Today's Tidbit... 1956 Pacific Coast Conference Press Book
I recently acquired a 1956 Pacific Coast Conference Football Press Book, which provides fun information about each member school, including rosters and conference records in a format I had not seen before.
The PCC was the best conference on the West Coast throughout its history. Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, and Washington formed the conference in 1915. Washington State joined in 1917, and Stanford followed in 1918. Idaho and USC came along in 1922, Montana in 1924, and UCLA in 1928. Montana dropped out in 1950, and the conference dissolved in 1959 due to the ongoing California versus Northwest split, cheating scandals, and good old academic and political battles.
The Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) sprang from its ashes, then the Pac-8, -10, and -12. Despite the AAWU being an entirely new organization, it claimed the PCC's history and records as its own. With the pending dissolution of the Pac-12, the press guide representing one of the last years of the PCC illustrates how much college football has changed since then.
Roster Makeup
Football was a far more regional game in 1956 than today, at least based on team rosters. Today's college football rosters have strong representations of players from their home state and region, with numerous others from elsewhere in the country. But things were far more local and regional in 1956. For example, California's entire roster was from California, other than one Nevadan and a Hawaiian.
UCLA had a Michigander, a Tennessean, and a Texan among an otherwise all-California roster. USC had two players from Pennsylvania, one from Idaho and one from Arizona. The rest were Californians. The other teams, especially Oregon State, Washington State, and Idaho, had many players from outside their home state, but the overwhelming majority came from the conference footprint. In the entire conference, only 18 players' hometowns were east of the Mississippi River, not including one Stanford player from Teheran. There was also one player from Canada (British Columbia) and 7 or 8 from T.H., or the Territory of Hawaii.
Nonconference Opponents
Besides the roster composition, PCC teams were somewhat more regional in their nonconference scheduling and mostly played teams from major conferences. Washington State and Idaho, the eighth and ninth-place teams in 1955, played lesser nonconference teams, though two of those teams later joined the Pac-10 or Pac-12. All the other schools' nonconference opponents play in major conferences today, except for one game against San Jose State.
The PCC's preferred nonconference opponents were Big Ten teams (7 of 18), while former Southwest and Big 8 teams, plus Pitt, filled the bill. They did not play any ACC or SEC teams or Eastern Independents not named Pitt.
Individual and Team Records
The Press Book also provided individual and team records in a nice comparative format. The press book listed the 1955 leaders in key offensive and defensive categories for individual and team records, followed by the conference leader in previous years. It's a great way to present a table since it puts the performance from the focal year into perspective.
The Total Offense table shows John Brodie led the conference with 1044 yards.
He also led the conference in passing, blowing away the competition with 1,024 yards for the season, while quarterbacks regularly exceed those numbers in three games today. The previous years' comparison shows Brodie's number fell well short of those from recent years, but even the highest of those numbers fall short of today's.
Another interesting table showed the top scorers among kickers, primarily from kicking PATs, not field goals. Teams did not kick many field goals then because they missed most of them, so the leading scorers among kickers made only four field goals combined. The table illustrates why they widened the goal posts in 1958 and added the two-point conversion in 1959.
Top Coaching Staff
The conference was near capacity with top-flight head coaches in 1956, including Pappy Waldorf at Cal, Red Sanders of UCLA, Len Casanova at Oregon, Tommy Prothro at Oregon State, and Darrel Royal at Washington.
Few assistant coaches jump out for their success as coaches or administrators, though Mel Hein and Pete Kmetovic were exceptional players in their day. Nevertheless, the assistant coach pool included John Ralston at Cal and Ray Nagel of UCLA, while Oregon stole the assistant coach show with John McKay, Jerry Frei, and Lon Stiner. Stiner was long in the tooth then, having coached Oregon State for 14 years, including the 1942 Rose Bowl in Durham.
The PCC lasted 40+ years, and the successor AAWU and Pac-8 to Pac-12 versions stood tall for another 60+ years. Almost 110 years of conference history will go down the tubes next season. Although many conferences have realigned in the past, they have tended to shift regional borders rather than eliminate regions as the locus of conference formation. We are entering a new world, and only time will tell how this will affect the major college football business.
Football Archaeology is reader-supported. Click here to buy one of my books or otherwise support the site.
The names alone are fascinating. These were the days of sanity in terms of scheduling.