Vintage Tech photo #6

donsue

donsue

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Lothridge vs who?​
 

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DeepSnap said:
Opening game, USC(w), Friday, September 22, 1961 at the LA Coliseum, a 27-7 win for the good guys & Billy the Kid's GT debut.

The following week was the Rice game at Grant Field where Rice showed up with white visitors jerseys, only to end up borrowing/wearing GT's dark blue jerseys.
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I always thought the 1960-62 teams were so close to being really good. The 1960 team was 5-5 and lost those 5 games by a total of 11 points. Lost to Bama, GA, UF, by one point, and 2 points to Aub
 
DeepSnap said:
Opening game, USC(w), Friday, September 22, 1961 at the LA Coliseum, a 27-7 win for the good guys & Billy the Kid's GT debut.

The following week was the Rice game at Grant Field where Rice showed up with white visitors jerseys, only to end up borrowing/wearing GT's dark blue jerseys.
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That's hilarious, I wonder how often that's happened with Tech? (Or with LSU, probably...)
 
gtleviathan said:
That's hilarious, I wonder how often that's happened with Tech? (Or with LSU, probably...)
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It got a bit of press at the time, but the long term effect was for a while up into the '70s, and maybe even the '80s, the visiting team got to call who got the light jerseys & who got the dark ones. It's really only a problem now that games are played at noon in late August and early September. I believe you can find (probably) Freddie Miller narrated highlights of this game on YouTube.

The HFC at Rice was Jess Neely, a Vandy educated attorney-turned-coach who was an old friend of Coach Dodd's, so it got handled pretty quickly & smoothly. No idea, other than a day game at 2:00 on Sept 30, why Dodd didn't just say, "Okay, no problem, we'll just wear our dark jerseys."

The most recent similar-but-different episode was a few years ago when VPI&SU showed up at BDS@HGF only to have their road jerseys stolen. Believe they ended up taping over the names on the borrowed white GT jerseys.
 
DeepSnap said:
It got a bit of press at the time, but the long term effect was for a while up into the '70s, and maybe even the '80s, the visiting team got to call who got the light jerseys & who got the dark ones. It's really only a problem now that games are played at noon in late August and early September. I believe you can find (probably) Freddie Miller narrated highlights of this game on YouTube.

The HFC at Rice was Jess Neely, a Vandy educated attorney-turned-coach who was an old friend of Coach Dodd's, so it got handled pretty quickly & smoothly. No idea, other than a day game at 2:00 on Sept 30, why Dodd didn't just say, "Okay, no problem, we'll just wear our dark jerseys."

The most recent similar-but-different episode was a few years ago when VPI&SU showed up at BDS@HGF only to have their road jerseys stolen. Believe they ended up taping over the names on the borrowed white GT jerseys.
Click to expand...
I was at Tech from '62 to '67, and I never saw a Tech blue jersey at Grant Field and didn't even know we had any.
 
DeepSnap said:
It got a bit of press at the time, but the long term effect was for a while up into the '70s, and maybe even the '80s, the visiting team got to call who got the light jerseys & who got the dark ones. It's really only a problem now that games are played at noon in late August and early September. I believe you can find (probably) Freddie Miller narrated highlights of this game on YouTube.

The HFC at Rice was Jess Neely, a Vandy educated attorney-turned-coach who was an old friend of Coach Dodd's, so it got handled pretty quickly & smoothly. No idea, other than a day game at 2:00 on Sept 30, why Dodd didn't just say, "Okay, no problem, we'll just wear our dark jerseys."

The most recent similar-but-different episode was a few years ago when VPI&SU showed up at BDS@HGF only to have their road jerseys stolen. Believe they ended up taping over the names on the borrowed white GT jerseys.
Click to expand...
For VT, it was just some of the jerseys, right? I definitely remember the QB killing us in our own jersey. They even sharpied a Nike swoosh on it.
 
Supersize that order mutt said:
I was at Tech from '62 to '67, and I never saw a Tech blue jersey at Grant Field and didn't even know we had any.
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You wouldn't have seen Tech wear blue jerseys at Grant Field in that era, but at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, what do you think Tech wore against LSU? Just like when LSU played at GF in the 1962 7-10 game (featuring Jerry Stovall's 2nd half KO TD return & Joe Auer's infamous drop of a Lothridge Hail Mary) & wore their purple jerseys, they returned the favor in Baton Rouge.
 
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DeepSnap said:
You wouldn't have seen Tech wear blue jerseys at Grant Field in that era, but at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, what do do think Tech wore against LSU? Just like when LSU played at GF in the 1962 7-10 game (featuring Jerry Stovall's 2nd half KO TD return & Joe Auer's infamous drop of a Lothridge Hail Mary) & wore their purple jerseys, they returned the favor in Baton Rouge.
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I honestly never knew what we wore at LSU, or for any other away game besides Athens, for that matter, but I do remember the controversy in '62 in Atlanta.

I must dispute what you call the "hail mary" pass that Joe Auer unbelievably dropped. My memory of it was that it was a sideline pass and not a particularly long one, and Joe dropped it just somewhat past the 50 yard line. And, IIRC, it was not at the end of the game, and possibly even in the 3rd quarter. It probably did make the ultimate difference in the game, and the student body (including myself) were totally pissed that he dropped it the way he did. It was almost a gimme throw, and Joe blew it.
 
donsue said:
I always thought the 1960-62 teams were so close to being really good. The 1960 team was 5-5 and lost those 5 games by a total of 11 points. Lost to Bama, GA, UF, by one point, and 2 points to Aub
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That's only four games. Who was the fifth?
 
Supersize that order mutt said:
I must dispute what you call the "hail mary" pass that Joe Auer unbelievably dropped. My memory of it was that it was a sideline pass and not a particularly long one, and Joe dropped it just somewhat past the 50 yard line. And, IIRC, it was not at the end of the game, and possibly even in the 3rd quarter. It probably did make the ultimate difference in the game, and the student body (including myself) were totally pissed that he dropped it the way he did. It was almost a gimme throw, and Joe blew it.
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You're probably right about the 3rd quarter being when "the drop" occurred. I was a 12 YO kid sitting in the South End Zone so I got a good look at the start of Stovall's return & his #21 getting smaller and smaller. I seem to recall Auer's wide open (no one within 30 - 40 yards of him on a blown LSU coverage) drop was coming toward me, so that would have to have been the 3rd quarter, also.

The legend that got passed down to us in the late '60s/early '70s was that after the game Auer was asked by a reporter about the drop & he said, "You win some - you lose some." Supposedly Lothridge heard it & had to be pulled away from trying to fight/strangle Joe.
 
DeepSnap said:
You're probably right about the 3rd quarter being when "the drop" occurred. I was a 12 YO kid sitting in the South End Zone so I got a good look at the start of Stovall's return & his #21 getting smaller and smaller. I seem to recall Auer's wide open (no one within 30 - 40 yards of him on a blown LSU coverage) drop was coming toward me, so that would have to have been the 3rd quarter, also.

The legend that got passed down to us in the late '60s/early '70s was that after the game Auer was asked by a reporter about the drop & he said, "You win some - you lose some." Supposedly Lothridge heard it & had to be pulled away from trying to fight/strangle Joe.
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Auer was a different sort of dude. Didn’t he have a pet tiger or something like that?
 
DeepSnap said:
You're probably right about the 3rd quarter being when "the drop" occurred. I was a 12 YO kid sitting in the South End Zone so I got a good look at the start of Stovall's return & his #21 getting smaller and smaller. I seem to recall Auer's wide open (no one within 30 - 40 yards of him on a blown LSU coverage) drop was coming toward me, so that would have to have been the 3rd quarter, also.

The legend that got passed down to us in the late '60s/early '70s was that after the game Auer was asked by a reporter about the drop & he said, "You win some - you lose some." Supposedly Lothridge heard it & had to be pulled away from trying to fight/strangle Joe.
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I remember the pass going north, not south. I probably heard that story about what Auer said, and it wouldn't surprise me. I remember the students even after the game not speaking too kindly about Auer overall, even though he was overall a very good player. But in the back of my mind, I remember that he could sometimes be a jerk.
I just did some checking online, and there were a bunch of posts on that other site, which shall remain nameless, when he died. One person on there said the pass was on the west sideline, but he didn't say in which direction. It was definitely on the west sideline, and I THOUGHT it was going north.
Another poster said he had a lion, not a tiger, and even I posted that I remember that he had a lion.
Someone else posted that after the game, when asked about the pass, he said, "Whoops". I don't doubt that he also said, "you win some, you lose some".
 
donsue said:
Auer was a different sort of dude. Didn’t he have a pet tiger or something like that?
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Yep....... like to drive the tiger or lion around in his convertible..... IIRC, he had a friend, perhaps a veterinarian, who had several exotic animals... Joe passed away in March 2019 & a lot of the tales got passed around on various sites.

Joe will forever be remembered in Miami Dolphins lore as the man who scored the Dolphins first TD in their first game on a 95 yard KO return. For a ME major, he was a few standard deviations from the norm in the personality department.
 
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DeepSnap said:
Yep....... like to drive the tiger or lion around in his convertible..... IIRC, he had a friend, perhaps a veterinarian, who had several exotic animals... Joe passed away in March 2019 & a lot of the tales got passed around on various sites.

Joe will forever be remembered in Miami Dolphins lore as the man who scored the Dolphins first TD in their first game on a 95 yard KO return. For a ME major, he was a few standard deviations from the norm in the personality department.
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Yep, and true to form, he was interviewed after the game by a reporter what he was thinking about as he scored the first touchdown in Dolphin history and he said supposedly: "I was worried about all that noise bothering "Flipper". The real live dolphin they had in a pool at the stadium.
 
clapper said:
Clifford the lion.

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Another animal superstar was Clifford the Lion, who arrived on campus in 1961 with football player Joe Auer. For a lion, Clifford was well behaved: potty-trained and docile. He lived in Cloudman Hall, where residents would occasionally walk to the lavatories late at night, half-asleep, only to be startled fully awake by Clifford’s hot breath on the back of their legs. As Clifford got older, he began growling at night — a problem that eventually led students in the hall to sign a petition to send him away.
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ööööing legend.
 
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