Hargiss Recalls 1930 Season
by Don Pierce, 1955

Reunion of Jayhawk Squad Inspires Football Tales

     LAWRENCE —Mike Getto isn't likely to close his Big Six room (nobody ever bothered to rename it Big Seven) at the Eldridge Hotel before dawn Saturday morning. Twenty-five members of KU's only undisputed conference football champions of modern times, the 1930 squad, will crank up a silver anniversary reunion there on the eve of the annual Homecoming vendetta with Missouri.
     Mike won't mind too much since he was line coach of that outfit, molding one of the craggiest ramparts the conference ever saw. Besides that he's manager of the hotel, a far cry from 25 years ago when Phog Allen hired him directly out of Pitt to tutor the forwards for Bill Hargiss.
     Of course there will be considerable yarn-spinning. It won't be long until Hargiss, now state athletic commissioner, corners that market.  The Ole Bald Eagle warmed up with a couple at midweek which bear repeating.
     "We were going down to play Oklahoma in '29," he started. "We went down Friday even in those days and stayed in Oklahoma City. Saturday morning when we started for Norman the bus was pretty well crowded with friends and alumni. I was looking for some other way to get some rides for some of them."
     "Frosty Cox's brother offered to take three of the players: I gave him Frosty and the Bausch boys, Jim and Pete. I checked with 'em. Yes, they said they knew the way. It's only 15 miles, of course."
     "The bus got to Norman. Pretty soon, in the dressing room, I noticed Frosty and the Bausch boys weren't there. We went out to warm up. They still hadn't showed up. It was cold and raining hard and I knew those three were in the ditch somewhere. I didn't have any hair then either, but I was tearing it just the same.
     "We started the game and still three first-stringers were missing. We'd been going about five minutes when here they came, driving straight down the running track. They'd been half way to Stillwater."
     "I told 'em to suit up fast as they could. As soon as they came out of the dressing room I sent all three right in. On the first play Jim wrecked his knee. On the second Pete broke big collarbone. Frosty finally went 15 yards on a reverse, and we beat 'em, 7-0. But Jim and Pete were out of the Missouri game and we lost it, 7-0."
     Bill was still shaking his head when he recalled a more fortunate incident of the title year.
     "There was a lot of bantering back and forth before we played Kansas State that season. That was the game Jim Bausch ran the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown."
     "I had two friends out in Lyons, one a KU man: the other an Aggie. They were opposing each other in litigation over a three-acre tract of land. They still were trying to work out something the Saturday morning of the game."
     "They weren't getting any place and finally one of them, I forgot which, proposed they let the game decide their problem. The man who's team won would get what he wanted.  Then they hopped in the car and drove to the game."
     "They got there a trifle late and took bleacher seats with their backs to the scoreboard. Kansas was kicking off.  What they didn't know was that it was the second kickoff of the game. Jim had just made his run."
     With the game wearing on into the second half and they thinking the score was 0-0, they kept making bets right into the fourth quarter. They didn't discover their mistake until Jim ran for another touchdown late in the game.
     JIM AND PETE both have accepted invitations to the week-end fete, ramrodded by
Bunny Black, then a smallish halfback, but now a Lawrence shoe store tycoon. Cox won't