75 Years Ago This Week - Our Greatest Coach, Odus Mitchell, Wins Our First Bowl Game, Defeating Legend Amos Alonzo Stagg's Pacific Tigers

[ADLER]

It was December 21, 1946

  I stopped by Coach Mitchell's grave in Denton this week

It was beyond comical how the 1946 football season started for North Texas. The football program had been cancelled at North Texas State during World War II. The was no equipment and there were no facilities. North Texas had hired a new coach to rebuild the program but he never reported to campus and he called to say that he had taken another job just two weeks before the fall semester started.

Former Athletic Director Theron Fouts had been instrumental in the creation of the new Lone Star Conference and now his own school was not even going to be fielding a team.

A call went out to Odus Mitchell, football coach at Marshall High School in the tiny east piney woods town of Marshall, Texas. Mitchell had studied the game and it's great innovators, and was having a very successful career coaching at Marshall. His 1944 team, with a side throwing kid at quarterback named Y.A. Tittle, had just made the Texas football quarterfinals.

Coach Mitchell must have been crazy because he boldly jumped at the opportunity. He was then told "you have no team, you have no equipment or facilities, you have no time to recruit players so you'll have to draw from current students on campus, and, you play at Texas A&M in College Station in 11 days."

Nothing daunted Coach Mitchell and he enthusiastically accepted the challenge.

In a 1982 interview, Mitchell recalled the whirlwind start to the 1946 season.

"It was nearly time for the season to start," he said. "I hadn't done any recruiting or anything, and I hadn't had an experience with recruiting. I got initiated like heck the first game."

Texas A&M trounced North Texas in Mitchell's first game at the helm, 47-0.

But things turned around quickly.

Mitchell got his first collegiate victory the next game with a 14-0 win over Austin College. Two weeks later, the squad beat Fort Sam Houston.

Three wins later, North Texas was geared up for a showdown for the Lone Star Conference Championship with rival East Texas State, now known as Texas A&M-Commerce.

North Texas exploded for a 47-7 victory and was headed to its first bowl game in program history.

Mitchell was set to square off with legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg's College of the Pacific Tigers in the 1946 Optimist Bowl.

 

First year North Texas coach Odus Mitchell with Pacific coach Amos Alonzo Stagg the night preceding the bowl game

1946 Optimist Bowl

Public School Stadium, site of the 1946 Optimist Bowl, later to be renamed Robertson Stadium

The game was scoreless through the first quarter, but NT got on the board in the second when Ned McNeil intercepted a Pacific pass and ran it 58 yards back for a touchdown.

Pacific tied the game in the third on a five-yard touchdown pass following a fumble recovery deep in North Texas territory.

The Tiger broke the tie late in the fourth quarter on a 22-yard touchdown pass, but a key miss on the extra point gave North Texas some life.

NT then drove down the field to give the school its first ever bowl victory.

The drive began with a long kickoff return, a 20-yard gain through the air, a lengthy quarterback run and a couple Tigers penalties, making it first-and-goal from the Pacific nine-yard line.

After three failed pass attempts, North Texas was down to its last chance.

NT hall of fame running back Billy Dinkle, who frequently took snaps at quarterback for the 1946 squad, stayed back and threw a pass to wide receiver Louis Rienzi in the end zone to tie the game.

Dinkle, also the kicker, then won the game himself by putting the extra point through the uprights with only seconds left, giving North Texas the 14-13 lead and victory.

 Legendary Coach Stagg prepares to shake hands with victorious North Texas Coach Odus Mitchell  as he watches the final seconds tick on the game clock

Mitchell went on to win an incredible 122 games at North Texas, took the team to 14 winning seasons and led the school's efforts in integrating the team in 1956, making it the first team in Texas to allow African-American students to play college football as he instituted a policy allowing "any African American students who showed interest in the football team to be given a fair chance" while he was the head coach at North Texas. He extended a scholarship offer to incoming African-American freshmen Abner Haynes and Leon King in 1956, promoting them to the varsity squad in 1957. Haynes and King both made their varsity debuts on September 21, 1957, becoming the first African-Americans to play major college football in Texas.

In the summer of 1965, he also recruited future National Football League Hall of Famer Mean Joe Greene from Temple, Texas. The ferocious Greene-led defense allowed an average of less than two yards per carry in 1966, Mitchell's final season at North Texas, earning the team the nickname "Mean Green," which stuck and is now the official mascot of the university to this day.

In that 1966 season, North Texas went 8–2, which helped earn him National Coach of the Year honors. In 1986, he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Mitchell retired in 1966 and was selected for the North Texas Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1981 and the Optimist Bowl-winning team boasted several other hall of famers as well including Dinkle, tackles Felton Whitlow and Dick Lindsay, defensive linemen Jim Cooper and Jim Eagle and starting quarterback Fred McCain.

North Texas HOF Center Jim Eagle's varsity blanket.

Mitchell, now a member of the Texas Hall of Fame, took North Texas to the Salad Bowl the very next season, but nothing could compare to the scrappy 1946 team that rallied around him and won the Optimist Bowl in his first season.

We are now heading into our 13th Bowl Game this Thursday in the Frisco Classic

*** and in an odd side note*** ... that high school quarterback that he started despite the sidearm-throwing-hitch went on to play at LSU. He got moved to running back because of his throwing style, but was then pulled back to QB due to personnel shortage. Tittle then played 17 years in the NFL, and still holds the NY Giants record for most touchdowns in a season, and only retired when he said "I think it's a hint to retire when your backup quarterback is dating your daughter." (That's a hint to Aune, keep playing)

 

Almost all of the notes in this post are compiled from other people's notes and stories. If you feel like thanking somebody, please thank Randy Cummings, for he compiled all of Coach Odus Mitchell's recorded memoirs into a compilation for the Willis Library back in the 1980's. For those of you that don't know him, Randy is the tall white haired guy wearing a referee jersey at the sidecourt table at every North Texas men's basketball game. He's had a lifetime of selfless devotion to our sports programs, please stop by and tell him "thank you".

 

.

Edited February 13, 2022 by ADLER

[PlummMeanGreen]

22 minutes ago, ADLER said:

I stopped by Coach Mitchell's grave in Denton this week

It was beyond comical how the 1946 football season started for North Texas. The football program had been cancelled at North Texas State during World War II. The was no equipment and there were no facilities. North Texas had hired a new coach to rebuild the program and he called to say that he had taken another job just two weeks before the fall semester started.

Former Athletic Director Theron Fouts had bee instrumental in the creation of the new Lone Star Conference and now his own school was not even going to be fielding a team.A call went out to Odus Mitchell, football coach at Marshall High School in the tiny east piney woods town of Marshall, Texas. Mitchell, a man that had never played football before he started coaching it four years earlier, studied the game and it's

Mitchell was selected for the NT Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1981 and the Optimist Bowl-winning team boasted several other hall of famers as well including Dinkle, tackles Felton Whitlow and Dick Lindsay, defensive linemen Jim Cooper and Jim Eagle and starting quarterback Fred McCain.

(On ebay right now)
 

 

Thanks, ADLER!  

Great photos, too.

🦅

[Mean Green Matt]

Has anyone seen @ADLERand @PlummMeanGreenin the same place?

[ADLER]

20 hours ago, Mean Green Matt said:

Has anyone seen @ADLERand @PlummMeanGreenin the same place?

I'll take that as a compliment. Although slightly homespun, Plumm is pretty observant and has been following this program for even longer than I have.

 

 

[greenjoe]

This is very well written.  Where is Coach Mitchell buried ?

Win.

GO MEAN GREEN

[ADLER]

11 minutes ago, greenjoe said:

This is very well written.  Where is Coach Mitchell buried ?

Win.

GO MEAN GREEN

Thanks. He and his wife wanted to be buried as close as possible to their football program. They are in Roselawn, just south of Apogee off Bonnie Brae.

He literally loved this school to the grave.

Edited December 22, 2021 by ADLER

[greenjoe]

What a great story.  

[ADLER]

Can you imagine how Coach Mitchell felt in that picture. Four months earlier he has been called from a rural high school for the incredible task of instantly whipping together a Division 1 football team, then three months later he's having to compete in a bowl game against The Grand Old Man Of Football, the most famous coach in the country, in what Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg has proclaimed will be the final game of his legendary career?

[ADLER]

One of the main points of the 1946 season is that it was the birth of North Texas as a scholarship granting football program. SMU immediately stopped playing North Texas for the next 28 years.

North Texas had previously, as a non-scholarship football program gone 1-18-1 against fully scholarshipped SWC member SMU. Other than a miraculous win and tie by North Texas, these scores are irrelevant except to a certain DRC sportswriter. SMU also had a 3-1 record while North Texas was in 1AA with less scholarships and a 6-1 advantage in the 70's and early 80's when they were openly paying players.

SMU holds a significantly more modest 7-3 edge against North Texas when scholarship limits are equal and neither team is paying players. 

Edited December 24, 2021 by ADLER

[greenminer]

12 hours ago, ADLER said:

SMU holds a significantly more modest 7-3 edge against North Texas when scholarship limits are equal and neither team is playing players. 

If you can win some games without actually playing players, I tip my hat to ya!  That's a heckofuh coaching job.

[ADLER]

[letsgiveacheer]

What a great thread. Thanks, Adler.

I had the honor of meeting Mitchell and yes, he did love our school very much.

In the clip above, please note Billy Dinkle was both the fullback and kicker! Can you imagine that today?

[ADLER]

Thank you and to everyone else that read though it.

It was such a turning point in North Texas sports history, the rebirth and elevation of football from absolutely nothing that dramatically culminated with a final game for the rookie coach against the coach revered as the "Grand Old Man Of Football". 

North Texas still never had the benefit of hometown media, stands filled by Texas, Arkansas, or A&M fans, or the television contracts that came with it. Although it was tough at times, North Texas chose to fight to live on its feet than to  luxuriously live on its knees like several of it's regional peer institutions.

It's been a long uphill battle. Now we're finding ourselves, due to some outstanding effort by some university employees and incredible generosity by several others, at another crossroads. The AAC opportunity/challenge lies ahead. What can Neal, Wren and our athletic staff do with it?

Where do we want this legacy to stand in another 75 years? I'll be long gone, but I'll want more plaques and statues to the champions and more facilities to the wonderful benefactors that have made all that future possible.

Edited December 27, 2021 by ADLER

[NorthTexasSportsNetwork]

On 12/21/2021 at 2:19 PM, ADLER said:

It was December 21, 1946

  I stopped by Coach Mitchell's grave in Denton this week

It was beyond comical how the 1946 football season started for North Texas. The football program had been cancelled at North Texas State during World War II. The was no equipment and there were no facilities. North Texas had hired a new coach to rebuild the program but he never reported to campus and he called to say that he had taken another job just two weeks before the fall semester started.

Former Athletic Director Theron Fouts had been instrumental in the creation of the new Lone Star Conference and now his own school was not even going to be fielding a team.

A call went out to Odus Mitchell, football coach at Marshall High School in the tiny east piney woods town of Marshall, Texas. Mitchell had studied the game and it's great innovators, and was having a very successful career coaching at Marshall. His 1944 team, with a side throwing kid at quarterback named Y.A. Tittle, had just made the Texas football quarterfinals.

Coach Mitchell must have been crazy because he boldly jumped at the opportunity. He was then told "you have no team, you have no equipment or facilities, you have no time to recruit players so you'll have to draw from current students on campus, and, you play at Texas A&M in College Station in 11 days."

Nothing daunted Coach Mitchell and he enthusiastically accepted the challenge.

In a 1982 interview, Mitchell recalled the whirlwind start to the 1946 season.

"It was nearly time for the season to start," he said. "I hadn't done any recruiting or anything, and I hadn't had an experience with recruiting. I got initiated like heck the first game."

Texas A&M trounced North Texas in Mitchell's first game at the helm, 47-0.

But things turned around quickly.

Mitchell got his first collegiate victory the next game with a 14-0 win over Austin College. Two weeks later, the squad beat Fort Sam Houston.

Three wins later, North Texas was geared up for a showdown for the Lone Star Conference Championship with rival East Texas State, now known as Texas A&M-Commerce.

North Texas exploded for a 47-7 victory and was headed to its first bowl game in program history.

Mitchell was set to square off with legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg's College of the Pacific Tigers in the 1946 Optimist Bowl.

 

First year North Texas coach Odus Mitchell with Pacific coach Amos Alonzo Stagg the night preceding the bowl game

1946 Optimist Bowl

Public School Stadium, site of the 1946 Optimist Bowl, later to be renamed Robertson Stadium

The game was scoreless through the first quarter, but NT got on the board in the second when Ned McNeil intercepted a Pacific pass and ran it 58 yards back for a touchdown.

Pacific tied the game in the third on a five-yard touchdown pass following a fumble recovery deep in North Texas territory.

The Tiger broke the tie late in the fourth quarter on a 22-yard touchdown pass, but a key miss on the extra point gave North Texas some life.

NT then drove down the field to give the school its first ever bowl victory.

The drive began with a long kickoff return, a 20-yard gain through the air, a lengthy quarterback run and a couple Tigers penalties, making it first-and-goal from the Pacific nine-yard line.

After three failed pass attempts, North Texas was down to its last chance.

NT hall of fame running back Billy Dinkle, who frequently took snaps at quarterback for the 1946 squad, stayed back and threw a pass to wide receiver Louis Rienzi in the end zone to tie the game.

Dinkle, also the kicker, then won the game himself by putting the extra point through the uprights with only seconds left, giving North Texas the 14-13 lead and victory.

 Legendary Coach Stagg prepares to shake hands with victorious North Texas Coach Odus Mitchell  as he watches the final seconds tick on the game clock

Mitchell went on to win an incredible 122 games at North Texas, took the team to 14 winning seasons and led the school's efforts in integrating the team in 1956, making it the first team in Texas to allow African-American students to play college football as he instituted a policy allowing "any African American students who showed interest in the football team to be given a fair chance" while he was the head coach at North Texas. He extended a scholarship offer to incoming African-American freshmen Abner Haynes and Leon King in 1956, promoting them to the varsity squad in 1957. Haynes and King both made their varsity debuts on September 21, 1957, becoming the first African-Americans to play major college football in Texas.

In the summer of 1965, he also recruited future National Football League Hall of Famer Mean Joe Greene from Temple, Texas. The ferocious Greene-led defense allowed an average of less than two yards per carry in 1966, Mitchell's final season at North Texas, earning the team the nickname "Mean Green," which stuck and is now the official mascot of the university to this day.

In that 1966 season, North Texas went 8–2, which helped earn him National Coach of the Year honors. In 1986, he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Mitchell retired in 1966 and was selected for the North Texas Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 1981 and the Optimist Bowl-winning team boasted several other hall of famers as well including Dinkle, tackles Felton Whitlow and Dick Lindsay, defensive linemen Jim Cooper and Jim Eagle and starting quarterback Fred McCain.

(On ebay right now)

Mitchell, now a member of the Texas Hall of Fame, took North Texas to the Salad Bowl the very next season, but nothing could compare to the scrappy 1946 team that rallied around him and won the Optimist Bowl in his first season.

We are now heading into our 13th Bowl Game this Thursday in the Frisco Classic

*** and in an odd side note*** ... that high school quarterback that he started despite the sidearm-throwing-hitch went on to play at LSU. He got moved to running back because of his throwing style, but was then pulled back to QB due to personnel shortage. Tittle then played 17 years in the NFL, and still holds the NY Giants record for most touchdowns in a season, and only retired when he said "I think it's a hint to retire when your backup quarterback is dating your daughter." (That's a hint to Aune, keep playing)

 

Almost all of the notes in this post are compiled from other people's notes and stories. If you feel like thanking somebody, please thank Randy Cummings, for he compiled all of Coach Odus Mitchell's recorded memoirs into a compilation for the Willis Library back in the 1980's. For those of you that don't know him, Randy is the tall white haired guy wearing a referee jersey at the sidecourt table at every North Texas men's basketball game. He's had a lifetime of selfless devotion to our sports programs, please stop by and tell him "thank you".

 

.

Is his grave at Roselawn?

[ADLER]

14 minutes ago, NorthTexasSportsNetwork said:

Is his grave at Roselawn?

Yes, toward the front , west side, in the Garden of Dalton section if you feel a pilgrimage is required.

I would love to see him reinterred at the Athletic Village with a befitting monument but I don't think state schools can do that.

[UNTLifer]

I wish they would name the playing field after Coach Mitchell.

Odus Mitchell Field at Apogee Stadium.

I wonder what the price tag for that would be?  I went to school with his grandkids and used to see him at the old golf course.  Wonderful man.