When you're a Linfield graduate,
Wildcat football fan and used accounting in your professional career, a record
of Linfield football scores from the sport's beginning at the college in 1896
to the present is of more than passing interest.
In 2005, Linfield hit a milestone
50-seasons* of its all-division record of consecutive football winning seasons.
It's called "The Streak." TheMcMinnville News-Register issued
a "Streak" tabloid section which includes scores of all the 'Cats
games to that point.
The scores in that section piqued the
interest of Wildcat fan and McMinnville resident Gerry Painter, a 1950 Linfield graduate (B.S. in Business),
who served 1973-1990 as treasurer and chief financial officer of Norwich
University, Northfield, Vt.
Using scores in the N-R's streak
section along with information from the Linfield Football Record Book posted online by Linfield Athletics' sports
information, Painter created a spreadsheet.
On the spreadsheet, he used data from
the two sources and recorded every Linfield football game by head coach, by
season and which game (first, second, etc.) of the season, by playoff games and
by opponent teams. Since that time he has continued recording all Linfield
football games.
Painter says his spread sheet shows a
"fact which truly is amazing” when Ad Rutschman coached Linfield
football for 24 seasons, 1968-1991. “In the seventh game of each of his
seasons, a remarkable thing happened: He never lost."
When
Painter told Rutschman at McMinnville Quarterback Club the fact of the seventh
game results, Rutschman’s response was he did not know, ‘but who cares.’ ”
Painter says that “underscores the difference between a coach and an
accountant.”
Of the 24 seventh games, six were
against Whitworth, four versus Willamette and three against PLU. So the seventh
games were not all against the weaker teams. The odds of winning all of the
seventh game for 24 seasons have to be staggering!," says Painter.
Prior
to Norwich, Painter and his wife, Jackie, Linfield Class of 1954, lived in
California’s Bay Area. He was a practicing C.P.A with a major national
accounting firm in San Francisco. Then, he was business officer for an
interdenominational theological seminary in Berkeley adjacent to the Cal
campus.
While
in the Bay Area, Painter became an avid fan of the San Francisco Giants
baseball and the 49ers football teams. In Vermont he thinks he was probably the
only fan of either team.
At
Norwich, the Painters worked 18 years in the pressbox for all home games of the
Norwich Cadets NCAA D3 football team. He ran the football game clock and she
operated the scoreboard.
They
retired to McMinnville in 1993 to be near Linfield, where they met.
*Note: This story
posted Oct. 19, 2014. That was the day after Linfield defeated Whitworth,
65-13, in the Wildcat’s 2014 Homecoming football game on Maxwell Field. The win
assured Linfield its 59th consecutive winning season.
