For the last third of a century, wherever Purdue football fans have gathered, elders would regale wide-eyed youngsters with an unimaginable story.
For proof the old-timers would offer a creased game program, a tattered program or a 16-millimeter film clip.
“See, Sonny?” Grandpa would say, shaking his cane at the flickering images on the living-room wall. “I told you Purdue played in the Rose Bowl.”
An invention? Not quite.
For 33 years the 1966 Boilermakers wore the mantle as the university’s only Rose Bowl team. Renowned for producing astronauts Purdue sent more men to the moon than Pasadena.
That all changed this autumn. But Purdue’s run for the Roses hardly has diminished the ’66 team’s place in lore. If anything it has sparked a nostalgic revival. Members of the 1966 Boilermakers have been invited to a university-sponsored pep rally Dec. 30 in Century City, with a private reception to follow.
“We’re trying to get the guys back together,” said Greg Christopher, director of the John Purdue Club. “They’re the heroes of yesteryear.”
“Yesteryear” is precisely the right word. When Purdue ran into the Rose Bowl on Jan. 2, 1967, Joe Paterno had just completed his rookie season at Penn State. A year earlier, Alabama had won a share of the national title with an all-white team. And Bo Schembechler was still three years away from turning Michigan into a modern-day monster.
It was so long ago that Leroy Keyes can only scratch his graying beard as he thinks about it.
“When you sit back and look at the talent this school has produced, I’m almost sad to think it has been that long,” said Keyes, a star running and defensive back on the 1966 team. “We knew we were the first to go there. We never dreamed it would take this long to go back.”
As Keyes spoke during lunch recently, he wore a cream-colored sweater with “Purdue” etched across the front in old gold. Keyes, a John Purdue Club assistant director, is identified closely with that glorious time in the school’s athletic history. So is Bob Griese, the dashing All-America quarterback who went on to a Hall of Fame pro football career before becoming an ABC-TV football analyst.
But while the Boilermakers were talented–they had three All-Americans–they weren’t the best team in the Big Ten; that distinction belonged to No. 2-ranked Michigan State. Purdue wasn’t even the best team in Indiana, having lost to Notre Dame, the eventual national champion.
What set the ’66 Boilermakers apart? As team members looked back this month, they used words such as “work ethic,” “unselfishness” and “teamwork”–terms that seem as dated as the skinny ties worn by their head coach, Jack Mollenkopf.
“It was a very special time, a very exciting time,” said George Catavolos, a 1966 co-captain. “But the thing that I’m proudest of is that, aside from two great players, we just had a lot of guys who worked real hard.”
The team had more than its share of hard-nosed kids from Chicago and the steel towns of Northwest Indiana–players such as fullback Bob Baltzell, who now runs his own agribusiness in Nebraska, as well as linebacker Frank Burke, a GI veteran who made 10 tackles in the Rose Bowl.
“A blue-collar team, that’s what they were,” said Bob DeMoss, an assistant coach who later succeeded Mollenkopf. “We had some good, tough kids. We weren’t going to win any track meets. People used to say, `Griese can’t throw deep.’ I said, `Who’s he going to throw it to?'”
The Boilermakers didn’t strike awe in many teams; in the Rose Bowl USC outgained them 323 yards to 244. But they were smart and inventive. Give them a chance and they would find a way to beat you.
“We had a bunch of no-namers who came on like gangbusters,” former halfback Ed Crowley said.
In that way they’re a lot like the bunch that will represent the university in Pasadena in the coming new year.
“There are a lot of similarities between this team and the ’66 team,” said Catavolos, now the Indianapolis Colts’ assistant head coach. “If you’re making out an All-American team, you probably wouldn’t have many [Boilermakers] on there. The thing is it’s a team game and everybody fits in with what the coaches ask them to do.”
Both teams’ success began over center. The 1966 team was led by Griese, who also served as punter and placekicker. The 2000 Boilermakers ride on the arm of senior quarterback Drew Brees, the Tribune’s Silver Football winner as the Big Ten MVP.
Through a strange coincidence both teams lost to Notre Dame and Michigan State (this year’s Boilermakers also fell to Penn State).
Like this year, when Purdue stumbled to a 3-2 start, the 1966 Boilermakers did not have an auspicious beginning. After shelling Ohio University 42-3, the Boilermakers took the bus over to South Bend and lost 26-14 at Notre Dame.
Purdue rebounded to beat Southern Methodist 35-23, Iowa 35-0 and Michigan 22-21. But then came a 41-20 pounding at No. 2 Michigan State.
That loss virtually eliminated the Boilermakers from Big Ten title contention. But because the conference didn’t allow repeat Rose Bowl appearances, the Boilermakers knew the second-place team would go to Pasadena. Victories over Illinois (25-21) and Wisconsin (23-0) set the stage for the Rose Bowl clincher at Minnesota.
When the Boilermakers returned from Minneapolis after a 16-0 victory, thousands of fans, many of them clutching bouquets of roses, greeted them.
That crowd was nothing compared with the horde that went West with the Boilermakers. The team went first-class all the way. Players met Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn (the name as published has been corrected in this text) and Charlton Heston, who had yet to become known as Hollywood’s biggest Northwestern fan.
The hoopla grew to such a pitch that Mollenkopf moved the team into a monastery the night before the game. But the Boilermakers couldn’t escape the tension. Back then the Rose Bowl was easily the biggest college football game of the year, even if the Sugar, Cotton and Orange sometimes eclipsed it in poll importance.
“On the first play, Griese and [running back] Perry Williams ran into each other,” DeMoss said. “Everybody was a little bit nervous, to be honest.”
The game settled down into a tense defensive struggle in front of 101,455. Purdue was clinging to a 14-7 lead on short touchdown runs by Williams when USC’s Troy Winslow hit Rod Sherman for a 19-yard score with 2 minutes 28 seconds to play.
Trojans coach John McKay, himself a former Purdue halfback, had to decide whether to kick the game-tying point-after or play for the victory. It was a no-brainer. The offense stayed on the field.
“You don’t go to the Rose Bowl to tie,” DeMoss said. “We’d have done the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot.”
The Trojans tried to pass for the two-pointer. Catavolos picked it off to seal Purdue’s victory.
As the seventh-ranked Boilermakers returned to the Midwest, they looked like a team on the rise. Although Griese was graduating Keyes was only a sophomore, as was Williams.
The next year the Boilermakers tied for the Big Ten title with Minnesota and Indiana, blowing the outright crown in a season-ending loss to the hated Hoosiers. But even if Purdue had finished alone in first, it still would have spent the holidays at home because of the Big Ten’s no-repeat policy.
No one could have guessed that Purdue soon closely would fall behind Michigan and Ohio State, which assumed joint ownership of the Big Ten.
“What happened was those schools didn’t sit back on their laurels,” Keyes said. “Michigan, Ohio State, they stockpiled depth. We had the individual talent, but we had no depth.”
As the Boilermakers flamed out each autumn, the 1966 team began to grow in lore. There is a generation of Purdue fans who weren’t even alive when the Boilermakers made their only Rose Bowl appearance.
“Every year that Purdue didn’t go to the Rose Bowl I appreciated it more,” Crowley said. “One of the things that I was most proud of was that we were the only Purdue team to go to the Rose Bowl–and we won.”
The ’66 team has remained close over the years. Whenever they have returned for campus reunions, they have wondered when–or if–another Purdue team would repeat their feat.
Now that another finally has, the ’66 Boilermakers are ready to celebrate.
“When you go to the Rose Bowl, people say, `Hey, this program is on track,'” Keyes said. “Hopefully we don’t have to wait 34 more years.”
