Thundering Herd
From TributeToTroy
We had hopes but they (Notre Dame) talked him into staying. Maybe it was better that Rock stayed there and we got Jones.” Howard Harding Jones. The Headman. Responsible for bringing national recognition to USC when the East and Midwest were considered the twin citadels of college football.
His approach to the game was straight-forward yet intricate—power football, the single wing. Opponents often said they knew where the Trojans, under Jones, were coming, but still couldn’t stop them. Jones’ teams became known as the Thundering Herd, running (seldom passing) roughshod over some of the nation’s best teams.
Before Jones came to USC, the school had not produced an All-American or won a national championship. During his 16 years as USC’s coach, Jones developed 19 All-Americans, won national championships in 1928, 1931 and 1932, had undefeated seasons in 1928, 1932 and 1939, won eight Pacific Coast Conference titles and was undefeated in five appearances in the Rose Bowl. His overall record was 121-36-13 (.750) and his teams had seven seasons in which they won nine or more games.
It was during Jones’ regime, in 1926, that the USC-Notre Dame rivalry began, a rivalry now esteemed as the most prestigious intersectional series in the country. If it had not been for the persuasiveness of a young bride in 1925, the Trojan-Irish series may never have been.
Wilson and his bride, Marion, got on the Sunset Limited train to Lincoln where Notre Dame was going to play Nebraska. Mission: a USC-Notre Dame home-and-home series. Wilson didn’t get to meet with Rockne though, until after the game when they all got on a train to Chicago.
“He told me that he couldn’t meet USC because Notre Dame was traveling too much,” Wilson said. “I thought the whole thing was off but as Rock and I talked, Marion was with Mrs. Rockne, Bonnie, in her compartment. Marion told Bonnie how nice Southern California was and how hospitable the people were.
“Well, when Rock went back to the compartment, Bonnie talked him into the game. But if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Wilson talking to Mrs. Rockne, there wouldn’t have been a series.”
Jones developed the prototype of the modern tailback. His tailback, called the quarterback in the Jones’ system, not only carried the ball 80 or 90 percent of the time, but also passed, punted and played safety on defense.
These running backs had a regal quality to their names: Morton Kaer, Morley Drury, Russ Saunders, Marshall Duffield, Gus Shaver, Orville Mohler, Homer Griffith, Irvine (Cotton) Warburton, Ambrose Schindler and Grenville Lansdell.
There was the great blocking back, Erny Pinckert, and later Bob Hoffman. The linemen of the 20s and 30s were the best of their day—Brice Taylor, Jesse Hibbs, Nate Barragar, Francis Tappaan, Garrett Arbelbide, Johnny Baker, Stan Williamson, Tay Brown, Ernie Smith, Aaron Rosenberg, Curtis Youel and Harry Smith.
Jones made an immediate impact at USC. His first team in 1925 had an 11-2 record. The Trojans were 8-2 in 1926, 8-1-1 in 1927, 9-0-1 in 1928, 10-2 in 1929 and 8-2 in 1930. After a season-opening loss to St. Mary’s in 1931, the Trojans didn’t lose another game until Stanford beat them, 13-7, in 1933—a 27-game unbeaten streak.
Trojan old timers still argue about which team was Jones’ best. Some say it was the 1929 team that destroyed Pittsburgh in the 1929 Rose Bowl, 47-14, even though USC lost two regular season games. Others contend it was the 1931 club that rebounded from a loss to St. Mary’s to go undefeated the rest of the season, including the historic 16-14 upset of Notre Dame at South Bend on Johnny Baker’s late field goal.
For the purists who say that the record is the only way to measure the worth of a team, it’s difficult to dispute the credentials of the 1932 team, which went 10-0 and allowed its opponents to score only 13 points.
As usually happens to any coach who has a long association with a single school, Jones had some down years, from 1934 through 1937.
USC rebounded with a 9-2 record in 1938, including a 7-3 Rose Bowl victory over Duke in which fourth-string quarterback Doyle Nave came off the bench in the final minutes to throw four consecutive passes to end “Antelope” Al Krueger, the last for the touchdown. The Blue Devils went into the Rose Bowl undefeated, untied and unscored upon.
Some insist that Jones’ last great team in 1939 was his best. USC was unbeaten, but tied by Oregon and UCLA, in 10 games. The Trojans climaxed the season with Jones’ final Rose Bowl victory, 14-0, over an unscored-upon Tennessee.
Jones died of a heart attack July 27, 1941, at the age of 55. The Trojans would have some strong teams in the next 20 years under four coaches, but they wouldn’t win another national championship until the John McKay era.
A Yale man and a former All-American at that school along with his famous brother Tad, Jones was already a competent coach when he came to USC in 1925 (he had coached at Syracuse, Yale, Ohio State, Yale again, Iowa and Duke). After a season at Duke, Jones became USC’s coach.
Some say he got the job on the recommendation of Rockne. The 1928 season marked USC’s first victory (27-14) over Notre Dame,after Rockne had tagged Jones with one-point defeats in 1926 and 1927.
Jones had a remarkably consistent record from 1925 through 1933, never losing more than two games in a season and establishing USC’s winning tradition in the Rose Bowl.
Jones believed in and coached power football. Although his Thundering Herd teams rolled up yardage and scored as many as 492 points as early as 1929, some critics incessantly carped that USC’s offense was unimaginative.
Jones added wrinkles to his offense, to be sure. He made good use of a wingback reverse and a surprise passing attack, demonstrated to near-perfection in the 1930 Rose Bowl when Russ Saunders threw three TD passes to beat Pittsburgh.
Still, it was the running game with flawless execution that was the trademark of Jones’ best teams. Rules discouraged passing during Jones’ heyday because a pass had to be attempted five yards behind the line of scrimmage and a team couldn’t throw two incomplete passes in one series. Otherwise, it would incur a five-yard penalty in both instances.
So run the Trojans did. Drury. a workhorse in the backfield, became USC’s first 1,000-yard rusher (1,163) in 1927. Amazingly, the Trojans wouldn’t have another 1,000-yard runner until Mike Garrett (1,440) in 1965.
Mort Kaer, USC’s first All-American tailback, gained 852 yards in 1926; Saunders had 972 in 1929; Orv Mohler and Gus Shaver accounted for 983 and 936 in 1930 and 1931, and Cotton Warburton gained 885 in 1933. All of these backs averaged better than five yards per carry with considerably fewer attempts (excepting Drury’s 223 in 1927) than the modern-day USC tailback.
Years later, Willis O. (Bill) Hunter, the USC athletic director when Jones was hired in 1925, said succinctly: “I’d have to say that all of us hitched our wagon to a star, and Howard Jones was that star. He made all of USC’s later success possible.”
TROJAN TIMELINE
- Early Years (1888-1924)
- Thundering Herd (1925-1940)
- Forties & Fifties (1941-1959)
- Glory Years, Part I (1960-1975)
- Glory Years, Part II (1976-1982)
- Wilderness Years (1983-2001)
- Return to Glory (2002-present)
(Much of the material on the page is adapted from Mal Florence's 1980 book about USC’s football history, “The Trojan Heritage.”)
