Arizona State University Football
Arizona State University traces its origins to 1886, when the Territorial Normal School was
established in Tempe. The school organized its first football team in 1896. Professor
Frederick M. Irish, the science teacher, was the first coach for the team. There were no
special facilities for football at that time. Games were usually played on a plowed dirt field.
Students helped prepare the playing field and sewed padding into sweaters and pants to make
their own uniforms.
The first interscholastic game was played on February 28, 1897, against the Phoenix Indian
School Indians. The Indians, known as one of the best teams in Arizona, beat the Normals
by a score of 38-20. The football team usually played only a few games each season. Their
regular opponents were the Phoenix Indian School, University of Arizona, and Phoenix Union
High School.
Charles Haigler, who was born in the mining town of Globe, Arizona, and grew up in Tempe,
became Tempe's first star athlete. He joined the first Normal School football team in 1896,
when he was 17 years old. After a few years of training, he emerged as the star of the 1899
season. In the team's first game against the University of Arizona on Thanksgiving Day,
1899, the fast-running fullback was unstoppable. Haigler "hit the U of A line like a thousand
bricks" and led the Normals to an 11-2 victory. After several years at the Tempe Normal
School, he went on to play for the University of Southern California Trojans, where the star
running back was known as "Arizona Charlie."
In 1922, the Normal School football team became known as the Bulldogs. Through the
1920s, they continued to play local high schools and Indian schools, and the Flagstaff Normal
School and the University of Arizona. However, big changes were taking place at Tempe's
teacher training school. In 1925, the Normal School officially became a four-year teachers
college. Along with the change in the school's status, the Bulldogs faced their first
out-of-state opponent that year -- the Texas School of Mines (now the University of Texas at
El Paso).
Arthur J. Matthews had been president of the Normal School since 1900. He had encouraged student athletics, but he believed that school sports should be for student recreation and physical fitness, and not for public entertainment. When Ralph Swetman became president of Arizona State Teachers College in 1930, one of the changes that he wanted to make was to turn the school's football games into big community events. Swetman knew that a successful football program would help generate public support for the college. He hired Ted Shipkey,
an All-American player from Stanford University, to coach the Bulldogs. Shipkey took the team's talented athletes -- which included "Skipper" Dick, Norris Steverson, Landon Hardesty, and Horace Smitheran -- and turned them into a winning team.
President Swetman also played a leading role in forming the Border States Intercollegiate
Athletic Conference. The ASTC team would no longer be playing against Arizona high
schools; they would now start competing against other Southwestern colleges. The Bulldogs,
along with the Flagstaff Lumberjacks and Arizona Wildcats, joined the New Mexico Lobos,
the New Mexico State Aggies, and the Texas Miners in the Border Conference.
The true test for the new Bulldogs came on October 30, 1931. Playing at home under the
newly installed lights at Irish Field, they met their traditional rivals, the University of Arizona
Wildcats. Throughout the game, the Bulldogs dominated the field. To the delight of
thousands of local fans, the Bulldogs won their first varsity football victory over Arizona
since 1899. The final score: Arizona State, 19 -- Arizona, 6. The Bulldogs went on to claim
their first Border Conference championship title.
Arizona State Teachers College struggled for survival during the Great Depression. There
was not enough money in the budget to pay everyone's salary. Since football had little to do
with training teachers, Ted Shipkey was among those that were fired. But the new president,
Grady Gammage, still wanted to maintain the football program. He hired Rudy Lavik, former
coach at Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff, to lead the Bulldogs.
In 1937, Lavik became athletic director for the college and Dixie Howell was hired as head
football coach. Howell had been an All-American quarterback at Alabama and the star of the
1935 Rose Bowl. Under his leadership, the Bulldogs gained national attention for the first
time. After winning their second Border Conference title in 1939, they went to the 1940 Sun
Bowl in El Paso. They again won the conference championship in 1940 and returned to the
Sun Bowl in 1941. But Howell's chance to build an impressive football team was cut short.
Many young men enlisted in the armed forces during the Second World War, and few were
left to form a team. After the 1942 season, there was no intercollegiate sports program until
the end of the war.
After the war, Arizona State Teachers College became a four-year liberal arts college, and
was renamed Arizona State College. Soon a new name was proposed for the football team --
the Sun Devils. Renowned animator Walt Disney drew up a new logo, and "Sparky," the
grinning devil with a pitchfork, replaced the Pete the Bulldog as the school's mascot.
The Arizona State College Sun Devils were led by a number of coaches, including Ed
Doherty (1947-1950), Larry Siemering (1951), and Clyde Smith (1952-1954). In 1955, Dan
Devine was hired as the head football coach. Although he stayed for only three years,
Devine made great progress toward gaining national recognition for the Sun Devils. In 1957,
a year in which the Sun Devils crushed the University of Arizona, 47-7, the team went
undefeated and was ranked eleventh in national standings by the Associated Press poll.
However, Arizona State did not receive an invitation to a bowl game that year. At the end of
the season, Devine resigned to take a job as head coach at Missouri.
Assistant coach Frank Kush became head coach of the Sun Devils in 1958. The former
All-American lineman from Michigan State would continue to build Arizona State's reputation
as a major national contender in collegiate football. Kush's tough stance with his players in
that first season demonstrated his disciplinary style of coaching that would eventually produce
several winning teams. After their undefeated 1957 season, the 1958 team lost three of its
first five games. Kush realized that they lacked motivation. So, when the Sun Devils had a
long layover during a flight to Michigan for a game against Detroit University, he had his
players practice in Kansas City while they were waiting to catch the next plane. In addition,
he had his starting players sit out for the first half of the game. This strict approach worked.
The Sun Devils beat Detroit, 27-6, and went on to win the rest of their games that year.
In 1960, the Sun Devils played Washington State, their first Pacific Coast Conference
opponent. To get opportunities to play against more competitive teams, ASU switched from
the Border Conference to the newly organized Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in 1962.
The following season, the team held an 8-1 record, beat the University of Arizona with a
score of 35-6, and finished fourteenth in the national collegiate standings in the United Press
International poll.
In 1970, the Sun Devils went undefeated, winning the WAC championship. They were
invited to play in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia, that year, where they defeated North
Carolina. The team finished the season ranked number six in the nation in the Associated
Press poll. The Sun Devils continued to be a winning team for many more years. From
1971 to 1973, quarterback Danny White led a team that was an offensive powerhouse, with
32 wins and only 4 losses over the three year period. During this time, they won the first
three Fiesta Bowls, defeating Florida State in 1971, Missouri in 1972, and Pittsburgh in 1973.
The 1975 Sun Devil team was known as the "Crunch Bunch." In the final game of the
season, the Sun Devils played their old rivals, the UA Wildcats, for the WAC championship.
It was one of the most memorable games in the school's history. Wide receiver John
Jefferson turned the game around in ASU's favor when he made a spectacular catch, diving
into the end zone for a touchdown. Years later, fans still talked about "The Catch." The Sun
Devils went on to defeat Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl, and ended the season ranked number
two in the nation. Frank Kush was named coach of year by the American Football Coaches
Association.
The Sun Devils' pre-season training camp, Camp Tontozona, was built near Payson in 1960.
The camp had long been used as a retreat and conference center for the university. Without
permission from administration officials, Coach Kush had a playing field carved out of the
hills by a construction company that was doing road work nearby. He then turned to the Sun
Angels and several influential members of the Board of Regents to help persuade Athletic
Director Clyde Smith to support the idea of a football training camp.
In 1931, Arizona State Teachers College was one of the founding schools of the Border
Conference. During the thirty years that it was a member, Arizona State won seven
conference titles. In 1962, the Sun Devils joined the Western Athletic Conference (WAC),
which ASU helped organize, along with the universities of Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and
New Mexico, and Brigham Young University. In 1967, the conference added Colorado State
University and the University of Texas at El Paso. The Sun Devils won seven WAC titles.
The Sun Devils continued to seek better teams to play. They had consistently dominated the
Western Athletic Conference. To gain the top national standings, they had to play some of
the best college teams in the country. In 1978, ASU and UA joined the Pacific Athletic
Conference, and the PAC-8 became the PAC-10. Now the Sun Devils play regularly
scheduled games against such outstanding teams as Washington and University of Southern
California. In 1986, ASU won the PAC-10 conference title and went on to defeat the
Michigan Wolverines in the 1987 Rose Bowl.
See an
"ASU Football History
Video" [outside link to ASU Athletics, June 2006, (broadband connection
required)]
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