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— General history
— J.F. “Pop” McKale
— The games
— Comparisons then and now
— Wildcats nickname
— Military service
— Rankings
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77 DAYS TO KICKOFF
Excerpt from L.A. Times, Nov. 8, 1914, authored by Bill Henry:
“Arizona’s cactus-fed athletes, despite heroic efforts on the part of their two halfbacks, (Asa) Porter and (Franklin) Luis, went down to defeat before the Occidental Tigers yesterday afternoon, the tally with all precincts heard from being 14 to 0 in favor of the Tigers.
Confident of rolling up a big score, the Tigers took the field with grins on their faces, but before the game was 10 seconds old they knew they had a battle on their hands.
The Arizona men showed the fight of wild cats and displayed before the public gaze a couple of little shrimps in the backfield who defied all attempts of the Tigers to stop them.”This site will conduct a countdown in a 100-day period, leading up to Arizona’s 2014 football season-opener with UNLV on Aug. 29 at Arizona Stadium. The 100 Days ‘Til Kickoff countdown will include information daily about the historic 1914 Arizona team that helped create the school’s nickname of “Wildcats” because of how they played that fateful day against Occidental.
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Babe Ruth started his major-league career the same year Arizona became the Wildcats
Not only was Arizona’s nickname “Wildcats” born in 1914, so was the Babe’s historic baseball career.
About a month before the “Varsity” played Occidental in Los Angeles on Nov. 7, 1914, Babe Ruth started his career with the Boston Red Sox on Oct. 2 of that year. He defeated the New York Yankees and also recorded his first major-league hit, a double, off of New York’s Leonard Cole.
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Jim Thorpe, another legendary sports figure, was in only his second season in the major leagues with the San Francisco Giants in 1914. He was two years removed from the unprecedented feat of winning gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon at the Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.
In 1913, those medals were stripped because Thorpe was paid as a minor-league baseball player before the Games. At that time, only amateurs could compete in the Olympics. The medals were reinstated in 1983, 30 years after Thorpe’s passing.
The 1914 Arizona football team that earned the honor of being named the first “Wildcats” was composed of (front row, left to right): Verne La Tourette, George Seeley, Leo Cloud, Richard Meyer, Asa Porter. Second row: Franklin Luis, Lawrence Jackson, Ray Miller, J.F. “Pop” McKale (coach), Turner Smith, Harry Hobson (manager), Orville McPherson, Albert Crawford, Ernest Renaud. Back row: Albert Condron, Emzy Lynch, Charley Beach, Vinton Hammels, Bill Hendry, George Clawson, Harry Turvey.
(AllSportsTucson.com graphic/Photo from University of Arizona Library Special Collections)
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Thorpe’s 14-year Hall of Fame pro football career began in 1915 with Canton (Ohio) Bulldogs.
Arizona’s 1914 football team was likely oblivious to Babe Ruth and how great of a talent he would become. He played most of the 1914 season in the the minor leagues with Baltimore and Providence.
They likely were aware of Thorpe’s exploits, primarily in the Olympics. He did not flourish in football until the 1920s, after his baseball career ended. Baseball was not his best sport as he had a career batting average of .252 in only six seasons. He became an All-Pro in football in 1923.
Ruth and Thorpe were ranked among the top 10 North American athletes in the 20th Century by ESPN. Makes you wonder if any athlete starting his or her career this year will become one of the top 10 athletes of the 21st century.
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Anecdotes about Jim Thorpe helped fuel the Wildcat football team in 1922
Stories of Thorpe’s athleticism impacted Arizona’s program eight years after the 1914 team earned the nickname of “Wildcats”. James H. Pierce, an actor who went on to star as Tarzan in 1932, was hired by J.F. “Pop” McKale as an assistant football coach and head basketball coach in 1922.
Pierce hailed from Freedom, Ind., and was an All-American center for the Indiana football team. He knew of Thorpe when Thorpe was an assistant at Indiana in 1915.
Pierce mentioned in his autobiography that he used anecdotes of Thorpe to the Wildcats in 1922 to motivate them:
“Then there was the legendary Jim Thorpe, who coached one year at Indiana. As an example of his great ability, he could stand on one goal line (and he frequently did this between halves at games as an exhibition to please the audience) and punt to the other one. I told of the time he held a hotel clerk out an eight-story window by the heels for trying to break up a party. My anecdotes made a hit, and I was now an official Wildcat. The teams at Arizona were called Wildcats.”
After spending two years in Tucson, Pierce pursued his acting career in Hollywood. He became a coach for Glendale (Calif.) High School in that area. One of his players at Glendale: John Wayne.
ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He also writes articles for Bleacher Report and Lindy’s College Sports.
