By George Edmonston Jr.

Editor's note: Fiesta Bowl champs. No. 1-ranking. First true Heisman candidate in 40 years. Sold-out stadium...game tickets treated like gold bullion. Conference and school records falling like rain. These are heady times for Oregon State football fans, historic times, with expectations for the 2001 season running sky high. But where did all this Orange and Black football madness begin? The first season? Game? First coach? Stadium? Quarterback? First touchdown? Let us now go back to those opening days of college football in Corvallis, to the people and events that sit at the historical tap root of OSU’s most popular spectator sport. In this, the first of a three-part series, we examine the story of William"Will" Bloss, OSU’s first head coach, the great organizer, the opening spark of a century’s-old athletic tradition.

OSU’s First Football Team

Next to "Will" H. Bloss, Oregon State’s first coach and quarterback, no one knew more about the 1893 football team at State Agricultural College (SAC) than a guy who wasn’t even on the team.

His name was Austin T. Buxton, a junior in mechanical engineering from Forest Grove, and he was editor of what might be the university’s first real "yearbook." He called it "The Hayseed," and, in addition to profiling the entire school and its various departments, the student journalist devoted four full pages to the 1893 football season...OSU’s first...and to the young men who played the games.

Looking at that time so long ago, it’s easy to see this was college football in Oregon in its infancy, played under a set of rules that today would turn milk sour at NCAA headquarters, with athletes who didn’t have the foggiest understanding of what they were setting in motion. Since 1890 or 1891, football had been the hot new game on
college campuses around the state, and by 1893, had replaced baseball as the most popular intercollegiate sport in Oregon. In essence, the young men who first kicked the pigskin at OSU simply felt they were participating in a fad.

After tryouts and workouts that stretched to mid-October, Bloss finally settled on an eclectic group of 17 athletes to play on Oregon State’s first football team. No stranger group has ever been assembled to wear the Orange and Black. The starting left guard was a high school junior. One of the substitutes was John Fulton, an alumnus and SAC faculty member assigned to a department called the "Chemistry Station." He would spend the rest of his career at his alma mater and become one of OSU’s most beloved professors. Two members of the starting lineup were brothers; their father was the secretary of the Executive Committee of school’s Board of Regents. The head coach, as we have seen, also played quarterback and was the son of the president. He was not a student. Neither were three other members of the squad, all substitutes. Among them was Clem Jones, who moved to Athens, Tenn., sometime after the season and was never heard from again.

Coach Bloss had arrived in Corvallis shortly after his president father, John McKnight Bloss, in June 1892. He had played college football in the Midwest and was familiar with the game. With this as his background, he quickly became known on campus as a person knowledgeable in the new sport of football and impressed SAC athletes with his knowledge as a "trainer." For sure, many of these acquaintances were made at the SAC gymnasium, which had been moved from Cauthorn to a room in the new
Mechanical Hall, constructed by his father directly behind the Administration Building (now Benton Hall) in 1892 to house the school’s new power plant.

It was at the Cauthorn men’s dorm in 1889 or 1890 that a group of students, including over 30 women, had formed the Oregon Agricultural College Athletic Association (OACAA), the forerunner to the OSU Athletic Department. It is not surprising that seven of the 17 original players, including three starters, were not only members of the OACAA but officers: the president, vice president and secretary. Three subs were also members of the board. (Note: Oregon Agricultural College (or OAC) had been in popular usage on campus and around town since c. 1888 but
was not the official name of the school until 1907.)

There were other similarities. In the year he had lived in Corvallis, he had watched a lot of these guys in other activities, from baseball and track and field to workouts in the college gym. By the fall of 1893, he more-or-less knew who could get the job done. Furthermore, Bloss also realized that most of his players were from farming backgrounds, replete with the mental and physical toughness that goes with that lifestyle, and knew that such experiences would serve them well when games got tough.

Here then, individually, are the 11 players Head Coach Will Bloss selected in 1893 to play on Oregon State’s first football team. Their first game would be against Albany College on Nov. 11, 1893. When known, information is given regarding what happened to these football "pioneers" once leaving Corvallis. Spellings used for positions are the ones in popular usage at the time. Starting weights and heights...forget it!

The Left End was Charles Owsley from La Grande. He was a sophomore in the fall of 1893 and sergeant at arms of the OAC Athletic Association. He graduated from SAC with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1896. After graduation, he returned home.

Left Tackle: A. Desborough Nash. The brother of SAC starting left half Percival Nash. Born in 1876 in London, England, Desborough was 17 at the time of the Albany College game and was not enrolled as a student. His father, Wallis Nash, was a member of the SAC Board of Regents and had, early in his career, worked as an attorney in London for Charles Darwin and other English and American luminaries. Survived a scarlet fever outbreak in his family that claimed the lives of two brothers and two sisters inside one week. Played first base on the SAC baseball team.

Left Guard: Daniel Harvey Bodine from Albany. Vice president of the OAC Athletic Association. In 1893, he was enrolled in the "preparatory" department at SAC, which means that by today’s standards, he was still in high school, probably a junior. He did eventually graduate from Oregon State, in agriculture in 1898, and became the city recorder for his home town. He lived at 819 W. 9th Street in Albany.

Center Rush: Harvey "Pap Hayseed" McAlister or McAllister. Originally from Lexington, Ore., in Morrow County, McAllister played one of the toughest positions in early football. Anchoring the center of the line, it was "Pap’s" job to clear a hole for the popular "wedge play," which meant one guy running the ball with 10 blockers out front. Guess who ended up at the bottom of the pile? That he did this as a freshman is remarkable. His personal scrapbook, which includes numerous newspaper
clippings of the 1893 season, was his gift to the OSU Archives years ago and is one of the primary research tools school historians use today to recall Oregon State’s first football season.

Right Guard: Henry M. Desborough. He was a senior at the time of the game and graduated in 1894 in mechanical engineering. In 1925, the Alumni Association’s Student Directory lists "no record" for this early football pioneer.

Right Tackle: Thomas Beall. He was a junior in 1893 and graduated in 1895 with a degree in agriculture. In 1904, he became the first player from the '93 team to die. President of the OAC Athletic Association. Played center field for baseball team.

Right End: Charles Small. Freshman. Secretary of his class. Graduated in 1897 in mechanical engineering but spent his career as a farmer in Benton County. Not related to the well-known Small family in Corvallis that includes clothier Phil Small (now deceased) and daughter Shirley Small, the wife of retired OSU Alumni Director Don Wirth.

Quarter Back: William H. "Will" Bloss. The subject of Part 1 of this series. Son of SAC president. Left after 1893 season to return as coach in 1897. In his two years at SAC, Bloss lost but one game, that to the University of Portland. Many SAC fans said the loss was a fluke, since the UP had sent "spies" to campus the week before and had practiced for the game by scrimmaging a team that had played SAC earlier in the year. Today we call this "sour grapes."

Left Half Back: Brady F. Burnett. Probably Will’s favorite player. Team captain. Scored the first two touchdowns in Oregon State history, back-to-back fumble recoveries, the second TD for 60 yards. At the time of the game, he had already graduated from SAC (agriculture) and was listed in "The Hayseed" below the senior class as a "special student." Member of SAC May 1893 track and field team, first in school history. He eventually became an attorney in Roseburg with the B.L. Eddy law firm.

Right Half Back: Percival Nash. Older brother of Desborough. Same background as brother. Like teammate Brady Burnett, Percival had graduated in 1893 in agriculture and was listed as a "special student" for the fall of '93. After leaving Corvallis, he became a Federal Probation Agent in Reno, Nevada. Played right field on the baseball team. Born in London. Like his brother, he was a survivor of the scarlet fever
epidemic that took four of his brothers and sisters.

Full Back: Ralph Terrill. A sophomore, Ralph graduated in 1897 with a degree in mechanical engineering. For years he worked at the Acme hardware store in Wilmington, Calif., and lived at 315 Canal Ave.

The "subs" were: A. Lambert (not a student); W. Abernethy (not a student); Arthur E. Buchanan, who graduated in 1896 in mechanical engineering and died in 1916; John Fulton, an SAC alumnus and faculty member; Harry W. Kelley, a graduate in agriculture in 1896; Clem Jones (not a student), who moves to Athens, Tenn., and quickly disappears from alumni records.

The school's first football team played in 1893-94. Photo from The Orange and Black.

Until May 2, 1893, Navy Blue was the official school color for both Corvallis College and State Agricultural College. On that date, the SAC faculty voted to begin using "orange" to represent the school at all official activities, particularly athletics. Black was added two weeks later by a vote of the student body, still remembering the
classy-looking, all-black baseball uniforms town clothier J.H. Harris had donated the SAC team in April 1892. There was only one catch. Mr. Harris had put his initials on the shirt-fronts of the uniforms, "J.H.H." in big white letters, and "hoped," he said when they were delivered, "you college boys won’t mind."

For such gorgeous uniforms, the "college boys" didn’t mind a bit.

Not content on stopping here in this business of starting new school traditions, President Bloss appointed a faculty committee to confer with students in the writing of a "college cry" or "yell." Thus the cheer, "Zip Boom Bee, Zip Boom Bee, O. A., O. A., O. A. C." was born, the first such in OSU history. Just who actually came up with this three-line historical ditty is still a mystery. Some credit Gordon C. "Don" Ray, an engineering student in the class of 1896, with penning Oregon State’s first, while others say it was coach Bloss himself who did the deed.

Whatever the case, the big day, Nov. 11, 1893, finally arrived and the Albany team appeared on the field as scheduled, at 1:45 p.m., for a brief 10-minute workout. The "farmers" of Will Bloss arrived at 1:55 p.m. sharp. The game would begin at 2 p.m. with the toss of a coin at center field. At that moment, team captain Brady Burnett would make a decision that for all time would help define the spirit of OSU athletics.

The First Game...

November 11, 1893. 1:58 p.m. Overcast skies, no rain.

As Oregon State team captain Brady Burnett walked to the center of the College Field on Lower Campus for the 2 p.m. toss of the coin that would mark the beginning of OSU football history, he was astonished at the scene.

It was bedlam. Over 500 spectators had paid a dime each to see this inaugural gridiron clash. That would equal the "take" of many of the popular literary societies on campus at their annual fund-raisers. This was some accomplishment since these groups enjoyed "top-billing" in the social life of the campus. Folks were calling this the biggest crowd ever to watch a sporting event in Corvallis.

And the noise! Horns of various sizes were scattered throughout the assembled spectators, many decorated with the school colors of the two participants, Albany College and State Agricultural College.

For SAC, this meant Orange and Black, new colors that had represented the college only one other time, back in late May at an "athletic contest" up in Portland against the city’s Multnomah Athletic Club.

Honk! Squeak! The brass cacophony grew louder as fan emotions were pushed to fever levels. Off to one corner of the home side, the south side, some of Burnett’s classmates were trying out their school’s new cheer..."Zip Boom Bee, Zip Boom Bee, O. A., O. A., O. A. C!" They were desperately trying to be heard over the noise of the SAC Cadet Band, which was also trying to be heard over all the other racket that seemed to concentrate in the center of the field into one giant ball of chaos.
The new cheer also reflected the growing popularity among students and townspeople to refer to the school as the "Oregon Agricultural College," a name that would not be made official until president William Jasper Kerr made it so in 1907.

Burnett saw two others approaching. One was a fellow named Washburn, captain of the Albany side. They had first met that morning at 11 a.m., when the Albany team had arrived riding a bunch of hacks they had used to travel the 12 miles between the towns. He and Bloss had accompanied the visiting fellows to the Cauthorn men’s dorm, where all had enjoyed a meal and had swapped horrible tales about what they were going to do to one another once the game was under way.

This welcoming act on the part of Burnett and Bloss would one day be the spirit that would help form the historic "30 Staters" organization at OSU, which, from the 1920s through the 1950s, performed similar services for visiting college teams to Corvallis.

The other was the referee, I.N. Irvine. He would, later in the season, be accused by the newspaper in Monmouth of "home cooking" a game for SAC against the Oregon State Normal School (now Western Oregon University). But all that was still in the future. Right now what mattered was that Irvine had the coin that would start the game.

Washburn, as the visiting captain, was given the call. The crowd became quiet as the Irvine’s right hand flipped the silver dollar into the autumn sky.

"Heads," Washburn cried out.

It was. OSU had begun its long road to the 2001 season opener next Sunday against Fresno State on the losing end of a coin toss.

"We want the ball," he quickly told Irvine, who just as quickly informed the crowd with crude hand signals that Albany College would receive the opening kickoff.

Now it was up to Brady Burnett to decide which side of the field his team would defend.

There is an old axiom in warfare that says that when defending something precious, you put it to your back: King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defending the high frontier pass at Thermopylae; Lee at Petersburg; the French at Verdun; the Russians at Moscow...war is full of examples. Maybe Burnett had some of this in mind that day. Or maybe it was just pure instinct. Whatever it was, his call would help define
the spirit of OSU athletics for all time.

"We will defend the west goal." he said loudly. There was no hesitation in his voice. He had not checked the direction of the wind. Nothing weather-related really mattered.

He had decided they would put their college to their backs; it was time to defend this most precious thing called "alma mater."

And defend it they did, right from the opening buzzer.

After receiving the kickoff, Albany’s Washburn tried a "V" wedge play right over Pap Hayseed’s Center Rush position, that is, 10 blockers out front heading straight for the middle.

SAC stood like a wall of granite. Washburn fumbled. In a flash, Burnett had the ball scooped off the ground and was rushing unopposed to the Albany goal line to score the first touchdown in OSU football history. The extra point try, for two points, was wide and the "farmers" or "agrics" from SAC were ahead 4-0, the number of points allowed for a TD during this early period in the evolution of the college game.

Furious they had fallen behind so quickly, Washburn and company tried another "wedge" on their next possession. Same result. Again there was a fumble and again Burnett was Johnny-on-the-spot, scooping up the ball on about the Albany 40-yard line and carrying it some 60 yards for the second TD in OSU history. What a day he was having...back-to-back fumble recoveries for touchdowns, a feat that has never been matched by any Beaver player since.

The score at half was 38-0, a slaughter even by today’s standards. It would be much worse by game’s end. Officials and coaches agreed to a 10-minute intermission. As was customary, the two squads retired to opposite ends of the field for sit-down-in-the-grass discussions with their coaches about strategy for the second half. Students from both schools took the opportunity to form serpentine-type formations that circled around their champions with shouts of encouragement about "fighting the good fight." Albany, playing "short-handed" that day, approached Bloss with a request that he might send a few of his subs to its side in hopes of "evening things up." Bloss obliged. And everywhere could be heard the cry..."Zip Boom Bee, Zip Boom Bee..."

The second half produced the first "trick play" in Oregon State history. On the kickoff, Bloss carried the ball about 30 yards. Just as he was about to be tackled, he "tricked" the Albany side by handing the ball off to Burnett in mid-stride. The fleet-footed SAC captain was once-again off the races, flying 70 yards down the sidelines past a totally confused Albany defense for yet another score.

Bloss, Burnett, Pap Hayseed, the Nash brothers and the rest of the 17 fellows who made up Oregon State’s first football team went on to post an impressive 4-1 record that year, with away and home wins over nearby Monmouth College (O.S.N.S.), 33-22 and 28-0, and a 6-0 win over the Multnomah Athletic Club. SAC’s only loss came at the hands of the University of Portland in a controversial 26-12 setback, in which the Corvallis faithful accused the UP of using spies and "cheating" to win.

A closer look at the record also indicates the spirit of Burnett’s decision to defend the west goal was kept strong right through to the last game. The only points SAC's defense allowed all year came at the road, not at home.

The young sport of football, then, had survived its first game and first season. Coach Bloss left the team at the end of the season, giving way to Head Coach Guy Kennedy, who would lead SAC to its first game and first victory over the University of Oregon in Eugene. Bloss would return to coach but not quarterback the O.A.C. team in 1897 to a 2-0 record and its first football championship of the Pacific Northwest.
National recognition for Oregon State football would come in 1907 under the direction of Coach Fred S. Norcross, a Fielding Yost and University of Michigan alumnus, who would lead the school to its first ever football championship of the West Coast.

Next week: Part 13...The presidency of John McKnight Bloss (1892-1896)