From today's National Post on the U of Buffalo team that will be playing in the International Bowl at the Rogers Center on Jan. 3.
An Argo-Cat fan
They never really talked about it.
For close to 50 years, they have been getting together at Brunner's tavern on the Friday night of homecoming. They have a few beers, tell some old stories and then gather again the next day to watch their University of Buffalo Bulls football team play. And every year, what they did as the members of the Buffalo Bulls in 1958 never comes up for discussion.
"Talk to any of the guys, and they will tell you how, for 50 years, we never talked about it. And we didn't avoid talking about it, it just didn't mean anything special to us," says Phil Bamford, an offensive guard and linebacker with the 1958 Bulls. "We did what we did because it was the right thing to do. And, sure, we might talk about how what a shame it is that we didn't go down there and play that game, because we would have kicked their asses. But they were the ones that lost, not us."
The 1958 Bulls were a powerhouse. They had an 8-1 record in the regular season, and were awarded with the Lambert Cup, presented to the top small-college team in the eastern United States. To cap it all off, the Bulls received an invitation to the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Fla.
It did not get any get any bigger than a bowl invitation. The Tangerine would be the apex of most of those players' careers, and maybe even their lives. But there was a catch. The local high school athletic board, which ran the stadium in Orlando, did not permit blacks and whites to play together. Buffalo had two black players on its roster: Willie Evans, the star running back, and Mike Wilson, a backup defensive end.
It may sound strange, but Willie Evans has no recollection of the meeting his teammates called at the Clark Gym, soon after getting word that he and Wilson were not welcome in Orlando. Evans is 71 years old, and he forgets things. And like Bamford says, it was not something they talked about much in the years since, so the meeting at the Clark has slipped from his memory. The old running back does not remember getting up in front of the Bulls with Wilson that day, and urging his teammates to go and play the damn game, because it was something they had worked hard for.
He does not remember the captains getting ready to hand out ballots, so the team could take a vote, and then Gene Zinni -- or maybe it was Paul Szymendera -- standing up and saying there was no need for a secret ballot. They would take a vote right then and there with a show off hands.
"Not one hand went up," Bamford says. "It was unanimous. These guys were our buddies, and we weren't going without them. It had nothing to do with race. We were just amazed at how people could be so stupid."
So, the Bulls stayed home. As the university's football fortunes waned, it was not invited back to a bowl game until Buffalo earned a berth in the 2009 International Bowl, in Toronto on Jan. 3.
Times are different now. Buffalo is different now. In the 1950s, the city was a booming example of industrial America in its full, post-Second World War roar. Manufacturing jobs were abundant, and jazz luminaries such as Louis Armstrong were filling the nightclubs with black fans, white fans -- jazz fans. Buffalo was not the Deep South. Racism did exist, though. What is presently a rusting, rapidly depopulating city by a lake was then a pulsing crush of colours and ethnicities: Italians, Poles, Irish, Germans and blacks. For Evans, and for others, football was the melting pot.
He was a black kid who went to a predominantly Polish high school. And the Italian or German player he would run over during a game and who might shoot him a dirty look, would end up blocking for him on an all-star team.
"Things were not perfect," Evans says. "It was tough to find a job as a young black man in the downtown section of the city."
There were opportunities. Evans finished university and became a teacher, a coach, and a public school administrator in Buffalo. The Bulls gave him his start. "That team was a wonderful group of fellows," he says. "We just got along so well."
Bamford says Evans was serious back then but funny in a quiet, subtle way. There was one time when Dick Offenhamer, the head coach, was furious. The players were goofing around at practice. It was getting dark outside. There was work to be done. Offenhamer barked at the Bulls, saying it did not matter that is was getting dark. They had things to do, and as long as there was enough daylight for him to see their faces practice would continue.
Evans, the black running back, broke an uneasy silence.
"So Willie says to him, ‘Coach, does that mean I can go in now?'" Bamford says, laughing. "That did it. Everybody broke up and Offenhamer called practice. And that was Willie for you. There were no blacks and there were no whites on that team. And there was nothing I wouldn't have done for my teammates -- and nothing they would not have done for me. We were like brothers. And when push comes to shove, you unite."
The Bulls are still standing together, only now, something that did not get talked about much in 1958 -- because it was something any good teammate would do -- has become a major news story. Bamford, Evans and the others have been getting phone calls from the media. Fifty years later, they are talking. Fifty years later, the players from that old Buffalo team, who gather at Brunner's for homecoming to have a few beers and catch a game, are heading to Toronto on Jan. 3 to watch the Bulls in a bowl.
"Are you kidding me?" Evans says. "We've already chartered the bus. We'll be there. We wouldn't miss this one."
National Post
joconnor@nationalpost.com