USD Football 1994

You Say You Want aRevolution continued

B "Everybody waited until third and long to throw. That's why nobody paid much attention to the pass, because even our mothers knew how to play defense against it on third and long."

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size (6-0, 181 ) coaches covet. But he threw with pinpoint accuracy, seldom made mis- takes (only four interceptions in 326 attempts in 1964) and quickly grasped h ow to best exploit opponents' weaknesses. Twilley was an unimposing target (5- 10, 180) and a decided long shot to win any footrace. But he had an uncanny knack for getting open against double and even triple coverage and latching onto balls others wouldn't have touched. What both players shared, besides a lack of natural gifts, was an almost fanatical desire to improve. They put in count- less hours of practice-often after practice had officially ended. "We both worked hard," said Twilley, who went on to play pro football, as did Rhome. "I can remember days when we would stay out, after we ran wind sprints, at least 30 minutes-sometimes longer than that-and work on the timing of a particular route." All that extra work paid enormous dividends. Even today their achievements rank among the best in collegiate history. Twilley still holds or shares 10 NCAA records, still ranks No. 2 on the all-time receiving list based on catches per game (10.0). And Rhome's passing efficiency rating that season (172.6) has been bet- tered only three times in the intervening years. Oddly enough, the aerial combination that rewrote the record book almost didn't come to be. Rhome began his collegiate career at SMU and Twilley came close to not playing college ball at all. He probably wouldn't have even played beyond high school had it not been for injuries to his teammates. As a junior at Houston's Galena Park High, Twilley was a 141-pound junior varsity guard. The pivotal point in his career occurred during a scrim- mage aga inst the varsity. "All the ends got hurt and continued

GLENN DOBBS

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Howard Twilley (left), with coach Glenn Dobbs, was on the receiving end of this honor from Sports Illustrated. were taught in high school that it was a good way to get the ball down the field if you didn't do like everybody else and wait until third and long to do it." Those beliefs were rein- forced at Tulsa, where Dobbs starred in the early '40s. When he returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1961 , it was only natural that the Hurri- canes- now known as the Golden Hurricane- would begin filling the air with foot- balls. Tulsa passed on 52 percent of its plays in 1964. The typi- cal Division I team that sea- son passed 29 percent of the time. In a year when games featured 36 passes on average, the Hurricanes themselves were putting up 3 7.7 attempts in their wide-open, pull-out- all-the-stops attack that focused national attention on the program. "It was like, 'What in the world is going on at that place?"' Rhome recalled. What was going on? Tulsa unleashed a weapon that most college coaches preferred to ignore. Shock waves reverber- ated throughout the land as the explosive Hurricanes laid

pizazz into a staid old game. " W e were having a blast," said Rhome, the runner-up to Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte in that year's Heis- man Trophy voting. "We were doing a lot of things with motion and people didn't know how to adjust to it. T h e r e wasn't a lot of man-to- man cover- age, either. Te a m s

Jerry Rhame (right) was synonymous with passing honors. Here he passes the Gold Glave to its owner, Milwaukee pitcher Warren Spahn.

waste to a succession of oppo- nents. They scored 58 points or more three times in 1964; only one other Division I team (Utah State) accomplished that feat even once. Tulsa led the nation with 384 points; no other school managed to break the 300 barrier. The Hurricanes demolished defenses with their aerial wiz- ardry and, in the process, put

played a lot of zone, so if you could read defenses, you could just pick them apart." Which is what happened most Saturdays. Rhome and Twilley were as unstoppable as an avalanche. It was delicious- ly ironic, given that neither player was especially gifted physically. Rhome, for example, didn't possess a rifle arm or the sort of