The Undefeated

By Don Wade

On Saturday night, Sept. 21, 1963, when the University of Mississippi football team came to Memphis to play the Tigers, no seat was left unsold inside old Crump Stadium. A capacity crowd of 31,650 would attend, and many other diehards were turned away.

“Hundreds of last-ditch hopefuls still clustered outside the gates hoping for a reprieve from the vigilant guards,” read one newspaper account. “A reporter driving into the stadium was offered $3.45 — ‘All I have’ — by a young man who wanted to hide in the trunk of his automobile.”

Ole Miss had defeated Memphis State in the first 17 games of the series and had not been shut out in its previous 47 games overall, a remarkable accomplishment in an era when low-scoring, defensive battles were common.

On this night, both streaks ended. The Tigers played the Rebels to a 0-0 tie. It proved to be the Tigers’ closest call in their first undefeated season since 1938 and only one since.

It Didn’t Feel Like A Tie

Ole Miss entered the game carrying a No. 2 national ranking. The previous season coach Johnny Vaught’s team had gone 10-0 and won the Southeastern Conference and the Sugar Bowl.

Come game time, none of that would matter.

The Memphis State defense was impenetrable – allowing just 57 yards rushing, making a heroic goal line stand and intercepting three passes. Hiding in the trunk of a car lined up in the Ole Miss backfield was about the only way anyone was going to crash Memphis State’s end zone.

“Somebody racked me up,” Ole Miss running back Buck Randall would say of his own failed goal-line carry.

That somebody, no doubt, was No. 75, John Fred Robilio, who made several key tackles around the goal line and earned National Player of the Week honors.

As Chuck Brooks, a Tigers All-American, later said: “Hitting people was fun.”

Of course, Ole Miss did some hitting of its own. Memphis running back Dave Casinelli, who won the NCAA rushing title that season to become the first MSU player ever to lead the nation in a major statistical category, was stopped just inches from a touchdown in the first quarter. The Tigers’ Billy Fletcher had a 32-yard field goal attempt in the fourth quarter that fell short.

“At the time, and maybe it was just in my mind, I felt like we were dominating the game,” Memphis State lineman Wiley Patterson said, recalling the game 59 years later. “I remember saying I was sorry the game ended so soon because I felt like we could have won it.”

Sportswriters of the day passed their own judgments.

“Memphis State youngsters came off the field chattering to each other, exchanging congratulations,” wrote the Commercial Appeal’s David Bloom. “If nobody else regarded this feat as a victory, it’s a cinch they did — and should.”

Boys Will Be Boys

Tigers coach Billy “Spook” Murphy had huge hopes for junior lineman Bob Finamore, but Finamore never played a down in 1963. While Brooks, Casinelli, Harry Schuh and Russell Vollmer were the team’s stars, Finamore didn’t even get to put his hand in the dirt.

He broke his ankle just weeks before the season started.

“I was depressed, especially when they traveled,” said Finamore. “I was back in the school’s empty dormitory, getting around on my crutches, just trying to survive.”

Murphy and his staff were renowned for their recruiting and preparation. Players came from near and far – from the Northeast to the Midwest to the Deep South.

Chicago alone gave the Tigers the likes of tackle Dick Quast, back Bob Sherlag and center John Cronin. 

Herb Cummings, who backed up Cronin, said: “He was a strong sucker, but he had a temper and would get kicked out of games, and I’d get to play.”

Depth and versatility mattered. Also, substitution rules were restrictive. 

“We played both ways,” Quast said. “If we lost the ball, we’d play defense until the coach could send in the defensive unit.”

They did whatever they had to do. And, well, a few things they didn’t have to do. Sherlag, on the occasion of the team’s 50-year reunion in 2013, recalled that guys would employ lit cigarettes to ignite cherry bombs in dorm trash cans.

“Nobody got hurt,” he said. “But you couldn’t hear too well for a while.”

Meanwhile, on the field, the Tigers let the college football world know who they were by blasting opponents.

“You could hear the helmets cracking each other,” Patterson said.

Said Quast: “We had some nasty people on that team.”

‘Put A Sponge On It’

On Oct. 26, 1963, at Crump Stadium against Mississippi State, quarterback Russ Vollmer — Mr. Do Everything — made his legend.

He took the opening kickoff 78 yards to set up the Tigers’ first score. Then, in the second quarter, he was returning a punt when he cut toward the sideline on the south side of the field and was, as one sports scribe put it, knocked into the “top step of the deep, black hole that leads to the dressing room tunnel.”

Vollmer landed on his back. The Tigers, trailing 10-9 at halftime, looked to be in a dire situation when Vollmer went to the emergency room of nearby Methodist Hospital for X-rays (they were negative).

Russ’s brother Richard accompanied him to the hospital, and, as the story goes, heard the Tigers’ quarterback proclaim, “I don’t give a damn if it is hurt! Let’s put a sponge on it and it will be all right.”

When Vollmer returned to Crump, the third quarter already underway, the crowd cheered at the sight of him.

Suddenly, the mood shifted.

“It was like everybody said, ‘We’re gonna win now. Russ is back!,’ ” Quast said. “It was a charge.”

Vollmer made good on those hopes by leading the Tigers on a 70-yard game-winning drive in the fourth quarter, Memphis State prevailing 17-10.

Postgame, everyone was still talking about the play that sent Vollmer to the hospital and whether the defensive players had taken a cheap shot. Mississippi State coach Paul Davis said no, adding, “He was right on the sideline when our boys hit him. Vollmer’s own momentum carried him over the wire.”

Whatever the facts, officials penalized the defense 15 yards. Vollmer only learned of this later.

“That’s good …” he told reporters, adding that he was a step out of bounds when he got hit and “flew through the air.”

The Season Lives On

Memphis State finished with a 9-0-1 record and landed at No. 14 in the UPI Coaches Poll, still the highest final ranking in school history.

But there would be no bowl game. Anticipating an invitation from the more prestigious Gator Bowl, the team voted to turn down the invitation in hand from the Sun Bowl. The Gator Bowl bid never came.

“We could have beaten anybody in the country,” Quast said. “I was sure of that.”

As it was, they had managed to go undefeated against every team that stood before them.Six decades removed from that wondrous year, the men still alive today who helped make it happen say in some ways the season never ended.

Quast, who went into manufacturing and became a vice president, and who had two sons play linebacker at the University of Iowa, said that 1963 “prepared me for the rest of my life.”

Finamore, who for many years was a high school football assistant coach in New Jersey with several state titles on his resume, made much use of what he learned from Murphy and the Tigers staff.

“On offense, we ran all the Memphis State plays, the Wing-T,” Finamore said of his time as a coach.

Cummings recalled the resolve they had even as Vollmer was in a hospital ER and the score tilted in their opponents’ favor.

“We never had a defeatist attitude,” he said. “Murphy never allowed that.”

Added Quast: “Everybody covered everybody. Everybody worked together.”

It was, if not a perfect season, the next best thing, and one to be forever remembered.

“It’s a record that we have and I’m very, very proud of,” Quast said. “I’ve got a special place in my heart for that year.”