When the SMU Mustangs play the Duke Blue Devils on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, in Durham, N.C., it will be only the third time the two programs have met on the gridiron.
SMU and Duke met for the very first time on Sept. 26, 1952, in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. SMU lost 14-7 in front of a crowd of 28,000. The schools played again in 1956 in Durham (Duke won again, 14-6) in front of 16,000 fans. And that was 68 years ago.
Much has changed since then. To illustrate, in 1952 SMU played in the old Southwest Conference, which had seven schools as members. Texas won the championship that year, followed by Rice in second place and SMU in third. The Ponies finished the season 4-5-1. Rounding out the SWC standings were TCU, Baylor, Texas A&M, and Arkansas. It was overall not a good year for the Conference. Texas had the only winning record (9-2), beating Tennessee in the 1953 Cotton Bowl on Jan. 1.
The SWC is long gone, though it had a good run from 1914 to 1996. Texas, Texas A&M, and Arkansas are now in the SEC. Rice is in the AAC, Baylor and TCU play in the Big 12, and SMU now finds itself in the ACC.
In 1952 Duke was a member of the Southern Conference. The Blue Devils had a very good season that year, going 6-0 in conference play and 8-2 overall, but their two losses (to Virginia and Navy) probably kept them from a bowl.
The Southern Conference of 1952 also illustrates how dramatically college football has changed. While the SWC had only seven members, the Southern Conference had a whopping fifteen. Members in 1952 included Duke, West Virginia, Wake Forest, William & Mary, George Washington, Furman, Virginia Tech, Washington & Lee, Virginia Military Institute, South Carolina, North Carolina State, North Carolina, The Citadel, Davidson, and Richmond. That kind of league—in which small liberal arts colleges with fewer than 1,000 students played against major state universities—would be impossible to imagine today. Some of the old Southern Conference schools are now in the ACC or SEC or Big 12, but many others are either in the Football Championship Subdivision or Division III. The Southern Conference still exists, but the only members from 1952 who are currently in the league are Furman and VMI.
But for those of us who enjoy the past as much as the present, old football programs make for interesting reading. Here is the introduction provided by SMU’s sports information service in 1952:
Two universities whose football teams long have ranked among the leaders of the country will meet on the gridiron for the first time in history tonight when the Southern Methodist University Mustangs entertain the Duke University Blue Devils.
Nationally-recognized sports writers have placed the Blue Devils on the spot by picking them to win the Southern Conference championship, and a glance at the roster shows that Coach Bill Murray has some of the outstanding performers in the nation ready to take the field against the Mustangs. Duke boasted a powerful offensive eleven last season and was the only team to tie undefeated Georgia Tech. From last year’s offensive combination Coach Murray lost only one starter. Worth (A Million) Lutz has been named on several pre-season All-American selections and has numerous teammates of ability and experience to help him advance the ball. Duke has no doubts about its offensive team’s ability to score—but says its problem is to get a defensive combination that can hold the opposition long enough to get the ball for the offensive outfit.
The Mustangs have been named to finish fourth in the Southwest Conference, but loyal SMU fans think that the Ponies may surprise the sports writers. The Ponies boast an All-American candidate of the own in Captain Bill Forester, the conference’s No. 1 punter of 1951 in Jerry Norton, one of the top pass receivers of the country in Benton Musslewhite, and several other veterans of proven ability as well as one of the finest groups of first-year players ever to wear the Red and Blue. Frank Eidom, Duane Nutt, Tommie Fields, Doyle Nix, Ed Bernet, and other sophomores are expected to make names for themselves as sophomores.
Tonight’s game should be a thriller.
For more thrills, we also recommend perusing the entire program and the wonderful period advertisements. Go Ponies!