Minnesota sports fans were more preoccupied with Gophers football in the 1950s than we are with the Vikings today.
One obvious reason for this was the lack of competition: The Minneapolis Lakers were the only team in a major league, and the NBA was iffy in that regard. There were minor league baseball and hockey teams in Minneapolis and in St. Paul.
The Gophers on the gridiron were kings, although there was basically a blackout for information throughout the summer. Starting from perhaps age 8 in 1954, I would mark late July with almost daily trips to Toussaint's drug store in downtown Fulda in the hope that the college football annuals had arrived.
The two main publications were Street & Smith and Dell's. I was a Street & Smith guy, because it was a thicker publication, with more information on each team and easier to read schedules in the back.
The optimism surrounding the Gophers in 1957 was such that the trips to Toussaint's were doubled – one in the morning, another in the afternoon – until the annuals had arrived. I remember the excitement of seeing Gophers quarterback Bobby Cox on the cover.
I had imagined it was the cover of Street & Smith, the big book. Then, in 2003, Cox died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Plymouth, and I went on-line looking for a replica of that Street & Smith cover.
All I could find was a cover featuring Clendon Thomas, an Oklahoma running back. Cox was on a cover, but it was Dell's, under the label of Stanley Woodward's Football Annual. Woodward was a famous East Coast sportswriter.
I don't know if the publications had enough sophistication in those days to have regional covers. Maybe there's a Street & Smith out there with Bobby on the cover.
