|
|
“Enthusiasm was at its height this morning at the Sixteenth street
station where 300 students awaited the arrival of Coach Garret Cochran,”
reported the Daily Cal on September 15, 1899. “‘Here’s to you, Garry
Cochran’ and the college yells rang in the air and college spirit was
manifested as never before.... At twelve o’clock the ‘Owl’ steamed into
the depot and all pent up feeling broke loose. At the sight of Cochran
all let forth a shout and rushed to grasp the hand of the idealized
coach.”
The 22 year old Cochran was hired from Princeton in 1898 to be both
football and baseball coach. An alumnus of the elite Lawrenceville
Preparatory School, Cochran as a Princeton undergraduate had served as
captain of both the baseball and football teams during his junior and
senior years. At Cal, Cochran quickly reconstituted what had been a
lackluster squad, shifting players around in their positions and
teaching a new brand of football. One sportswriter has called it the
Cochran Revolution. The revolution worked, and the Cal football team
went into the Big Game undefeated. For the first time in campus
history, the university was galvanized by a sporting event. Over 200
Cal men swore not to wear neckties for an entire year if Stanford won.
“Boys,” Cochran exhorted the team in the locker room before the
game, “this is the opportunity of your lives. A grander opportunity to
immortalize your names, stamp them indelibly upon the pages of the
history of your university, has never been given to you. For eight long
years have those lobster backs made you bite the dust. It is your turn
now. Make them bite and bite hard.... Some of you have mothers and
fathers and sisters here today. Yes, boys, some of you have sweethearts
here, who are wishing and praying that you may win. Play, fellows, play
for their sakes. Let your motto be, ‘Hit ‘em again, harder, harder.’”
Cal won the 1898 Big Game by a score of 22-0.
Cochran spent the summer of 1899 working in the mines in New Mexico,
but when he stepped off the train in Oakland the next Fall he was
greeted as a conquering hero. Cal once again looked forward to a
winning football season, and a special importance was attached to the
Big Game since San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan had promised to award a football
statue by Douglas Tilden to either Cal or Stanford — to
whichever team had the better two-out-of-three record for 1898, 1899 and
1900. A second Big Game win would secure the statue for Berkeley.
New President Benjamin Ide Wheeler made it clear that the 1899 Big
Game was more than just a football match. “We simply must win,” he told
a pep rally, “It would break my heart if the college did not win the
first year I was out here. We must win, if we have to roar our throats
out.... It always does a man good to know that the whole gang is with
him, and he can play better. I believe in a college where all go
shoulder to shoulder; in fact, I may say I do not believe in any other
sort of college. I want to see California win, but, even above that, I
want to see her win honestly. It would grieve my heart to think that
any California player was unfair or ungentlemanly in any action. I want
everyone of them to be a gentleman, and by a gentleman, I mean one who
bucks the line hard.”
And win they did, 30-zip. The Tilden football statue would come to
Berkeley.
On December 7, 1899 the Daily Cal reported that the Big Game was not
only a scoring blow-out, it was also a financial windfall, with a net
profit of $16,046.80. Garret Cochran had almost single-handedly created
the institution of Cal football.
In December Garret Cochran was a god. By January he was gone, with
no explanation for his departure.
The Daily Cal for January 16, 1900 reported that the ASUC Athletic
Commission was negotiating with Cochran’s assistant, Addison “King”
Kelly, to become the new head football coach. One reason for offering
the job to Kelly may have been a new rule that Stanford was promoting in
the wake of their stinging double loss: football coaches must now be
graduates of the college they coach. But Cal was opposing the adoption
of that rule, and in all the discussion published in many columns in the
Daily Cal during the 1899-1900 academic year, not once is the question
of Cochran’s eligibility raised. Clearly, his departure was caused by
other factors.
Cochran next appeared as the head football coach at Annapolis, where
he led the Midshipmen during the first half of the 1900 season. Despite
a respectable win-loss record (6-3) he was replaced mid-season by Arthur
“Doc” Hillebrand. Then he simply dropped from sight.
The names of the men who played on the 1898 and 1899 Cal football
team have been — as Coach Cochran promised them — inscribed in campus
history. Their surnames appear carved in stone on the east side of the
pediment of the Tilden statue. Beneath them is the inscription, “Garret
Cochran, Coach.” Those words and a mystery are all that remain.
Links on This Page
Read More About It
- Daily Californian, September 1899 — May 1900
- Dan S. Brodie. 66 Years on the California Gridiron, 1882-1948 : the
History of Football at the University of California (Oakland :
Olympic Publishing Co., 1949)
- John T. Sullivan. Cal vs. Stanford, the Big Game : a Game-by-game
History of America’s Greatest Football Rivalry (West Point, NY :
Leisure Press, 1983)
|
|
