Giant Killers -- The Civil War

Oregon State University Athletics is proudly celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the famed "Giant Killers" football team. Led by the late head coach Dee Andros, Oregon State posted a 7-2-1 record that included victories over No. 1 ranked USC, No. 2 Purdue and then a tie with the new No. 2 team in the land UCLA.

Historian Kip Carlson is in the midst of writing a six-part series on the team that originally prints in the gameday program that is available at Reser Stadium.

PART 5 – THE CIVIL WAR

The drama was over; now the reviews were coming in.

On November 11, 1967, Oregon State knocked off No. 1 Southern California 3-0 in Corvallis; the Beavers had already won at Purdue 22-14 and tied at UCLA 16-16 when those schools were ranked No. 2 in the nation. When the Sunday papers dropped on doorsteps up and down the West Coast the next morning, the OSU "Giant Killers" were being hailed around the country:

"It was Oregon State 3, Southern California 0 in the shot heard 'round the football world Saturday. And buried somewhere beneath the Parker Stadium mud lie the Trojans' national No. 1 collegiate ranking, their perfect season and their eight-game winning streak … before this upset ever unfolded, Bill Taylor of the Dallas Cowboys and a special friend of OSU coach Dee Andros had said Oregon State needs a perfect game, some breaks and luck to win. The Beavers delivered on all counts." – Don Fair, The Oregonian

"By all the great traditions of sports and by right of conquest, the real No. 1 is Oregon State … if it were boxing instead of today's ballot-conscious football, there'd be no question. When the challenger beats the champ in the ring, he's the champeen, period!" – George Pasero, Oregon Journal

"Football's fantastic continued to reign here Saturday as the astonishing Oregon State Beavers again turned football Davids, and this time slew the No. 1 team in the nation, Southern California's mighty Trojans." – Al Lightner, Oregon Statesman

"If it's alibis or excuses you're looking for, we're here to disappoint you. The Trojans just plain got beat … giant killers? Heck, Saturday they're the giants." – Harley Tinkham, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

"The thing to remember about Saturdays super shock in the dark and damp home of the saber-toothed Beaver is that USC didn't lose the game. Oregon State won. Andros and his orange-coated Beavers won with a mighty defense and a lot of dedication, and they will talk about this one in Corvallis for many years to come." – John Hall, Los Angeles Times

The day hadn't been without its down side, though. UCLA had defeated Washington 48-0, ending OSU's slim chance at a Rose Bowl berth. And Oregon State horticulture professor Quentin Zielinski, 48, died after suffering an apparent heart attack at the game.

While there was speculation about where Oregon State would land in the national rankings, the fact remained: the Beavers weren't yet even No. 1 in their own state. There was still the matter of the Civil War before OSU's historic season would go in the books.

Oregon entered the game with a 2-7 record. Jerry Frei was in his first season as the Ducks' head coach after a long career as an assistant in Eugene. The previous week, Oregon had lost a late lead in falling at Stanford 17-14.

By the time the Ducks left their dressing room, though, they'd heard the score from Corvallis and knew they now had a chance to beat the team that beat No. 1.

"This club isn't going into that ball game Saturday conceding a thing," Frei told the Oregon Journal. "They're definitely going in believing they can win.

"Have a chance? Heck yes we've got a chance."

Andros, who had seen his team come out flat in its loss to Brigham Young, was also taking nothing for granted.

"We've got to make that supreme effort one more time," Andros told the Journal. "We have to be mature enough to realize that we'll have a heckuva effort against us Saturday when we play. Oregon will be inspired, and I know they've made great improvement."

Even as the Beavers tried to focus on the Ducks, their upset of Southern California was a continuing source of conversation and news.

Andros, whose Saturday night after the game was spent hosting a party for high school coaches around the state, had to break away from the group a number of times to take congratulatory telephone calls.

"I've never seen anything like it," Andros told Pasero of the Journal. "The telegrams, the calls … Governor Tom McCall was on the line, and Senator Mark Hatfield from Washington, D.C. And I really appreciated one call from Bud Wikiinson, my old coach, who told me how thrilled he and his wife, Mary, were over our team's wins this year. That one meant a lot to me."

Down south, USC athletic director Jess Hill was still fuming that Oregon State had not covered the Parker Stadium field in the rainy week leading up to the game. Hill told a gathering of Southern California football writers, "I can assure you that there will be a conference rule that all institutions have a tarp and use it the week before a game." Another report said California Governor Ronald Reagan had offered a $1 donation toward the estimated $15,000 it would cost OSU to purchase a tarp.

Andros scoffed that California teams had been traveling north for games for decades and not complained about uncovered fields. Said Andros, "I'll tell them, too, that if they've got so much money they should buy a couple of big fans and blow that smog out of the Coliseum so we can see the ball when we go down there."

When the national rankings did come out on Tuesday, Oregon State was ranked No. 8 in both the United Press International coaches poll and Associated Press sportswriters and sportscasters voting. UCLA was the new No. 1 team in the nation, and they'd face No. 3 USC for the Pacific-8's Rose Bowl berth – and the only blemish on each team's record had been at the hands of the Beavers.

On Wednesday, the game films from the win over the Trojans were shown in the Home Economics building auditorium on campus, with OSU coaches on hand to narrate the action.

It was another wet week in the Willamette Valley, but the field at Oregon's new Autzen Stadium had been covered: the Ducks moved the tarp from their baseball field and covered the rest of the surface with a patchwork of plastic sheets.

By Friday, Oregon State had been installed as a 13-point favorite. A crowd of 35,000-40,000 was expected for the game, and fans from Corvallis were advised to use Highway 99W for the trip to avoid a repeat of the Interstate 5 gridlock of the previous Saturday.

For a chunk of the game, it looked as though the Beavers themselves were the ones in the slow lane.

By halftime, Oregon State had fumbled away the ball twice inside the Oregon 5-yard line and the Ducks led 3-0; if not for an interception by Charlie Olds inside the Beaver 20, the gap could have been bigger. By the end of the third quarter, the Beavers had lost four fumbles on the day and also had a pair of punts blocked, and Oregon led 10-0.

Oregon State had 15 minutes to make up two scores if it wanted to avoid going from Giant Killers to Giant Killed.

"The fourth quarter was something," Beaver quarterback Steve Preece later told the Oregonian. "Nobody talked in the huddle at all, except once when a lineman said, 'Let's show 'em what kind of a team we are. After that one remark, nothing was said by anybody. The linemen just went to work and it was great."

The first play of the fourth quarter got things going. OSU faced a third-and-8 from its own 22 when Preece found Don Summers for 35 yards to the Oregon 43. Fullback Bill Enyart shouldered a lot of the load from there, but it was another pass that took the ball to the 1, Preece finding split end Roger Cantlon on his stomach and Cantlon just keeping the ball above the ground as he hauled it in. Enyart scored from there and it was 10-7 with just over nine minutes to play.

The Beavers forced a punt and took over on the Duck 45. From there, nine runs and a penalty took the ball to the Oregon 4. As the crowd of 40,100 – the largest ever for a Civil War to that time – waited for another Enyart plunge into the line, Preece took the ball and swept left for the score that put OSU up 14-10 with 2:30 to go.

Oregon State's defense made sure that's the way it stayed, and the Beavers had their fourth straight win over Oregon.

"I made some dumb plays today," said Beaver linebacker Skip Vanderbundt, one of the team's six seniors. "But I never played in a losing game against Oregon in three years."

Enyart finished with a school-record 35 carries for a personal-best 167 yards, never being tackled for a loss. In the Beaver locker room, he couldn't stop smiling.

"I'll stop grinning when we lose," Enyart said. As for his record workday, Enyart offered, "Oh, I'm a little tired, but I'd have been a lot more weary if we hadn't scored that last touchdown."

In that era, the Pac-8 rule was that only one team would go to a bowl game – the champion to the Rose Bowl – so OSU's season was over. Southern California had knocked off UCLA 21-20 that afternoon to win the conference title.

"In my book, these are real champions," Andros said of his team. "Any time you spot a fired-up opponent 10 points and come back to win, it takes a lot of unity and togetherness. We never lost our poise; everybody pulled together, the offense yelling for the defense and vice-versa."

The Beavers, finishing with a 7-2-1 record, remained No. 8 in both the AP and UPI polls the next week. When the final polls were taken – done at the conclusion of the regular season in those years – Oregon State was ranked No. 7 by the AP sportswriters and sportscasters and No. 8 by the UPI coaches. Southern California was ranked No. 1 in both final polls, then went on to cement its claim to the national championship by beating No. 4 Indiana 14-3 in the Rose Bowl.

Enyart, wide receiver Gary Houser and offensive guard Dave Marlette were named to the All-Pac-8 first team, and defensive tackle Jess Lewis and offensive guard Jon Sandstrom were named to the All-Coast squad. Sandstrom and Lewis were named to various All-America teams. Defensive end Harry Gunner and Vanderbundt earned spots in a number of all-star games, including the next summer's annual College All-Star Game against the defending NFL champion.

The bulk of the squad would return the next season for another run at a Pac-8 championship and Rose Bowl berth. Regardless of what might happen in 1968, they had already made history as Oregon State's Giant Killers of 1967.

"Judge them on how they finished," Andros told the Portland Beaver Huddle a few days after the Civil War triumph. "They were a great team. The greatest I've been around as a coach."

NEXT: The Legend, 50 Years Later

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