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1941 Longhorns - Cool Photo

Steamboat1874

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Valmy77

Valmy77 13239

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8 minutes ago, SnowAggy said:

Cool photo.

Makes you wonder if all these guys fought in the war (I presume yes) and if they all survived ( I presume no).

Yeah most of them ended up in the war I think. A few of them died, I know one of the guys on that team died in a training accident during the war not far from Austin.

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Hiphopopotamos

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AAS story about this team - from 2012:

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The last of the '41 Horns is gone, but magazine cover keeps players, season timeless

 
 
By
  • The black and white photos of the 14 young men, all handsome, all in their prime, still stare from the cover of a Life magazine that was published seven decades ago.

The story of how those 14 University of Texas football players arrived on the cover of the country's popular magazine, and what they accomplished - first as Longhorns, then later as husbands, fathers and businessmen - has survived the decades.

 
 

But now, none of them are left. The last Longhorn that was immortalized on Life's Nov. 17, 1941, cover died this month.

Julian Garrett, a lineman who was described by his daughter as a giant of a man with the gentlest of souls, was buried last Wednesday next to his wife, Peggy, in a cemetery in Orange that dates to the 19th century. Garrett died Jan. 7, three days after he turned 94. The day before his birthday, Garrett told his daughter and son that he was ready to go.

"The last couple of years, he'd say, ‘All my friends are gone. I've pretty much outlived all of them,' " said Tom Garrett, his son.

Though no one is left to swap tales of games and glory, this Texas story, back when the Longhorns wore leather helmets and played both ways, is timeless. There's an argument to be made that the 1941 Longhorns were the most impactful squad in the history of the Texas program.

It was the first Texas football team to reach the No. 1 ranking. That year saw the program's first consensus All-Americans. The Longhorns that season secured the inaugural hat-inspired trophy for the winner of the Texas-Oklahoma game at the State Fair. And because of the 1941 Longhorns, fans first burned red candles at a hex rally against Texas A&M. They even escorted the team with a torchlight parade, another tradition that still lives today.

UT won its first six games of the season, three by shutouts. After a 34-0 win over Southern Methodist, the Longhorns reached No. 1 in the polls and seemed destined for the Rose Bowl. SMU coach Matty Bell proclaimed UT as "the greatest team in Southwest Conference history ... even better than my Rose Bowl team of 1935." When the Longhorns arrived back at their dormitory from beating the Mustangs, "Miss Grif," the house mother, placed a long-stemmed rose on each plate at the dinner table.

 
 

The Texas charm captured the fancy of Life editors, who sent a photographer to Austin in early November.

Back then, the publicity value of landing a Life cover was incalculable for a school of 11,000 students and a town of fewer than 90,000 residents.

"To be on the cover of Life magazine, to be featured, it was enormous," said Texas athletic department spokesman Bill Little, whose online columns often focus on the colorful history of the program. "Nothing in today's media can compare to Life magazine."

Life's eight-page spread on the Longhorns focused on campus life as well as on 50-year-old head coach Dana Xenophon Bible, who would later be selected to the College Football Hall of Fame. The story dubbed Texas as "the biggest, richest university in the south," though it stated that as late as 1923, just before oil bubbled forth from West Texas, the school was "largely a forlorn community of shacks."

The magazine went with the 14 players, but could have picked one of Texas' stars as its lone cover boy. There was Jack Crain, nicknamed "Cowboy" and "the Nocona Nugget." Or Noble Doss, who caught the famous pass in Texas' 1940 upset of Texas A&M, the defending national champions. Or end Mal Kutner, who became Texas' first All-American. Or Pete Layden, that season's leading scorer, rusher and passer who was so athletically gifted, he went on to a professional football and baseball career.

Garrett, who was a 6-foot-4-inch starting lineman, could have carried the cover just with his All-American appeal. One observer said Garrett was known as the most handsome player on the team. Garrett's son said Nellie Connally — then a team tutor and the wife of future governor John Connally — once described his dad as the most eligible man on campus.

But Life's photographer took 14 individual portraits — the 11 starters, plus three key reserves — for the cover. The week before, Life's cover featured American actress Gene Tierney. The three weeks following, the magazine went with World War II themes, including General Douglas MacArthur and a U.S. bomber plane. The Longhorns cover was the only one that year that Life featured so many people.

Inside that Nov. 17, 1941, issue, photos showed men dressed in business suits cheering at games. Women donned dresses with corsages pinned to them. Even Bible, who relied on poetry to inspire his team in big games, sported a fedora, dark suit and a cigar on the sidelines.

Making the Life cover put the Longhorns in select company; it was one of only two covers devoted to sports that year. In the summer, Life featured Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, who was tearing up the major leagues on his way to a .406 batting average.

But, alas, Texas fell victim to a cover jinx.

As the issue, which cost a dime and was read by more than 13 million people, was being produced, the Longhorns suffered through two games that made national headlines.

The first was a 7-7 tie in Waco against Baylor, in which Texas played without four injured starters. Doss, playing with an injured arm, dropped what could have been the winning touchdown pass. It was the same type of over-the-shoulder pass that he caught in 1940 that set up the winning score against the Aggies, a play still considered to be one of the most significant in team history.

In interviews before the Longhorns played in the 2005 Rose Bowl, Doss — a team man, first and foremost — said he never got over letting his friends and teammates down against Baylor.

That following week, Texas lost to TCU 14-7, two days before the Life issue came out. The 6-1-1 Longhorns dropped to No. 10 in the national polls.

Next up was No. 2-ranked Texas A&M, a Thanksgiving game in College Station, where the Longhorns hadn't won since 1923.

A group of Texas students consulted Augusta Hipple, an Austin fortune teller, on what to do to break the maroon jinx. She advised them to burn red candles, the precursor to today's hex rally tradition. The Longhorns won, 23-0.

Texas had one more game to play — against Oregon, on Dec. 6 — as bowls jockeyed for teams. Three of the four bowls desired the Longhorns. Texas turned down invitations from the Orange and Sugar, aiming instead for the Rose Bowl. But the Rose invited Texas with a caveat — it wanted the Longhorns to cancel their home game against the Ducks.

The Rose Bowl's other team was Oregon State, which very nearly had been upset earlier in the season by Oregon. The committee, fearing a potential Texas loss, didn't want to invite the Longhorns outright, risking a tarnishing of the New Year's game.

Bible, however, informed the Rose Bowl that "we don't cancel games." So Texas didn't receive an invitation.

Bible, in his pre-game chat with the team, eschewed gentle poetry and told his Longhorns that they needed to post a huge, decisive victory over the Ducks.

Texas won, 71-7. Eight players — even the blocking back — scored touchdowns.

Bill Sansing, now 91 but at the time a cub reporter covering the game, still remembers Bible's postgame words in the locker room.

"We beat them to death," Sansing recalled last week, quoting Bible.

Within hours, however, all celebrations stopped. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor the following day.

Texas finished ranked as the nation's fourth-best team. The Rose Bowl picked Duke to face Oregon State and moved the bowl game from the West Coast to Durham, N.C., because of concerns about safety. But by then, in the face of war, college football had turned irrelevant.

Sixteen Longhorn players in the senior class joined the Armed Forces. Chal Daniel, an All-America guard who was shown in the third row of photos on that Life cover, was killed in an Army training accident in 1943. Another teammate lost his life in a bombing raid over Europe one year later.

Garrett was recruited to the civilian ship-building business, which was so vital to the U.S. war effort. He helped supervise the building of ships that transported several teammates to battle sites in the South Pacific.

After the war, Texas' 13 survivors from that 1941 Life cover settled into their own lives.

Crain became a state legislator. Wally Scott earned his law degree and created the framework for the Longhorn Foundation. Doss went into the insurance business. Buddy Jungmichel was hired by Blair Cherry — Bible's hand-picked successor at Texas — as an assistant coach.

Doss, Kutner, Layden and Spec Sanders enjoyed professional football careers.

Henry Harkins became an oil executive and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the university.

In February 2009, Doss became the 13th player from the Life cover to die, leaving only Garrett to keep alive the first-hand stories from 1941.

Now, they're all gone. But even with Garrett's death, those Longhorns — just like the stories from that season — still live on, ageless, thanks to the cover of a magazine that has lasted through the decades.

Edited by Hiphopopotamos
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Dnaguy

Dnaguy 12000

Posted
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3 hours ago, SnowAggy said:

Cool photo.

Makes you wonder if all these guys fought in the war (I presume yes) and if they all survived ( I presume no).

Cool photo.

Makes you wonder if all these guys contracted VD (I presume yes) and if they all got the proper antinbiotics (I presume no)

Makes you wonder all these guys smoked (I presume yes) and if they all went cancer free (I presume no)

Makes you wonder if all these guys chidren weren't vacicnated (I presume yes) and if all their children lived to 18 (I presume no)

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jdhorn92

jdhorn92 1552

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58 minutes ago, ztejas said:

On the national title - I'm assuming UT only claims AP or/and Coaches Poll titles? Because in 1970 we didn't finish #1 in the AP but did in the UPI. Obviously the other 3 claimed are completely undisputed. 

Ask a Bama fan how its done.  They claim 17.

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Bevo in VA

Bevo in VA 342

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2 hours ago, ztejas said:

On the national title - I'm assuming UT only claims AP or/and Coaches Poll titles? Because in 1970 we didn't finish #1 in the AP but did in the UPI. Obviously the other 3 claimed are completely undisputed. 

UPI poll is the coaches poll.  Name changed in 1990.  Back then, the final coaches poll was released before the bowl game hence the split national championship that year.

Edited by Bevo in VA
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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8349

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Posted (edited)
12 hours ago, Valmy77 said:

Yeah most of them ended up in the war I think. A few of them died, I know one of the guys on that team died in a training accident during the war not far from Austin.

My grandparents were there during and after the war, and I used to see their yearbooks. The names of  the war dead took up pages and pages of the Cactus. 

Edited by MaybeACoordinator
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