Fred Roberts: The First Great Oklahoma Sooner

On November 2nd Vernon Parrington dropped his first game ever as Oklahoma Football Head Coach to Arkansas City, 17-11 in Norman despite Fred Roberts heroic 70 yard touchdown run to put the Rough Riders back in the game. Arkansas City managed to boost their personnel prior to the game by gaining the aide of a few players who were veterans of successful organized football teams. One came from Princeton and brought many newfangled plays with him from his Ivy League experience. This helped the Arkansas City team jump out on Oklahoma 17-0 before the University boys even knew what had happened.

By kicking a well-conceived opening kickoff the "Railroaders", as Arkansas City was known, grabbed the ball and scored within four and a half minutes of the opening gun. This town team fought dirty with the varsity, punching one player in the stomach to get an edge on a block to get a runner around the corner. Oklahoma was a brutish, overpowering team during their stretch with Vernon Parrington, but Arkansas City brought out the perfect potion to overcome such a strategy.

The Railroaders included in their arsenal the early form of the reverse by faking one way, hiding the ball partially under a jersey and going the other. Oklahoma continued to be dazed and confused by the reverses, wedges, and tackle-backs but fought back to within 17-11. Arkansas City then began to stall basically every play, not really looking as much to score as they were to run as much time off as possible. It was a solemn day as the University boys dropped their first game in four years, the first under Parrington.

The University boys were scheduled to have one more game with Fielding Yost's Kansas University team, but the contract fell through. Oklahoma eventually took a loss financially on the game and was content to call the 1899 season quits with a 2-1 overall record.

The most incredible figure of the 1899 season was the first in a line of world-beater running backs. Before Adrian Peterson or Quentin Griffin stepped on the field there was a tremendous athlete. Even long before Mike Gaddis, Marcus Dupree, Billy Sims, Greg Pruitt, Joe Washington, Steve Owens, or the first Heisman Trophy winning Sooner Billy Vessels, there was Fred Roberts. Roberts was the embodiment of the rare, once-in-a-generation back. A few random descriptions of Roberts from Harold Keith's Oklahoma Kickoff:

Fred Roberts came to Norman and enrolled after the Kingfisher game. He was a 185-pound farm boy living near the little post office of Mayfield, Kansas, near Caldwell on the Oklahoma line. ... When Parrington's varsity got their first look at Lum Roberts cousin stripped, their eyes stuck out. The twenty-three year old Kansas youth was the picture of force irresistible. ... When he rolled his sleeve back from his wrist, his arm popped out big as the average man's thigh. ... He had a jolting stiffarm, he could dodge like a collie and he was the first Oklahoma player ever to cut back in the broken field. He was a squatty, round-bodied fellow, hard to tackle, yet one who could continue to gain ground after being tackled by dragging his tacklers and whirling.

Roberts was described by an opponent after the game, "He was a cat and a locomotive combined." Fred Roberts was called the "five dollar half-back" because one opposing player mused that he would cost that much to play on a team for one game due to his immense talent. What Fred Roberts gave Oklahoma then was what teams could only dream about in that period. Roberts was as big and strong as he needed to be, as big as the majority of the linemen, but he had the reckless moves and blinding speed you could only dream of.

In his first game against Arkansas he was able to score a touchdown and give his team that all-important breakaway threat, shown by his 30 yard scamper in the second half. Again, in the comeback attempt against the Arkansas City Town Team, Roberts showed his powerful skills with the ball. Most long runs in this day were due to the interference, or downfield blocking surrounding the runner, that got them down the field. However, Roberts lost his blockers, or interference, as he approached the goal line. This was no problem for the "five dollar half-back" as he simply sidestepped tacklers and dragged a few more into the end zone. Though it wasn't enough for victory that day, it was enough to wet the appetites of the hardcore University fans. A taste of what was to come.

Oklahoma football was turning the century with Parrington on board and an inaugural battle with the University of Texas Longhorns on the horizon. The game was taking off around the country and Norman was no exception. However, just a day's drive away in Galveston, Texas, a natural disaster ravaged the Texas Beach. Between six and eight thousand people were killed in the process of the monstrous hurricane.

The storm destroyed an estimated 3,600 buildings while cutting through the beach with winds over 140 miles per hour. The elevation of Galveston Beach rose seven feet above the normal height while causing over $20 million in damage and taking between 16 and 22% of the city's population. A report commemorating the 100th anniversary of the disaster from the official website for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration is available by clicking here.

To put this into perspective, the loss of life from the recent Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana has approached the 1,500 mark; Galveston's horrible disaster took over 8,000 lives. Though its importance pales in comparison, a little over one month later the University of Oklahoma would travel into Austin, Texas for their first ever meeting with the Longhorns. A rivalry was about to be born, stories were about to be made.

Sources

1. Oklahoma Kickoff by Harold Keith
2. The Daily Oklahoman Archives
3. Rites of Autumn: The Story of College Football by Richard Whittingham