History: A football loss I will never forget

[Section 15]

In the thread about Duke's recent 48-0 loss to Virginia, someone commented that they had never witnessed a worse defeat of a Duke football team. That comment brought back memories of just such a defeat, one that will remain with me always and one that revealed to me something that as a young child I hadn't yet realized about those people who play for and support that place on the wrong side of 15-501.

The game was played in Durham on Thanksgiving day, 1959. I was 11 years old, sitting in the stands in what I remember was a cold, off-and-on drizzle. Duke had a decent team that year. Coached by "Smiling Bill" Murray and led by Outland Trophy winner and later Duke coach, Mike McGee, Duke was considered a slight favorite.

It was not to be. By half time, Duke was behind 28-0. In my 11 year-old mind, I figured that if "they" could score 28 points in the first half, then "we" could score at least that many in the second half. That made sense to me.

If you know the history of that game, you know the opposite was true. Those people just kept running up the score. Late in the fourth quarter, leading 42-0, they scored again. Now 48-0, what did they do? You guessed it - they went for two. Final score 50-0.

Yeah classy, but what can you expect from those people? However that wasn't the worst part, nor was it the biggest lesson I learned from that experience. The worst part came next Monday morning when I returned to school. The game had been televised, rare in those days, and I think all my classmates watched the game and magically became big fans of that other team.

Not that I had ever made a big deal of my allegiance to Duke, I knew I was outnumbered, but all I heard the whole week was "50-0," spoken out loud, written on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the room, and scratched on the covers of notebooks where I would see it. You can imagine how much fun that week was.

There is, however, a moral to this story. Despite the defeat of historic proportions and the less than gracious attitude of the victors, the very next year Duke won the ACC title and went on to beat Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's day 1961. I was in the stands that year for wins over Bobby Dodd's Georgia Tech and especially an undefeated and top ten ranked Navy. Yes, the sun will rise again.

To this day, I am proud that I sat though every minute of that game and still believed that the team had a chance to win until the very end (I was always hopeful as a kid). And what was the enduring lesson I learned over 60 years ago? To borrow a phrase, and in my best Tim Allen voice, "9F to infinity and beyond."

Section 15

[4Gen]

In the thread about Duke's recent 48-0 loss to Virginia, someone commented that they had never witnessed a worse defeat of a Duke football team. That comment brought back memories of just such a defeat, one that will remain with me always and one that revealed to me something that as a young child I hadn't yet realized about those people who play for and support that place on the wrong side of 15-501.

The game was played in Durham on Thanksgiving day, 1959. I was 11 years old, sitting in the stands in what I remember was a cold, off-and-on drizzle. Duke had a decent team that year. Coached by "Smiling Bill" Murray and led by Outland Trophy winner and later Duke coach, Mike McGee, Duke was considered a slight favorite.

It was not to be. By half time, Duke was behind 28-0. In my 11 year-old mind, I figured that if "they" could score 28 points in the first half, then "we" could score at least that many in the second half. That made sense to me.

If you know the history of that game, you know the opposite was true. Those people just kept running up the score. Late in the fourth quarter, leading 42-0, they scored again. Now 48-0, what did they do? You guessed it - they went for two. Final score 50-0.

Yeah classy, but what can you expect from those people? However that wasn't the worst part, nor was it the biggest lesson I learned from that experience. The worst part came next Monday morning when I returned to school. The game had been televised, rare in those days, and I think all my classmates watched the game and magically became big fans of that other team.

Not that I had ever made a big deal of my allegiance to Duke, I knew I was outnumbered, but all I heard the whole week was "50-0," spoken out loud, written on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the room, and scratched on the covers of notebooks where I would see it. You can imagine how much fun that week was.

There is, however, a moral to this story. Despite the defeat of historic proportions and the less than gracious attitude of the victors, the very next year Duke won the ACC title and went on to beat Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's day 1961. I was in the stands that year for wins over Bobby Dodd's Georgia Tech and especially an undefeated and top ten ranked Navy. Yes, the sun will rise again.

To this day, I am proud that I sat though every minute of that game and still believed that the team had a chance to win until the very end (I was always hopeful as a kid). And what was the enduring lesson I learned over 60 years ago? To borrow a phrase, and in my best Tim Allen voice, "9F to infinity and beyond."

Section 15

I was eight years old living in Troy, NC. My father was a Methodist minister and a double Dukie. We went out that day and when we got home, over the garage on a big sheet was the score. Inside the parsonage, every room was decorated (and I use that term loosely), in every imaginable way, poking fun. I still remember a dead devil in my parents' bed, gouged by a ram's horn. Those were different days, and believe it or not, I remember them fondly.

Aside: Once, when State beat Duke in football (a rarity), Mr. Jim (whose action was unseen by anyone) strategically spread rye grass in our yard spelling "State". With each day, a green hue became curiouser and curiouser. A great gag, one I also remember.

[sagegrouse]

I was eight years old living in Troy, NC. My father was a Methodist minister and a double Dukie. We went out that day and when we got home, over the garage on a big sheet was the score. Inside the parsonage, every room was decorated (and I use that term loosely), in every imaginable way, poking fun. I still remember a dead devil in my parents' bed, gouged by a ram's horn. Those were different days, and believe it or not, I remember them fondly.

Aside: Once, when State beat Duke in football (a rarity), Mr. Jim (whose action was unseen by anyone) strategically spread rye grass in our yard spelling "State". With each day, a green hue became curiouser and curiouser. A great gag, one I also remember.

Yeah, do't mess with an Ag School -- it could be worse.

I remember hearing of the 50-0 game from my next door neighbor three years older who went to UNC. Meant nothing to me at the moment -- I wasn't a Duke fan until a few months later.

[budwom]

The good thing about being a Duke football fan, there are MANY horrific losses to reminisce about. Back in the George Welsh era at UVa, I remember when they led us 28-0 in the first quarter, causing Welsh to note "it's not my fault if they can't tackle."

[jv001]

I remember the 50-0 whipping Duke took that day. I believe Duke was favored by 7 points. My carolina buddies kidded me not for weeks but for a couple of years. I'm pretty sure they were cheating back then. But I remember another cheat football game. They played Oklahoma and were underdogs but my cheat buddies kept telling me, they may beat us but they won't score many points on us because we've got LT. I think the cheats lost 45-0. Now that was a good day but still not as good as, 82-50.

GoDuke!

[HereBeforeCoachK]

The good thing about being a Duke football fan, there are MANY horrific losses to reminisce about. Back in the George Welsh era at UVa, I remember when they led us 28-0 in the first quarter, causing Welsh to note "it's not my fault if they can't tackle."

Was that the Virginia loss that was so bad, it cause Spurrier to say something like after seeing that game, he did not want to even play Clemson the following week...if it's the season I'm thinking of, that was the game Duke shocked them in. I believe Welsh was the UVa coach then.

[budwom]

Was that the Virginia loss that was so bad, it cause Spurrier to say something like after seeing that game, he did not want to even play Clemson the following week...if it's the season I'm thinking of, that was the game Duke shocked them in. I believe Welsh was the UVa coach then.

Not sure, but I don't think that was a Spurrier era game...but we did get whacked by UVA before the glorious win vs Clemson, a game notable by the presence of the CLemson fan next to me who was cocky and sober at the start of the game and belligerently, nastily drunk by the end of it.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

Not sure, but I don't think that was a Spurrier era game...but we did get whacked by UVA before the glorious win vs Clemson, a game notable by the presence of the CLemson fan next to me who was cocky and sober at the start of the game and belligerently, nastily drunk by the end of it.

Yep...a game where Billy Ray and Randy Cuthbert turned the season around...along with a rain aided defense...and Dave Brown took it from there. (IIRC....off top of head)

[killerleft]

Yep...a game where Billy Ray and Randy Cuthbert turned the season around...along with a rain aided defense...and Dave Brown took it from there. (IIRC...off top of head)

We rushed eight nearly all game long. Clemson could not pass. Chris Port was an offensive lineman who excelled that year. The first Duke touchdown when Cuthbert bullied his way into the end zone with the help of that line from the five-yard line will always remain one of my favorite memories of Duke Football.

[tteettimes]

I also recall that a 9F fan had a Front auto tag“ 50-0”
It kept getting stolen

[HereBeforeCoachK]

We rushed eight nearly all game long. Clemson could not pass. Chris Port was an offensive lineman who excelled that year. The first Duke touchdown when Cuthbert bullied his way into the end zone with the help of that line from the five-yard line will always remain one of my favorite memories of Duke Football.

Yep, that's my memory too. The weather really helped. Cuthbert was a stud. Ironically, it was a season saved by that - but then ended up being an air show with Dave Brown and Clarkston Hines...and Spurriers' worst decision ever in coaching...starting Ray in the Bowl game. As Charles B would say, "turble...just turble..."

[JStuart]

In the thread about Duke's recent 48-0 loss to Virginia, someone commented that they had never witnessed a worse defeat of a Duke football team. That comment brought back memories of just such a defeat, one that will remain with me always and one that revealed to me something that as a young child I hadn't yet realized about those people who play for and support that place on the wrong side of 15-501.

The game was played in Durham on Thanksgiving day, 1959. I was 11 years old, sitting in the stands in what I remember was a cold, off-and-on drizzle. Duke had a decent team that year. Coached by "Smiling Bill" Murray and led by Outland Trophy winner and later Duke coach, Mike McGee, Duke was considered a slight favorite.

It was not to be. By half time, Duke was behind 28-0. In my 11 year-old mind, I figured that if "they" could score 28 points in the first half, then "we" could score at least that many in the second half. That made sense to me.

If you know the history of that game, you know the opposite was true. Those people just kept running up the score. Late in the fourth quarter, leading 42-0, they scored again. Now 48-0, what did they do? You guessed it - they went for two. Final score 50-0.

Yeah classy, but what can you expect from those people? However that wasn't the worst part, nor was it the biggest lesson I learned from that experience. The worst part came next Monday morning when I returned to school. The game had been televised, rare in those days, and I think all my classmates watched the game and magically became big fans of that other team.

Not that I had ever made a big deal of my allegiance to Duke, I knew I was outnumbered, but all I heard the whole week was "50-0," spoken out loud, written on the blackboard when the teacher was out of the room, and scratched on the covers of notebooks where I would see it. You can imagine how much fun that week was.

There is, however, a moral to this story. Despite the defeat of historic proportions and the less than gracious attitude of the victors, the very next year Duke won the ACC title and went on to beat Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's day 1961. I was in the stands that year for wins over Bobby Dodd's Georgia Tech and especially an undefeated and top ten ranked Navy. Yes, the sun will rise again.

To this day, I am proud that I sat though every minute of that game and still believed that the team had a chance to win until the very end (I was always hopeful as a kid). And what was the enduring lesson I learned over 60 years ago? To borrow a phrase, and in my best Tim Allen voice, "9F to infinity and beyond."

Section 15

Ahhh, I think it is still 'too soon'.
I also was at that game. My grandfather had been given tickets, but they were in the unc section, and we sat in front of a 'leather-lunged' heel fan, whose insults to Duke players I can hear still. I was 9, and remember that at one point they were on the one yard line, and failed to score, thus the shutout.

Fast forward to 1976, when I was in my internship year doing internal medicine in the Baylor Medical system in Houston, on the pulmonary rotation at the VA. The attending physician -introducing us all to each other on the first day- discovered I was a Duke Med grad (everyone else was Baylor, or UTexas) and went on a discussion of what was expected of us in that rotation...and somehow segue-ed to how underdogs in the past had followed the example of the unc football team, who traveled to a superior Duke team's stadium in 1959 (when he was an undergrad at CH) and rose up to beat the devils 50-0! He looked right at me as he delivered the line.
I had been up all night on my previous rotation, and I thought.."I've traveled halfway across the country, I have to put up with tarheel crap yet again! I can't excape it" Almost, almost as bad as trying to explain to texicans why barbecue is really pork, and that SWC sports weren't as good as ACC, but I quickly learned that one doesn't argue with Texas.
Later the next spring, I was on ER duty the night Dean played Al McGuire's Marquette team for the NCAA championship. All these Texas interns at halftime were thinking the Warriors (now the Golden Eagles) were going to romp, but I warned them, Dean will get the lead in the late part of the game, and go to the Four Corners, and win going away. Well, with Phil Ford less than 100%, Dean ordered the Four Corners after they tied Marquette in the last few minutes...and McGuire's team was having none of this, and won going away.
Apologies for going off on a tangent, but you started it!
JStuart

[Section 15]

Ahhh, I think it is still 'too soon'.
I also was at that game. My grandfather had been given tickets, but they were in the unc section, and we sat in front of a 'leather-lunged' heel fan, whose insults to Duke players I can hear still. I was 9, and remember that at one point they were on the one yard line, and failed to score, thus the shutout.

Fast forward to 1976, when I was in my internship year doing internal medicine in the Baylor Medical system in Houston, on the pulmonary rotation at the VA. The attending physician -introducing us all to each other on the first day- discovered I was a Duke Med grad (everyone else was Baylor, or UTexas) and went on a discussion of what was expected of us in that rotation...and somehow segue-ed to how underdogs in the past had followed the example of the unc football team, who traveled to a superior Duke team's stadium in 1959 (when he was an undergrad at CH) and rose up to beat the devils 50-0! He looked right at me as he delivered the line.
I had been up all night on my previous rotation, and I thought.."I've traveled halfway across the country, I have to put up with tarheel crap yet again! I can't excape it" Almost, almost as bad as trying to explain to texicans why barbecue is really pork, and that SWC sports weren't as good as ACC, but I quickly learned that one doesn't argue with Texas.
Later the next spring, I was on ER duty the night Dean played Al McGuire's Marquette team for the NCAA championship. All these Texas interns at halftime were thinking the Warriors (now the Golden Eagles) were going to romp, but I warned them, Dean will get the lead in the late part of the game, and go to the Four Corners, and win going away. Well, with Phil Ford less than 100%, Dean ordered the Four Corners after they tied Marquette in the last few minutes...and McGuire's team was having none of this, and won going away.
Apologies for going off on a tangent, but you started it!
JStuart

I figured I wasn't the only person on DBR who was at this game. At least I was sitting on the home side of the stadium. Can't imagine what it must have been like for you on the other side.

I looked at a contemporary newspaper account of the game and came across these gems that I hadn't remembered:

• The loss was the most lopsided score in a college football game to date, eclipsing a 58-12 (46 point margin) victory by Villanova in 1929. Remember that this was the era of 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
  
• When the score was 48-0, the "visitors" fans started chanting "go for fifty, go for fifty" and of course the Carolina coach, Jim Hickey, did.
  
• During the last 20 seconds of the game, when Carolina was on the Duke 4, Hickey put his first team back in in an attempt to score again. Fortunately the clock ran out before they did.
  
• The crowd size was only around 33,000, which was considered a disappointment that was blamed on the fact that the game was held on Thanksgiving day.

Section 15

[JStuart]

I figured I wasn't the only person on DBR who was at this game. At least I was sitting on the home side of the stadium. Can't imagine what it must have been like for you on the other side.

I looked at a contemporary newspaper account of the game and came across these gems that I hadn't remembered:

• The loss was the most lopsided score in a college football game to date, eclipsing a 58-12 (46 point margin) victory by Villanova in 1929. Remember that this was the era of 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
  
• When the score was 48-0, the "visitors" fans started chanting "go for fifty, go for fifty" and of course the Carolina coach, Jim Hickey, did.
  
• During the last 20 seconds of the game, when Carolina was on the Duke 4, Hickey put his first team back in in an attempt to score again. Fortunately the clock ran out before they did.
  
• The crowd size was only around 33,000, which was considered a disappointment that was blamed on the fact that the game was held on Thanksgiving day.

Section 15

Jim Sumner will probably weigh in soon with more data. I remember that there was an annual Duke-unc freshman football game on Thanksgiving Day to benefit the Duke Cerebral Palsy hospital (now named after Lenox Baker)
Football was a much bigger deal then than basketball, and national TV games were few and far between.
But, I digress. Spurrier's team shutting out one of Mack Brown's early teams in Chapel Hill was quite enjoyable.

[budwom]

^ and mocking him by calling him Mr. Football.

[Section 15]

Jim Sumner will probably weigh in soon with more data. I remember that there was an annual Duke-unc freshman football game on Thanksgiving Day to benefit the Duke Cerebral Palsy hospital (now named after Lenox Baker)
Football was a much bigger deal then than basketball, and national TV games were few and far between.
But, I digress. Spurrier's team shutting out one of Mack Brown's early teams in Chapel Hill was quite enjoyable.

Hard to believe that the ACC was formed as primarily a football conference. Maryland and Duke were considered the anchors of the new conference.

Always good to beat UNC. But, I was angry at Spurrier for only winning 41-0. He should have gone for at least 50 and even better more than 50. As my Boston Irish in-laws always would say: "Never forgive, never forget."

Section 15

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

I figured I wasn't the only person on DBR who was at this game. At least I was sitting on the home side of the stadium. Can't imagine what it must have been like for you on the other side.

I looked at a contemporary newspaper account of the game and came across these gems that I hadn't remembered:

• The loss was the most lopsided score in a college football game to date, eclipsing a 58-12 (46 point margin) victory by Villanova in 1929. Remember that this was the era of 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
  
• When the score was 48-0, the "visitors" fans started chanting "go for fifty, go for fifty" and of course the Carolina coach, Jim Hickey, did.
  
• During the last 20 seconds of the game, when Carolina was on the Duke 4, Hickey put his first team back in in an attempt to score again. Fortunately the clock ran out before they did.
  
• The crowd size was only around 33,000, which was considered a disappointment that was blamed on the fact that the game was held on Thanksgiving day.

Section 15

My recall was that Jim Tatum had died unexpectedly a few months before and the UNC team played against Duke in tribute to him.

[Section 15]

My recall was that Jim Tatum had died unexpectedly a few months before and the UNC team played against Duke in tribute to him.

Apparently he died from a tick bite (Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever).

Another factor may have been that the previous year (1958) Duke had knocked UNC out of a sure spot in the Sugar Bowl. That was a sweet treat!

Section 15

[Indoor66]

Apparently he died from a tick bite (Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever).

Another factor may have been that the previous year (1958) Duke had knocked UNC out of a sure spot in the Sugar Bowl. That was a sweet treat!

Section 15

Tatum's son later practiced law in Durham.

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

Tatum's son later practiced law in Durham.

And Coach Tatum's wife was a teacher at a school where I was principal.