TU Savors 1964 Season, 61–14 Win Over OSU
By WAYNE MCCOMBS
Contributing Writer
HALL OF FAME REUNION: Former Tulsa football greats and members of the 1964 team, from left, Bob Breitenstein, Jerry Rhome, and Bill Goods, during last year’s game against Hawaii at Skelly Stadium. The 1964 team was inducted into the TU Athletic Hall of Fame last year and was introduced during the halftime of the Hawaii game.
Members of the legendary 1964 Golden Hurricane football team gathered together last fall for induction into the University of Tulsa Athletic Hall of Fame.
Forty former players, coaches, and managers of the Bluebonnet Bowl championship team reunited during the week of the Tulsa-Hawaii game for the festivities. Also inducted into the 2003 Hall of Fame were football player and 1916 graduate Reuben Leekley, football player and 1985 graduate David Alexander, and soccer player and 1991 graduate Kevin King.
The 1964 football team was coached by the great Glenn Dobbs, who guided the Hurricane to national fame with one of the most prolific passing attacks in college football history. Tulsa rewrote the national passing record book that season, establishing 27 new NCAA team and individual records including being the first team in college history to average over 300 yards passing per game. The Golden Hurricane won 9 and lost 2 that year. But the team is best remembered for two of those nine victories.
The October 31st home game against Oklahoma State pitted the high-flying Hurricane against the nation’s number-one rated pass defense. Though OSU was a two-touchdown favorite, TU had its way that day with quarterback Jerry Rhome passing for 488 yards. Howard Twilley caught passes for 217 of those yards. The 61–14 rout before an overflow crowd encouraged civic leaders and football boosters to begin a drive to expand Skelly Stadium to its current capacity of 40,235, which at that time was larger than the major league baseball parks in Kansas City and St. Louis.
Rhome was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy that season completing 244 passes for 2,870 yards and 23 touchdowns. Split end Twilley broke NCAA records for pass receptions with 95 and yards at 1,178.
The game was especially sweet for Tulsa players and fans, as OSU had announced they were ending the storied series after the 1965 game, saying that Tulsa was not a tough-enough foe. (The series was resumed in 1976. Ironically, this year’s game in Stillwater on September 11 is also a termination of the series on OSU’s initiative.)
Tulsa was invited to meet Mississippi in the 1964 Bluebonnet Bowl game in Houston. TU put up over 300 yards of offense to post a 14–7 victory over the Southeastern Conference team.
The 1964 Hurricane squad was the first in school history that had African-American team members. Lineman Bob Breitenstein, a member of the TU Hall of Fame class of 1994 and after graduation a standout with the NFL Denver Broncos, said that during the summer of 1964 all the team members received a letter informing them that black players were going to be on the team. “We all got along with no problems, though we played against some teams, including Mississippi, that did have racial hatred.” Willie Townes, a Tulsa defensive lineman and an African-American from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, played his heart out in the win against Mississippi. Townes later starred in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys.
Arkansas, which won the national championship that year, defeating Tulsa 31–22, was segregated. (Tulsa actually outgained the Razorbacks by over 200 yards in the game.) The Hog band played “Dixie” as a main song, and the cheerleaders and crowd displayed Confederate flags in those so-very-different times.
Breitenstein remembers, “The Hurricane teammates joked with one another and had fun. The five black guys that we had on the team were a perfect fit to integrate a sports team. Nobody had any type of ax to grind. I don’t recall any fights of any kind whatsoever. We all realized we had a common goal.”
Record-setting quarterback Rhome said the reason he transferred to Tulsa from SMU was the wide-open Glenn Dobbs offense. SMU coach Hayden Fry wanted to have a running attack, and Rhome looked elsewhere where he could pass. He chose Tulsa, saying, “Coach Dobbs recruited big offensive linemen that learned to pass block. Some were transfers and others were junior college players. Dobbs looked everywhere for them.”
Rhome adds, “The 1964 team was successful because we were so close. We came from all over the nation and just came together here at TU. We’ve stayed in contact with one another over the years.” Rhome, retired from college and professional coaching, now resides in the Atlanta area.
F. A. Dry was an assistant coach for Dobbs’ staff. Dry coached high school football at Tulsa Hale and Tulsa Edison before he joined the staff in 1961. He remembers, “I knew that Dobbs liked to throw the ball and that his teams would be wide open on offense. In the spring of 1963 Dobbs brought in NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Sammy Baugh to help us. He had a brilliant football mind and he helped us tremendously.” (Dry in 1972 became the head football coach at TU through 1976, winning four straight Missouri Valley Conference championships.) “We were not a large squad in 1964, we were from so many backgrounds, and we were interesting to each other and the players bought into our system and it worked. The bonding of these 1964 players continues on to this day. They still care about each other.”
Updated 08-26-2004
Back to Top
READER COMMENTS
Back to Top
Contact GTR News
