The 1940s
Post-war growth fuels new Bearcats era.
1940 - 1949
When the 1940s arrived in Cincinnati, the Bearcats were competing without a conference. Gone were the days of head coaches Dana King and Russ Cohen. London Gant’s career had long since been ended by a string of unfortunate injuries. After a 37-16-1 tear through the first half of the 1930s, the program collapsed to a 9-23-5 mark to close out the decade.
World War II
The ‘40s brought the effects of war to Cincinnati. In 1941, the Bearcats football squad’s hopes were said to be “the brightest in the history of the university.” By the time the season started, however, much of that hope had been dashed by military service, with several key returners called into duty. Willard “Willie” Stargel—a three-sport athlete from local Woodward High School––already had a reputation in the city because of his prep achievements, and was seen as an answer to many of the team’s problems. Before his first varsity action, the Enquirer predicted he “may shape into one of the best ends UC has ever had.” As a sophomore in 1941, Stargel was just a backup as the team navigated the unplanned roster turnover to finish 6-3––including key home victories over rivals Louisville and Miami.
Things got even tighter the next year. By the start of the 1942 season, the United States had joined the war, and once again, Selective Service ravaged the Bearcats’ roster. Eleven players expected to contribute on the field left for military service, leading returning stars like Stargel and Elbie Nickel to shoulder the load on a team of inexperienced underclassmen.
The Bearcats immediately removed any doubt about their capabilities, blasting Louisville 51-0 in the season opener. Stargel recovered two fumbles in the victory. Three weeks later, a Stargel touchdown against Ohio pushed Cincinnati to an improbable 4-0 start, their best since 1935. A resurgent Bearcats team faced its biggest challenge of the young decade as second-ranked Georgia came to Nippert Stadium on October 24th. Stargel was told to stay home; Georgia didn’t compete against Black athletes.
The Bulldogs came into Nippert and tallied 21 points in the first quarter, rolling to a 35-13 victory. The Bearcats’ decision to play without Stargel, in deference to southern teams’ segregation policies, became a theme. When UC traveled to Tennessee the following month, it sidelined Stargel again, and the Bearcats lost again, this time 34-12. Cincinnati closed the 1942 campaign with a trio of decisive rivalry victories over Dayton, Xavier, and Miami to finish 8-2. They were unbeaten with Willie, winless without him. It was their best season since 1897.
In January 1943, the war came for Stargel. Ahead of a basketball matchup with Akron, he was called into duty and ordered to report to Ft. Thomas. Willard would have company. By May, athletic director Chuck Mileham reported that 57 UC student-athletes had left the university for service. Then, on July 29th, everything came to a halt. The War Department forbade participation in sports by any student enrolled in the military, and many of the Bearcats’ facilities, including Nippert Stadium, would be repurposed for Army training. UC joined scores of other universities across the country by canceling the 1943 football season.
1943 and 1944 were sleepy times in Cincinnati, as the Bearcats played no football for the first time since 1884. When football returned to UC in 1945, it did so without Stargel or many of the players it had relied upon before the war. A forgettable 4-4 year was punctuated by middling attendance, but the sport would return the following autumn with a renewed interest from fans in Cincinnati and across America.
A Post-War Boom
In February 1946 the Bearcats became charter members of the Midwestern Conference––quickly renamed the Mid-American Conference. The MAC––which first featured schools like Ohio and Butler––would begin play in basketball in 1946 with football to follow in 1947.
The ‘Cats opened the 1946 season, Stargel in tow, with a trip to Bloomington to face the heavily favored Hoosiers. “Almost without exception, the so-called experts are picking Cincinnati as pretty much of a soft touch for last year’s Big Ten champions,” reported the Enquirer. “Maybe so, but the quiet word from Burnet Woods is that Coach Ray Nolting has a pretty husky bunch of lads wearing the red and black this year.”
The “quiet word” proved to be correct. The Bearcats went to Bloomington and scored the program’s biggest upset, a 15-6 win in front of 15,000 stunned Hoosiers––the largest opening-day crowd in Indiana history. Post-war football was off and running.
The team returned home the following week with a 26-7 loss to Kentucky in a packed Nippert Stadium before rattling off four consecutive victories, including a road win at Michigan State and a triumph over Ohio in front of 25,000 fans under the lights at Nippert. The near-capacity homecoming crowd was the second of the season, an unprecedented level of excitement for football in the Queen City.
Following a bitter loss in Tulsa on November 2nd, the team rebounded, beating Xavier and Case Western to set up a monumental Thanksgiving showdown with rival Miami and head coach Sid Gillman, also 7-2 on the year, in the 50th edition of the Battle for the Victory Bell. UM pranksters were running wild in Clifton the week leading up to the game. The Mick and Mack statues had been defaced and UC officials feared vandalism on Carson Field, so they left one of the light towers on overnight for several nights leading up to Saturday.
The 27,000-seat capacity of the bowl was sold out before game day, with an additional 1,000 bleacher and standing-room tickets set to go on sale 90 minutes before kickoff. It would be the largest crowd the stadium had ever hosted, and the father of UC football––Dr. Arch Carson, then 82 years old––was expected to attend.
The weather was perfect and the game lived up to the billing. With 30 seconds remaining and the Bearcats trailing by a point, QB and former Hughes High School standout Tom O’Malley found captain TE Elbie Nickel on a six-yard touchdown pass. The 13-7 victory capped an 8-2 campaign. Reports claimed as many as 30,000 fans were on hand to see it live, a Nippert record.
Just like before the war, the Bearcats were untouchable with their full complement of players and only lost in games against southern teams, with Stargel sidelined. The segregation wouldn’t end in the regular season.
When El Paso’s Sun Bowl came calling in December, it offered UC another milestone moment, its first bowl game. The invitation came with a stipulation: leave Stargel at home. Fans wrote to the Enquirer in favor of rejecting the invitation if Willie, one of the team’s best players, wouldn’t be allowed to play. Players and coaches voted to accept the invitation, but UC president Dr. Raymond Walters stood in opposition. The vote went in front of the UC board of trustees, who initially sided with Walters but re-voted after “several hours of debate” and chose to overrule the president and send the football team to play the game. The Bearcats flew to Texas without Stargel, where they beat Virginia Tech 18-6. The 9-2 record was the best in program history.
Stargel finished 16-0 in his last two seasons as a Bearcat, but his team lost four times without him.
The 1947 season was much like the one that preceded it. The lone MAC loss came to Dayton, and the Bearcats got rocked by undefeated Gillman and Miami, 38-7, in the Battle for the Victory Bell. But they played well otherwise, finishing 7-3 and earning a conference title. Nippert also broke attendance records––twice.
Nothing went right for the Bearcats in 1948, as the team finished 3-6-1. UC still had a shot to win the MAC title on Thanksgiving against Miami. A 43-19 Redskin blowout dashed that dream, and it was time for a change in leadership in Clifton. The UC board of directors met in secret in the offices of Renton K. Brodie-–a Procter & Gamble executive––where it was decided Nolting’s time at UC was over. He was asked to resign on December 7, but he declined and was fired.
By December 15, UC had set its sights on a new leader.
A Bright Future
The 1949 season brought a new face to lead the Bearcats––former Miami head coach Gillman, who had spent the 1948 season as an assistant at Army. Gillman’s offense emphasized downfield routes, which separated him from the screen-happy playbooks of the era. He had worked as an usher at a movie theater and made a habit of clipping football segments out of newsreels and taking them home to review on a projector, making him the first coach to study game film.
Gillman’s impact was swift, righting the disappointing 1948 season with a 7-4 mark in 1949, capped by a 27-6 Victory Bell win over Miami and first-year head coach Woody Hayes. The team’s 4-0 conference record earned another MAC title and another bowl trip, a 33-13 romp over Toledo in the Glass Bowl.
The Bearcats had blossoming fan support, a modern offense, and a full head of steam heading into the 1950s.
