How much about college football has changed since 1950? Ask Blair Cherry.

When readers received their October 20, 1951 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, above the whimsical train scene were teasers of two different articles. The first was “Joliet, America’s Toughest Prison” by John Bartlow Martin.

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The second?

“WHY I QUIT COACHING” by Blair Cherry. Former Head Coach, University of Texas.

Cherry, a TCU graduate, was a longtime assistant under Dana X. Bible. Cherry was an accomplished high school coach in Texas, leading Amarillo High School to three consecutive state championships in 1934, 1935, and 1936.

He joined Bible’s staff after title No. 3 and was groomed to be the legendary head coach’s replacement. Bible stepped down ahead of the 1947 season and Cherry succeeded him. He found immediate success thanks to All-American quarterback Bobby Layne on the way to a 10-1 record, a Sugar Bowl win, and a top-five finish.

Cherry was by no means a failure. He went 7-3-1 in 1948 with an Orange Bowl win, dropped to 6-4 in 1949, and bounced back with a 9-2 season with a No. 3 finish in the AP Poll before a Cotton Bowl loss.

Then, he stepped down. And with the help of The Saturday Evening Post, he explained why around this time 73 years ago.

The Saturday Evening Post editors made sure to post a note saying that long rants written by Cherry about leaving coaching and Georgetown University president Very Rev. Hunter Guthrie, S.J. on why the Hoyas dropped the sport were not meant to illustrate the magazine’s opposition to college football. Rather, the editors “do feel, however, that the game is getting out of hand in many cases, and that the testimony of Father Guthrie and Mr. Cherry may help to reverse an alarming trend.”

If only they knew.

I had read during the course of the long offseason snippets of Cherry’s lengthy essay, and knew I needed to get a copy of this American staple for good bye week content. Paging between advertisements for Shell, Vaseline Hair Tonic, Dodge Trucks, General Electric, and Kraft Salad Oil (The most wonderful oil ever created for homemade salad dressings and baking!), Cherry’s diatribe was there.

The article received all of pages 40 and 41 and jumped ahead several times. The main photo was one of Cherry and quarterback Ben Tompkins from the 1951 Cotton Bowl, Cherry’s final game. The Longhorns lost 20-14 to Tennessee in a season where rival Oklahoma won its first national championship.

An interesting read! pic.twitter.com/dDl2ypBZ0s

— Joe Cook (@josephcook89) October 5, 2024

It begins…

A year ago, I was occupying a hot seat as the coach of a football team that was supposed to win its conference championship. We made it, too. The University of Texas won the Southwest Conference title and beat every other team in the league for the first time.

We lost only one regular-season game, to national champion Oklahoma — by one point in the closing minutes. It was a good season, the best of my four as Longhorn head coach — my best, and my last.

They didn’t fire me — I quit.

Imagine a coach defeating the No. 1 team in the country (like Cherry did on November 4, 1950 over SMU) then revealing shortly thereafter he would quit at year’s end. That’s exactly what happened, though he admits he missed the deadline by a day to coach the Cotton Bowl.

Why did it? In short…

1. He wanted to join his brother in the oil business. Smart!
2. Health problems. Ulcers and insomnia caused him to miss Texas’ 17-0 win versus Texas A&M.
3. Family life: “I felt it wasn’t fair to my wife and two young children to let them remain indefinitely football widow and orphans, and I felt obliged to improve our financial lot while I could.”

What am I getting to here?

What’s different in the 70 years since?

No. 1 will never be an issue for high-profile college football coaching again. Steve Sarkisian makes over $10 million.

But No. 2 hasn’t changed too much. We lost Mike Leach a few years ago, and the harsh schedule coaches suffer through for generational cash surely do not help. Nor do any habits coaches may form. That said, a credit to Nick Saban for ensuring his coaches’ health as best he can. Sarkisian is here today because of it.

No. 3? Again, money doesn’t change time away from loved ones.

Whether in 1950 or 2024, college football looks very similar. It’s a similar beautiful yet broken sport like it was when Rutgers played Princeton in 1869.

Remember how Layne was there in Cherry’s first year? Replacing him was the near insurmountable task of Cherry’s tenure. Being unable to replicate All-American play earned Cherry angry direct correspondence via mail and 3:30 a.m. phone calls.

I think that’s still around, just in a different form in social media.

Cherry noted that “Texas is the primary target of nearly every team on its schedule, year in and year out.” Sound familiar?

Dealing with all that plus every team’s best effort on a weekly basis wore on Cherry.

So too did criticism for wins. He identified a game against Arkansas that Texas won and received no praise for but rather harsh barbs from not only fans, but also the media. He identified a headline in an unnamed Texas newspaper that said “IS CHERRY NEAR END AT TEXAS?”

After a win.

Once Oklahoma topped the Longhorns on October 14, 1950 in a 14-13 win, Cherry knew he was calling it quits. The pressure from media, rivals, and failures against Bud Wilkinson‘s Oklahoma (Cherry was 1-3 against OU with three straight one-possession losses) drove Cherry out of the sport.

He told his family. He told assistant Edwin Price to be on the lookout for the job. Price eventually got it. Between calls from the Houston Post and the Austin newspaper, Cherry told Bible his plans and word got out.

Again, not much has changed.

In the article, Cherry explained “football coaching nowadays is an around-the-clock, around-the-calendar business. While much is made of the fact that most coaches are paid more than most history teachers, the financial reward in itself is an insufficient attraction when the hazards are considered. You never heard of a history teacher, even in the South, getting fired because Lee didn’t win at Appomattox.”

Oh yeah, there’s recruiting.

“The competition for manpower is especially fierce in the Southwest, where some 25 senior colleges are sponsoring football and where raiders from Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and other alien territories often carry off the flower of Texas football youth into four-year captivity,” Cherry wrote.

A poignant paragraph near the end still speaks to what head coaches like Sarkisian deal with today. It’s right by an ad for Phillips’ milk of magnesia.

“If college football is getting out of hand — and I am afraid that it is — only the colleges themselves can save it,” Cherry wrote.

Ah!

“Most coaches I know would prefer to work hard on the field, do their best to get the maximum from their material, win some and lose some, and go home and sleep soundly at night instead of joining in the grand rat race that now goes on twelve months a year,” Cherry continued.

Oh!

He’d add near the end, “I am no longer interested in trying to please the public with a professional show put on by semipros under amateur sponsorship.”

So what’s the point of all this?

The sport of college football has changed dramatically. In a lot of key ways, it also has not changed.

Some of these complaints by Cherry aren’t very different from complaints from head coaches today. Schedules. Criticism. Off-field distractions. “Amateurism.”

And what does that mean for college football?

Maybe upcoming court cases change the face of the sport so drastically that it’s not something that Cherry, Darrell Royal, Fred Akers, or the Mack Brown of the 2000s would recognize.

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But what seems more likely is that the sport is going to look similar to how it always has, warts and all. Just ask the head coaches.