SMALL COLLEGE S.I.D.
MAY 1998 issue of ‘College Football Historical Society’ newsletter
By Tim Marsh
My first recollection of Pacific Northwest small college
athletics is from the late 1950s, when I went with my parents to a College of
Puget Sound (now University of Puget Sound/UPS) at Pacific Lutheran College
(now Pacific Lutheran University/PLU) men’s basketball game in Tacoma,
Washington. Little did I know at that time, as a grade school student, that my
college days and career would connect me to small college athletics in a more
substantial way.
After graduating from high school in 1966 in suburban Tacoma,
I attended Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, an athletic arch-rival of
PLU in the old Northwest Conference. A journalism major at Linfield, I
participated in Wildcat cross-country and track, but my main connection with
Linfield Wildcat athletics came in a different way.
When I began at Linfield, Paul Durham was the football coach
and athletic director. Other Linfield coaches included Ted Wilson in men’s
basketball; Hal Smith in cross-country, track, and wrestling; and Roy Helser in
baseball. All had been outstanding college athletes; Durham and Helser at
Linfield, Wilson at Eastern Oregon, and Smith at Washington State. During my
time at the college, before he left to become athletic director at the
University of Hawaii, Durham was still writing a sports colt in the McMinnville
News-Register newspaper. This was a remnant of earlier years when he had been
the sports editor of the paper, as well as Linfield Athletic Director and
coach. Durham had “ink in his veins” from his family’s printing business.
My first contact with Durham came while covering sports for
the Linfield student newspaper. Later, with Helser as the A-D., I served an
academic year as the college’s sports information director; which was a great
experience. On a shoestring budget, Linfield had an excellent athletic program;
and being the SID put me in the middle of it, working not only with individuals
who were great coaches, but great people. During my years as a Linfield
student, 1966-1970, the college had excellent football, basketball and baseball
teams In fact, an upset football win by Linfield over the University of Hawaii
in Honolulu probably helped Durham in landing the Hawaii AD job.
Linfield Wildcat football home games were played under the
lights on Maxwell Field during my years at the school. I recall opponent
schools not liking to play at Linfield because the lights did a poor job of
illuminating the field. However, I also remember Linfield games at night being
extolled; because it allowed fans to attend an Oregon State game in Corvallis
or a University of Oregon game in Eugene in the afternoon, and then still get
back to McMinnville in time for a Linfield game at night. In my senior year the
Homecoming game, unfortunately a loss to Pacific Lutheran, was played in the
afternoon. Starting the next season, Linfield switched all its home football
games to the afternoon. The poor lighting aside, I think the wooden poles upon
which the lights were attached were deteriorating, and there was not enough
money available to replace them
The football games I saw on campus at Linfield are now a
blur in my memory. So many of them seemed to be blow-out wins or last-second
victories. On the road, I particularly remember Linfield playing Pacific
University (then the Badgers, now the Boxers) in Forest Grove, Oregon. A
Linfield star player was injured in the first half. In the stands was a player
of a similar size in street clothes. The coach had him come out of the stands
and suit up at halftime, wearing at least the jersey of the star player, if not
the entire uniform. In my SID role, I recall climbing up to the pressbox to
inform the media of the halftime uniform number reassignment.
During my Linfield days, I wrote about the transition of the
football head coaching job, from Durham (1948-1967) to Ad Rutschman, a Linfield
graduate who had been a star running back for Durham With Rutschman (1968-1991)
the program never missed a beat in its success. In his first game as Linfield
head coach at the start of the 1968 season, Rutschman’s Wildcats beat the Boise
State Broncos in Boise’s first football game as a four-year college, by a score
of 17-7. Rutschman’s teams won three NAIA Division II national championships. I
am fortunate today to count Durham and Rutschman, as well as Rutschman’s wife,
Joan (who served many years as Linfield athletic administrative assistant and
ticket manager), among my close friends.
After graduating from Linfield, I worked on the old Oregon
Statesman daily newspaper in Salem before becoming sports editor of the Observer
daily newspaper in La Grande, Oregon, home of Eastern Oregon College (now
Eastern Oregon University), then a member of the old Oregon Collegiate
Conference. While there, I continued on with my connection to Pacific Northwest
small college athletics through covering games of the Eastern Oregon
Mountaineers. But it was tough getting very close to Mountaineer athletics, as my
sports beat also included seven high schools in the newspaper’s circulation
area. When I arrived in La Grande from Salem, I was somewhat familiar with the
town and college. In my senior year, Linfield met Eastern Oregon in a
NAIA District 2 men’s basketball best of three games playoff series. Ted Wilson, Linfield head coach, was back in his old stomping ground. He was an EOU grad, former EOU student body president and former EOU star athlete. In the third and final game, Linfield won in front
of many Wildcat fans who made the 300 mile trip from McMinnville to La Grande.
Leaving La Grande, I became news service and sports
information director at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I
especially enjoyed working there with Roy Thompson, the football coach, and
John Wilcox, the men’s basketball coach and assistant football coach: while
also becoming friends with some of the Whitman student-athletes: including
Thompson’s son Mark, who would go on to his own successful football coaching
career. Roy Thompson’s college playing career had included the University of
Washington as a freshman and, after World War II, Clark College in Vancouver,
Washington, and the University of Portland (Ore.) where he played on Portland’s
last football team before the sport was discontinued. Wilcox had played
football for Boise Junior College and the University of Oregon, along with one
year for the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL.
The Whitman sports team are called the Missionaries. It is a
natural name since the college (not to be confused with Whitworth College in
Spokane or Whittier College in California) was named after missionaries Marcus
and Narcissa Whitman. This was a nickname which implied to me, at least,
passivity; and it gave the impression that Whitman, a nonsectarian school, was
church-related. I did some checking and learned that the “Missionaries” name,
although used for many years, apparently had never been officially adopted by
the Whitman student body. This was enough of an opening for me to start
promoting a “Shockers” nickname for the teams. Walla Walla is wheat growing
country, and the Shockers (short for Wheat Shocker) seemed appropriate. I
started using the Shockers name in my SID work, which dismayed some at the
college and amused others. But as soon as I left the college for a new job in
Oregon, use of the Shocker name was discontinued at Whitman College.
During my SID days at Whitman I was always uneasy when
Whitman would play Linfield, my alma mater. With any other opponent I could
feel completely comfortable with a Whitman victory. But a Whitman win over
Linfield would be greeted with mixed emotions. Most of the time there was
nothing to worry about, as Linfield usually did well in sports and Whitman did
not. When Whitman traveled to McMinnville to end the 1973 football season, I
certainly expected that Linfield, coached by Rutschman, would beat Whitman,
coached by Thompson. This was a game in which I had two close friends,
influential people in my life, coaching on opposite sidelines.
Whitman came into the contest with a 2-5-1 record. Linfield
was 7-1-0, and the expected win over Whitman would give the Wildcats at least a
share of the Northwest Conference title, and assure them a spot in the NAIA
national football playoffs. But the unexpected happened, as Whitman won the
game by a score of 18-9, and I was in a state of shock when it was over. I
would not believe that Whitman had won, much less had pulled off the upset on
the road at McMinnville. In a way, I was heartbroken, as Linfield had been
battling to get back into the NAIA football playoffs for many years. The
Wildcats finally returned to the playoffs in 1974 under Rutschman, having last
been in the NAIA playoffs in 1965 with Durham as the coach. However, knowing
the struggles Thompson and the Whitman team had been through that season, I was
still pleased. Despite my allegiance, then and now, to alma mater Linfield; my
heart had to be with my employer. At Whitman we called the game the “Shocker
Bowl”; the game that had helped to earn the name Shockers for the Whitman
sports teams.
Since leaving Whitman in 1975, my connection to Pacific
Northwest small college athletics has been through the teams of Linfield. I was
able to assist the college when it played in four NAIA national football
playoffs in McMinnville. Looking back on my Pacific Northwest small college
experiences, the games and the wins and losses are enjoyable to remember and
talk about; but more important are the friendships which resulted from my time
as a sports information director for Linfield and Whitman Colleges.
