Old Blues See Hints Of 1951’s Glory Days

If you were a member of the Cal football team in 1951, you had to wake up at 8 a.m., climb up to Memorial Stadium and clean it before every practice and every game.

If you were a member of the Cal football team in 1951, you wore leather caps, wore no pads and had no face mask.

If you were a member of the Cal football team in 1951, you didn’t have the luxury of playing on Momentum Turf. If it rained, you played in the mud.

But if you were a member of the Cal football team in 1951, you were a part of, for at least a week, the No. 1 football team in the country.

“When you’re young, like I was back in 1951, you just think about playing. Just being a part of all of this,” says Vincent Maiorana, a starting offensive guard for that 1951 team.

Today, the times are different. The uniforms are different. But at No. 2 in the nation, Cal finds itself at its highest ranking since that 1951 team. The times may be changing, but the Bears are finally, almost, back on top.

“The whole thing speaks for itself,” says Maiorana. “They’ve done a marvelous job. The coaches have done a great job. It’s nice to see them back to where they belong.”

But if there were a difference between now and then, it would be that, in the 1950s, Cal was considered a perennial powerhouse.

Coach Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf resurrected a Bears program that had incurred eight losing seasons before he arrived in 1947. Waldorf led Cal to three consecutive undefeated seasons from 1948 to 1950, when the Bears won the Pacific Coast Conference and made trips to Rose Bowls.

In fact, starting in 1948, the Bears went undefeated for 21 straight regular season games, until the 1951 season, when then-No. 1 Cal lost 21-14 to USC at Memorial Stadium.

“I remember when I was a young man coming out of Southern California, being recruited by several schools and choosing to go to the University of California, well they had gone to the Rose Bowl for three straight years,” says Jim Hanifan, a freshman tight end for the 1951 team. “It was the place to go.”

Today, Cal may not be mentioned in the same breath as “traditional” powers like Ohio State, Michigan or USC, but the Bears have done their share of recruiting, bringing in four- and five- star recruits like Marshawn Lynch and DeSean Jackson the last several years.

It’s this ability to bring in talent that Hanifan cites as one of the reasons why current Cal coach Jeff Tedford has been able to turn a once bottom-dwelling football team into the No. 2 program in the country.

“You’ve got a really good coaching staff. You’ve got a hell of a coach,” says Hanifan. “Then you’ve got a group of fellas that they’ve brought together and they’ve recruited to the university and they’re playing the game the right way.”

But before the Bears reached the height they have recently, Cal was not among college football’s elite.

In fact, after 1952 there were only two years before the Tedford era in which the Bears were ranked in the top 10—1968, when the team obtained a No. 8 ranking, and 1991, when Cal finished at No. 8.

It was quite different from the days of Waldorf.

“I really hoped that they would (have achieved what the 1951 team achieved),” Maiorana said. “There were times when they touched upon it and it looked like it was going to happen, but then they would fall back.”

It hasn’t been until now, under Tedford, that it has happened. And the excitement that it brings can be felt far beyond the confines of Memorial Stadium.

The Sunday after the Bears’ 2007 season-opening win against Tennessee, Maiorana went to church like he always does. During the Roman Catholic ceremony of communion, Maiorana, instead of saying the traditional Amen, Maiorana whispered “go bears.”

That’s how much that victory over the Volunteers—and this winning tradition—means to Maiorana.

“When I was at the Tennessee game, and I have been going to games prior to that, it kind of epitomized what I was feeling,” says Maiorana. “You can see, looking across the stadium and see the old excitement back. You can see the young people enjoying it and you can see the old people enjoying it right with them.”

Tags: