TOO MANY MEN ON THE FIELD

Unquestionably, it was a great defensive play. Dicky Maegle, Rice’s star running back, was in the clear at the opponent’s 42 and apparently headed for a 95-yard second-quarter touchdown when Alabama’s Tommy Lewis cut him down with a devastating block/tackle. The crowd of 75,504 and a national television audience gaped. Rice cheerleader Joan Ryba, standing a few feet away, yelled, “He did it! He did it!” TV and radio announcers were momentarily mute. Lewis, you see, had been sitting on the Crimson Tide’s bench when without benefit of a helmet he thrust himself into the 18th Cotton Bowl game and college football history on Jan. 1, 1954. Needless to say, the officials awarded Rice and Maegle the touchdown. As the teams left the field at halftime, Lewis jogged up to Maegle and put his arm around his shoulder by way of apology. “At first I thought it was one of my teammates,” Maegle recalled. “He had tears streaming down his face. He apologized and apologized, and he said, ‘I don’t know what got into me. I hope they don’t string me up on these goalposts.”