Pappy Waldorf was OSU's greatest coach

As spring 1932 approached, Oklahoma A&M people grew alarmed. Great Depression budget cuts had crippled the university, and there was talk that football coach Lynn Waldorf might be enticed away to the University of Oklahoma.

Dean C.H. McElroy, head of the athletic cabinet, said, “It would set us back to lose Waldorf, whose work here has been extraordinary and highly pleasing to us all.”

Harry B. Cordell, the state's head of agriculture, fired back at the state board of agriculture's budget cuts by declaring they could cost A&M the services of Waldorf “while using its own expense funds to the limit.”

A prominent booster dropped by The Oklahoman offices and told sports editor Bus Ham, “This big-time football fight is another instance in which we can't complain. Lynn Waldorf, while bringing Aggie football along to new heights, kept it on a sane, even basis for which we are mighty happy.”

The crisis was averted. A&M relieved the legendary Ed Gallagher of his athletic director duties, made Waldorf the AD and coach, and OU eventually hired the forgettable Lewie Hardage to coach.

A little less than two years later, the crisis returned. This time, A&M lost Waldorf not to the hated Sooners, but to college football history. Waldorf went on to a Hall of Fame career that included championship stops at Kansas State, Northwestern and the University of California. Lynn Waldorf, who later would become known as “Pappy,” spent five years in Stillwater. He was the best football coach the Cowboys ever had.

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With apologies to Mike Gundy, who has taken OSU to nationally-relevant heights; and to Pat Jones, who won big with the Cowboys in the 1980s; and to Jim Lookabaugh, who did the same in the 1940s, Lynn Waldorf was the total package. Immensely popular. Great innovator. Of the highest character. And a big winner.

In Waldorf's five seasons, 1929-33, the Aggies went 34-10-7, a winning percentage of .735. Gundy, 104-50, is next on the list, at .675. Gundy needs 35 straight wins to surpass Waldorf's percentage.

When Waldorf arrived in Stillwater, the rivalry we now call the Bedlam Series was 23 games old. Oklahoma A&M had won thrice. A&M had lost three straight to Tulsa and beaten TU once since 1918. Waldorf's Aggies never lost to either in-state rival, going 7-0-3.

Waldorf ignited excitement with his hiring. A&M added a $37,000 stadium lighting system, making night games possible; 500 turned out for a night scrimmage that first September. The first night game, in 1929, drew 8,000 for a 12-0 victory over Northwestern Oklahoma State.

In 1928, OU had drubbed A&M 47-0. But in 1929, optimism was so high for the return game in Norman that hundreds of Cowboy fans headed south in “decrepit old jalopies,” wrote OSU historian Doris Dellinger, in her OSU book, Intercollegiate Athletics.

Soon enough, A&M was filling Lewis Field and adding seats by the season, and school president Henry Bennett set aside more than $100,000 to start a $500,000 athletics campaign for a new gymnasium and updated football stadium. Waldorf promoted a $40,000, 10-year loan to add 2,200 seats, a public-address system, electric scoreboard and an improved pressbox.

The Cowboys managed a 7-7 tie with OU in that first trip to Norman, finished off a 4-3-2 season, pride swelled in Stillwater and “offered considerable promise. It was almost tangible. The Cowboys were going places,” Dellinger wrote.

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Waldorf was born on Oct. 3, 1902, in Clifton Springs, N.Y., the son of a Methodist minister. Waldorf eventually went to Syracuse University, where he was a two-time second-team Walter Camp all-American and earned degrees in sociology and psychology. In 1925, he married Louise McKay.

By then, the Rev. Ernest Lynn Waldorf had become a Methodist bishop and was in Kansas City, Mo., overseeing a multi-state region that included Oklahoma.

Oklahoma City University, affiliated with the Methodist Church, had an athletic opening, and at age 23 Waldorf was hired to be the Goldbugs' athletic director and coach for football, basketball and track, at the impressive salary of $4,000. Waldorf invigorated OCU with football success, going 19-9-3 at OCU and recruiting eventual NFL star Ace Gutowsky to the school.

But Waldorf left OCU in 1928 to be an assistant coach at Kansas. The Oklahoman reported that Mrs. Waldorf received the news of the move “enthusiastically,” but Waldorf also received a telegram from his OCU team, asking “that if possible, he remain with the Goldbugs.”

A year later, when Oklahoma A&M worked out a buyout of coach John Maulbetsch, Waldorf was summoned to Stillwater, hired at the princely sum of $6,000.

“Waldorf brought a ready grin and amiable disposition to Stillwater, along with topflight credentials,” Dellinger wrote.

Waldorf was a great football mind. He developed a platoon system that also was starting to be adopted by Notre Dame's Knute Rockne, in which different backfields would be deployed. Waldorf hired as an assistant Albert Exendine, an Oklahoman who had played football at Carlisle with Jim Thorpe and who would succeed Waldorf in Stillwater.

Waldorf was not a screamer. His players rallied around his calm demeanor.

Waldorf was a marketer, too. He twice staged doubleheaders, in which his team played back-to-back games on the same night, against teams the Cowboys were expected to beat.

Waldorf campaigned for admission to the Big Six Conference, which then consisted of OU, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa State and Kansas State. A&M was granted an audience, but no invitation came. President Bennett seemed undeterred. “Just beat them every time we play one of them,” he said.

The Oklahoman's Charles J. Brill wrote after that first season, “This is the first time the Stillwater institution has had an athletic staff organized along lines of efficiency. With all due respects to those who have gone before, Aggieland never has had a head football coach whose personality and capabilities could compare with that of Lynn Waldorf.”

Waldorf's next four seasons were superb: 7-2-1, 8-2-1, 9-1-2 and 6-2-1. His 34 wins in five years surpassed the Cowboys' total (31) for the previous 10 years.

Waldorf's 1932 team missed unbeaten status only because he belatedly scheduled a November game against Jefferson Law School of Dallas, which drew from other college teams and had no eligibility standards. The Cowboys lost 12-6.

“Lynn simply has wrought miracles with those Aggies,” Bus Ham wrote. “He has done far better than he ever dreamed he possibly could … he has turned what amounted to chaos into teamplay, not only on the gridiron, but on the street corners, in the classrooms and in the Stillwater homes.”

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The one thing Waldorf didn't have was timing. In the middle of his first season, the stock market crashed. Depression didn't come to Oklahoma immediately. But when it came, it came hard.

President Bennett's fundraising campaign was doomed. Just making payroll became paramount.

Faculty and staff budgets were sliced. That included football coaches. Waldorf's $6,000 salary was whittled by five percent. Then 10 percent. When he left in March 1935, Waldorf was making $4,200.

And others had taken notice of the Cowboys' success.

In 1932, Bennie Owen himself, the OU athletic director and legendary former coach, had mentioned Waldorf as the answer to the Sooner woes. Waldorf was linked to far more jobs than even Gundy has been linked to. Missouri. Iowa State. Drake. The University of Chicago, where Amos Alonzo Stagg was retiring. Texas, in January 1934. “I am very well satisfied here,” Waldorf said. “The situation at Stillwater is pleasant. I am not doing any looking around.”

But Waldorf was a football coach. Most of them are nomads. In March 1934, Kansas State coach Bo McMillin resigned to take the Indiana job. K-State came calling with a rousing financial package, and Waldorf this time jumped.

Details were not released, but Waldorf admitted it was for a substantial increase. The Waldorfs went from living in a Stillwater apartment to a three-acre tract in Manhattan, Kan.

When Waldorf had arrived in Stillwater, the state had given A&M $25,000 annually to pay athletic department and physical education department salaries. Five years later, A&M was receiving $5,000. The Aggies had no recourse to try to keep Waldorf.

“There were no unpleasant memories and I hope my successor will be accorded the same backing,” Waldorf said.

Exendine became the A&M coach. He lasted two years and went 7-12-1. Ted Cox replaced Exendine and was 7-23 from 1936-38. Only when Lookabaugh was again hired in 1939 did the Cowboys find success.

Meanwhile, Waldorf stayed only one year at K-State. But what a year. The 1934 Wildcats, picked last in the Big Six, won the conference. It was KSU's only conference football championship until Bill Snyder's 2003 team.

Then it was off to Northwestern, where Waldorf's father was on the board of trustees, and more success. His first Northwestern team stunned Notre Dame, probably costing the Fighting Irish the national title, and in the celebration that followed, Waldorf's staff came up with the nickname “Pappy.” Pappy Waldorf would become one of college football's iconic names. His 1936 Wildcats went 7-1, won the Big Ten and beat Minnesota, the team declared the national champion. After 11 years, Waldorf was off to Cal, where he took the Golden Bears to three straight Rose Bowls, 1948-50. He retired from coaching in 1956 and was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966.

Pappy Waldorf died Aug. 15, 1981, at age 78. The greatest coach in Cowboy history, back when the school was known as Oklahoma A&M and the coach was known as Lynn.

Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at (405) 760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok.com/berrytramel.