Great Teams and Eras: The 1920s
Thursday, August 10, 2006 | Football
As part of the celebration of the 100th season of Florida football, gatorzone.com will run a series of historical features throughout the preseason and the 2006 campaign. The series will give Gator fans an appreciation and understanding of the past teams and players that helped build the Gator football program.
During preseason practice, readers can learn about ground-breaking Florida teams of the past on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the “Great Teams and Eras” series. In addition to those stories, each Friday from the beginning of preseason practice until the season's first game will feature a look at one of Florida's legendary players as part of the “Gator Greats” series.
Once the season is underway, the look back in time will continue on Tuesdays and Thursdays with “Rivalries and Series” and “Great Games” entries relevant to the week's opponent. Occasionally, additional stories will be unveiled on Wednesday of game weeks when the opportunity arises.
As the 2006 football season approaches, take some time to sit back and reflect on the teams, players and moments that all lead up to this, the 100th season of Florida Gator football.
Great Teams Series – 1928
By: Norm Carlson
Now, any discussion about the greatest Florida football teams of all time will include the 1928 Gators coached by Charles Bachman. That team, the highest-scoring team in the nation that season, has become legendary. There is a mystique about it and the cast of players and coaches assembled in Gainesville.
The pony-backfield averaged just under 165 pounds per man. Seldom did the same set of backs start, there was so much talent available that Bachman wanted to keep morale alive by alternating starters.
Clyde (Cannonball) Crabtree, 5-8 and 148 pounds, was the quarterback. He could punt with either foot, pass with either arm, and could do either while on a dead run.
“What a weapon he was,” Bachman has said over the years. “He would sprint to his right or his left and have the option of running, passing, handing the ball off, or punting it. He simply frustrated defenses on third down by running right or left toward the sidelines, and if the defensive safety came up, he'd punt the ball over his head.”
Carl Brumbaugh was a halfback on that team, and alternated with Red Bethea. Brumbaugh went on to start at quarterback for the Chicago Bears, playing pro football for a decade and becoming the first T-Formation quarterback in that league. He was the quarterback in the Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski backfield in Chicago, but couldn't beat Crabtree out at that position with the Gators.
Rainey Cawthon and Royce Goodbread were other backfield starters, and team captain Goof Bowyer spelled Crabtree at quarterback. The line included tough Bill McRae, who was to go on to become a Rhodes Scholar and federal judge, All-Southern guard Jimmy Steele, Dashwood Hicks, Carlos Proctor and Wilbur James, whose son John was the Gator punter in the early 1970s and played in the NFL.
Dale Van Sickle was Florida's first All-American as an end, and old-time experts will argue that the other end, Dutch Stanley, was better.
That team scored 336 points in nine games, an average of 37.3 points per game. It beat Auburn, 27-0, and Georgia, 26-6, the first time ever for a Florida team. Powerful Washington & Lee was smashed, 60-6, in a game described by Atlanta Journal sports editor Morgan Blake: “The only certain method to stop the Gators is to refuse to come onto the field… the attack was dazzling in its sweep, crushing in its power, and merciless in its slaughter… Florida's great football team is magnificent in the fullest sense of the word, keen, alert, fast and powerful.”
The 1928 Gators were 8-0, when they headed to Knoxville to face Tennessee in the showdown game with the 8-0-1 Vols, led by quarterback Bobby Dodd.
The field was frozen, resulting in a story which still lives. The Vols, seeking to slow the rapid Gator backs, supposedly wet the field and it froze overnight, then thawed and turned to mud as the game wore on.
The Gators lost the game, 13-12, and a possible trip to the Rose Bowl. Georgia Tech went instead, and beat California, 8-7, in the game which featured the wrong-way run of Roy Riegels.
Still, the 1928 Gator football team has lived on in the memories of its fans. If it isn't the finest in school history, it certainly ranks with those which are always mentioned in arguments on the subject.
The Roaring 20s
By: Norm Carlson
Across the land it was called the “Roaring Twenties” and football at the University of Florida was no exception during that exciting decade.
The years 1920-29 saw the emergence of Gator football on the national and sectional scenes, and produced heroes many Florida people can recall to this day.
Against schedules which began to include national powers like Texas, Army and Georgia Tech, the Gators of the 1920s recorded 64 wins.
There were legendary coaches like Major James A. Van Fleet, later to become one of our nation's greatest military heroes as a four-star General, and H.L. (Tom) Sebring, who would become a famous judge in the Nuremberg Trials following World War II.
Charles Bachman took the 1928 team within a game of the Rose Bowl. That team ranks with the finest in Florida history and it led the nation in scoring while compiling an 8-1 record, losing only to Tennessee, 13-12, on the final day of the season.
Bachman's 1929 team was 8-2, so he finished the decade at 16-3 for two seasons.
Van Fleet, who was also the commandant of the ROTC, was head coach in 1923-24 and his teams were 12-3-4, while recording ties by identical 7-7 scores against Georgia Tech twice and Texas. His 1923 team beat the great Wallace Wade-coached Alabama team in Birmingham, 16-6.
There was an abundance of stellar athletes on the teams of the 1920s. All-Southern choices included lineman Robby Robinson and Goldy Goldstein, a three-time choice from 1923-25, halfback Ark Newton, quarterbacks Edgar Jones and Clyde (Cannonball) Crabtree and end Dale Van Sickle, who was Florida's first All-American in 1928.
Newton was a spectacular player who many old-timers argue was the greatest athlete of the decade. He was a brilliant broken-field runner, a superb passer and a punter who ranked with the nation's best. Newton started four years at Florida, 1921-24, and also lettered in baseball and track.
In the 16-6 win over Alabama in 1923, Jones scored every point for the Gators. In 1925, Jones scored 108 points, second to the 110 scored in 1969 by Tommy Durrance.
Following the 1925 season, Jones played in the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco, the first Florida player ever selected for an all-star contest.
Goldstein was not only a three-time All-Southern choice at guard, but started on Gator basketball team. He was elected to Florida Blue Key and graduated from the UF Law School.
Ion (Speedy) Walker was another Gator hero of that era, lettering in football (1926-27), basketball (1926-27-28) and baseball (1926-27).
LaMar Sarra, captain of the 1926 team, was a three-year football star and played four seasons of basketball. Other top gridders of the 1920s included Cecil Beck, Bill Middlekauff, Tom Owens, Ben Clemons, John A. Murphree, Willie DeHoff, Tootie Perry, Cy Williams and many others.
The 1928 team remains a legendary unit, rating in lofty standing in Florida history along with such teams as those produced in 1966, 1969, 1975, 1984, 1985.
The line included the likes of Bill McRae who later became a Rhodes Scholar, Jimmy Steele, Wilbur James, Mike Houser, Chester Allen, Jus Clemons, Carlos Proctor, Joe Bryan, Louis Bono, Bert Grandoff and Dashwood Hicks.
However, it was the backfield that got the glory and is best remembered to this day. Cannonball Crabtree could pass with either arm and punt with either foot, and could do either while on the dead run.
Rainey Cawthon, Royce Goodbread and Carl Brumbaugh rounded out the starting backfield, but Coach Bachman was so deep in talent he often started various combinations which also included Red Bethea and Goof Bowyer. Brumbaugh went to the National Football League and quarterbacked the Chicago Bear teams which featured Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski. He was actually the first T-formation quarterback in professional football, although its use was limited until Sid Luckman joined him in the lineup. Brumbaugh, who played 15 years in the pros, stayed on to help tutor Luckman. The 1928 Gator team scored 336 points in nine games, an average of nearly 38 points a game. They belted archrivals Auburn (27-0) and Georgia (26-6). Washington & Lee, a powerful team in those days, was crushed 60-6.
The decade of the 1920s, which began on a high note in 1920, ended the same way with the 1929 team finishing 8-2, blanking Auburn (19-0) and beating Georgia 18-6.
The final football game of the 1920s was a fitting climax to the era. The Gators played Oregon in Miami in a forerunner to the modern Orange Bowl. Florida won 20-6 behind an 81-yard punt return for a TD by Crabtree, a 31-yard run by Ed Sauls and a 10-yard run by Red McEwen, brother of non-athletic Tampa Tribune sports editor Tom McEwen.
Bachman's two-year 16-3 coaching record for 1928-29 would stand as the finest in Gator history until Galen Hall's 17-1-1 mark in 1984-85.
