A LITTLE BIT ABOUT OKLAHOMA FOOTBALL
This week author Sally Jenkins is releasing a new book called The Real All-Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, A People, A Nation -- about the Carlise Indian college, in Pennsylvania, where Jim Thorpe studied and all-Indian football teams regularly pummelled the top Ivy-league schools on the gridiron pitch of the day. This was surprising to many, as the players had no football experience and rarely broke 150 pounds. The team used reverses and misdirections and long passes to trick opponents. In a 1903 Harvard game, one player snuck the ball in an inside pocket of his jersey and raced undetected down the sideline. By 1912, the New York Times callled Carlisle 'the most perfect brand of football ever seen in America.'
Things changed by December 26, 1927 though. That year, the 'world champion' New York Giants visited Oklahoma and played the Hominy Indians -- a team led of players of various tribes, including the great John Levi, who Jim Thorpe called 'the best athlete' he'd ever seen. Playing in Pawhuska, Hominy won 13-7.
There was talk of the Indians moving to Tulsa and joining the NFL, but -- alas -- the Great Depression soon slowed down the football crazy of the '20s, and the team folded in 1932.
Carlisle never beat an NFL team. Only Hominy did.
Get a PDF of a 1967 Oklahoma Today article by Arthur Shoemaker on the Indians.
--> The FBO salutes the Hominy Indians
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