Jim Owens, The “Big Fella”
By Richard Linde, Updated 26 November 2004

I

He began his head coaching career in the Pacific Coast Conference, which back in 1957 was the weakest conference in college football and an embarrassment to every PCC football fan.

"Hey, guys, those Midwest farm boys are tough and strong. You west coast kids are a bunch of sissies."

He resurrected a football program on the wane and was known to everybody who lived in Seattle - football fan or not. Like Hugh McElhenny before, he gave a provincial, modest seaport town notoriety and visibility, and today, among all of us who shared his spectacular moment in time, he stands as tall as his mentor, Paul "Bear" Bryant, and forever will. 

No story about a Husky coach of the fifties, however, would be complete without first mentioning the influential Roscoe “Torchy” Torrance, a Seattle businessman and avid Husky fan.

Sleepless in Seattle

In his book "Torchy!," Torrance recalls a meeting he had with Bear Bryant, who was coaching Kentucky at the time. According to Torrance, Bryant pointed to one of his assistant coaches and said, “That fellow will make a great coach for somebody some day.” The coach was Jim Owens. When Torrance returned to Seattle he mentioned the incident to Washington’s athletic director, George Briggs. A year later, Jim Owens took over as Washington’s head football coach, leaving Texas A&M as an assistant coach.

Owens took over a program in total turmoil. After he was fired in 1955, ex- Husky coach John Cherberg testified that Husky athletes were being paid under the table through a slush fund run by Torrance. Harvey Cassill (Washington’s AD) resigned in 1956 after it was disclosed that funds had been diverted from a pro football exhibition to the Greater Washington Advertising Organization, headed by Torrance. This organization distributed monthly paychecks to Husky players. In 1956, Washington was banned from the Rose Bowl (a two year ban) for its slush-fund scandal. Although boosters were allowed to help players out with cash payments in those days, the allowable amount was limited by the NCAA in the mid-fifties; Washington’s players received more than that amount.

Cherberg charged that Torrance was using the slush fund to turn Husky players against him. According to Torrance that charge wasn’t true at all. Although the local press had known about the slush fund all along, they backstabbed Torrance, treating it as a breaking story. Sports writers, who had been friends with him for years, left him twisting in the wind. Years later, Cherberg and Torrance shook hands, settling their differences. Cherberg used his new-found popularity to become the Lt. Governor of the State of Washington.

"I'm here to stay"

A cacophony of backbiting, countercharges and unrest set the scene for Jim Owens when he arrived in town. Call it “Sleepless in Seattle,” sans Tom Hanks. There was no love affair between Husky fans and their head coaches. Stated another way, taking over the Washington head coaching job in 1957 was akin to replacing the Captain of the Titanic just after it had struck the iceberg.

Seemingly naïve enough not to know any better, Jim Owens was just two months short of his thirtieth birthday when he took the job, replacing Darrel Royal who jumped ship for Texas after a one-year stint as head football coach at Washington.

“I’m here to stay,” said Owens, who was the fourth Husky football coach in a span of six years. Seemingly, he was ready to go down with the ship—or willing to be keelhauled like his predecessors.

Not surprisingly—considering those tumultuous times—Owens had losing seasons during his first two years at Washington (1957, 1958). Notwithstanding, Washington’s 1957 freshman class headed by Bob Schloredt may have been one of its best ever. In 1958, a Husky team made up mostly of sophomores traveled to Columbus, Ohio to play the heavily favored Ohio State Buckeyes, and lost 12-7. The Huskies were in the game all the way, a portent of things to come.

In 1959, the Huskies went 10-1-0, beating Wisconsin in the 1960 Rose Bowl game, 44-8. Not only did that game turn the Rose Bowl around for the old Pacific Coast Conference, but also it was a critical juncture in Husky history that ended 36 years of frustration. Up to that point in time, Washington’s best effort in the Rose Bowl had been a 14-14 tie with Navy in 1924. In their previous appearance 16 years earlier (1944), Southern Cal had administered a wartime whopping, 29-0.

The Death March

Taking advantage of the limited substitution (one platoon football) rule, Owens conditioned his athletes better than anyone else. His teams fourth-quartered their opponents, pinning them to the mat after wearing them down for three quarters. His players believed in themselves because they had survived the “death march,” a term used by the media to describe Husky practices.

As an assistant to Owens, Tom Tipps (on the staff with Owens at Texas A&M) helped him install the physical conditioning program they had used at Texas A&M so successfully. In 1957, they took over a team that lacked depth; there was little experience at quarterback. The coaches looked for an edge. They took players to the point of where they thought they couldn’t do anymore, both physically and mentally. Then they’d push them some more. Husky practices resembled a military boot camp; the physical conditioning and mental toughness gained during the week translated into victories on Saturday.

After several successful years at Washington, other schools attempted to lure Owens away. At that time, fans were saying that Owens walked across the lake to get to the games from his Mercer Island home. In 1961, Owens assumed two roles: that of head football coach and athletic director. The new position paid more money and made it unattractive for him to leave Washington.

To compete with the pros for fan interest, the NCAA decided to return to two-platoon football in 1964. After that rules change, Owens was slow to change his coaching philosophy. In the past, his teams emphasized defense and the running game, something he’d learned at Oklahoma. However, conditioning and mental preparedness were not as important as having skilled athletes on the playing field.

Up to that time, his teams had been run-oriented, only throwing the ball occasionally to keep the defense honest. But the other teams from the Pacific Eight conference were searching for quarterbacks who could pass the ball and looking for receivers who could get open and catch it. Fortunately for them, California’s high schools and junior colleges were turning out those commodities in droves. Nobody could run on the Trojans in those days, so it made sense to pass the ball and keep the fans interested by featuring a wide-open attack.

Considering the number of its teams that featured a passing game, it can be said that the Pacific Eight/Pac-10 was college football’s first real passing conference. It dominated the Rose Bowl from 1970-1992, going 19-4 against the ground-oriented Big Ten.

Owens was slow to match the rest of the conference in a wide-open attack. Tough entrance requirements at Washington made it hard for him to recruit skilled athletes from out of state. Then there was the racial unrest at Washington in 1968 through 1970, which haunted the Washington program. The Huskies went 1-9-0 in 1969 in the midst of that crisis.

Racial unrest

The sixties were a time of racial unrest and turmoil in the United States. In that decade, a popular president and one of his brothers were assassinated. Riots occurring in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, in August of 1965, resulted in the death of 35 people who were mostly black. In February of that year, Malcolm X was assassinated. In April 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King met a similar fate and, on June 5 of that year, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Beginning in 1961, The Vietnam War, the most unpopular war in American history, lasted through the decade and halfway into the next.

Many students of the sixties and early seventies "loathed the military," as former president Bill Clinton wrote in a letter to Colonel Holmes on December 3, 1969. To compound the racial problems at the UW, Jim Owens ran a football program that resembled a military boot camp at times.

Three incidents of racial revolt, occurring over a span of three years, began in 1968. Unfair treatment of black athletes at the university surfaced after Harry Edwards, a black Sociology professor at San Jose State, visited the Washington campus in 1968. Edwards is the author of the book, The Revolt of the Black Athlete (1969).

In that book, referring to gains made at San Jose State College in 1967 via demands by The United Black Students for Action, Edwards wrote, " So we called a rally to commence at noon on the opening day of classes for the fall, 1967, semester ... [for] the elimination of racism at San Jose State College. We invited all faculty members and administration officials. We outlined a list of demands and stated publicly what our strategy would be if our demands were not met. We, in effect, declared that we would prevent the opening football game of the season from being played by any means necessary...So we had carried the confrontation. But more than this, we had learned the use of power -- the power to be gained from exploiting the white man's economic and almost religious involvement in athletics."

Edwards, along with Tommy Smith of San Jose State College, helped influence the black boycott of the 1968 Olympic games.

The racial unrest at the UW was made public in March 1968 by Life Magazine. Thirteen African American players, who apparently were led by halfback Harvey Blanks, made four demands of the university and its athletic department.

1. A four-man black athletic committee would oversee any changes that Jim Owens made in black personnel, such as demoting a player to second string.
2. All coaches would be reviewed for discriminatory practices.
3. An athletic trainer who purportedly used the “N” word was to be dismissed. It was alleged that he gave perfunctory treatment to injured black players.
4. A black coach was to be hired.

Two of the demands were met. Carver Gayton, an African American player from one of Owens’ early teams, was hired as an assistant coach. The trainer was fired.

Whatever gains were made were laid to rest when, on October 29, 1969, four black players, meeting with Gayton, protested the demotion of black halfback, Landy Harrell, to second string. Harrell then quit the team over his punishment, which required him to run the steps of Husky Stadium twice for fumbling twice against Oregon in a 22-7 loss the previous week. They had other grievances as well and said they wanted to boycott the UCLA game.

After Gayton told Owens what had happened, Owens met with every player on the team and asked for their 100% commitment to the football program. Apparently, Blanks, Greg Alex, Lamar Mills and Ralph Bayard, all of them African Americans, said they could not. As a result, Owens suspended them from the team.

The next day, on Friday, as the team was about to board the bus for the airport for its game with UCLA at the Coliseum, several hundred protesters, mostly black along with some white sympathizers, surrounded the team bus and demanded that the remaining eight black players boycott the game. They did. To make up for the eight African Americans who stayed behind, Owens brought eight reserves to the game, most of them redshirts.

UCLA beat Washington, 57-14, in what turned out to be one of the most disappointing Husky games I have ever witnessed in person.

While Owens and his wife Martha were in Los Angeles, four men, two black and two white, assailed Owens’ 17-year old daughter, Kathy, They forced her car off the road and one of them, reportedly black, asked her if she was an Owens. Before she managed to drive off, the assailant pulled her head back by the hair and struck her in the face.

Joe Kearny, who assumed the role of athletic director after taking over from Owens earlier in the year, met with Gayton, Owens, school administrators, the Board of Regents and student leaders later in the week.

On Tuesday, November 2, Gayton’s brother, Gary, an attorney hired by the four suspended players, said that he would do everything in his power to see that Owens resigned or in someway be dismissed as football coach.

That statement triggered a backlash of support for Owens among white fans, some of whom had been noncommittal until then.

On Saturday, at the Stanford game, Owens was given a standing ovation by the predominantly 48,000 white fans as he took the field. His team was 0-7 at the time.

After meeting with the four suspended black players the next Friday, Owens announced that reinstatement of three of the African American players, Alex, Bayard and Mills. Blanks remained suspended; Gayton, caught in the middle of the suspensions, resigned as assistant coach the next Monday.

Blanks, through his attorney Gary Gayton, threatened to sue the school.

In April 1970, the school's Human Right Commission began an investigation into charges of racism in the athletic department.

On October 20, 1970, Kearny said the relationship between the athletic department and black athletes was substantially improved. That afternoon, Owens suspended black halfback Mark Wheeler for missing two practices.

Two days after the Washington State game, Wheeler (who had never returned to the team), Ira Hampton, Charles Evans and Calvin Jones left the team.

Their leaving the team triggered an investigation by the Board of Regents into racial practices at the university. The Human Rights Commission, which had been working on the problems since April, recommended that Owens and Kearny be fired.

On December 19, 1970,  the group dominated by  the Board of Regents, which had been investigating the situation for almost one month, recommended the hiring of a black assistant coach and a black athletics’ department manager.

Early in January, Ray Jackson, who had been on Owens’ first Rose Bowl team, was hired as an assistant coach. Former Seattle sportswriter Donald K. Smith was hired as associate athletic director.

Smith said that the firing of Owens and Kearny would not solve the situation, that its roots went much deeper than just those two men, and that it was a problem that existed elsewhere in the country.

Calvin Jones returned to the team as a result of negotiations with Smith, Gary Gayton and Owens. Wheeler enrolled at Harvard; Hammon and Evans transferred to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.

Blanks never was reinstated nor did he file suit against the university. Later, Owens permitted him to play in an Alumni All-Star game to demonstrate his talent to pro scouts. He went on to pursue an acting career.

The Black Athletes Alumni Club, which had previously discouraged black athletes from attending Washington, reversed its stand

Smith managed to restore peace and order to the Huskies’ football program. [Rockne, One Hundred Years].

Owens' final years at the UW

Owens was forced into a passing game, whether he liked it or not. He had come from the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust school of football, and needed to change his philosophy. Enter Sonny Sixkiller, a sophomore out of Ashland, Oregon. Ironically, the Huskies installed Astroturf in 1968. Beginning in 1970, under Sixkiller, no more clouds of dust could be seen, just rooster tails from skidding corner backs trying to catch Husky receivers on rainy days.

In 1970, The Huskies posted a 6-4 record, a marked improvement over their 1-9 record in 1969. Washington had returned to the passing game that had worked so successfully many years before, when Don Heinrich quarterbacked the Huskies. Washington compiled two 8-3 seasons, back to back, in 1971 and 1972.

Unfortunately, Owens’ last two seasons were losing ones. The California schools in the conference had a huge population advantage that Owens just couldn’t overcome. Coming along later in time, several NCAA rules mitigated the effect of this advantage, which helped Owens’ successors at Washington. If Owens had stayed at Washington a few more years, he might have left the program with his head held high.

Jim Owens retired to Big Fork, Montana in 1974, garnering a 99-82-6 record at Washington. His reign at Washington can be broken down into three periods: The first two years when the Huskies were coming off sanctions (1957-1958, 6-13-1); the years between then and the implementation of two-platoon football (1959-1963, 38-12-3); and the subsequent years leading to his retirement (1964-1974, 55-57-2).

The UW's most charismatic coach

Jim Owens was the most charismatic of Washington’s head football coaches. With his good looks and positive personality, he was ready made for TV. As a student at Oklahoma, the coeds flocked after him on campus, but he said he never looked back. Everyone who met him was captivated by his wide smile and personality. When he spoke with you, he would look you right in the eye, and you believed what he said.

When Owens’ teams played in Los Angeles, I made a point to meet the team bus when it arrived at the Coliseum; I always gave Owens a wave of the hand as he got off the bus, and then would call out to wish him luck. He always waved back and smiled. I like to think he began to know me by sight after a few years, and expected me to be there. I was one of the few fans to show up on those occasions, for it was tough for Owens to win in LA. A lot of coaches would have been too arrogant or introverted to encourage my raucous behavior—but not Owens. If he had been a professional golfer, he would have been as popular with the fans as Seattle’s Freddie Couples.

Owens spent time in California searching for JC players. A couple of former JC coaches I talked with say they will never forget Owens’ magnetic personality and honesty. I had the same experience at a Los Angeles hotel, where I met Owens at a Husky Hoedown preceding a Rose Bowl game. He’d retired then, but was most gracious and willing to talk about the past, especially about that 1960 Rose Bowl game. That game is a watershed moment in Husky history, launching Washington football, as it is known today, the West Coast’s premier program.

Owens’ effort at Washington paved the way for the Dawgfather, Don James (1975-1992, 153-57-2). Without Jim Owens who knows where the Huskies would be today. When it comes to comparing Washington’s coaches, the “Big Fella” stands tall, maybe slightly taller than the rest.

Afterward (one of the first equal-opportunity coaches).

On October 25, 2003, Jim Owens was honored during half-time at the UW/USC football game. At that time, a statue of his likeness was unveiled and was given a permanent spot in front of Husky Stadium.

One day before the unveiling, black protestors decried the placement of the statue, and their protests were given top billing by the Seattle media.

Owens said accusations of racism were "totally untrue," as were charges that he "stacked" black players at certain positions to limit the number of African Americans on the field. One of Owens' black players, Dave Dinish agreed with Owens, saying Owens had players at their best positions, regardless of color.

As mentioned, I met Jim Owens in 1978 at a Husky Hoedown held at the St. Bonaventure hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Owens dined with George Fleming who was one of the blacks on the 1960 Rose Bowl team, and I spoke with Fleming, reliving a remarkable moment in Husky history that forever changed West Coast football.

The following day, the Dawgs went on to beat Michigan, 27-20, in the Rose Bowl.

"Those (protesters) are well off base," said Dinish, who played halfback and receiver. "Jim Owens was extremely good to me."

"(We) should have a Jim Owens Day. I love the guy," said Ron Preston, another black who played running back. "I thought he was just as fair as could be."

None of the protestors that protested the placement of the statue were members of Owens' teams from 1968-70, when the racial unrest occurred.

In his book written with Bob Condotta, Sonny Sixkiller (1969-1973) has this to say, "I know there was some controversy about how Coach Owens treated some players, but as far as I saw it, he was always fair with everybody...I mean, I have to give him a lot of credit for taking a skinny kid out of Ashland, Oregon and letting him throw the football around. I'll always be proud of that. [Sixkiller, Condotta].

Stacking players? Gee, kind of hard stacking players when one-platoon football ruled the day. Ask Charlie Mitchell if Owens ever stacked him at halfback. Mitchell, one of the quickest backs I’d ever seen at Washington, started for Owens in a number of games and carried the ball ad nauseam.

"Humpback 32, on White." Mitchell off right tackle. Mitchell off left tackle.

Hey, Owens, throw Charlie a pass or two, or run him to the outside like Odell did with Hurricane Hugh.

Hey, Owens, remember Don Heinrich--the Arm, the Bremerton Bomber? He transferred the ball. Oh, sure, three things can happen and two of them are bad. I forgot.

Several of Owens’s blacks were named to all-conference teams, Mitchell (1961), Fleming (1960), Ray Jackson (1960). Wow, they sure got short-changed in carries. Was Owens an off-and-on again racist?

Oh, sure, Hugh McElhenny is the king of them all, but Mitchell deserves his legendary place in Husky history, too, along with George Fleming, Dave Dinish, Ray Jackson, Ron Preston and every black, including the protesters, who played for the Big Fella.

There weren’t many black players in college football during Owens early years at the UW; ironically, Owens was one of the first coaches in college football to give black players an equal opportunity, and he was taught by the great Paul Bear Bryant, who got converted over by Sam “Bam” Cunningham in 1970.

Later, after that historical game with USC, former Bear Bryant assistant coach Jerry Claiborne noted, “Sam Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama in 60 minutes that night than Martin Luther King had accomplished in 20 years.”

Was Owens a racist?

The fact is that Owens never was a bigot, racist or prejudiced. He was simply overwhelmed by the times, like most white Americans who had never suffered the prejudices of racism and profiling, all of them, both black and white Americans, caught ashore in a tsunami of misunderstanding and turbulence. Some of them have drifted out to sea and then back again, to rewrite a history that is never quite the same, the retelling of which, at times, suits the whims of a demagogue.

Quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jim Owens exited Washington with these words to say, “We are the sum of our days, and should look sharp at how they pass. Of our days, they come and go like muffled veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party.”

Bio

Owens served two-and-a-half years with the Naval Air Corps during World War II, following is graduation from high school in 1944. For a while he was stationed in Corpus Christie, Texas where he was able to hitchhike home on the weekends and see his girl friend, whom he married when he was 19. Following his service, Owens enrolled at Oklahoma, where he played from 1946-1949. Owens was the Sooners' captain and leading receiver, earning him All-American honors on Oklahoma's 11-0 squad in 1949. After graduating in 1950, Owens played one season for the Baltimore Colts while also serving as a part-time assistant at Johns Hopkins University. Owens was then an assistant under Paul 'Bear' Bryant at Kentucky from 1951-53 and followed Bryant to Texas A&M in 1954 and stayed until 1956. Owens' Husky teams won three AAWU titles and went to three Rose Bowls,  including the Huskies' first ever Rose Bowl win in 1960, a 44-8 romp over Wisconsin. Owens split his other two trips to Pasadena when the Huskies beat Minnesota 17-7 in 1961 and lost to Illinois in 1964 17-7. Owens retired after the 1974 campaign and was inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of 1979.

Mea Culpa:

All of the opinions expressed in this article are my own, and should not be associated with any of the authors of the references listed below or with dawgman.com, with whom I wish to credit the photos.

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