USD Football 1994

You SayYou Want aRevolution continued

That's how Rhome came to wear Tulsa colors. He had led the Southwest Conference in passing at SMU in 1961, but when the Mustangs hired a new coach who was enamored of the run, Rhome transferred to Tulsa. Rhome and Twilley made their varsity debuts in 1963 as the Hurricanes successfully defended their national passing title by averaging 244.8 yards per game. But that was a mere for 1964, when fell

the national map, 11 said Twil- ley. "They were a pretty good team, but they were trying to play us with a wide-tackle six defense [basically an eight-man front, a nm-prevention align- ment!. They didn't have a chance." Tulsa also bombarded Southern 1llinois 163-7), Louisville (58-0) and North Texas State (47-0). The Hurri- canes capped a 9-2 season by beatingMississippi in the Blue- bonnet Bowl, 14-7. Incredibly, many of the national passing records set by Tulsa in 1964 didn't even last a year as school records. Bill Anderson succeeded Rhome as the Hurricanes 1 quarterback and the nation's leading passer in 1965. Twilley actually improved on his phenomenal junior season, catching 134 passes for 1,779 yards, a record that still stands. But the I965 squad merely built onto an existing founda- tion. It was Tulsa 1 s 1 964 team that revolutionized the game, proving beyond all doubts that a passing team could win. Other schools soon began duplicating the Hurricanes 1 modus operandi; passing num- bers soared, as did scores. Col- lege football hasn't been the same since. "I knew we were doing something better than anybody else had done, or was doing, or would be doing for quite a long while," said Dobbs. "But it was so normal to us that we didn 1 t understand why people thought it was unusual. We just knew it would win games for us better than any other method. We really didn 1 t think of it as that big a deal." But it was. For in 1964, the University of Tulsa brought college football out of the dark ages and launched the modern era. By launching passes. Bob FULTON IS A FREELANCE WRITER FROM lNDIANA, PA., AND A FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR TO TOUCHDOWN ILLUSTRATED.

holds NCAA receiving records.

NFLers Don Chandler (left) and Tony Banfield (right) discuss football as the Rhome-men do. Tulsa lost only two games that year: a 31-22 setback at Arkansas, which finished 11-0, and a 28-23 loss to Cincinnati that cost Dobbs' team the Mis- souri Valley Conference crown. The Hurricanes won the rest of their regular-season games by an average margin of 33 points. The highlight was unques- tionably a 61-14 rout of favored Oklahoma State. Rhome com- pleted 35 of 43 passing attempts for 488 yards and four touchdowns. Twilley caught 15 passes for 217 yards and two scores. "That was the game that put the University of Tulsa on

B

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the coach asked for someone to volunteer, so I did," said Twil- ley. "I had never caught a pass in organized football in my life until that day. Anyway, I caught six or seven passes and scored a couple of touchdowns. The coaches moved me from guard to end. It completely changed my life. 11 T hat's not to suggest col- lege recruiters were soon beat- ing a path to Twilley's door. Fact is, he received only two scholarship offers as a senior, one from Tulsa, the other from Tarleton State, an NAIA school in Texas. Twilley wound up at Tulsa along with a lot of other players overlooked by bigger schools. Dobbs knew he couldn't outrecruit Oklahoma and Oklahoma State for

"We were doing a lot of things

with motion and people

didn't know how to adjust to it."

JERRY RHOME

I

B prospects, so he sought a dif- ferent sort of player, the kind who would've been lost in those Big Eight Conference programs: The kind who excelled in a pass-oriented offense.