Remembering Ernie

What's to remember about Ernie Davis? What ISN'T to remember!

Ultimate talent, ultimate humility ...

Almost inarguably, Elegant Ernie's best-remembered play on the football field was his limping catch-and-run covering 87 yards less than 87 seconds into the Cotton Bowl victory that climaxed his sophomore season. Not until moments before the kickoff had the decision been made to risk putting Davis on the field despite a painful strained thigh he suffered three days before the game.

Now, clock stopped at 13:59, it was an unpromising second-and-26. Gerhard Schwedes, the other starting halfback, took a pitchout from Dave Sarette, rolled out nearly to the coffin corner and with his primary receiver covered and intended-decoy Davis unlocated, simply let fly. A limping Ernie pulled the ball in near midfield, and limped the rest of the way untouched by the Texas Longhorns' ablebodied defenders. At the time, it was the longest scoring pass play in major-bowl history, and ignited a 23-14 success that sealed the 1959 season's national championship.

I was 1,500 miles away, a witness thanks only to our living-room's primitive black-and-white television set and ABC's cameramen. I favor memories from up-close-and-personal experiences. As in "been there, done that".

Accordingly, I savor two of my unforgettable "Ernie Davis stories" that occurred seven Decembers apart -- by chance having covered the first game and last game of his varsity careers in high school and college: first, the Elmira Free Academy 14-year-old's basketball debut; finally, the newly-anointed Heisman Trophy recipient, in SU's victorious Liberty Bowl.

With the 1954 basketball fray at Endicott (N.Y.) going poorly, the 6-foot freshman was sent in from the bench as the first quarter ended. He scored within two seconds, and wound up the game's high scorer with 24 points -- a wrist still in a cast since playing end in the JV football team's opener. EFA went 52-0 in Ernie's final two years of basketball, and many -- this judge included -- questioned why football became his preferred college endeavor. He'd been midway in his junior football season before shifted from end to running back.

The Liberty Bowl and aftermath remain bittersweet. Frigid weather left 82,904 Philadelphia Stadium seats empty, slimmest attendance of Davis's SU career. Kicked in the kidney before touching the ball, Ernie looked lackluster as Miami took a 14-0 halftime lead, before his battering second-half dominance in SU prevailing by 15-14. QB Sarette would tell, "I'd ask him how he felt, and he told me just to keep giving him the ball." Ernie struggled to the locker-room in agony, face so contorted that teammates summoned a doctor. Informed at his locker that his 30 carries broke what had been the SU record, "It felt more like 50," he told me with a wan smile. To this day, I wonder if the ravages of acute monocytic leukemia had begun, undetected.

He wore Number 49 when I first saw him play for Syracuse -- finale of the 1958 freshman team (frosh of the era not eligible for varsity athletics). He personally outscored host Colgate's previously-unbeaten yearlings and outrushed his teammates, 125 yards to 31, while I stood with a legendary Orange alumnus/booster named Marty Handler, addressed interchangeably as "Boss" and "Coach." An Elmira native, he'd lengthily been ambassador-without-portfolio in the recruiting.

At game's end, Handler declared, "If we play our cards right, Ernie will be All-East by June and All-America by August." Marty wasn't known for understatement, but this occasion almost proved an exception:

E.g. --One New York City newspaper's 13-paragraph pre-season story on Syracuse didn't get past Ernie until the ninth 'graph.

E.g. -- At easy Oyster Bowl victory at Norfolk over Navy in Game 3 that catapulted SU into the polls' top 10, I sat within a peek at a Washington writer's typewriter. He'd written: "Davis is the sophomore halfback whom they've been calling the second Jimmy Brown. It's about time they started calling him the first Ernie Davis."

Against West Virginia in 1959, Game 5 of his career, Ernie ran for 141 yards in just nine carries. The 15.7 yards-per-carry set the Syracuse record that still stands, its silver-anniversary approaching. He's the only Orangeman to average 'in the 7s' for a season, and did it twice. His career average is likewise untouched.
So-called "Ernie Davis Specials" were his touchdown runs that sometimes covered twice as many yards as the line-of-scrimmage to goal-line distance.
Ernie played one game after graduation, sad to say, for participation in which a $200 check made him a pro. He was booed as never before in draftees' June 29, 1962, "All-America Game" in Buffalo. Booed not because of appearing tired and sluggish on the field, but because he'd declined the Buffalo Bills' bid for their No. 1 pick in the American Football League draft in favor of his intended NFL life with Cleveland and Jim Brown.

Physicals the next month, sidelining him from the College All-Stars' game against Green Bay, studied what was wrong. "Mumps" and "blood disorder" were hinted to the media. An Elmira insider entrusted me with what wouldn't be revealed to Ernie until October: That he had less than a year to live. Actually seven months, in which he never was heard to complain.

John Fox '49 is the sports editor emeritus of the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin.

Syracuse University Athletics

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