season, believing Dobie had encouraged a strike by the players. The State College of Washington (it would later become Washington State University) attached to the PCC in 1917, and Stanford came aboard in 1919. USC and Idaho joined in 1922, Montana in 1924, and UCLA in 1928. The Roaring ’20s were proving to be a Golden Age for West Coast football. The first football program to sustain excellence in the PCC was Cal, where the famed “Wonder Teams” of coach Andy Smith went 44–0–4 from 1920 to 1924. The 1920 squad outscored opponents 510–14—a record that in- cluded a 127–0 victory over St. Mary’s—and thrashed Ohio State 28–0 in the Rose Bowl. Smith died of pneumonia while visiting Philadelphia in January of 1926.
As the Golden Bears’ amazing run was coming to an end, rival Stanford was more than ready to step into the void. Famed coach Glenn (Pop) Warner came West in 1924, and his Palo Alto teams would win or share the PCC title in three of the next four years, includ- ing 1926, when the team
went 10–0–1. Bob Waterfield
Warner’s most indelible player was fullback Ernie Nev- ers. Playing against the legendary Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in the 1925 Rose Bowl, Nevers played 60 minutes on two not-quite-
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healed broken ankles, ran for 114 yards, threw a touchdown pass, intercepted a pass, and made several tackles. But he was ruled inches short of the end zone on a key fourth-down play, and Stanford lost 27–10. As Washington coach Enoch Bagshaw once said of Nevers: “He can run like a sprinter through a sliver of an opening or plow like a battleship through a mass of tacklers.”
Meanwhile, USC, which had gotten off to a great start under coach “Gloomy” Gus Henderson, ascended an- other notch after Howard Jones took over in 1925. By the time he left in 1940, Jones would claim seven PCC
titles, five Rose Bowl victories (all of them against Hall of Fame coaches), four national championships, and an overall record of 121–36–13. Washington State, which won the 1916 Rose Bowl before the PCC began play, put together a powerful team in 1929 and 1930, with three future all-pro NFL linemen in Mel Hein, Glen (Turk) Edwards, and George Hurley.
USC was back on top from 1931 to 1933, winning 25 straight in one stretch. But a group of freshmen arrived at Stanford in 1932 and vowed never to lose to the Trojans. Two newspapermen picked up the story and the Stanford class became known as the “Vow Boys.” They lived up to their word, beating the Trojans (and Cal) in three consecutive varsity seasons. The 1939 season marked the first time the PCC claimed two
teams in the final Associated Press Top 20 poll, with USC finishing the season at No. 3 and UCLA at No. 7. The Bruins featured a pair of sensational halfbacks who broke tackles, then broke racial bar- riers. Kenny Washington helped knock down the NFL’s color line by signing with the Los Angeles Rams in 1946, and Jackie Robin- son shattered Major League Baseball’s with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
ASUCLA Photography
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