Some Codgers Kicking Around Gridiron Rematch

Time definitely can’t heal all wounds. Not if your name is Bryant Smick.

A decade after the Codger Bowl, Smick, 76, is still crankier than a lineman with jock itch over the touch-football grudge match between former Colfax and St. John high school rivals.

Colfax won the Codger Bowl, 6-0, avenging a 1938 loss to St. John.

But a cloud of suspicion hangs over the last-minute touchdown that decided the rematch.

With just 39 seconds left, pint-sized Hal “Babe” Lyons caught a pass and headed for the end zone like a drunk trying to zigzag his way home.

Smick and other wounded St. John Eagles have pored over the Codger Bowl videotape the way conspiracy buffs examine the Zapruder film.

The evidence is obvious, they contend: Lyons clearly was touched by an Eagle. And if he wasn’t, well, he certainly stepped out of bounds.

No score. No fair.

“It was definitely fixed. I’ll never forgive those referees,” grouses Smick. “We tried to be good sports and say, ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.’ “But down deep, it hurt. We just sat there and took it like a big bunch of dummies.”

Can this mean there will be a Codger Bowl II?

“If we’re gonna settle it,” snorts Smick, “we’d better hurry up!”

Tragic, but true.

The Codgers from both schools got together the other day in St. John. All are pushing 80. A few, in fact, have pushed right through it.

Any more time goes by and players will have to suit up in iron lungs.

On a more sobering note, 16 Codgers already have passed through those righteous uprights. They are, I hope, enjoying the view from God’s eternal sky box.

Perhaps it’s best to leave well enough alone. Perhaps it’s best to content ourselves with those glorious memories of Sept. 24, 1988.

It all happened in the wheat town of Colfax. The kickoff was preceded by a motorcade of vintage cars. Some 2,500 fans plus national TV news crews and reporters from People magazine showed up.

Disney couldn’t have scripted a more magical event.

It happened because of John Crawford, a Hollywood actor and former Colfaxian. Crawford dreamed up the Codger Bowl as a way to have some fun and erase a few personal scars from his youth.

He was one of the original 1938 Bulldogs who lost the snowy Armistice Day football game, 14-0, to St. John. “I was kind of a screw-up,” says Crawford, adding that he dropped a sure touchdown pass during the game.

So Crawford organized the wonderful rematch. He followed that up with the Codger Pole, a 65-foot totem pole stuck in downtown Colfax to memorialize the game.

Easily the weirdest sight on the Palouse, the Codger Pole features chain-saw-carved mugs of all the players. Colfax created a tiny park around the pole. The City Council even named the 167-foot street leading to it John Crawford Boulevard.

That’s no boulevard - that’s an alley.

“I’m reluctant to let go of it,” Crawford says of all the Codger business. “We have this fellowship. And with time thinning the herd, we Codgers are becoming more and more precious.”

That they are.

Dick Behrens, who filled in as coach for the St. John Codgers, said it best in a letter to his fellow players. Noting that St. John-Endicott High recently beat Colfax High, 22-18, he wrote:

“What if 50 years from now, some member of this year’s Colfax team can’t let go of the defeat and brings the team back for another game? I can think of no greater way for these players to celebrate their youth than to meet on the gridiron. …

“Let us hope that somewhere on this year’s roster there is a John Crawford to seize a dream and run with it to such a glorious end.”