Gene's Blog: 75 years later, the Cigar Bowl remembered

ST. PAUL, MINN. - This college football bowl season marks the 75^th anniversary of St. Thomas' trip to play in the 1949 Cigar Bowl in Tampa, Florida. St. Thomas tied Missouri Valley, 13-13, under the lights in Tampa's Phillips Stadium on January 1, 1948, to cap a memorable 7-1-1 season.

Here are 25 fun factoids surrounding that memorable 1948 season:

St. Thomas was the first in-state college/university team to play in a January 1 bowl game, later joined with that distinction by the University of Minnesota, which played in the 1961 and 1962 Rose Bowls as well as the 2015 Citrus Bowl and the 2020 Outback Bowl.
This Tommie team's media clips included high praise from local and regional reporters. The unit was billed "the best 11 in St. Thomas history" in one story, and in another was called "the Notre Dame of the Northwest."
Meanwhile, the opposing Vikings of Missouri Valley College from Marshall, Missouri -- who wore the Purple and Orange colors -- had built a 41-game winning streak that ended four weeks earlier with a close loss to Evansville. One season earlier, Missouri Valley was recognized as the best small college team in the country.
Several Tommie Cigar Bowlers returned to campus for team and class reunions over the years. In interviews, the players often said it was a unique group that played well together and was laser focused from the first days of preseason practice.
Two dozen of the 35-man Cigar Bowl roster members were still alive in 2008, the 60^th anniversary of that season. Today just one Cigar Bowler is still living – retired St. Paul teacher Tom Pacholl.
Perhaps the most decorated St. Thomas player on that team, RB-end-kicker Jack Salscheider, had major-college skills and savvy on the field, according to several local newspaper accounts. One reporter wrote that a standout like Salscheider alone might have elevated U of M Coach Bernie Bierman's Gopher team to a Rose Bowl berth that season, an honor that instead went to league champion Northwestern. A former U.S. Marine who served in World War II in the Pacific campaign, Salscheider repped St. Thomas on the 1948 Little All-America and Catholic All-America teams. He scored 12 touchdowns, kicking 19 PATs, rushing for 919 yards and averaging 44 yards a punt and 9.3 yards per rush over eight regular-season games.
Four members of that 1948 Tommie team went on to play NFL football. HB Jim "Popcorn" Brandt played three seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers and one CFL season for the Montreal Alouettes. End Don Simonsen played one season with the Los Angeles Rams. QB Ed Krowka, a Chicago native, played one season with the Detroit Lions before a heart condition ended his playing days. Salscheider played one season with the New York Giants and scored one touchdown on a kickoff return as a rookie before injuries halted his NFL career.
A fifth teammate, tackle Jim White, turned down an New York Giants contract offer and chose to attend medical school on a path to long career as a Twin Cities physician and professor.

A MIAC Streak

The 1948 team's head coach, Frank Deig, had only two assistant coaches (John Lackner, Bill Funk). Deig's 56 wins in his 12 seasons from 1946-57 included a 15-0 run in MIAC games from 1947-49. His 56 victories set a St. Thomas school record for football coaching wins, a feat broken more than 50 years later by current coach Glenn Caruso.
Deig and four members of that 1948 Cigar Bowl squad – Brandt, Salscheider, Simonsen and FB-track athlete Smith Eggleston -- were later inducted into the St. Thomas Athletic Hall of Fame. Brandt, Salscheider and Simonsen were among the 15 charter members of the first class selected in 1974. Besides his football contributions, Eggleston was a 24-foot long jumper here for the Tommies. In the fall of 2023, the entire Cigar Bowl unit was inducted as a team into the Hall of Fame.
With its youthful roster that included just four seniors, and with no players weighing more than 200 pounds, the 1948 Tommies started the season fast. They outscored their five MIAC opponents by a 138-6 margin as part of a 7-0 start.
The Toms were denied an unbeaten record when they lost on the road at Loras (Iowa) to 20-13 to close the regular season. They were still invited to compete in the Tampa game, learning on December 1 that would get the chance to play the defending Cigar champion Vikings. Newspaper accounts said St. Thomas edged out Wofford (S.C.) and Bowling Green (Ohio) for the bowl slot.

Bowl Hoopla

The Tommies practiced indoors at the University of Minnesota fieldhouse over the holiday break before leaving town on December 26 for the long train ride to Tampa.
St. Paul's overnight low temperature on departure day was 10-below zero, thus the Florida sunshine that greeted them was a welcome reward. A box of snow from the campus was packaged and shipped by courier to Tampa and opened by the team as part of the run up to the New Year's Day game.
The Tommies may not have been "America's Team," but could make a claim as "Miss America's Team." Among the celebrities to travel to Tampa to the bowl game and pose with players in photo shoots was the 1948 reigning Miss America, BeBe Shopp of Hopkins, Minnesota.
Game tickets were sold at Walgreens at prices ranging from $2.40 to $4.80. The kickoff was held at night so fans could follow radio broadcasts of the marquee bowl games played earlier in the day like the Rose and Cotton bowl.
One newspaper pre-game story projected a battle between "the Toms' speed and passing vs. the (Missouri Valley) Vikings' power running" behind their huge offensive line.
Two special teams breakdowns – a botched Tommie punt and a Vikings' punt return TD – proved costly as St. Thomas fell behind in the first half. After collected itself at halftime, St. Thomas used Brandt's 80-yard punt return touchdown and Salscheider's short TD run to tie the game. In the closing minute, a 60-yard pass from Krowka eluded Salscheider's outstretched hands at the goal line in what would have been a go-ahead score. The game ended in a tie despite St. Thomas' 14-6 advantage in first downs and its 216-173 edge in total yards gained. Missouri Valley had no passing yards.

Bowl Talk

The Cigar Bowl was one of 16 bowl games to wrap up the 1948 football season. It joined the Rose, Orange, Cotton, Sugar, Sun, Delta, Gator, Dixie, Tangerine, Salad, Harbor, Raisin, Shrine and Camellia Bowls played that week.
One year later, on January 1, 1950, the Cigar Bowl featured Florida State – then a member of the Dixie Conference -- defeating Wofford. The Cigar Bowl was held for nine years until it was discontinued in 1954. The only other upper Midwest school invited to the Cigar Bowl was UW-La Crosse, a two-time participant. The city of Tampa had to wait until 1985 until it would host another college football bowl game when the All-American Bowl moved there from Birmingham, Alabama.
Over the 1948-49 school year, St. Thomas won eight of the 10 men's team championships contested in the MIAC. The 1949 Tommies would repeat as conference football champions, making it six league titles in the sport over an 11-year run span for St. Thomas.
Deig was named National Small College Coach of the Year in 1956 after leading the Tommies to a 9-0 record and an MIAC title. He retired in 1958 due to failing health and died in 1960 at age 50. Missouri Valley's Volney Ashford would win multiple national coaching awards and took his teams to nine bowl games. Ashford coached the Vikings until 1967 and died in 1973 at age 65. Ashford was later voted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Popcorn Brandt earned his nickname as a youth when he sold popcorn at the concession stands at the Olivia (Minn.) town ball baseball games. Jim's younger brother who also attended St. Thomas was nicknamed Peanuts. It turns out that Popcorn's wife Aurella had the best nickname in the family – Jim affectionately called her "Sugar."
Also a standout as a boxer and as a track sprinter, Popcorn Brandt scored four NFL touchdowns in a three-year Steelers career. He also had a memorable kickoff return touchdown at Minneapolis' Parade Stadium during an NFL exhibition game played there. A close family friend explained that Brandt missed getting an NFL pension as he was one season short of the league rule of four years of service. The NFL later changed the rule to three years, the friend said, and Brandt's wife received the benefits retroactively in recent years after his passing.
Brandt was a popular Steelers player. Pittsburgh's Hall of Fame owner Art Rooney was so fond of the Minnesotan that upon his retirement from the NFL, he tried to present Brandt a special gift – a horse. Brandt and his wife were returning to Minnesota but had no facility to board and care for the animal. He politely declined, making him a rare person to, figuratively speaking, look a gift horse in the mouth.

Popcorn Brandt and his teammates instead could savor the fact that memories of the 1948 Cigar Bowl season alone were the gifts that would keep on giving for their college into eternity.

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Click here to watch a 2013 video story on the Tommies' Cigar Bowl season:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mkDponz1Jyk

University of St. Thomas Athletics

Gene's Blog: 75 years later, the Cigar Bowl remembered

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