Until Columbus High School went 10-0 in 1959, it had been 52 years since the school had fielded an undefeated football team.
Since then, another 60 years have passed since Columbus or now Columbus North has gone unbeaten.
Friday night, that 1959 Columbus squad will be honored at North’s home opener against Southport. The team was led by the late Max Andress, who won 118 games between 1951-71.
“Andress was quick to point out, it was not even probably one of his top five or 10 teams for quality of athletes or skill,” said Larry Long, a backup offensive tackle on that team. “We were always the smallest team on the field. We just really didn’t have the quality of guys. It was a bunch of overachieving little guys that had fun. Our mantra was, ‘If we didn’t play our best every game, we were going to lose,’ so everybody really paid attention.”
Little guys and ‘Blue Bandits’
The 1959 Columbus team was not blessed with an overabundance of size. In fact, the Bull Dogs were smaller across the board than most of the teams they played.
Speedy running back Graham Updike stood about 5-foot-5.
“Basically, the defense could not see him coming, he was so short,” defensive end Paul Pringle said. “He was the absolute star on offense.”
The other running back, Johnny Moore, was last non-recruited player to be cut at Purdue. Pringle called him more of a slasher, while Updike was more of a scatback.
The offensive line was small, as well.
“I believe we had the lightest team in the conference,” said fullback and linebacker Bill Spicer, the team MVP. “It was just an unusual group of guys. It’s one of those things that doesn’t happen very often.”
“Undersized would be putting it mildly, even for 1959 days,” Pringle added. “Our offensive tackles at most weighed 165 to 170 pounds.”
Long weighed even less.
“We were a little scrawny team,” Long said. “I was a 16-year-old, 160-pound senior second-string tackle. By the end of the season, I was down to about 152 because you couldn’t keep your weight. Tuesday nights, we ran a mile after practice with pads on, and the two-a-days were unbelievably tough. Luckily, nobody died when you think about that with the 95-degree days.”
Pringle helped lead a defense that was dubbed the “Blue Bandits” after LSU’s “Chinese Bandits” unit. The Bull Dogs defense allowed only 45 points in 10 games. The starters gave up only five touchdowns all season.
That 5-4 defense featured eight seniors and three juniors. Pringle called middle linebackers Spicer and John Gentry the stars of the unit.
“I played against I think the best team in the state, the defense across from me,” Long said. “Games were a piece of cake. Practice was brutal.”
Then, there was quarterback Skip Lindeman, who got the job almost by accident.
“When I was a freshman, I was the fourth string end, not on the varsity, but on the freshman team,” Lindeman said. “The guy that was being groomed for the quarterback, that guy’s family moved away from Columbus during our sophomore year. The coach was looking for someone to play quarterback, and I was lucky to get the job. I feel very fortunate to have been the quarterback on the undefeated team.”
Journey to perfection
Columbus was coming off a 6-3-1 season and a fourth-place finish in the South Central Conference in 1958.
“What I remember about the season a lot is, the coach said earlier in the season that we might be lucky if we won five games, which was kind of interesting to most of us coming back to play for him,” Spicer said.
The Bull Dogs beat Franklin 25-6 and Martinsville 22-7 to begin the 1959 season. That set up a showdown at Seymour, which also was 2-0.
“In those years, Seymour was tough,” Lindeman said. “We had never beaten them on their field. We’d beat them up here, and they’d beat us down there. My junior year, they beat us 12-7, and I was heartbroken. We went down there, and I said to Bill Spicer, I didn’t like our attitude. We had a slogan, ‘If they don’t score on us, they can’t beat us.’ We beat them 28-0, and I remember toward the end of the game, Bill Spicer came up to me and said, ‘We’re ready to beat Seymour,’ and I just laughed. On the way home, the tune on the radio was ‘Poison Ivy’ by The Coasters, and we sung it at the top of our lungs.”
Then came a game against unbeaten Bloomington, a team that had beaten the Bull Dogs five years in a row. Columbus won 21-6.
“I don’t think they took us seriously,” Lindeman said. “They had a really good quarterback named Ron Brinegar, and he had beat us his sophomore year and his junior year. Right before the half, it was 0-0, and I faded back to pass, and I saw an end cutting across, and I threw it just a little bit behind him. After that, I saw Graham Updike, our speedy halfback, looking at the sky, like he was open. So I ran over to coach Andress and said, ‘Updike was open. We need to throw it to him.’ I lofted the ball up in the air, and Updike ran under it. Coach Andress at halftime said, ‘Way to go guys. It’s too soon to talk about undefeated teams, but I know this team can go all the way,’ and there was this roar.”
The Bull Dogs followed with back-to-back home shutouts Shelbyville (27-0) and Greensburg (31-0) to improve to 6-0. Then came three games in a nine-day span, beginning with a 21-7 victory at Jeffersonville.
“We were nervous,” Lindeman said. “That was going to be a tough game, and Jeff really wanted to beat us. We were very fortunate to win that game.”
Columbus beat undefeated Southport 13-6 at home on a Wednesday. The Bull Dogs trailed 7-6 when Gene Critzer made a crushing hit on the Cardinal quarterback, and Rapp picked up the fumble and returned it for the game-winning touchdown.
“We drew the largest crowd they’d ever had when we played Southport,” Spicer said. “I know the team was really surprised when we ran out on the field, and there were all these chairs. They had never seen that many people at a football game.”
Three days later, on a Saturday, Columbus went on the road and shut out North Vernon 26-0 on a muddy field.
“I remember our coach at halftime saying, ‘Don’t complain about the mud. They’re playing in the same mud,’” Lindeman said.
After that, all that stood between a 10-0 season was a win at Connersville.
“I don’t know that we thought about that, but as we got ready to play our final game over at Connersville, there had been an undefeated team 50 years before us, and I remember our coach saying, ‘We don’t want to make it 51,’” Lindeman said.
The Bull Dogs returned home with a 40-13 victory, completing the perfect season. The IHSAA did not institute postseason playoffs for another 14 years until 1973.
Success after football
Several Columbus players did receive postseason recognition. Guard John Gentry was named first-team All-State, and Spicer, Updike and center Jack Hinkle were honorable mention All-State.
Spicer, Updike, Moore, Hinkle and guard John Gentry made first made first-team All-SCC. Lindeman, offensive and defensive tackle Al Betz and tight end Dan Mobley were named honorable mention All-Conference. Andress was chosen as SCC Coach of the Year, the first of four times he would win that award.
Long also credited swimming coach Duane Barrows, who was an assistant football coach, with getting the team ready physically.
“Duane made us the best in shape in the state,” Long said. “Duane worked our butts off. He made sure we were in the best shape possible.”
A few of the Bull Dogs played a little college football. Rapp played at Indiana University, then became a Colonel in the Marines and served in Vietnam. He is the head of Buliders Association in Virginia.
Spicer played one year at Louisville and one year at Franklin, then joined the Marine Corps and became a Colonel. He did three tours in Vietnam and taught the British how to fly their Harrier Jets. He now lives in Lakeland, Florida, have written “Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine,” Volumes 1 through 5, and three books about riding motorcycles.
Lindeman played two years at Wabash. He has spent most of his adult life in California and still works as a minister in Upland, California, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
Pringle graduated from Dartmouth, earned a law degree from Michigan and was managing partner of the San Francisco office for Sidley Law Firm. Gentry and Dan FitzGibbons were Green Berets, Tony Patterson was Air Force Major, Mike Burt became a surgeon, Long received an MBA and at least five others were attorneys.
Of the 440 kids in the Class of 1960, four of top 10 academically were on the football team.
“Every guy went to college and graduated,” Long said. “Nearly every guy is married to his original wife, so the average marriage has lasted 50 years. It was just an amazing bunch of guys, smart, little, in better shape, grew up in a great school system and a neat city.”
And the got along well, for the most part.
“We never had any intrasquad squabbles,” Spicer said. “Everybody knew what their job was and did their job. We never talked about winning or losing. We just talked about winning the play in front of us.”
George Abel wrote 49 pages about the 1959 team, which he planned to turn into a book, but died in April. Long has those writings and still is considering publishing them.
Meanwhile, Columbus North is still looking for that next undefeated season.
“Frankly, that does surprise me,” Pringle said. “I would have thought that some other team would have come along and done that.”
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The 1959 Columbus football team is the school’s last unbeaten team. Here are the results in its 10-0 season:
Franklin;25-6
Martinsville;22-7
Seymour;28-0
Bloomington;21-6
Shelbyville;27-0
Greensburg;31-0
Jeffersonville;21-7
Southport;13-6
North Vernon;26-0
Connersville;40-13
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