Tag: Alan Ameche

Heisman Trophy weekend offers reason for us at Badgers Wire to celebrate Wisconsin’s two stiff-arm trophy icons. The recent winner was Ron Dayne in 1999, but Alan Ameche came first in 1954.

As we noted in our review of the 1954 Heisman vote which lifted Ameche to college football immortality, Ameche is — for most American sports fans who are aware of him — the man who ended the first sudden-death overtime game in NFL history, the seminal 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants in fabled Yankee Stadium. A moment with Alan Ameche at the center of the action permanently changed the NFL, professional football, and sports culture in the United States. That is quite a legacy to leave behind.

Yet, while Ameche is associated with the NFL’s rise to prominence, and while his 1954 Heisman cemented his place in the history of college football, earning him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame, “The Horse” was first and foremost a Wisconsin icon for a reason not connected to the Heisman.

To be sure, Ameche’s identity as Wisconsin’s first Heisman winner gives him a special place in UW sports history — and the broader history of the school itself — but let’s imagine a world in which Ameche had narrowly lost that 1954 Heisman vote, which was very close. Would he still be an immortal in the pantheon of great Wisconsin sports figures? Absolutely.

Here’s the simple but powerful detail of Ameche’s career which younger Badgers need to know (and remember, and then pass along to future generations of UW fans): Ameche helped Wisconsin make its first Rose Bowl AND its first bowl game of any kind.

The first college football season in which there were multiple bowl games was 1934. The Orange, Sugar and Sun joined the Rose. However, the Rose Bowl, at that time, had not yet developed the Pac-12-Big Ten tradition which marks the bowl today. The Pac-12 was then called the Pacific Coast Conference, and the Big Ten was then known as the Western Conference. (That’s why Michigan’s fight song refers to the “champions of the West,” in case you ever wondered about that.)

The Pac-12 and Big Ten relationship in the Rose Bowl didn’t begin until the 1946 season and the 1947 game between Illinois and UCLA. I mention this because in 1942, Wisconsin’s first great team of the multi-bowl era went 8-1-1 and finished third in the final Associated Press poll. If the Pac-12-Big Ten relationship had begun in 1942, Wisconsin would have played UCLA in the 1943 Rose Bowl. However, No. 2 Georgia got the invitation instead. This prevented Wisconsin from making its first Rose Bowl and its first bowl game of any kind.

Ten years later, in the 1952 season, Ameche was there to lift Wisconsin to the 1953 Rose Bowl against USC. It was the first time Wisconsin was able to make the pilgrimage to Pasadena which is treasured among Big Ten fans. That same pilgrimage will take place in a few weeks against Oregon, in preparation for the 2020 Rose Bowl.

Alan Ameche was a pioneer for Wisconsin football not just as a Heisman winner, but as a Rose Bowl participant. His imprint on football is so much more than that one touchdown in 1958 for the Colts.

Before there was Ron Dayne in 1999, the Wisconsin Badgers gained their first Heisman Trophy winner in 1954. Alan Ameche made history for the Badgers, en route to the College Football Hall of Fame and a significant piece of NFL immortality.

When you mention Alan Ameche to a sports fan on the street (and that sports fan is at least 50 years old), you will almost always get one answer among people who actually remember the running back: “Oh yeah, right, he was the guy who scored the winning touchdown in overtime of the 1958 NFL Championship Game.” Ameche won one of the most important and consequential football games ever played, a game widely credited with giving professional football the publicity and the sizzle needed to emerge into America’s most popular sport in the coming decades.

The process by which the NFL grew into a commercial juggernaut — amplified by NFL Films, aided by Commissioner Pete Rozelle, fueled by Vince Lombardi, enhanced by Joe Namath’s victory in Super Bowl III, strengthened by the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, catapulted by the runaway success of the emergent Super Bowl concept — began in many ways with a game in which Alan Ameche played, a game which ended on a touchdown Ameche scored. That is no small place in history for the man nicknamed “The Horse.”

Here is how the 1954 Heisman vote went down:

Ameche won a close vote with 1,068 points. He gained 214 first-place votes, which was 34 more than runner-up Kurt Burris of Oklahoma, who collected 180 such votes. Burris had 838 points. Ameche might have lost the Heisman had Burris won more second- and third-place votes, but Ameche exceeded Burris in those categories as well, with 46 more seconds (157-111) and 36 more thirds (112-76).

The 46 more seconds provided 92 points. The 36 thirds added 36 points, meaning that Ameche outdistanced Burris by 128 points on votes other than first-place tallies. Given that Ameche won the first-place category by 102 points over Burris (34 more first-place votes at three points per vote), a complete flip of 128 points to Burris would have given the Sooner lineman the victory. This was not a runaway created by first-place votes, but a case of Ameche being slightly better in first, second, and third-place results.

Howard “Hopalong” Cassady of Ohio State finished third with 810 points, right behind Burris’s 838. Instructively, Cassady collected 139 second-place votes. Fourth-place finisher Ralph Guglielmi of Notre Dame — who had 691 points and was also competitive in the top tier of the 1954 Heisman race — hauled in 128 second-place votes as well. Cassady and Guglielmi split the vote with Burris, which contributed to Ameche’s victory.

Four Heisman contenders — Ameche, Burris, Cassady, and Guglielmi — all gained more than 110 first- and second-place votes, making the 1954 Heisman one of the more deeply competitive and balanced Heisman races of all time.

A Wisconsin Badger and future Baltimore Colt came out on top, just as he did four years later in the 1958 NFL season.

One immortal and iconic moment in New York on a football field was preceded by four years in the very same city, when Alan Ameche lifted the Heisman Trophy at the Downtown Athletic Club.