Rice hero was famously bowled over in Cotton Bowl victory

UnforgettabOwl
Rice hero was famously bowled over in Cotton Bowl victory

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

Rice’s last bowl victory wasn’t just another college football game. It was legendary.

On New Year’s Day 1954, the sixth-ranked 8-2 Owls went to Dallas’ Cotton Bowl to play Alabama in a game remembered not only for the record-setting performance by running back Dicky Maegle but also for the run he didn’t get to complete. 

Maegle, now 74 and living in Katy, Texas, will be an honored guest at the Texas Bowl, which has named him to its 2008 class of Gridiron Legends. The Owls face Western Michigan in the bowl Dec. 30 at Reliant Stadium.

But in Maegle’s first bowl game, he was on the receiving end of one of the most famous tackles in college football history. It happened in the second quarter. Maegle had already drawn blood from the Crimson Tide, giving Rice a 7-6 lead with a 79-yard touchdown run on the first play of the quarter, setting a record for the longest rush in Cotton Bowl history.

That record didn’t stand for long, though. A few minutes later, after the Owls recovered a fumble at their own 10-yard line and a penalty pushed them back to the 5, Maegle took the ball around the right side, picked up a couple of blocks and took off.

He’d gone as far as the Alabama 40 with nothing but open field ahead when an overexuberant Tommy Lewis, sans helmet, leapt off the Crimson Tide bench, blindsided the Owl with a perfect block and quickly returned to his seat.

With the stadium in an uproar, officials who saw the whole thing awarded Maegle, still flattened at the 40, the touchdown. It went in the books as a 95-yard rush — a record that still stands.

”When I hit the ground, it knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t get up, even if I wanted to get him,” Maegle said later in a video of the play you can see here and here.

Rice went on to win 28-6. Maegle scored a third touchdown on a 34-yard sprint in the third quarter, and he set Cotton Bowl records for the highest average per carry (24.1), which still stands, and for the most rushing yards in a game (265), a mark broken in 2008 by Missouri’s Tony Temple.

A few days later, Maegle and a mortified Lewis were brought to New York to appear on the ”The Ed Sullivan Show,” where Lewis uttered a line still famous in Crimson Tide history — “Mr. Sullivan, I guess I was just so full of Alabama.” Lewis later admitted he and Sulilivan cooked up the quote together.

According to the College Football Hall of Fame, to which Maegle was inducted in 1979, he set 26 records during his time at Rice, including marks for 22 career touchdowns and 72 total points in a season. He spent seven years in the National Football League with the San Francisco 49ers, Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys, after which he went into the hotel business. Maegle was among the first Owls inducted into the Rice Hall of Fame, created in 1970.

The Cotton Bowl certainly hasn’t forgotten Maegle. He was on the Rice campus recently to film a segment about the ’54 game that will be aired as part of a video about the Dallas stadium, which will see its last Cotton Bowl when Texas Tech plays Mississippi Jan. 2. The game will move to the Cowboys’ new stadium in 2010.

Rice’s bowl days didn’t begin and end with ‘Bama. The Owls had appeared in three previous classics, all victories, beginning with the 1938 Cotton Bowl, a 28-14 win over Colorado that saw Rice come back from a 14-0 first-quarter deficit. Sophomore quarterback Ernie Lain’s three second-quarter touchdown passes were the difference.

In 1947, the Owls went to the Orange Bowl, where they topped Tennessee 8-0 on New Year’s Day. Huey Keeney scored the lone touchdown on a 50-yard run after taking a lateral from Buddy Russ. The game was also notable for headgear: The Owls donned new plastic-shell helmets, while Tennessee wore old-fashioned leather ones.

Returning to the Cotton Bowl in 1950, Rice topped the University of North Carolina 27-13. The dominant Owls led 27-0 before the Tar Heels got on the board late in the game.

Rice hasn’t fared so well in four bowl appearances since 1954. They had their helmets handed to them by Navy, 20-7, in a 1958 return to the Cotton Bowl.

On Jan. 2, 1961, Ole Miss held the line and beat Rice 14-6 before 82,851 fans in New Orleans. That same year, Dec. 16, Kansas took it to the Owls 33-7 in the Bluebonnet Bowl at Rice Stadium.

Rice returned to bowl duty in 2006. In the New Orleans Bowl, the resurgent Owls lost to Troy, 41-17, but Rice’s newest All-American, Jarett Dillard, set a record by catching a touchdown pass for the 15th consecutive game.