The only one thing we’re not excited about while looking forward to Thursday night’s inaugural football game at the sparkling new Saluki Stadium is the opponent.
We have nothing against Quincy College, it’s just that we can’t avoid remembering what a sensational occasion it was in 1964 when the SIU Arena opened and the Salukis were opposing Oklahoma State with Henry Iba on the bench.
Don Boydston, SIU’s athletics director at the time, had been successful in getting Mr. Iba, as virtually everyone called him, to bringing his team to Carbondale due to their longtime friendship.
Boydston had been an outstanding high jumper at Oklahoma State during his undergraduate days there and the link between the two was strong.
In addition, it probably didn’t hurt that Jack Hartman, SIU’s head basketball coach at the time, had played for Iba as a freshman at Oklahoma State before being told by Iba that he had to choose between football and basketball. A quarterback, Hartman chose that sport and, as a matter of fact, played a couple of years in the Canadian league following his graduation from OSU and turning to basketball as a coach.
Mr. Iba was perhaps college basketball’s No. 1 ambassador, the early edition of John Wooden. The mere sight of him on the sidelines inside the SIU Arena was enough to inform the world that basketball was now a major happening at Southern Illinois University.
The fact that SIU blasted the Cowboys, 76-55, was almost too much. Even the most rabid Saluki fans were somewhat saddened that Mr. Iba had been forced to such humiliation.
George McNeil, one of SIU’s finest play-makers from the early days and a true gentleman that just recently passed away, scored the first point ever in the Arena for the Salukis. It was a free throw.
Although it hasn’t been talked about yet, or at least we haven’t read any reference to it, it’s only logical that SIU’s backs and receivers are, at least privately, thinking about scoring the first touchdown in the new stadium. It’ll be a historical happening that no one can ever erase or change.
Scoring was not something that SIU’s football team in 1937 -- the first year McAndrew was used -- did a lot of. Officials delayed playing a home game, obviously needing as much time as possible to put the stadium in use, until late October when four games were still on the schedule. Only problem was that the Salukis -- then called the Maroons -- didn’t score a TD in any of the contests against Western, Eastern and Northern Illinois or Southeast Missouri State.
They did manage a field goal, however, in a 3-0 win over Eastern Illinois and it was credited to Lester Deason, a four-year veteran from Carbondale.
The question now is, “who’s the Lester Deason of the new Saluki Stadium?” It’ll be answered Thursday night.
