On Nov. 7, 1908, Whitworth College made a name for itself in the world of college football. Outweighed at virtually every position and a heavy underdog going into the game, Whitworth outplayed the University of Oregon and defeated the Ducks by a score of 16-10. Led by the likes of Percy Colbert, Claude McQuillan, William Paul and Ernie Tanner, Whitworth laid an early claim to football prominence in the Pacific Northwest. One hundred years after the fact, the story is not only fun to remember, but it’s a story that deserves a special place in the annals of Whitworth history.
Without doubt, Whitworth’s success a century ago depended heavily on its football coach, Arthur Reuber. Arriving a year earlier, Reuber set about the unlikely task of creating a football team that could compete with the University of Washington, Washington State College and the University of Oregon. Not much is known about coach Reuber other than the fact that he had previously coached at the University of Chattanooga in Tennessee. Why he came to the distant Pacific Northwest we may never know. Reuber had played his collegiate football at Northwestern University in Chicago and had been their captain. We know that he brought with him a passion for some of the new-style football that incorporated the forward pass — an “invention” that had been recently legalized in part because of the substantial number of football deaths that had occurred in 1905. But Rueber also believed that football could build character among the young men if properly taught.
In that first year under Reuber in 1907, Whitworth, then located in Tacoma, played a schedule that included the sailors from the Battleship Nebraska, the local YMCA, the Aberdeen Athletic Club, as well as the University of Washington, the Oregon Agricultural College, and Whitman. In that first year under Reuber, Whitworth knocked off the sailors, and the YMCA and played respectably against the UW losing only 5-0. Whitworth also lost to the O.A.C. (which later changed its name to Oregon State College) 6-0, as well as to Whitman (the real football power of the Northwest) 17-0.
But Reuber never lost enthusiasm. He envisioned a program at Whitworth built on character and competitiveness. In an October 1907 edition of The Whitworthian he wrote, “If a college is represented by a band of ruffians who depend upon their brawn, brute force and questionable tactics to win, it will not be long before that school will have the undesirable reputation of being a school filled with 'muckers' and men without principle. But on the other hand, let the same college be represented by a football team that is composed of clean men who depend upon superior brains, speed and determination for victory and that school will have a reputation among its neighboring schools of which it may well be proud.”
It’s probably hard to imagine what coach Reuber thought when he called for tryouts at Whitworth the following year; there were only 31 males in the entire student body. But nevertheless, Reuber met an eager group of players.
Two of Reuber’s players were unusual to say the least. Ernie Tanner became the first African American player on any football team in the Pacific Northwest, according to the Oregonian. Born in Indianapolis, Tanner’s father was a trapeze performer and his mother was a nurse. They moved to Tacoma in 1900, and Ernie graduated from Stadium high school where he was an outstanding athlete in track, basketball, football and baseball before coming to Whitworth.
One of Tanner’s teammates was William Paul, Whitworth’s quarterback. A Tlinget Indian raised in Sitka, Alaska, Paul became a Christian after his family had been converted to the Presbyterian Church by missionaries. At age 14 he was sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Dickinson. Pennsylvania. Carlisle stripped students of the native culture and attempted to assimilate them into white society. Paul was taught to speak English but was forbidden to speak his native tongue. He had to cut his hair and forsake all contact with his native culture. But Carlisle also taught him football skills--he played for the legendary Pop Warner at the Pennsylvania school, the same school that taught the great Native American football player Jim Thorpe.
Paul left Carlisle went back to his native Alaska but could not find work. Years later he remembered finding a catalog for Whitworth with the cover torn off—scrounged up $125 and came south to Tacoma. He did every odd job possible including sweeping sidewalks, cutting grass, milking cows and even doing some bookkeeping for the college. He played football, basketball, baseball, edited the newspaper, helped start the literary society and later made the debating team, played the lead role in the senior class play, and married his college sweetheart.
In the fall of 1908, Tanner and Paul joined several other Whitworth male athletes and let Coach Reuber have his way.
The first game of the year was a big one — the University of Washington. The UW had a new coach, Gil Dobie, who would go down as one of the legendary coaches in school history. Dobie’s teams beginning in 1908 won 58 games, tied three and lost none – Washington tallied 1,938 points while holding their opponents to 119 in those years..
But on that October day in 1908, Whitworth gave the UW all they could handle before falling 24-4 on a couple of late touchdowns. Indicative of the struggle to establish rules in those early years, apparently the first half was played in 25 minutes and the second half in 35 minutes and it was in those last ten minutes that Washington scored most of its points. A few years later in the Seattle P-I, coach Dobie recalled “Washington University rooters would never concede it, but I’m telling you now that the greatest victory Washington won in the last three years was that over Whitworth College of Tacoma … We have beaten Oregon, Washington State and all the rest of the them since then, but no victory ever gave me such satisfaction as that one over coach Reuber’s Whitworth team.”
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