Oldsters remember Brown Bomber
By STEVE SNIDER
UPI Sports Writer
NEW YORK (UPI)—Two famous names in boxing still pack a mighty wallop long after their ring deeds are done.
For the grandfathers and great grandfathers of America, Jack Dempsey still is the king. For the dads who grew up in the tough depression years, it's Joe Louis.
I nearly wept when Louis, creaking and broke at 37, tried his final comeback at Madison Square Garden and Rocky Marciano stretched him out on the ring apron in the eighth round. Rocky felt like crying, too.
Kids of 12 aren't supposed to cry but I almost did when Dempsey lost to Gene Tunney that first time.
"I hated to do it," said Marciano, then only a year away from the title, himself. "He was my idol."
Thus, the older generations interested in boxing have an edge on the moderns whose memories don't go back as far as Joe Louis.
The younger set, except for those followers of Cassius Clay, mostly look for idols in pro football, baseball, basketball or whatever.
There is little to evoke emotional memories about the heavy-weight champs between Dempsey and Louis, Louis and now.
When Joe went down for a count the other day, winding up in a New York hospital, it seemed the whole world suddenly remembered.
It has been more than 20 years since Louis wore the heavyweight crown. But people remembered. Tehy remembered him as a fighter and as a man, not as an object of sympathy for ghastly financial errors he made.
Phone calls, cables, letters and telegrams flowed in from around the globe.
Dempsey and Louis were products of an era—Dempsey in the golden age of sports in the 1920's. Louis in the dark days of a depression, a world war and a period in which black athletes were beginning to emerge as human beings.
KU won 'All Sports' trophy
The University of Kansas has now officially edged out the Sooners of Oklahoma for the 1968-69 Big Eight Conference's "All Sports" trophy. The Jayhawks' 36 points in eleven sports will bring them the first trophy given in this contest and it will be on permanent display at KU.
The basketball championship went to Colorado, Oklahoma State took the wrestling and baseball crowns and Iowa State was first in gymnastics.
The big wins for Kansas came in track as they captured the cross country, indoor and outdoor championships. Kansas tied the Sooners for the football honors. Oklahoma, the winner of the "unofficial" title the past three years, also grabbed a first in tennis and seconds in swimming, gymnastics, wrestling, baseball and golf for their 39 points.
The University of Colorado was third in the Big Eight with 50 points, Missouri was fourth with 51, and Kansas State and Oklahoma State tied for the fifth spot with $ 51 \frac{1}{2} $ points each. Following K-State and OSU were Iowa State with $ 56 \frac{1}{2} $ points and Nebraska with $ 60 \frac{1}{2} $ points.
This is the sixth time Kansas has been tops in the Big Eight since it was formed in 1929. Over the years Oklahoma has won 26 times, Iowa State and Nebraska
The signs of that emergence weren't easy to recognize. There was a feeling among officials, on a hot summer night in Chicago 32 years ago, that all hell would break loose in and around Comiskey Park when Louis, as expected, won the heavyweight title from James J. Braddock.
3 times, Oklahoma State twice and Missouri once.
Jack Johnson, first Negro champion from 1908-15, had left a bitter image with the public by his way of life outside of the ring. The term "White Hope" was coined during Johnson's tenure. The color of a fighter's skin became an issue.
In the eleven events Kansas was first in football,first in cross country, tied for second in basketball, first in indoor track, first in swimming, third in gymnastics, did not compete in wrestling, first in outdoor track, sixth in baseball, fourth in tennis and seventh in golf.
Along came Louis. He was called such names as "Brown Bomber" and "Dark Destroyer." But somehow those became terms of affection rather than a racial issue.
So there were mighty cheers in Comisky Park when Joe knocked out Braddock and became the first titleholder of his race since Jack Johnson. There were no riots, no fist fights, merely a general acceptance by the witnesses that here was a fighting machine perhaps more worthy of the title than any since Dempsey.
Between 1937 and his first retirement in 1949, he defended his title a record 25 times by defeating the best men available as well as his "bums of the month."
Jly.8 1969 KANSAN 5
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Schmeling kavoed him in their first fight before Joe became champ and later the income tax people threw him for a loss. His reaction to each disaster was the same: "I forgot to duck."
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