ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 TAG: 9612110014
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE COLLEGE had the little football team that could compete with - and occasionally beat - Virginia Tech, Virginia and VMI until the program became a casualty of World War II.
It was the late 1940s and thousands of soldiers returned home from World War II to the United States. They still had some fight left in them, as people in Salem, and more specifically, at Roanoke College could attest.
On the college's campus, students and even more loudly, alumni, were crying for the return of football. A special alumni committee in the fall of 1945 convened to discuss the resumption of the school's intercollegiate football program. The school had taken a hiatus from football after the 1942 season. President Charles Smith, however, citing financial duress, said football would not work in the college's immediate post-war plans.
Students were disappointed. ``Even more vocal were the alumni,'' said Mark F. Miller, present head of the college's history department. ``Things got out of hand.''
A wild protest was held during the Alumni Weekend of 1949. It got so unruly, the next year's Alumni Weekend was canceled.
The alumni were worked up because they knew what they were missing. Some of the best small college football played in Virginia was played at Roanoke College. It was 51 years, until the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl in 1993, before small college football was again played in Salem.
Roanoke competed in what was known as the ``College Division'' of state schools, many of which play in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. The ``University Division'', or ``Big Four'' as they more commonly were known, included Virginia, Virginia Tech, VMI and Washington and Lee.
None played football before Roanoke. The Maroons, a name adopted in 1910 because of a uniform change from blue and yellow, played their first season in 1880. They played Virginia Tech before Virginia did, although it took them 12 meetings to score on the Fighting Gobblers.
The greatest teams came later. In 1923 and 1927, the Maroons won the state small college championship. The 1927 team was the first small college squad to beat one of the Big Four, when it topped VMI 13-7 in Lexington.
VMI coach B.B. Clarkson's gameplan borrowed from a strategy first employed by the legendary Knute Rockne. Clarkson started his second string players, figuring the Roanoke team would get a false sense of security and would be caught off guard by the time he sent in the first string. By the time they were in, however, Roanoke had scored a touchdown and field goal. The game was decided at the end of the first half when the Maroons stopped a VMI drive at their 3-yard line.
Roanoke allowed the remainder of their state opponents to score just seven points and claimed the state championship with a 10-7 victory over Lynchburg College in ``a great thriller,'' according to the school newspaper, the Brackety-Ack.
No team had a collection of individual talent, however, like the Maroons of 1938. Headlining the group was end Kenneth Moore, a Vinton native who was the only Roanoke player ever named to the Associated Press' ``Little All-America'' team.
On Nov.17, 1938, a writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch said of the 6-1, 180-pound Moore, ``I think that Ken Moore is the state's finest end with room to spare and I have seen most of the other good teams play.'' Another account described Moore as ``the finest pass snagger in the state.''
Moore still lives in San Mateo, Calif., where he made a career as an FBI special agent (an occupation followed by five of his classmates). After graduating from Roanoke, Moore spent four years in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where he was a first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.
According to class president Bob Stevenson, ``Ken Moore vowed that he would marry the first girl he saw when he got off the boat after war. And he did!'' Her name was Harriet J. Van Auken.
Many of Moore's teammates still are living in Southwest Virginia, including co-captain Fred Coots of Daleville and offensive tackle Dexter Goodwin of Salem. According to Coots' son, Fred Jr., Coots and Goodwin were recruited by assistant coach J.S. ``Buddy'' Hackman, off a semi-pro team in their home state of Massachusetts.
Coots, who worked for the FBI from 1940 to 1972, remembers fondly the team's trip to Susquehanna University for a game in the fall of 1938. Susquehanna was coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg Jr. It was there that Coots met Stagg's father, Amos Alonzo Stagg Sr., who was retired from the University of Pacific and working as an advisor to his son.
This team of individual stars had one great team achievement. The Maroons traveled to Richmond for a game against the Spiders on Oct.22. Earlier the Richmond News Leader had reported, ``The Spiders handled [coach] `Pap' White's Maroons all right last year and shouldn't have a great deal of trouble likewise this time.''
Such opinions raised Roanoke's tempers, something Richmond didn't need. Professor Paul B. Williamson, the predecessor of the New York Times Computer, rated Roanoke the No.83 team in the nation at any level. In relation, VMI of the Big Four was No.86.
When it was over, the Maroons beat the Spiders 13-6 in Richmond's City Stadium. In a letter to the late Roanoke sports editor Bob McLelland in 1956, Moore called the victory his favorite football memory. Moore most enjoyed the late moments in the game when, because of a loss of their backfield men, White and Hackman put in linemen to run the ball. It was the last time Richmond and Roanoke played, and the only time the Maroons won.
A picture of that team, which finished with a 5-2-3 record, still hangs on the wall at Mac and Bob's restaurant on Main Street in Salem.
Four years after that landmark victory in Richmond, Roanoke played what would become its last season of football. The Maroons lost their last game, 42-0 at Catawba, on Nov.14, 1942. In his Sport-O-Data column in the Brackety-Ack, Ozzie Worley called the football squad the most disappointing team at the college that year. He also said it showed the most fight.
The real disappointment came that winter. With World War II raging, intercollegiate sports ended with the final whistle of the Washington and Lee men's basketball game in February. By the spring, Worley was encouraging his classmates to get out and watch the women's intramural basketball team ``for rip-roaring basketball games.'' By the fall, the sports page was replaced by the Sky Writers, a page published by the cadets of Roanoke College.
Sports came back to the college with a flourish in 1945, when the men's basketball team faced the newly-formed women's team in a scrimmage dubbed ``The Freak Game.'' Later that year, the alumni committee met to decide on how to bring football back. Before they could, the school's administration intervened.
According to Miller in his book, ``Dear Old Roanoke,'' president Smith said, ``Roanoke could be a good college or have a good football team. We can not be both.''
It was said that Smith spent the next three years defending his decision and that no decision in his tenure distressed him more.
Coots and his teammates weren't the alumni making the fuss, however. The members of the 1938 team almost all had served in the war. By the time they returned, they had much more important things to worry about, including families and jobs.
``I didn't feel too bad about it,'' Coots said. ``Roanoke was a small school. During the war, the bigger schools were getting all the players. It would have been hard to compete on their playing level.''
Coots said he was glad Roanoke has a broader athletic program these days because it reaches more people.
Some say Roanoke College hasn't been the same without the sport. Some would like it back. Some are glad it's gone. One thing is for sure: At Roanoke, they don't play football like they used to.
LENGTH: Long : 141 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROANOKE COLLEGE. 1. College Field, shown here during aby CNBRoanoke College game in 1938, was one of the few football fields in
the state that had lights. Alumni Gym is in the background. 2. Shown
here is a Roanoke College program cover from the 1938 game with
Randolph-Macon. The Maroons won 28-0 and finished the season 5-2-3.
Roanoke was rated the No.83 team in the nation at any level that
year. Virginia Military Institute of the Big Four was No. 86.
Graphic: Map.