AT a Columbia, Missouri, hotelon a hot, cloudy afternoon in 1913, a Soon-er football squad, stunned by the Missouriultimatum that the Oklahoma team couldeither play the game without its great sen-ior fullback, Claude Reeds, or go back toNorman without collecting its guarantee,dressed in grim silence .Reeds was the star of the youngish,

lightish Sooner team, the indispensablesource from which the strongest Soonerplays stemmed. Without him Oklahomawould have very little chance against thepowerful Tiger team coached by ChetBrewer and Henry "Indian" Schulte.The Missouri charge against Reeds, and

also against Buster Ambrister, veteranSooner quarterback, was that by playingnon-conference games as freshmen theyhad forfeited their senior eligibility . Eligi-bility rules were new in that early day andmembers of the Oklahoma team of 1913have always resented Missouri's forcing ofher own Missouri Valley conference eligi-bility requirements on a non-conferenceopponent (Oklahoma did not belongthen), especially since Kansas, Texas, Col-orado ant] all the other teams on theSooner schedule that year did not protestReeds.

It was a difficult decision for BennieOwen, the Sooner coach. If Owen bowedbefore the Missouri mandate, his teamwould be severely crippled without Reedsand Ambrister. If he refused to yield andtook his team back home, the schoolwould lose about $3,000 expense money, astaggering sum in those days . No matterhow Owen decided, it seemed Oklahoma'steam would be the loser .

Six hundred miles from home, the Soon-er coach talked it over with the boys . Theupshot of their conference was that theyouthful Sooners decided to play withoutReeds and Ambrister. And to make ar-rogant Missouri pay, if they could .

Into Reed's fullback spot went ParkeGeyer, a lanky, stoop-shouldered 164-pound substitute sophomore fullback whohad played at Norman High School . Am-bristcr's substitute was Montford Johnson,also a sophomore who had played at Nor-man High .The game began. Missouri received the

opening kickoff and tearing huge holesin the light Oklahoma line punched thelength of the field for a touchdown with-out ever surrendering the ball . Oklahomadrove back doggedly with the followingkickoff until stopped on the Tiger 30,from whence Ray Courtright booted afield goal .The infuriated Sooners took the lead, 10

to 6, when Courtright returned a Missouri

30

Greatest Sooner Passers[Sports Review]

B y Harold Keith

Spot Geyer in his st; ; dent days

Geyer

The% speak with awe of Samim- BaughBut the best I've ever seenWas a passin' foot who went to schoolBack about '15 .

You've never heard of Gevcr? Say!When he pegged that ballA living flame Shot through you,You couldn't breathe at all .

Though Mont\'d run his fastestFor fifq yards or more,Old Spot could hit his linger tipsThree tunes out of four .

They sent no blockcrs back for SpotHe'd run and dodge and fadeAnd slap the tacklers to the turfWith a hand as hig as a spade .

He'd fade so fast and fade so farThat Bennie used to boastOld Spot got splinters in his tailOf his own goal post .

But all the time his head was upAnd he was keen to seeHall Johnson loose-or Indian Fields-Or Capshaw in the free .

Then he'd cock his arm and whip the ballOut along the sky,A spinning soaring leveled shootSixt\ yards on the flc!

Down the field MontgomcrJ'd IcapTo palin the ball in stride,And you'd oughta heard those Sooners roarWhen he gave it a touchdown ride.

YeP, Ernie Lain had a glorious reignAnd Davey O'Brien too,The Trojan rave is Doyle NaveAnd Friedman's shots were true .

And they speak with awe of Sammy BaughBut the slickest I've ever seenWas the passin' fool who went to school(tack about '15 .

punt 35 yards to the Tiger 15 and TrimCapshaw whirled across from there for atouchdown . But Missouri's greater powertold and when the last quarter started, theTigers led 20 to 10 and Oklahoma's gal-lant little team was apparently whipped .Then Geyer, Reeds' kid understudy

playing his first full college game, wentinto action . He began raining forwardpasses, the straightest, truest passes theTiger fans had ever seen, and Oklahomadrove to a touchdown from kickoff, Geyerpitching a short one to Tom Lowry for thescore . Missouri 20, Oklahoma 17!There were only a few minutes left to

play but with young Geyer coolly riddlingthe Tiger defense with his thrilling aerials,the Sooners again moved bravely upfield,crossing chalk line after chalk line . Thefinal seconds were flying . Now it was acontest, not between Oklahoma and Mis-souri, but between young Geyer and theclock, because nothing the Missourians didcould stop this lanky boy's throwing .From midfield, Geyer hit Courtright

with still another pass and Corky ran 40yards to the Tiger 10-yard line . But theclock won, time was up after this play andthe Sooners disconsolately walked off thefield defeated, 20 to 17 .With Reeds back, Geyer played very

little in the rest of the games that fall .But Bennie Owen never forgot those whiz-zing passes by the gangling Norman boy.Reeds was graduating in the spring andOklahoma would need a new fullback .And the cunning little Sooner coach al-ready had him picked out-Geyer. Owenhad also decided on the style of the Soon-er offense in the future-forward passing.The most brilliant forward passing themidlands had ever seen .How "Spot" Geyer, as he came to be

known, made good in 1914 and 1915 is aSooner legend . Every old-time Soonerknows it . The green Norman kid becamethe Peerless Pegger of the Prairies . TheOklahoma team of 1914 lost but one gameand the Oklahoma team of 1915, whichGeyer captained, was all-victorious . LikeJove's thunderbolts, Geyer's deadly passesscared the foe. In 1914 Geyer completedmore than one mile of forward passes . In1915 he duplicated this feat . Nobody hadever seen such slinging . Geyer was so ac-curate with a football that given a wagonload of them, he could have played Boom-er Sooner on a xylophone from a distanceof 30 yards and sounded every note witha running throw.One of the most important qualities of

a great forward passer is coolness, but it'shard to be cool with half a dozen burlyenemy linesmen trying to rush you and

SOONER MAGAZINE

smash you to the ground . No player infootball is exposed like a forward passer .He's "naked," as the players say . He wantsto look at his charging foes but he can't .He's got to see them out of the corner ofhis eye and concentrate on his receiversdown the field.

Coolness was one of Geyer's greatesttraits . He was always wonderfully calmand relaxed, even to the point of noncha-lance. He could pick his men so wonder-fully even with enemy tacklers viciouslycutting at him, that on some plays Owengave him his choice of three or four mento throw to.Geyer proved he had no fear of rushing

opponents in the Oklahoma-Haskell In-dian game of 1914 at Kansas City . Theundefeated Haskell team that year wasprobably the roughest, dirtiest aggregationa Sooner team has had to face in the 45-year-old history of football at the state uni-

AUGUST, 1940

Phil White

versify . They were out to stop Geyer anyway they could and they clipped, sluggedand roughed him so mercilessly everytime he faded back to pass that two ofthem were banished from the game .. But Geyer took his punishment gamelyand beautifully . He revenged himself up-on his tormentors in the way he knew best-forward passing-completing 10 of 17passes against Haskell for 175 yards, oneof them a 45-yard touchdown shot to EndHomer Montgomery . After that hotly-waged battle, which Oklahoma won 35 to12, the grinning Geyer was a mass ofbruises and "charley horses" and Owensent him direct to Claremore, Oklahoma,to recuperate for a couple of days in thebaths there. The Indians had given hima terrific beating but they hadn't stoppedhim, or even slowed him.After his graduation, Geyer became

president of the Marland Oil Company ofTexas. Following two years of ill health,he died from pneumonia in 1932 at FortWorth, Texas.

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32

Was "Spot" Geyer the greatest forwardpasser ever developed at Oklahoma?No Sooner passer, or any pitcher either,

in these parts, has come anywhere nearequalling Geyer's phenomenal yardage."HulripyIs" critics assert it wouldn't bepossible nowadays against carefully or-ganized modern pass defenses, and yet"Trim" Capshaw, Geyer's teammate, hasa pretty good answer for that ."What would you use," Capshaw asks,

"against our long-punt setup with the endshopped wide and three good receivingbacks placed up close enough to the lineto be able to spread into the clear quickly?That way we had five receivers, all closeto the scrimmage line, and in Geyer a pass-er who was deadly accurate up to 50 yards.What would you use against that?"While you're figuring out what you'd

use, let's pass to another great Soonerpasser, a big 205-pound fellow who isprobably one of the most underestimatedSooner backs of all time, Phil White ofAnadarko and Oklahoma City, now anOklahoma City physician .Although White played in 1918 and

1919, lie was only an average player until1920, the year Owen turned out his un-defeated Missouri Valley championshipclub . Most fans know White was a greatkicker and also a terrific hitter who ranover tacklers with high knee action . Butit probably isn't realized that he was alsoa fine forward passer and a swell passdefense man, too.The game that inade White was the

Washington-Oklahoma battle at old St .Francis field in St. Louis early in the 1920season, Oklahoma's first Missouri ValleyConference clash . In the first half Wash-ington worked the screen pass, later bar-red, for two touchdowns . Their line wouldpurposely let the Sooner line sift throughto the passer, meanwhile blocking theSooner linebackers clear off the field andclearing the way for one of their backs todelay and then race in just beyond thescrimmage line to catch the pass . At thehalf Washington led, 14 to 3, and then itbegan to rain!Things looked bleak for the Sooners but

during the intermission Coach Owenquickly reorganized his defense, bringingWhite, Myron "Little Tub" Tyler andOuarterback Frank Ogilvie into the gamefor the first time and instructing his ends,on a forward pass situation, to drop backa couple of yards and cover the Washing-ton ends while his halves came up tobreak up the pass .

White was one of those defensive halvesand lie took charge . "Choose 'em, gang!"he yelled and that became the team's bat-tle cry. Led by White, who slapped off thecharging Bear linesmen and leaped highto intercept throw after throw, some ofthem with one hand, Oklahoma stoppedthe screen pass and came back in the rainto beat Washington 24 to 14 . White, whowas a great mudder, had a large part ofthe offense as well as the defense. He for-

Bob Duniap

ward-passed the wet ball to Tyler forOklahoma's final touchdown and kickedall three goals .He was a great player in all Oklahoma's

games the rest of the season . At Colum-bia, in Oklahoma's surprise defeat o£ Mis-souri 28 to 7, White set up Oklahoma'sfirst touchdown by passing 22 yards to JapHaskell to the Tiger one-yard line . In thesecond quarter he passed 40 yards to Has-kell but Missouri stopped that march. Inthe third period he passed 30 yards toTackle Port Johnston, setting up anotherscore, and in the fourth he passed 25 yardsto Haskell who ran 25 more for anothertouchdown.He also helped beat Kansas with his

27-yard shot to Tyler who ran to the Jay-hawker three, and in the final gameagainst Drake, White forward-passedthree touchdowns outright, two of themto Pott Johnston and one to Haskell, andin the final moment of play hurled a long50-yard flip to Tyler who ran to the Bull-dog one-yard line . Oklahoma's passingarithmetic in that game, which the Soon-ers won 44 to 7, was 11 completions in 26throws for a total of 185 yards.Was Phil White the greatest forward

passer ever developed at Norman? Waslie as good or better than Geyer?The third standout passer of the Uni-

versity was Bob Dunlap, the big 190-pound fellow from Haskell, Oklahoma,who quarterbacked Ad Lindsey's Soonersof 1931 and Lewie Hardage's Sooners of1932 and 1933 . Unlike Geyer and White,Dunlap played on mediocre Sooner teamsand consequently didn't shine with theeffulgence of the other two. And yet heranks with Reeds, White, Hugh McCul-lough and little Beryl Clark as the finestSooner triple-theater of all time .Dunlap's three-year passing record was

97 completions in 287 throws for a grandtotal of 1,641 yards and nine touchdownsthrown outright, not at all bad for mod-ern football . His best year was 1932 when

SOONER MAGAZINE

he hit 47 of 125 for 832 yards which wasmore net yardage than the Sooners earnedon their running game that season . Hisbest game was probably the 10-17 loss toTexas at Dallas in 1932 when Dunlap hit7 of his first 11 passes for 117 yards . Hewas as good at long passes as he was onshort ones, twice hitting Art Pansze andAb Walker for touchdowns after throwsnearly half the length of the field againstKansas State at Norman in 1932 .

Dunlap's handicap, and it is a terrificone for any passer, was that the Soonerrushing game was so weak all three yearshe played that the enemy could set backand lay for his passes . Also his receiverswere usually small men of only averagereceiving ability . And yet if he could haveplayed on the powerful Oklahoma teamsof 1920, 1938 or 1939, Dunlap mighteasily have been an All-American becausehe could kick, run, pass and defend withthe best of them .Was Bob Dunlap the greatest Sooner

forward passer of all time? Or if hewasn't, could he have been, with a strongersupporting cast?Tom Stidham's powerful Sooner teams

of the past three years have been builtaround three remarkably accurate forwardpassers at short range . In 1937 Jack Baerof Shawnee ranked second in the nation toEd Boell of New York U. in percentage offorward pass completions, hitting 40 of 80for .500 . In 1938 Hugh McCullough ofOklahoma City led the nation in percent-age of completions, cashing 70 of 111 for apercentage of .631 that has never been sur-passed . Last year Beryl Clark of Cherokeefired 64 times, ringing the bell 38 times fora percentage of .594 which also topped theUnited States .

Perhaps one of this modern trio de-serves to be ranked as Oklahoma's topfootball pitcher of them all .

All three were given good protectionand all save Baer were aided by slashingrunning games. However, the averageyardage gained was much shorter than inthe old days, Baer averaging 10.75 yardsper each completed pass, McCullough 9.24and Clark 11 .39 . Where Geyer would hit1,800 yards per season and White andDunlap around 800, Baer's total was 430,McCullough's 647 and Clark's 433. Andyet all three were corking throwers .

Little Clark probably performed a featnever before equalled by any Sooner whenhe completed nine consecutive passes with-out missing against Kansas and the Ok-lahoma Aggies at Norman last fall andran his string to 17 completions in 20shots through a hot streak in the IowaState and Kansas State games for an ex-traordinary percentage of .850 before mudand an injured shoulder stopped him atManhattan, Kansas .The University has produced several

other fine passers besides this sextet, menlike Reeds, '13 ; Skivy Davis, '19; FrankPotts, '26 ; Bus Haskins, '28; and C. C.Buxton, '30 . Perhaps one of them deservesthe top forward passing accolade .

AUGUST, 1940

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