The History of FSU Football: 1948 - Sixty Years Ago

By Jim Joanos

Backfield Coach Bill Armstrong, Line Coach Charlie Armstrong, Head Coach Don Veller, Line Coach Bob Harbison and Trainer Eddie Qwest

The 1948 season was the first in Florida State's history in which the team played as many as eight games. It was the first year that Florida State won a conference championship. It was Don Veller's first year as head coach of the Seminoles.

When Veller was hired in early 1948, Florida State had the previous year completed its first football season since 1904. Prior to 1905, the school had male students and fielded intercollegiate male sports teams but from 1905 until 1947, the institution had been a women's only college known as Florida State College for Women. In an abbreviated schedule, the 1947 Seminoles had gone zero and five. That first year had been totally makeshift. The 1948 season was much more organized.

Veller came to FSU with exceptional credentials. He had been a star halfback at the University of Indiana. Following college, he was a highly successful high school football coach in Elkhart, Indiana. When World War II came he spent the war years in the U.S. Army serving in a number of assignments. After his military duty, Veller had one year as athletic director, head football and track coach at Hanover College in Indiana. Then his old college coach, Bo McMillin hired him to be an assistant coach at his alma mater, Indiana. He served in that capacity for the 1947 season coaching the ends.

In 1948 FSU came calling. But it was academics more than his football credentials that got Veller the FSU job. As a college student, Veller had been outstanding in the classroom. He finished at Indiana with a 91 grade average and in his senior year won the Big Ten Conference's medal for scholarship and athletics. Before FSU hired him, he had already obtained a Master's Degree and was finishing up in the Doctor of Philosophy program at Indiana. In 1948, FSU's coaches were required to teach. There were no athletic scholarships and sports were considered an extension of the physical education program. Veller's main job was to teach in the physical education department as an associate professor. He was also to serve as Chairman of FSU's Division of Athletics. For all of that he was paid $5,400 per year. That Veller would more than likely receive his PhD degree in the near future was a major factor in his hiring. When he got his PhD, it was promised that he would get a slight raise.

Veller could only get to Tallahassee for very short periods of time in the spring of 1948 because of his pursuit of the PhD degree. Consequently, he had to rely on his two recently acquired assistant coaches, brothers Charley and Bill Armstrong to conduct most of spring practice. The Armstrongs had been football players at Indiana. Despite, Veller's absence, the assistants went ahead and installed the offensive formation that FSU would run under Veller's leadership, the "Cockeyed T." Sometime after spring practice, he hired a third assistant, Bob Harbison. Harbison had also played football at Indiana. Harbison would be an FSU assistant football coach for many years thereafter. He also hired Eddie Kwest, who had been an assistant at Indiana as FSU's head football trainer.

The spirit around Tallahasssee in regard to Florida State's football team took on an increased air of enthusiasm when it was learned that the team beginning in 1948 would compete in the "Dixie Conference," a group of five schools including FSU, Millsaps College, Stetson, Mississippi College and Tampa, none of whom offered athletic scholarships. Florida State was a very attractive place to go to college for many former military personnel who were returning to civilian life. A campus that boasted about twenty-five hundred coeds was especially appealing. Some of those soldiers, sailors and marines liked to play football. Some had played in the service. Some had played at other colleges when the war interrupted their education. Some had only high school experience. Some transferred from other schools. The former military men were joined by high school graduates from north Florida, and south Georgia and Alabama.

About eighty candidates for the team, including twenty-two lettermen from the year before, showed up for the two-a-day practices that began at 9 a.m. on Monday, September 13, 1948. The men were in full pads from the opening workout. Charlie Armstrong and Harbison worked with the linemen while Veller and Bill Armstrong coached the backs. The workouts must have been pretty tough for in less than a week nearly thirty of the potential players had eliminated themselves from further competition.

The preseason sessions lasted for nearly a month. Whatever Veller and his assistants did, it worked. For on Saturday night, October 9, 1948, Florida State won its first football game since 1904 by beating Cumberland University 30 to 0 before 6,500 fans at Tallahassee's Centennial Field. Two of the backs who starred for FSU included Ken MacLean and Wyatt "Red" Parish. FSU scored five touchdowns. Interestingly, FSU missed on all five extra points.

The FSU team lost its next game at Erskine College 6 to 14, but then went on to win its last six games. In order, the Seminoles defeated Millsaps College (7-6 away), Stetson (18-7 away), Mississippi College (26-6 home), Livingston State (12-6 home), Troy State (20-13 at Dothan, Alabama), and Tampa (33-12 home). By defeating all four of its Dixie Conference rivals, FSU won the conference championship. One unidentified writer described what Veller had done: "Veller took a group of boys that didn't win a game in 1947 and vaulted them to the Dixie Conference championship." There would be more conference championships following that 1948 season. Forty-five years later there would even be a national championship and later another. From very humble beginnings, a very special football program developed. Let's enjoy what we have this season and appreciate FSU's fine football history.