Traveling Seminoles
By Jim Joanos
Tallahassee is a great place for athletic events. The FSU sports venues are among the best and the town is quite hospitable. However, following Florida State athletics teams on the road is not bad either. Many Seminole fans regularly attend away games. As a university boasting a major sports program, an FSU team has played in nearly every state of the union one time or another as well as in a number of other countries. It is fun to listen to long time FSU fans talk about their traveling experiences. I have heard some really funny stories about some experiences in Chicago and South Bend in regard to the 1993 football game against Notre Dame, as well as some about Dallas at the end of the 1991 football season when FSU played Texas A & M in the Cotton Bowl. There are lots of tales about how big and good the steaks are in Omaha when the College Baseball World Series is played. The Carolina barbecue is reportedly very best at ACC basketball tournaments in Charlotte. Those that went with the Baseball team to Hawaii or the Basketball team to France have lots to say. I get jealous when I hear somebody talk about being in Tampa for our first football bowl game or in Los Angeles when the University of Southern California beat us by five points for the NCAA National Basketball Championship in 1972.
Many of us could draw up a list of our favorite road trips. I doubt that any two lists would be remotely similar. Let me tell you about a few of my trips.
Dothan, Alabama, 1948
I will always remember my first out of town FSU football game. I was fourteen years old. My older brother, Mike, an FSU student at the time, was a good guy. No matter how obnoxious I was as a teenager, he did not mind having me around. On the Saturday following Thanksgiving in 1948, he allowed me to ride up to Dothan, Alabama, with him and one of his school chums to watch FSU play Troy State. The trip up was special in itself. My brother's buddy, like so many other FSU male students at the time had been in military service during World War II. On the way up to Dothan, he entertained us with stories about Navy life during the big war. I especially remember one story about a sailor from the mountains of Tennessee keeping the entire crew of a destroyer supplied with moonshine.
When we got to Dothan, it was raining and had been most of the day so that Wiregrass Memorial Stadium, where the game was to be played, was a mess. Shortly before kickoff, some folks went out and poured some kind of flammable liquid on portions of the field and set fires in an attempt to dry off the field. That, to a fourteen year old, was most entertaining for I had never seen that done before nor have I since. I have asked around and not found anybody else that has seen it done anywhere else either. It did not seem to do much good as the field was muddy from end to end but it sure was fun to watch them fire up the field.
The football game was a very good one. Troy State had beaten FSU the year before in FSU's first year of modern day football 36 to 6. However, going into the game in 1948 the Seminoles had won four in a row and were 5-1 under brand new head coach, Don Veller. The only loss had been to Erskine, 14-6, in the second game of the season. We were hoping that the FSU team could keep their winning ways.
FSU started off well. Despite the deplorable conditions of rain and mud, the team drove 67 yards into the end zone following their receipt of the opening kickoff. Things slowed for FSU after that. By half time, Troy had scored and led 7 to 6. Both teams scored in the third quarter which ended 13 to 13. Remember extra points, especially on muddy fields in the rain, were not very automatic then. FSU scored in the fourth quarter on a great reception by Norman Eubanks in the end zone and held on to win the game 20-13. Although I remember much about that game to this day, I must admit, my memory has been greatly enhanced by reading the description of the game by History Professor Jimmy Jones in his book entitled, F.S.U. One Time! A History of Seminole Football. (Incidentally, that book, first published in 1973, and later supplemented is a must read if you want to know about early FSU football history). By the time the game ended, the rain had stopped and the FSU fans that were there were quite happy. The team was now 6-1 with one game left to be played. (The team went on to win that last game and ended the season, 7-1). Coach Veller and the FSU fledgling football program had already become quite popular and so had a couple of the assistant coaches that Veller had brought in that year. Bob Harbison and Charlie Armstrong had already become well known by FSU fans. Good things were happening.
I don't remember much about the ninety-mile ride home. I figure that I must have slept during most of it.
Omaha, Nebraska, June, 1970
I had not even considered going to the 1970 College Baseball World Series. In those days very few people went to college baseball games. Virtually nobody traveled to away games except the parents and a few family members of the players. And after all, FSU had been to the College World Series three times before (1957, 1962, and 1963) and not much had happened. The best that the team had done was in 1962 when they won the first two but were eliminated after losing the next two.
The 1970 College World Series turned out to be a special one for FSU fans. It started out with FSU shutting out both Arizona (4-0) and Dartmouth (6-0). Tallahassee townspeople got real excited. There was no ESPN then, so the series was not on TV, so we listened to the games on the radio at night and talked about them the next day at work. But then FSU lost its next game to Texas (1-5), so we all relaxed and figured it was going to be like the past College World Series experiences. But then in the following game, FSU shut out Ohio (2-0). After that, fans in Tallahassee got excited again. The next game would be a rematch against Texas, who by this time had one loss, with the winner scheduled to play Southern California, who also had a loss for the national championship. At least half of Tallahassee must have listened to the Texas game. In a long game, FSU pounded Texas 11-2. By the next day, somebody had chartered a Southern Airways airliner to go to the oncoming championship game. The seats on the plane sold like hotcakes. With the urging of my law partner at the time and the willingness on the part of my wife to allow me to go, I secured a seat just before they sold out. Soon, along with a number of Tallahassee's bankers and merchants and FSU fans, I was ready to go to Omaha.
We flew out on the day of the game. William Curtis Smith, one of the passengers among us, was at the time, the president of the Tallahassee area Boy Scout Council. He had called the scout council in Omaha and requested that they send a bugler to meet us at the Omaha airport. When we landed, not only was a bugler there, but we were received by a full Boy Scout band. It was a regal welcoming but put Bill on the spot. He had to scrounge around for tickets so that he could take all of the scouts to the game.
In any event, in short order, we were in school buses and headed directly to Rosenblatt Stadium. After hot dogs and cokes, the game began.
It was a magnificent game. Both teams got great pitching and played superb defense. Our centerfielder, Johnny Grubb (later drafted by San Diego and a longtime major leaguer) saved us by some great catches on a couple of occasions. When the first nine innings had passed, the score was 1 to 1. The game went into extra innings. Both teams had chances to score, but the pitching and defense came through for both teams. Late in the game, the FSU pitching had been turned over to Mac Scarce. His performance was one of the finest that I have ever witnessed. Inning after inning, the future major leaguer put the Trojans away. But the FSU team could not get him a single run. Finally, he developed a blister on one of his pitching fingers and had to come out of the game. Shortly after that, in the fifteenth inning, Southern California managed to score a run and win the game 2 to 1.
It was well after midnight when the game ended. We went back to the airport and flew home to Tallahassee. The sun had already risen when we got back. It had been a long, tiring day, but had been well worth the effort. Thirty years later, I am still most happy that I got to see one of the best games in College World Series history. I very much appreciate the efforts of those who chartered that airliner.
Tempe, Arizona, December, 1971
When I first saw Chevy Chase's famous movie about a vacation, I thoroughly enjoyed it, not just for its humor but how much it reminded me of our family's trip to the very first Fiesta Bowl in 1971. Just like Chase, we packed up the whole family into a station wagon and headed West. Just like Chase we enjoyed the tourist spots as we went.
In our case, the family included myself, spouse, Betty Lou, two thirteen-year-old daughters and a nine-year-old son. We did not make it to "Wally World" as Chase's family did but that is about the only place we did not see. On the way out, our experiences included a picnic in Baton Rouge, a dinner with Mexican music on the river in San Antonio, Christmas Eve shopping in Juarez, Christmas day at the OK Corral and the Crystal Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, Christmas' night dinner in a fancy cave restaurant in Nogales, Mexico, complete with strolling musicians, ancient ruins of an American Indian civilization, and a cowboy gunfight in Old Tucson. We have a special recollection of a night in a Louisiana motel when the kids' 'Creepy Crawler' cooker set fire to the carpet. I thought that we were all going to jail. After the game, we came back by way of the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Old Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Dallas. Special memories include a snow fight at the Grand Canyon, a near accident on an icy highway, and the discovery of how good soppapias can taste on a cold night in a Mexican restaurant in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We still refer to the trip as being "educational". The term was first used by Betty Lou, and later picked up and used sarcastically by the kids in reference to things that we made them do on the journey.
In between the trip out and back, we saw a wonderful football game. As it was the very first Fiesta Bowl, the people of Phoenix and Tempe wanted to be sure that everybody had a good time. It was most festive. It was a total sellout. Fifty-one thousand were packed in to see the inaugural of the new bowl. The cab driver who sat next to us was typical of the attitude of the fans. He was most cordial and quite proud of his community for having the big bowl game. He explained that the entertainer, Trini Lopez, featured in the halftime show was most popular in the area and that getting to hear Lopez in person was a memory that he would treasure.
The game was an aerial circus. The game went back and forth. FSU's quarterback, Gary Huff, took turns throwing to a number of receivers including Kent Gaydos, Rhett Dawson, and All-American Barry Smith. Arizona State's quarterback, Danny Smith, who would later have a great career in the NFL, spearheaded the Sun Devil offense. In the end, somebody had to lose and it was FSU, 45-38. Professor Jones has described the game as "the most exciting bowl game of '71". I did not see many other bowl games that year because we were on the road during most of them, but I am sure that it was. All in all, the trip remains one of the very best that our family has ever had together. My wife, who also loves to travel, has used the trip to illustrate her belief that I will go anywhere so long as there is money to pay for it and FSU is playing somebody.
There have been lots of other great trips. But this column is getting too long, so I will save those stories for, perhaps, another time. In the meantime, I look forward to more FSU trips. I still have not seen FSU win the college baseball world series. Likewise, I have never been to the Rose Bowl. I sure hope that in the near future, I get a chance to accomplish those desires. Go Seminoles!
If you have not been on the road with the Seminoles, you might be missing some fun times. Think about it.