By Jim Junot
Sports Information Director
Virginia Union University

In 1933 a forward thinking entrepreneur named J.R.E. Lee, Jr., decided to create a football bowl game featuring the season's two top black college football teams, who would then meet on the gridiron to determine the Black National Champion.

 

Lee was the son of J.R.E. Lee, Sr., then-President of Florida A&M University, so it was decided the Rattlers would always be the host team.

 

The decision met with little resistance. Florida A&M usually fielded a national power-house football team, and since African-Americans were excluded from playing in the established bowls of the era, the Orange Blossom Classic almost instantly became the premier bowl game among the black community.

 

In the 15 years of play, FAMU won seven Classic titles.

 

In 1948, the Rattlers had fielded a team which many considered the strongest of all FAMU teams. Florida A&M had reeled off eight straight victories without a defeat, and had captured it's fifth straight SIAC title.

 

When time came for an opponent for the Orange Blossom Classic, the Rattlers had never heard of a small private college in Richmond, Va., by the name of Virginia Union University.

 

But by the time the 1948 Classic was over, Florida A&M would never forget VUU.

A Season of Hope and Prayer

 

The 1948 football season began, as it always had with Virginia Union, with hope and prayer. The Panthers had not had won a CIAA title since 1923, and only had one winning season in the past eight years.

 

The big news around VUU football in the fall of 1948 was that venerable Hovey Field had been enlarged to seat 8,000 fans. Lights had also been added so the Panthers could stage night games and a press box had been built.

 

Virginia Union would be led in 1948 on offense by Don Ross, who had earned All-CIAA honors in 1947, and coached by Sam Taylor who, in his three years as coach of the Panthers, had garnered a 9-13-1 record.

 

The first night football game in CIAA history saw the Panthers dominate Maryland State University (now Maryland-Eastern Shore) 21-0 with Warren Oldham scoring two touchdowns.

 

The Panthers next travelled to Institute, W.Va., and downed West Virginia State University 10-7.

 

Then the wheels appeared to fall off the Panther express.

Five Games, Five Losses

 

In the next five games, VUU lost all five. North Carolina A&T downed the Panthers 14-7, then Howard blanked VUU 10-0. 

 

After a week off, winless Lincoln stunned the Panthers 21-7 and then VUU was shut out by North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) 32-0. Finally, Virginia State shut out VUU 7-0 in the Panthers' homecoming.

 

The local media turned on the Panthers.

 

“It was evident at practice drills last week that the Virginia Union Panthers had left their best game of the season in the mountains of West Virginia,” wrote Tom Mitchell in his column in the Afro-American sports column “Sport Chatter.”

 

Mitchell also wrote that VUU's head coach, Sam Taylor, was under threat of termination.

 

“He will have on his neck something no other Union mentor ever faced – the National Panther Club,” Mitchell wrote. “They are partially underwriting the athletic program at the school with a few thousand dollars, and they have already started the rumblings to 'win or else.'”

 

Mitchell continued the attack in the following issue of the Afro-American.

 

“Is there a rallying point for the Virginia Union Panthers or is the season hopelessly lost?” wrote Mitchell in his “Sports Chatter” column.

 

Mitchell crucified the Virginia Union administration as well as personally attacking the players.

 

“It can be stated categorically that there are members of the football team at Virginia Union who don't care whether the team wins or not,” Mitchell wrote. “There are others who apparently delight in a loss where they personally think they showed in the best advantage.”

 

But Virginia Union was about to show Tom Mitchell, the CIAA and the entire nation how wrong they were to write off the Panthers.

The Big Turnaround

VUU, now 2-5 on the season, was about to face the most powerful team in the CIAA in Shaw University. A rainstorm had turned Hovey Field into a sea of mud, but when the final gun was fired, Virginia Union had emerged with a 2-0 upset.

 

The next week VUU continued the turnaround, downing Morehouse College 26-7 which prompted the Panther faithful to charge the field after the win.

 

The Panthers concluded the regular season with a Thanksgiving Day match-up against Hampton. A stiff VUU defense and a one-yard plunge by Panther quarterback Earl Young gave Virginia Union a 6-2 win.

 

VUU finished with a 5-5 season and, although the Panthers had only allowed one touchdown in the final 12 quarters, the team thought the season was over.

 

Meanwhile down in Tallahassee, Fla., fate was conspiring to give the Panthers one more game.

Not the First, Nor the Second, Nor the Third, Nor the Fourth

 

Florida A&M was looking for an opponent to play in the Orange Blossom Classic for the mythical Black National Championship.

 

FAMU first asked Wilberforce College (now Central State University), but Wilberforce had already accepted a bid from the Fish Bowl, to be played in Norfolk, Va., on the same day as the Classic, December 4.

 

Then the FAMU Athletic Committee asked Lincoln University, but the Lions said “no thanks.” 

 

Then they asked Prairie View A&M, who also turned down the invite.   Then Morgan State University was asked, and they, too, declined.

 

Finally, FAMU turned to Virginia Union, who readily accepted the invitation.

 

Almost immediately, the so-called “experts” made VUU the underdog, with some odds-makers making the Panthers a 50-point underdog.

 

The 1948 Orange Blossom Classic would be played on December 4 in the Orange Bowl in Miami, Fla. The game marked only the second time that African-American athletes were allowed to play in the Orange Bowl.

 

With 15,986 fans looking on in segregated seats, VUU put on a performance on that sunny Saturday afternoon that stunned the nation.

"Fate of the Gods"

 

Tom Mitchell, writing for the Afro-American, wrote what many were feeling.

 

“Only the fate of the gods could have sent a 5-5 team into the citadel of champions, the Orange Bowl, for a clash with the five-time champion of the Southern Conference boasting an 8-1 record and rated in the top five colleges of the nation.,” Mitchell wrote.

 

VUU came out with a ground game which shocked the Rattlers. The Panthers racked up a school-record 403 rushing yards and Ross hauled in three touchdown passes as Virginia Union came away with a stunning 39-18 win over heavily-favored FAMU.

 

“A fantastic 'dream' team from the hallowed gray granite halls of Virginia Union, rated by dopesters as incapable of even chipping Florida A&M's 'Seven Walls of Granite,' became a potent nightmare under the giant floodlights here Saturday night and battered the sturdy Orange and Green 39 to 18,” wrote Chester L. Washington in the Pittsburgh Courier.

 

For the first time in history, a football team with five losses had become the National Champion. It was also the second, and most recent, time a Virginia Union University football team had captured the National Championship (the other being in 1923).

 

For VUU, it marked a new era in athletics.

 

“The word spread from the Orange Bowl Saturday night that the Virginia Union University Panthers are the team to watch following their 39-18 triumph over the Florida A&M Rattlers,” the Norfolk Journal & Guide wrote after the game.

 

“Virginia Union University's odyssey into the world's playground for it's 39-18 Orange Blossom Classic victory over Florida A&M presages the advent of the Virginia Panthers (sic) into the football big time."

Long Memories

 

So huge was the VUU win that, when the two teams next met 56 years later in 2004, Florida A&M invited surviving members back to the school with the promise of a win. Although A&M only led the 2004 game 14-10 at halftime, the Rattlers pulled away in the second half to win 35-10.

 

“FAMU Avenges 1948 Loss to Union” screamed Florida A&M's web site the next day.

 

Even Tom Mitchell, who had mercilessly raked VUU over the coals earlier in the 1948 season, was impressed by the Panthers on that December night.

 

“Here, above all, was more than a football game to a gallant band of oft-beaten, but never conquered, men of Virginia Union who would not succumb in other than their own shortcomings – and found that heart and belief in self can overcome the earth.”