Golden Griz: Flathead players key to UM’s 1969-70 success

While the University of Montana rightly celebrated the 25 year anniversary of its first national football championship, there is another landmark that just maybe put Griz football on the map.

Fifty years ago the Grizzlies had just finished back-to-back trips to the Camellia Bowl, which was the so-called championship for the “College Division,” or what later became Division II. The Griz lost both December games, in 1969 and ‘70, both times to North Dakota State (them again) in Sacramento.

Dotting Montana’s roster were Flathead High products like Doug Bain, Terry Pugh and Tim Gallagher; it was also filled out with junior college transfers, one of which – John Talolutu – has lived in Whitefish for 30 years.

Pugh credits Gallagher, a neighbor two years older, for influencing his athletic and academic career. Both live out of state, as does Bain; Talolutu, meanwhile, came to Missoula from Hawaii by way of Columbia Basin Junior College and, if not for a transfer by Burlington Northern, might never have left.

The quartet has fond memories of those seasons, save for the endings. Both years the NCAA prevented UM’s recent JC transfers from playing, and it decimated lineups that had gone 10-0 during the regular season.

It was such a sore subject that UM’s media guides for the succeeding years make little mention of it; the game-by-game results just end, with no Camellia Bowl.

“That’s good,” said Talolutu. “We don’t want to be reminded of it anyway.

“It was bad enough that we lost, but to not have all the key players, that’s the bad part. We weren’t expected to be there anyway and then the rules came up and – it is what it is.”

So it is that the 1969 squad, which boasted 11 all-Big Sky Conference players, couldn’t use all-world safety Karl Stein or top lineman Larry Miller or its running back tandem of Les Kent and Arnie Blancas and their 1,700 combined rushing yards.

“That was the main thing, you know,” said Bain, who lives in semi-retirement in Salem, Oregon. “We lost Arnie Blancas, Les Kent and Karl Stein – like our three best players.”

But before then: Wow.

“I think my sophomore year (1968) we were 2-7,” said Gallagher, who lives in Corvallis, Oregon. “Football wasn’t a big deal, and 1969 was the most fun because it kind of came out of nowhere. We switched over to the Wishbone (offense), and really the only other school that was running it was Texas.

“The traditional defense back then was a 5-2, with five down linemen. This was designed to annihilate that defense – and everybody was running the 5-2. We just went up and down the field.”

Gallagher was all-Big Sky at linebacker, with Pugh as his backup; Talolutu, all 195 pounds of him, was playing defensive end.

“I was recruited to play tight end, and they eventually moved me to outside linebacker,’ Gallagher said. “Thank God. because there was no passing.”

OK there was a little – Bain had 17 catches for 473 yards and five touchdowns in 1969, statistics that mesh perfectly with a run-first team.

“Doug Bain was a running back and they switched him to wide receiver because he was fast and he could block,” Gallagher said. “He was always blocking the cornerback and all of a sudden he’d fake a block and take off.”

Pugh was a freshman in 1969, which is also the first year the Griz moved from their original Dornblaser Stadium – it stood behind Main Hall, not far from where Washington-Grizzly Stadium is now – into the one UM still uses for soccer and track on South Avenue.

As that venue aged and the wind kept whipping through, an on-campus facility became more and more attractive. But in 1969-70, Dornblaser was the place to be.

“The thing you look back on is those two teams were really what got Missoula excited,” Gallagher said. “People were begging for tickets. It just exploded the enthusiasm for Montana football. I think that’s where it started.”

Adding to it for Pugh was Gallagher’s presence.

“We played the same position,” Pugh said. “I played behind him and he was basically my childhood mentor. I grew up maybe 20 feet from his driveway. He was like my big brother. When he went to the Grizzlies, I wanted to go to the Grizzlies.”

It was a different era: Pugh, Bain and Gallagher were part of huge freshman classes that, depending on who you talk to, had 25-28 scholarships and often numbered 40. Then the following spring the coaches – Jack Swarthout, Jack Elway, Bill Betcher – would whittle that number way down.

“They told us during spring ball, ‘Well, we’re only going to keep about eight of you freshmen,” Gallagher remembered.

“It seems like when I went there, they had extra money to recruit more people,” said Bain, who got to campus in 1966. “Then by the time I was a senior there were only four of us left.”

There was no such issue for Tululatu, who’d followed two high school teammates from Oahu to Columbia Basin, or so he thought.

“In the meanwhile my two friends had also applied to Wenatchee,” he said. “They must have got a better deal there. So I’m stuck (at CBC), but that turned out OK. I got the best of them both years we played.”

One of those players from Wenatchee was Tuufuli Uperesa, who became a top offensive lineman and NFL draft pick. Talolutu reunited with him at UM.

If the seasons were magical – the Griz were 10-0 in 1969 partly because Montana State missed a game-winning, 42-yard field goal in the final seconds – the endings weren’t.

The 1969 game was a 30-3 loss, though upon review it looks like the Grizzlies had more chances than in a 31-16 loss to NDSU a year later.

In ‘69, cornerback Pat Schruth had both a fumble recovery and an interception overturned, and the Bison scored on both possessions. All-American kicker Dan Worrell missed two field goals. Corner Roy Robinson couldn’t hang onto what seemed a certain pick-six.

“I didn’t believe it then, and still can’t,” Robinson told the Billings Gazette’s Norm Clarke after the game.

Bain has bad memories as well: He lost a contact during the game, never finding it, and then got hit on a route and broke his wrist. Meanwhile his wife had gotten in a car accident driving to Sacramento. She was fine; the car was not.

In 1970, Kent and Blancas got to play but starting QB Gary Berding, a first-year JC transfer, did not. Sophomore Elroy Chong, recruited as a passer, filled in at QB and the Grizzlies lost five fumbles while falling behind 28-3.

Chong, another in Montana’s “Hawaii Connection,” transferred home after the season. In 1971 he became a starting QB and piloted the Rainbows past Montana, 25-11.

The Camellia Bowl – so named because Sacramento is the “Camellia City” – continued and from 1973-75 was the DII championship game.

Before then it was billed (according to the Associated Press) as the “Pacific Coast Regional Championship.” Montana State won the 1964 game – and counts it as one of its three national titles – and lost in the 1966 Camellia Bowl to San Diego State.

It wasn’t played from 1976-79 and then resurrected in 1980 as the I-AA (now FCS) championship. Boise State beat Eastern Kentucky for the title that year.

Then it was gone, until 2014 when ESPN created the new FBS Camellia Bowl in Mobile, Alabama; now it was named for Alabama’s state flower. Buffalo beat Marshall 17-10 in the most recent game, played on Christmas Day.

Not many noticed. These former Griz played in a different era in a land far away, during a bellwether time of UM football.

Swarthout and his staff eventually left under the cloud of a work-study controversy. The Grizzlies’ fortunes trended up some under Larry Donovan, who guided them to a share of the Big Sky title in 1982; when Donovan was let go after the 1985 season, making way for Don Read, ground had been broken for Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

The stadium and Read’s success led to many a home playoff game, which led to the 1995 title, and another national championship in 2001 and five title game appearances besides.

Yet let no one forget 1969-70. Gallagher estimated that nine players from that era had NFL contracts, including him. Five were drafted, four of them offensive linemen, along with Robinson.

“It has flown by,” said Tululato, “It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.

“It was good luck and good fortune. The new formation and offensive plans they got from Texas, luckily we had the people to run it and it worked out for us.”

“I don’t think anybody was really thinking we would have a very good year,” Bain said, who’s had a long career in insurance. “We started running that offense and no one in that league had seen that before. It gave us an element of surprise.

“They called us the Jets, Mets and the Grizzlies – the New York Jets had won the Super Bowl, the Mets won the World Series and we were 10-0. It was quite a surprise for everybody.”