Nebraska Wesleyan started playing football 112 years ago, when the Coyotes beat Worthington Military Academy of Lincoln 46-0.
KEN HAMBLETON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, October 10, 2008 7:00 pm
Nebraska Wesleyan started playing football 112 years ago, when the Coyotes beat Worthington Military Academy of Lincoln 46-0.
That same season, Wesleyan played Nebraska twice, losing 18-8 and 28-0.
The next year, Wesleyan scrambled to find players to face Nebraska, losing 11-0. NWU had to fill out its team with a local Lincoln High kid and the game was shortened to two 15-minute halves.
In 1898, Wesleyan dropped football.
“Too brutish. Too dangerous,” a school administrator told the Nebraska State Journal. The Nebraska Legislature even discussed banning the sport after a player from Doane was killed in a game against Kansas.
Wesleyan somehow existed without football until 1908.
That fall, a group of students petitioned to have the sport reinstated at the school.
Nebraska manager Earl. O. Eager said he’d set up a practice game with “The Methodist team sometime soon but the Wesleyan men fear they are too new in the game to stand the roughing.”
Two weeks later, on Oct. 10, 1908, Wesleyan played its first game of the modern era, winning 6-0 against Grand Island College. Note that NWU reports the score 6-0 and the Sunday State Journal said it was 6-6 because Grand Island scored on “a play on which the score was made was curious and protested by Wesleyan rooters.”
It seems Grand Island was stopped on downs and during a dispute on the sideline about moving the chains, a Grand Island player picked up the ball and scored.
Some 450 victories later, NWU continues its 100th season of football Saturday with a 1 p.m. game against Dana College at Abel Stadium. NWU (1-3) picked up its first win of the season two weeks ago and Dana is 1-3 in the Great Plains Athletic Conference and 2-3 overall.
In the last 100 years, Wesleyan changed nicknames from Coyotes to Sun Flowers to Plainsmen to Prairie Wolves and won 22 conference titles.
Wesleyan also played in a New Year’s Day bowl game.
“We were pretty good, unbeaten in 1946, and they were trying to get a bowl game going in Oklahoma City,” said Cliff Squires, a four-time Little All-American for NWU.
Wesleyan played in the first and last Will Rogers Bowl. “We were up 13-0 at halftime but Pepperdine came back and won 38-13.”
Squires went on to play three more seasons with Wesleyan before he was drafted by the Detroit Lions — the first Wesleyan player drafted.
Wesleyan, which will induct six new members into its athletic hall of fame Saturday, will also retire Squires’ No. 41.
“That’s a very special thing to me,” said Squires, 82. “NWU has been a big part of my life. After high school (Lincoln Northeast) I went into the Navy. I came out and all my high school buddies who had gone to Nebraska were fed up with the place and transferring to Wesleyan. I decided to join them. I never regretted the decision.”
Squires lettered in basketball and football four years, track three years and baseball once. After two years as an All-America center and linebacker, he became an All-America fullback in NWU’s single-wing offense.
Squires eventually went into the sporting goods business (Russell Sporting Goods) with Herm Rohrig, among others, in downtown Lincoln. Squires also officiated football games for 35 years, including 20 years as a referee in the Big Eight Conference.
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@journalstar.com.