It’s October 10, 2023, the 100th anniversary of an interesting day for Austin College and SMU.
It’s been a big 2023 so far for SMU football. The Mustangs returned to a major conference after accepting an invitation to join the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). SMU began the season with a victory at home over Louisiana Tech. And the Ponies secured that win at home in Gerald J. Ford Stadium, dedicating a new stadium expansion on the 100th anniversary of the playing field.
The playing field was born in 1923 and was named the “Ownby Oval” after an SMU alumnus. Ownby Oval was dedicated at halftime of an October 10, 1923, game against a Mustang nemesis: Austin College. Despite membership in the Southwest Conference (SWC), the Kangaroos had defeated SMU three straight years.
But SMU Head Coach Ray Morrison hoped that 1923 would be different. The losing streak to the Roos had begun in 1920 after Head Coach Ewing Freeland’s Kangaroos had defeated SMU 42-0; Morrison lured Freeland to SMU in 1923 to help turn the tide of SMU’s fortunes. After finally defeating AC, perhaps SMU might even make a run at a first ever SWC title.
From the Corsicana Daily Sun:
“The [SMU] team has only a four-day rest between [today] and the game with Austin College, which will formally inaugurate Ownby Oval. [Austin College will] face a traditional rival comparatively fresh and eager to wipe out a year-old defeat at the hands of the Kangaroos. Wednesday’s encounter with Austin College is the last before SMU opens its [Southwest] conference campaign.”
“But the battle with the Kangaroos is of no less importance. Austin College is rated one of the strongest teams in the TIAA and last year held the Texas Longhorns to a comparatively small score and then defeated SMU. Opening ceremonies for the Oval named in honor of Jordan Ownby, donor of one of the steel stands, will precede what is expected to be SMU’s hardest game to date.”
And typical of AC-SMU contests in the 1920s, the game against Coach Pete Cawthon’s Kangaroos came right down to the wire. With the score deadlocked at 3-3 in the last minute of the game, SMU blocked a punt and rambled into the end zone to earn a 10-3 victory. From the “Fort Worth Star Telegram:”
“SMU students, faculty, and alumni are happy today. Wednesday was a perfect day. Ownby Oval, the university’s new athletic field, was formally opened with a victory. Austin College, SMU’s most bitter rival, was the victim of a heart-rending 10 to 3 score. The Austin [College] hoodoo had been broken. SMU had cleared a hurdle that upset their high hopes for three years.”
With a new home at Ownby and the AC jinx lifted, Ray Morrison and his SMU Mustangs never looked back. They defeated Texas A&M 10-0 at Kyle Field, as a fourth quarter drive led by 12th Man E. King Gill came up short. They walloped TCU at Fair Park 40-0, tamed Arkansas 16-6, returned to Ownby beat Oklahoma State 9-0, and ended their season in Dallas with a 16-0 defeat of Baylor. SMU finished the season as 1923 SWC champions, with a 5-0 conference mark and 9-0 overall record.
The 1923 SMU Mustangs outscored their opponents by an overwhelming 210-9. Not a single SWC school played SMU competitively, and only a late Arkansas touchdown prevented AC from being the only school to score on the Mustangs during the campaign of 1923. SMU clinched their first Southwest Conference title at Ownby on Thanksgiving Day. Austin College earned a 1923 TIAA Conference title that same day with a dominating 48-0 victory over Trinity. AC applied for SWC membership soon thereafter.
In December, the Southwest Conference met to decide AC’s fate. From the Waco Times-Herald:
“The [SWC] in a brief session here Thursday awarded the 1923 football championship to Southern Methodist University. For the present, the conference does not wish to enlarge its membership and for this reason the application for admission of Austin College of Sherman was not acted upon.”
Ray Morrison, who guided SMU to that 1923 title, finished his career in 1949 as head coach of Austin College football; he was later inaugurated into the College Football Hall of Fame. Former AC Coach Ewing Freeland, who helped Morrison earn that title in 1923, later became the first football coach of SWC member Texas Tech. Pete Cawthon, AC skipper in 1923, would follow Freeland to Lubbock and enjoy a career that has led to perennial nominations to the College Football Hall of Fame.
The fortunes of SMU football have waxed and waned dramatically over 100 years, from Doak Walker and the Pony Express to the Death Penalty and a return to Ownby Oval/Gerald J. Ford Stadium. The school’s acceptance this year to the ACC, one of the remaining Power Conferences, is just the latest chapter. With a stadium expansion and a 100th birthday celebration of Ownby/Ford, SMU is looking towards the future.
But dig into a little history, and you’ll find Austin College has been there from the start. The Mustangs today play at a place they parted but have since returned, a place born exactly 100 years ago today in a game which pitted a new, young Southern Methodist University against a 75-year-old august, elder statesman named Austin College.
