KOCH: Taking a trip through through UC's storied history

KOCH: Taking a trip through through UC's storied history

KOCH: Taking a trip through through UC's storied historyKOCH: Taking a trip through through UC's storied history
May 12, 2015

By Bill Koch
GoBEARCATS.com

CINCINNATI -- A few months ago, I was in the office of University of Cincinnati athletic director Mike Bohn when I noticed a striking black-and-white photo of Nippert Stadium hanging on the wall. It's a wide-angle view of the stadium, apparently from the 1940s, based on the cars that were visible in the background. There's no date on the photo, which is several feet wide and dominates the wall.

I asked him where he had gotten the photo and he directed me to his assistant, Beth Hussey, who told me she had happened upon it one day while she was in a storage room located in the old Armory Fieldhouse. She had it re-framed to hang in Bohn's office, a reminder of how the stadium looked long ago, even as the current Nippert Stadium renovation is being completed outside Bohn's office window.

"There's all kinds of stuff in that room," she said. "You should go in there and look around some day."

She didn't have to ask me twice. I filed that offer in the back of my mind for when the rush of basketball season and spring football had come to an end. Monday was the day we settled on to see what else was in that room. I arrived to meet Beth in her office not sure what to expect. Would I find a room full of worthless junk or would I find one filled with treasures from Oscar Robertson and Sandy Koufax?

As it turned out, it was somewhere in-between.

The Fieldhouse, the Bearcats' home court back in the days of Jack Twyman, the Big O and UC's two national championship teams, is a shell of what it once was. The lower-level seats have all been ripped out, but the bleachers on the upper level remain. There is little evidence that this was once the home of one of the greatest players in college basketball history or of two national title teams, a place where the Bearcats won 72 games in a row from 1957-58 until 1963-64.

Beth led me to a door just off the first floor that opened into a vacant men's restroom, which led to a storage area. She unlocked the door to the storage room and flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. Using the light on my cell phone, I carefully stepped over boxes to reach the other side of the room and found a switch that provided just enough light to enable me to see. Beth left me to forage on my own.

I found old trophies, framed photos - many of them with no dates or identification - ledgers with athletic department financial numbers from years gone by, and much more. There was no Robertson jersey, nor did I find the ball that Koufax threw in old Schmidlapp Gym when he worked out for Ed Jucker to make the UC baseball team -- how cool would that have been?

But I did find a letter from the the baseball Hall of Fame to the late Jim Kelly thanking him for sending along a plaque commemorating the induction in 1977 of Miller Huggins into the UC Athletics Hall of Fame, which now bears Kelly's name. Huggins, a UC law school graduate and former captain of the Bearcats' baseball team, was the manager of the 1927 Yankees, still widely considered the greatest team of all time, with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehring and Waite Hoyt.

I found a deflated football from UC's 24-17 football victory over Boston College on Oct. 26, 1985 at Riverfront Stadium. In addition to the score and the date, the writing on the ball points out that BC had won the Cotton Bowl the previous year. Then I found the program from the 1997 Humanitarian Bowl that marked UC's first bowl appearance in 47 years and a plaque from UC's 1962 Missouri Valley Conference football title.

There were action photos of Bob Wiesenhahn, who played on UC's 1961 national championship basketball team, and Paul Hogue, an All-American who played on both the '61 and '62 national title teams. The item that really caught my attention was a large framed collection of photos celebrating the 1962 national championship team with posed individual photos of each player. I was nine years old in 1962. That's when my identity as a sports fan was beginning to form.

What else?

Framed certificates signifying All-District awards for such former UC stalwarts as Danny Fortson, Leonard Stokes, Kenny Satterfield, Jason Maxiell and Steve Logan. A framed certificate acknowledging the late George Smith's honor as Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year in 1958-59. Smith recruited Robertson to UC, where he coached him for three years. After Robertson left, he became UC's athletic director, a job he held during UC's two national championship years.

And neckties with the old Bearcat logo on them. If I were inclined to wear ties, which I'm not, I would have stuffed one of those in my pocket. I still might.

There was a black-and-white action photo of former UC quarterback Greg Cook, still regarded as the greatest quarterback in school history who went on to become the American Football League Rookie of the Year playing for the Cincinnati Bengals before a shoulder injury ended his career prematurely. To accompany the photo, I found a copy of a proclamation from the Ohio House of Representatives commending Cook on being named the Most Valuable Player of the 1969 College All-Star game that the college players, lost 26-24, to the Super Bowl champion New York Jets.

On top of a stack of boxes I found a silver plate, the championship trophy for the 1998 Great Alaska Shootout. That tournament produced one of the greatest highlights in UC basketball history that is frequently shown on the video board at Fifth Third Arena before UC men's basketball games. With the score tied against top-ranked Duke, Ryan Fletcher inbounds the ball, heaving it nearly the length of the floor from under Duke's basket to Kenyon Martin, who catches it at the top of the key. Martin then dumps it off to Melvin Levett, who's cutting to the basket and dunks the ball with one second left, giving UC a 77-75 victory, still the only Bearcat win over a top-ranked team since they knocked off Ohio State for the national championship in 1962.

I also found a bronze plaque from UC's old baseball field, which was named in honor of Johnny Bench, and the silver shovel that was used in the groundbreaking ceremony for Varsity Village on May 7, 2003. There's another fancy shovel in there, no doubt from another groundbreaking ceremony, but there's nothing written on it to signify which one. Could it have been from Shoemaker Center/Fifth Third Arena?

And there was a red wooden board with typewritten index cards pasted on it. It appears to be a former UC football coach's version -- Sid Gillman, perhaps? - of John Wooden's famous Pyramid of Success, although there's no way to know whose philosophy is being expounded. The card at the top reads, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

And with that, it was time for me to get going. I left the room with a renewed sense of respect for UC's rich history, hoping that one day all of this memorabilia can be sorted through and displayed so that all UC fans can see it.

Bill Koch covered UC Athletics for 27 years - 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer - before joining the staff of GoBEARCATS.com in January, 2015 as featured columnist. Follow him on Twitter @bkoch.