Part I: Starting from Nothing
Part II: The Season
Business Time
The trip to the 1965 Rose Bowl was conducted in two distinct phases – party time and business time. The first portion started off with the usual tours, some time to hang out, and a bit of partying. OK, maybe a lot of partying.
“Chrysler gave us a car for every 4 guys,” junior fullback Barry Dehlin recalled. “For the first week, you had a bunch of 20-year-old guys out there and we were partying.”
As young men tend to do, they took advantage of their celebrity status with the California coeds.
“We went to Disneyland. The next thing you know we’re in our hotel room and there are eight or ten of the Disneyland tour guides,” Conley recalled. “We also went to the Whisky a Go Go. The girls are dancing and all that, and let’s just say we had some guys that were good at what they do, do you know what I mean?”
“I’ll never forget, we’re walking back into the hotel at night. [Senior end] Bill Laskey is with me along with a couple of other guys. We’ve got these girls with us with those frilly skirts shaking around. As we’re walking down the hall [assistant coach] Jocko Nelson walks by, looks at me, and just says, “Captain Conley.” And I go, “Coach Nelson.” And we just kept going right on by. [laughs]”
If you think Bump wasn’t aware of all of this, think again. He understood that the players were susceptible to being caught up in the off-the-field distractions and warned them as such. But he let them slide a bit in the beginning. “We were a little bit more lenient about some of the places we let them go and how late they stayed out,” Coach Elliott recalled.
Eventually, the team got down to the business at hand and Conley gathered up the seniors for a chat. “I told them we have to get back on track. We have to focus. And I added, ‘I’m probably the worst!” And everybody goes, ‘Yeah, you’re the worst!’ So I told them, ‘Well you know, I’m a natural-born leader!’”
After that first week Bump addressed the team as well and told them to get their heads back into it. But as Dehlin recalled, what truly registered were the simple words uttered by Coach Tony Mason. “Talk about a master of psychology. He told us, ‘I’ll tell you something, you are a bunch of good guys. And you used to be good football players.’”
“It just hit everybody. For the last week, everybody was in bed on time and focused.”
Gameday in Pasadena always seems to bring perfect weather and January 1, 1965, was no different. After a scoreless first quarter, Oregon broke through and tallied the game’s first touchdown. Down 7-0, Conley had enough. “I gathered everybody together and said, ‘This game is over. We didn’t come this far to lose!’”
“That was it. We demolished them.”
It started here, with Mel Anthony’s 84-yard TD dash:
There’s no other way to put it. All-told Anthony dashed for three TDs and for 123 of U-M’s 332 rushing yards, and Conley and the defense pitched a shutout the rest of the way in the 34-7 beatdown.
Oregon State’s coach Tommy Prothro later called the 1964 Wolverines the best team he’d ever seen, adding, “There were times when our players blasted Michigan players at full speed and only wound up flat on their backs.” He admitted he’d never seen such hitting.
The Forgotten Champions
Conley and his self-described group of losers finished a brutal schedule as undeniable champions of the Big Ten and captured Michigan’s first Rose Bowl victory since 1951. The dominating victory in Pasadena was a feat delivered to that point by only three other Michigan teams including Yost’s 1901 squad and Fritz Crisler’s 1947 Mad Magicians. Those teams have a permanent place in U-M football’s Valhalla—yet clearly the 1964 champions are not only overlooked by M fans, it’s fair to say they are widely ignored. Why?
Perhaps it’s because Crisler and Yost wrapped those victories in Pasadena within stellar coaching careers. Maybe the Detroit newspaper strike in ’64 put in the team in relative obscurity—and no one was there to tag the team with a catchy nickname [see “Mad Magicians”]. Perhaps the team was overshadowed by Bo’s spectacular arrival and consistent dominance.
Perhaps. But one thing is for certain – there’s no denying the greatness of the 1964 team. Sixteen players went on to play pro football including tackle Tom Mack, who landed in the NFL Hall of Fame. The championship certainly helped Bump attract more top talent to Ann Arbor, leading to the 8-2 1968 season and of course, filling the cupboard with the men who led Bo Schembechler’s beloved 1969 squad.
Elliott acknowledged the title helped get the attention of recruits. “People would like to join that type of a team. That was really important to our program because we needed that and they really made the difference. We had good talent and good people coming in and I think it went on from there. Of course thank goodness we even left a few players for Bo. [laughs]”
Bo recognized Bump’s influence—clearly. In the aftermath of the epic 24-12 win over #1 Ohio State in ’69, Schembechler summoned Elliott to the front of the players and presented him with the game ball. Elliott still has that pigskin at his home in Iowa City.
Whatever the reason, the 1964 team deserves better–this team, this season and its incredible captain., Conley, forever the leader of these men, is quick to defend his team’s place in history. “Today everybody looks back to Bo and the 1969 team—a team that went 8-3 and didn’t even win the Rose Bowl–as the team that turned Michigan around. I don’t think so. What turned Michigan around was the 1964 championship team. That turned Michigan around. It put Michigan back on the map.”
Go Blue.
Part I: Starting from Nothing
Part II: The Season
