei Belov, Aleksandr Boloshev, and Ivan Yedeshko.

Despite a three-point loss to the United States, Yugoslavia (having defeated the Soviets by three) finished second, with a young Drazen Dalipagic making the first of four world championship appearances in his Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame career. One of his teammates was a Croatian named Zeljko Jerkov.

Wouldn't you know it, the USA was undefeated in the tournament until the Stars and Stripes faced the Hammer and Sickle on that second Sunday of July. This was a clear-cut, 11-point loss that put Team USA in third place, even though Yugoslavia's ratio of points scored to points allowed was 1.107 and the USA's was 1.182 (the Soviets led with 1.228).

Guards John Lucas of Maryland and Luther "Ticky" Burden of Utah led the team in scoring for the tournament, and they along with forward Tom Boswell of South Carolina made the all-tournament team according to USA Basketball, but Land of Basketball has it that no Americans did.

Seven U.S. players got called for four fouls or more in the game against the Soviets, including Lucas, Burden, guard Steve Grote of Michigan, and guard Quinn Buckner of Indiana (an Olympian in 1976). Boswell fouled out, as did center Joe Meriweather of Southern Illinois and forward Myron Wilkins of Northwestern Oklahoma A&M Junior College (the team's oldest player).

Rounding out the selection of 12 collegians: forward Gus Gerard of Virginia, center Rich Kelley of Stanford, guard Frank Oleynick of Seattle, forward Rick Schmidt of Illinois (playing for his school's head coach, Gene Bartow), and forward Eugene Short of Jackson State.

EDIT, 3:26 p.m.: For perspective, Team USA finished fifth in 1970 and fifth in 1978, and fourth in both '63 and '67. This was the first U.S. medal in the worlds since 1959 and only one in the '60s or '70s. The Americans medaled at every world championship held in the '50s, '80s, and '90s.

EDIT 8:51 p.m., 10/26/24: Had originally spelled Salnikov's name "Salinkov" in the first reference.

SOURCES
FIBA hub for tournament information
USA Basketball PDF on team history, with 1974 on Page 41
Land of Basketball hub for more on the tournament format, possibly

Unfortunate Events

On this day 49 years ago...

Top of the eighth at Metropolitan Stadium, June 20. Twins are in the field with two out, but White Sox have two on. Three-two count on Ron Santo. Pitch delivered. While two umpires try to determine whether Santo's swing went around, Dick Allen runs to third and Ken Henderson to second. Catcher Randy Hundley, forgetting about the full count, throws to the hot corner, which Eric Soderholm had left because in the third baseman's mind Santo had struck out as opposed to having walked. Ray Corbin, the pitcher, goes to argue with the home-plate umpire, and injures Hundley. Allen crosses the plate, but the run doesn't count; Santo struck out. The Twins win the game 3-2 but lose their catcher.

SOURCE: Nash, George, and Alan Zullo. The Sports Hall of Shame. New York: Pocket Books, 1987.

Learning More About '74

The Topps Heritage cards are out for this year, and as usual they're more or less in the style of the regular Topps cards from 49 years before. I looked at them on COMC, and some of the Baseball Flashbacks and News Flashbacks have a couple of things of which I wasn't aware regarding 1974. One of the News Flashbacks cards involves Daylight Saving Time being in place for pretty much the whole year, and another involves a low Dow Jones average.

The AP Sports Almanac for 1975 mentions a recession in its overview of the World Football League. This month, for much of which I haven't had my new laptop, I've been making time to write things down that I see in the almanac, though I hope I'm not damaging the book. In my usual haste, some of the things I've been writing for pretty much every sport are not completely legible and may have to be backed up by sources on the Internet. As of Thursday, I've gone through everything from angling and fishing to ice hockey. Jai alai is next, and maybe the name of a challenger on a 1973 episode of "To Tell the Truth" will be found there, a name that escapes me. All I know is the three who appeared on the program wore different uniforms.

It seems the Memphis Tams had a uniform scheme like that of the Oakland A's during the first Mausoleum era (the team's going through the second now), sporting seven color combinations for jersey and shorts, all except white jersey with yellow shorts and green jersey with white shorts. How do I know this? It's on bballjerseys.com. Basketball at long last has its own version of Dressed to the Nines, NHL Uniforms, and Gridiron Uniform Database. Click on the red Memphis icon, then "View Photos," then "Home and Road" or "Alternate" to see the Tams' uniforms.