STREAK STANDS TEST OF TIME
By Ken Wheeler, Oregonian, Nov 6,
1997
It is a story of four coaches and hundreds of young men marching toward history. Forty-two autumns of Saturday afternoons and the legend, the legacy and the challenge they have built.
On Saturday, Linfield College will play the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma in a game with meaning beyond the final score. The Wildcats need a victory in one of their two remaining games to make it a winning season.
Not simply a winning season. For the Wildcats, a win would make it a 42nd consecutive winning season, tying the national record shared by Harvard (1881-1923) and Notre Dame (1889-1932).
Not since 1955 have the Wildcats had a losing season. It is a streak that was born with the Baby Boomers and has endured to see them start to turn gray. A streak that witnessed Cold War, the Iron Curtain and war in Vietnam. A streak that saw the Berlin Wall built and come down.
Three times the streak came down to the season's last game. Each time it survived, and each game now is part of the legacy that has been handed down.
Last season, Linfield, a school in McMinnville with an enrollment of slightly fewer than 2,200 full-time students, had to win its last two games to finish 5-4, with the major obstacle a with Lewis & Clark on Palatine Hill in the next-to-last game. With 19 seconds to play, the Pioneers had the ball fourth and goal at the Linfield 4-yard line.
One play -- the game and the streak on the line.
``At the end, it seemed like there were so many timeouts that each play was segmented, almost a game within a game,'' said Matt Craven, a Linfield junior defensive back from Bend who knocked down the last pass in the end zone as the Wildcats won 26-20.
Now Craven is back playing his senior season, faced again with the need to win one more game that will hand the streak on to the team that will follow.
``Yeah, I think it does bring some pressure on the team, but not necessarily bad pressure,'' he said. ``Anything a team can use to get itself motivated is good. I think what has been indicative of the Linfield program has been its consistency and its ability to rise to the challenge.''
In 1987, the Wildcats lost four of their first five games, then rebounded to win their final four to finish 5-4. Again, it was close, the final victory, 17-12 over Pacific, not decided until Steve Reimann, a linebacker from Salem, intercepted a pass at the Linfield 4 with 26 seconds to play.
``When we were 1-4, we were fully aware of the streak,'' Reimann said. ``We got together as a team and said, `We don't want to be the team that everybody looks to as the one that blew the streak.'
``We were really bad at the beginning of the season, but at the end I thought we could play with anybody. There is something about that Linfield tradition that just kind of carries on. You can feel it.
``I'll remember that play for the rest of my life. When I made the interception, I was so excited that I threw the ball way up in the air and got a 15-yard penalty and coach (Ad) Rutschman got mad at me.''
The streak was in its adolescence, only 16 years old, when the 4-4 Wildcats salvaged a winning season with a 24-14 win over Pacific Lutheran in their final game of the 1971 season.
``I can't remember that we were even aware at the time of the streak,'' said John Ketola, a defensive guard from Aberdeen, Wash. ``I just knew that if I didn't play well and we didn't win that game, I would have to put up with coach Rutschman's clipboard on Monday. He was so systematic in what he did, we focused on one play at a time, not a season or a streak.
``But the best thing that ever happened to me in my life was going to Linfield and playing football. There is such pride in the football program. There is something different there, something they instill in you.''
The streak began in 1956, the year the Portland Beavers moved out of their Vaughn Street ballpark, the year Mickey Mantle won the triple crown and the Yankees beat the Dodgers in a World Series in which Don Larsen pitched a perfect game, the year that Tommy Prothro's Oregon State Beavers became a Rose Bowl team.
Linfield, led by coach Paul Durham, had a 6-1-2 record and won its first Northwest Conference championship since 1935, when Durham played for the Wildcats. Durham coached at Linfield for 20 years, then turned the job over to Rutschman, who had been a standout player at the school, in 1968. Rutschman kept the job for 24 winning seasons, then was followed by Ed Langsdorf for four years, and Jay Locey, who is in his second year.
``I'm not absolutely sure that I even knew there was a string going when I started out coaching here,'' Rutschman said. ``I knew that Paul had some very good teams and that I was taking over a program that was on top and not on the bottom.
``Any pressure was self-imposed, but you wanted to make sure that you maintained something. I'm very thankful that I had a group of coaches and athletes who worked hard and took pride and ownership in it. But Paul, he's the one who started it.''
Durham's record at Linfield was 122-51-10. It was 90-17-6 once the consecutive-season winning streak was born. In the 24 years that followed, Rutschman was 183-48-3. Langsdorf was 32-9-1 and Locey is 9-7 going into Saturday's game.
Among them, there have been 25 league championships during the winning string, three NAIA championships, plus three other trips to the championship game, four trips to the semifinals and three to the quarterfinals.
``I think it's terrific when a school like Linfield can get involved in setting a national record,'' said Durham, who lives in Hawaii. ``The person who deserves the greatest credit by far is Ad Rutschman. He continued it for 24 years, which is incredible. You just can't give Ad enough credit. You can't imagine what an incredible job of coaching he did.
``Yes, I think the string is important. Linfield is a great school and that just adds to its greatness. I know it's important to all the athletes who played football there, even back before my time.''
And so it seems to be.
``If you make a decision to play football with the Linfield Wildcats, you are expected to be successful,'' said Lance Lopes, who played at Linfield from 1981-84 and now is general counsel for the Green Bay Packers. ``For me, it was a fabulous experience. I don't want to understate the enjoyment I took from the Linfield football program. If I could sum up in one word the reason for their success, tradition probably is the word I would use.
``There are tactical reasons for the long-term success. The outstanding people they have had running the program are incredible.''
Howard Morris, who later would coach and serve as athletic director at Oregon Tech, was a junior on that 1956 team when the streak began.
``I'm sure that (Locey) is feeling some pressure,'' Morris said. ``Nobody wants to be the one who breaks the streak. I just hope he goes ahead and makes it happen. It's not a life-or-death thing, but it would be nice recognition for the college and all of the people involved.''
Norm Musser, an assistant football coach at South Medford High School, played for the Wildcats in 1964.
``Paul Durham was a tremendous coach, a tremendous person,'' he said. ``I still look on him as a mentor and a friend. . . . And when Ad took over, he just raised the bar.''
Randy Mueller, who came from St. Maries, Idaho, to quarterback the Wildcats' 1982 NAIA championship team, is the vice president for football operations with the Seattle Seahawks, traveling the country to scout players.
``Every Sunday, no matter what city I'm in, the first thing I look for when I pick up the paper is the Linfield score,'' he said. ``Yeah, I'm emotionally attached to the string. Every player who has been a part of it is, even non-players who never got to play a down. They love it.
``It's true even with the non-athletes. The tradition of winning rubs off on them in whatever walk of life they choose. Going to Linfield was the best thing I ever did. There is no substitute for winning. It gives you confidence in whatever you do.''
``One of the things that really stands out in my mind,'' said Jon Yeakey, an assistant football coach at Glencoe High School who played at Linfield from 1989-91, ``is that Linfield was a special place all around -- the school, the athletic programs, the city of McMinnville. The football program could really thrive in that environment. . . The Linfield experience has been really special to people.''
Steve Lopes, an assistant athletic director at USC who played at Linfield from 1980-83, said his experience in McMinnville ``was something I would never trade for anything in the world. It taught me how to work hard and how to be successful. Ad Rutschman thought of the football field as a classroom and he used it as a classroom.''
Floyd Halvorsen, football coach at Sunset High School, said that when he was at Linfield from 1982-85, ``We never really thought about the string. We knew there was a streak but we just played the game and figured if we took care of the little things, winning would take care of itself.
``The success of the program obviously was something that played a big part in my experience there, but I think the balanced emphasis on academics and athletics and overall concern for the players as students as well as athletes completed the picture. All the pieces fit together in the proper balance for me.''
And so now all tradition and loyalty surround another autumn Saturday, the next-to-last one on Linfield's schedule. If Linfield loses this week, the Wildcats will have to beat Eastern Oregon at home Nov. 15.
Yes, Locey said, there is some pressure, but it is not something to run from.
``I think that if it is all kept in perspective, it can be very healthy,'' he said. ``Student-athletes come to Linfield because they want to be part of big games, want to play in big games.
``Paul Durham and Ad Rutschman are the guys who laid the groundwork, the foundation, put down the principles for what we are trying to do now.
``It's a heck of a legacy.''
