Oregon’s Last Cotton Bowl Gave Black Community A Lift Three Ducks Had Symolic Roles Before 1949 Contest With Smu

Nearly a half century ago, Oregon made its only other trip to the Cotton Bowl, in a time when life and football were far different from today.

On Jan. 1, 1949, the “Webfoots” lost to Southern Methodist 21-13 before a sellout crowd of 69,000 as a rally led by Oregon’s All-American quarterback Norm Van Brocklin fell short.

Doak Walker directed SMU to victory on his 22nd birthday. Mustang sophomore Kyle Rote rushed for 93 yards.

The yellowed clippings in the University of Oregon archives include a photo of running back Woodley Lewis carrying the ball.

A wire service account referred to him as “a swift Negro who gave SMU plenty of trouble.”

It was barely a year after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in baseball, and the three black players on the Oregon team became symbols for the black community in Dallas. Blacks were not allowed to play at SMU or any other Southwest Conference school.

Chet Daniels, a starting offensive guard and Oregon’s placekicker, said he and the other blacks on the team were feted to parties night after night. He and Lewis stayed with a wealthy black doctor.

“When we would go over to the hotel for dinner or for lunch or breakfast, the blacks who were working in the hotel as cooks and waiters and whatnot, when they weren’t working, they were standing in the doorway watching,” Daniels said. “It was something they didn’t expect to see.”

A chauffeured 1948 Cadillac would pick the players up after practice and take them to the doctor’s home.

“If you can imagine, a fellow giving you the key to his house, giving you the keys to his car, telling you to just lay your clothes on the bed and somebody will come and get them and press them for you,” Daniels said.

The Cotton Bowl was not Oregon’s first choice. The team had finished with a 7-0 record in the Pacific Coast Conference. Its only loss was a 14-0 defeat at No. 1-ranked Michigan. California had gone 6-0 in the conference. But in a vote of conference schools, California was selected as the Rose Bowl team. The Oregon players were embittered by the slight.

It took a special vote of the conference to allow Oregon to go elsewhere.

The Cotton Bowl picked the Webfoots after North Carolina waffled on whether it would accept a bid.

The all-white nature of the game had ended the previous year, when one black player had participated in the game for Penn State. But Oregon coach Jim Aiken told end Dan Garza, one of the Webfoots’ team leaders, that the blacks might not be allowed to play this time around.

“We said either we all play or we don’t play at all,” Garza said.

Daniels, Garza and some of the other players from that team plan to go to Dallas next week for a reunion before the Cotton Bowl game between Oregon and Colorado. John McKay, the former Southern Cal coach who was a halfback on that Oregon team, won’t be able to make it because of poor health.

Daniels hopes to find some of the people who were so kind to him.

“The memories,” he said. “It would be nice to just take a car and drive around to see if we can just see the places that we visited then, to know how things have changed.

“You know, we’ll be staying in one of the better hotels.”