Autumn has crushed her vintage from the wine-press of the year. December has arrived, a month for family reunions, frantic shoppers, Christmas sweater parties, and the Trail of Lights. On the Forty Acres, final exams have ended and the students have fled. The deserted walks have been temporarily ceded to the campus squirrels.

Just before the end of the semester, fall color made a brief but dazzling appearance. A balmy October and November kept the trees mostly green until the last minute, when a Thanksgiving chill prompted the leaves to turn all at once. The show peaked mid-way through finals – almost too late for most of the students to enjoy it – and lasted just over a week until a Texas Norther carried much of the color away.

While sunny skies and warm temperatures are often the rule, it’s good to know that the UT campus does indeed experience seasons.

Above: Battle Hall is a fine sight any time of year. (Click on an image for a larger view.)

Rusty-brown cypress and the deep green of live oak provide a great contrast to frame”the Family” statue in front of the McCombs School of Business.

The University of Texas seal is part of a decorative pediment on the north side of Goldsmith Hall, home to the School of Architecture.

For a short time, the east entrance to Rainey Hall, on the South Mall, was full of color.

Autumn made a singular statement in front of the Perry-Castaneda Library.

Ranks of windows and balconies along the north side of Sutton Hall. Opened in 1918 as the Education Building, construction began a century ago, in January 1917.

More fall color in front of the Moore-Hill residence hall, next to the stadium.

Framing the UT Tower among the fall color was easy. Either floating in a sea of gold…

… or bordered by red and orange. (Click on an image for a larger view.)

The strange case of the 1941 UT football season.

When he was hired in 1937, UT head football coach Dana X. Bible (photo at left) claimed the Texas Longhorns would be a “winner of a football team” in five years. As the 1941 season loomed, the coach’s predictions seemed likely to come true.

Since its inaugural season in 1893, the University of Texas football program boasted a lengthy list of regional successes – including an undefeated squad in 1900 – but had yet to earn respect as a national power. By the 1930s the team was lackluster and inconsistent. The 1932 squad posted a respectable 8-2 record, but had slid to 2-6-1 by 1936.

Bible was recruited to change that. Having produced a series of highly respected teams at Mississippi College, LSU, Texas A&M and the University of Nebraska, Bible’s reputation was solid. His arrival in Austin was hailed as the start of a new era for Longhorn football, though it wasn’t without some controversy. The new coach was awarded a 10-year contract at the unheard of salary of $15,000 per year. (In comparison, the average UT professor made $3,750, while President Harry Benedict earned $8,000.)

The first two years at Texas were rough. Bible’s 1938 team posted only a single win before the program began to improve. But as the 1941 season approached, hopes and expectations were high among the Longhorn faithful.

The schedule opened with a 34-6 victory over the University of Colorado, and continued with decisive wins over LSU, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Rice. When Texas blanked Southern Methodist University 34-0, the Longhorns were routinely outscoring their opponents by more than 30 points. For the first time in UT’s history, the Associated Press (AP) ranked the Longhorns as the best in the country. Life magazine elected to make the team its cover story for the November 17th issue (photo at right), which was to be released just in time for the upcoming Baylor game.

The victory over SMU, though, exacted a price. Four key players were injured and would be unable to participate the next week. And Baylor, playing at home in Waco, was understandably motivated at the prospect of hosting the No. 1 team in the nation. The Bears fought hard to earn a 7-7 tie with Texas, and as there was no overtime, the score ended UT’s perfect record.

That evening, a devastated Texas football squad arrived at the Austin train station at Third Street and Congress Avenue. They were met by thousands of supportive fans who escorted the team to campus with a torchlight parade (photo at left), though the mood was tainted and somber. In recognition of the tie score, the Tower was floodlit half orange and half white, but when the next AP poll was released, Texas had fallen to No. 2, behind the University of Minnesota.

Texas Christian University was next on the schedule, and while the Longhorns tried to shrug off their disappointment in Waco, the “curse” of the Life magazine cover lingered. For most of the game, the score was again tied 7-7, but with eight seconds left in the final period, TCU’s Emory Nix completed a 19-yard pass to Van Hall in the end zone to give the Horned Frogs a 14-7 victory. Hapless Texas saw its ranking drop eight positions to 10th.

On Thanksgiving Day, UT was to travel to College Station to take on the Texas Aggies. Texas A&M was having a banner season. Undefeated and ranked second in the nation by the AP, the Aggies had already won the Southwest Conference Championship. They also had a jinx on the Longhorns.

Since 1923 -for 18 years – the Longhorns had been unable to win a game at Kyle Field. Desperate to break the College Station spell, UT students consulted Madam Augusta Hipple, a local fortune teller. She instructed the students to burn red candles the week before the game as a way of “hexing” the Aggies.

Through the week of Thanksgiving, Austin shops found it difficult to keep red candles in stock. Candles were burned in store windows along the Drag, in the fraternity and sorority houses of west campus, in the lounges of university residence halls, and in the windows of Austin’s neighborhoods. Madam Hipple knew what she was doing. By uniting the football team and its fans with such a visible show of support, how could the Longhorns fail?

They didn’t. Texas went to College Station, defeated the Aggies 23-0, ended the 18-year jinx and restored their pride as the AP’s final poll listed Texas as No. 4.

The season wasn’t quite over though. Texas was to host the University of Oregon on December 6th, but the major bowls were already extending invitations. Many of the sports media predicted the Longhorns would travel to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl to play Pacific Champion Oregon State, but bowl officials were nervous about UT’s upcoming game with the Oregon Ducks. Earlier in the season, Oregon State had eked out a 12-7 win over their cross-state rivals. Suppose Texas was invited to Rose Bowl, but then lost their final regular game to Oregon, a team Oregon State had already defeated? To play it safe, the Rose Bowl invited Duke (then ranked No. 2) instead.

Furious at being snubbed, Coach Bible announced that Texas wouldn’t accept invitations to any bowl games, and was eager to show the Rose Bowl officials what they might have had in Pasadena. In front of 30,000 fans, Texas overwhelmed ill-fated Oregon 71-7. There was no mistaking in Bible’s message. As a final curtain call with just a few minutes left in the game, the coach sent in his first string players to a standing ovation. Three plays later, as the crowd sang “The Eyes of Texas,” the Longhorns scored their tenth touchdown of the day.

Austin was still celebrating on the morning of December 7^th. “Boy-o-boy!” exclaimed The Daily Texan, “Where is the Rose Bowl, and who cares?” After early church services, many students walked through downtown Austin in search of lunch. A few went to the Paramount Theater and paid the 40 cent admission to see the noontime showing of Sargent York, starring Gary Cooper. The top-grossing film of the year, it related the experiences of Alvin York, among the most-decorated American soldiers of the First World War. When the movie began, the audience knew that, despite what they saw on the screen, the world outside was still at peace. But as they left the theater, it was soon clear that everything had changed.

News of the attack on Pearl Harbor reached Austin by 12:30 that afternoon, and shattered the joy of the football victory the day before. Most people huddled in groups around radios and listened for the latest reports. Evening events were cancelled, and Austinites with family stationed in Hawaii worried about the fate of their loved ones. “What do we do now?” was the question of the day. By Monday morning, military recruiting stations in town were busy, as were the offices of the Red Cross. Before the end of the week, UT President Homer Rainey had outlined a plan for the University to participate in the national war effort.

Fearing an air raid along the west coast, the U.S. Government prohibited all large public events for the duration of the war, including the Rose Bowl. Instead, the game was moved to the visiting team’s stadium, in this case, to the Duke University campus in Durham, North Carolina. Oregon State managed a 20-16 upset over the second-ranked Blue Devils, but if the bowl officials had invited Texas as was expected, the 1942 Rose Bowl would have been held at Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin.

Click here: listen to some of the first UT cheers, recorded at “The BigYell” in 2007.

Before Bevo, before Texas teams were known as “Longhorns,” before orange and white were named the official university colors, what did UT students yell?

In the 1890s, when intercollegiate sports was new to the Forty Acres, groups of dedicated rooters – known as “rootatorial committees” – often created yells and songs for upcoming games. (History of the first UT yell is here.) Most of these didn’t last, but the printed sheets of the yells, as well as old yell books, are still preserved in the UT Archives. Occasionally I stumbled across them and made copies, or acquired them on EBay or at local book and paper shows. At some point, I wondered if it might be possible to record, save, and post some of the old yells online for others to hear. Certainly, it would require a group of UT students to do the yelling. And, well, probably pizza . . .

Above left: The 1910-11 UT song and yell book. Printed from 1899 through  the 1930s, the books were particularly useful for freshmen, who would bring them to football rallies. 

On October 23, 2007, the UT Heritage Society and the student-led Spirit and Traditions Council, both then sponsored by the Texas Exes, hosted the “Big Yell” in the banquet hall of the alumni center. More than 225 alumni and students arrived for a pre-Yell pizza party, downed a staggering 75 pizzas, and then gathered to rehearse and record a series of old University yells created from the 1890s through the 1900s that hadn’t been heard on the campus in more than 80 years.

Along the way, the group heard some UT history, shared fun facts, won door prizes, and listened to special guest Harley Clark, the former head cheerleader who introduced the “Hook ’em Horns” hand sign at a 1955 football rally in Gregory Gym. Yell books, similar to those published in the 1900s, were distributed to everyone.

Above: The 2007 Big Yell held was held in the alumni center. 

And what of the Big Yell? Everyone had so much fun, another program was held the following year. Since the north end of Darrell K Royal – Texas memorial Stadium was being rebuilt, the 2008 Big Yell took on old Clark Field – UT’s first athletic field – as a theme. Bleachers were brought in to the banquet hall and the crowd learned about early football plays, the story of Bevo, and other football-related traditions. The 2009 and 2010 Big Yells were similar to the first year, but instead of recording, an emphasis was placed on teaching new students UT history and traditions. Attendance continued to grow.

In 2011, at the suggestion of the students, the event was moved to the ballroom of the new Student Activities Center (photo at right) and scheduled to be on the afternoon of the first day of class. It was standing-room-only and was featured on the front page of The Daily Texan the next day. The following year, UT’s athletics department volunteered its support, and the program was moved to the stadium to handle the crowd.

Above: the 2012 Big Yell moved to the football stadium.

Today, the Big Yell has evolved into the “Texas Kick-off Rally,” and includes the Longhorn Band, cheerleaders, APO’s Texas Flag, Bevo, the Texas Cowboys’ Ol’ Smokey cannon, and the head football coach, and features a post-rally group photo of the freshman class.

Above: The freshman class of 2020 poses for a group photo on the football field after the 2016 “Texas Kick-off Rally.”

Listen to the 2007 “Big Yell” recordings here.

Or look under the “Audio” menu of the UT History Corner.

Happy yelling!

Jim