San Francisco Dons Football

bdusf — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:29:52 GMT

I just read about the destruction of the San Francisco Dons Football team some 57 years ago because of the bigget nature of the Southeast. The famous story of how an undefeated team that should have played for a natural chapionship instead stayed home to stand up for the African American players on the team. For more on this story, refer to the links below and the copy and paste from wikipedia. In my belief it is time to make up for this shameful behavior and start another team at the University of San Francisco. The town deserves it and its a great time to have a unifying project that would help stimulate job growth.

http://usfdons.cstv.com/trads/football_trad.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/20/BAGBPIV32K14.DTL

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-147665896.html

Compared to local rivals Santa Clara and Saint Mary's, USF's football teams were historically not as strong. However, the 1951 Dons entered college football lore by fielding a team that would go undefeated and produce three NFL hall of famers (Gino Marchetti, Ollie Matson, and Bob St. Clair). However, they did not receive any bowl invitations, as the team turned down any suggestions that they leave their two black teammates at home at the expense of a much-needed bowl bid. Due to the associated financial burden on the school that a bowl bid would have alleviated, USF's finest football team ever was to be its last in Division I. Though football made a brief comeback as a Division II sport during the 1960s and 1970s, USF has not fielded a varsity team since.

Kuharich was an indifferent recruiter who largely delegated that responsibility to his freshman coach, Brad Lynn. Lynn had little to offer prospective players in the way of scholarship inducements beyond tuition and room and board in an old ROTC barracks. However, Lynn would take recruits to the highest hill on campus, and would gesture out towards the sweeping panorama of San Francisco saying, "THIS is your campus." Only a handful of players from that 1951 team had been considered blue-ribbon prospects in high school. Two of the team's best players, Toler and guard Louis (Red) Stephens, had not even played high school football. Future Hall of Famer Marchetti was a high school dropout who had played only sparingly when he was in school.

The 1951 Dons were honored during the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.

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San Francisco Dons Football