Taps

On the second day of the new year taps were sounded this week for the 1938 college football season. While 215,000 fans watched the ceremonies in New Orleans, Miami, Pasadena and Dallas, millions of stay-at-homes, by their radios, followed events in the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl.

In New Orleans' Sugar Bowl, undefeated, untied Texas Christian, generally considered the No. 1 football team of 1938, pitted its famed passing attack against the aggressive line play of once-defeated (by Notre Dame) Carnegie Tech. At half-time it looked as if Texas Christian's little Davey O'Brien, most sensational footballer of the year (he completed 93 out of 167 passes), might become the disappointment of the finale. The Scoreboard read Carnegie Tech 7, Texas Christian 6-- because little Davey had failed to kick the extra point. But in the second half, Quarterback O'Brien resumed his role of hero, led his team to another touchdown and kicked a last-quarter field goal that not only gave Texas Christian the game, 15-to-7, but stamped it as one of the greatest football teams of the decade.

In Miami's Orange Bowl, under a hot sun, an undefeated, untied Tennessee team, which most experts rate second to Texas Christian, showed that it deserved its reputation by drubbing a praiseworthy Oklahoma eleven, undefeated Big Six champions, 17-to-0.

In Pasadena's Rose Bowl, in an off-&-on drizzle, a powerful, versatile Southern California team which had given Notre Dame its only defeat of the season, tried desperately to gain the distinction of being the first eleven to cross the goal line of the 1938 Duke team. Though they outrushed the Easterners by 135 yards to 86, outpassed them by 84 yards to 53, not until the final minute did they succeed. Then with four magnificent forward passes, as dramatic as a Hollywood scenario, the Pacific Coast champions smudged Duke's clean slate, 7-to-3.

In Dallas' Cotton Bowl, twice-defeated St. Mary's (of California) handed ambitious Texas Tech (pride of the Panhandle) its first defeat (20-to-13) after ten victories in a row.

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