I can’t get enough of these diagrammed wire photos from yesteryear..especially those that capture the brilliance of Bob Chappuis and the Mad Magicians, here exposing the USC defense in the ‘48 Rose Bowl:
The Wolverines pounded USC 49-0 and delivered Fritz Crisler a national championship is his final game at the helm of the Blue. Time Magazine did a nice job in describing the beating:
Southern Cal’s beefy bruisers, the West Coast champs, were not clubbed to death. They were just hoodwinked and whipsawed by Michigan’s slickers. Jack Weisenburger, Crisler’s sturdy spinning fullback, started most of Michigan’s backfield ballet and ball-handling hocuspocus, and chewed through the center of Southern Cal’s bewildered line for three Michigan touchdowns.
2 Comments
Craig
Greg, love any chance we get to look at the Mad Magicians. There’s a great personal connection for me. The kicker for that team was James Brieske, who would go on to become a teacher and eventually the first student activities director at Stevenson High School in Livonia, Michigan. He is the namesake of student activities center, the Brieske Room, at SHS, where I spent way more than my fair share of my four years as a student (and a fair amount of time there now as a teacher.)