Reusse: Former Gopher making nostalgic New Year's Day bowl trek

The Big Ten football schedule still was being done more at the whim of the schools than through the league office in 1961. That was a fall when six teams played six conference games and four teams played seven.

There were two unbeatens going into the final games of the regular season: Minnesota at 6-0 and Ohio State at 5-0. On the last Saturday, the Gophers had Wisconsin in Minneapolis and the Buckeyes were at Michigan.

Ohio State was leading Michigan 42-14 in the fourth quarter, when it drove for another touchdown and went for a two-point conversion. The final was 50-20.

Why did you go for two, the Ohio State coach was asked? "Because the rules don't allow you to go for three," the irascible Wayne Woodrow Hayes said.

An hour later, the Buckeyes heard the news that Wisconsin, from the middle of the Big Ten pack, had upset the Gophers 23-21. Ohio State was the clear-cut Big Ten champion and, at 8-0-1, presumably headed to the Rose Bowl as the No. 2 team in the country, behind 9-0 Alabama.

Sixteen seniors were among the 60 upperclassmen on the Gophers roster (freshmen were ineligible for varsity competition). They had taken the Gophers from 2-7 as sophomores in 1959, to being voted as national champions after the 8-1 regular season of 1960, but the seniors — All-America quarterback Sandy Stephens and the rest — would be leaving with a void:

They had been upset by Washington 17-7 in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 2, 1961, and there would not be a chance to right that wrong.

The sportscaster was Channel 5's Dick Nesbitt, and he was reporting that the Gophers had been chosen to fill the vacancy after the Ohio State Faculty Council voted 28-25 not to permit the Buckeyes to accept the invitation to Pasadena.

The majority in the faculty group believed that football had become too powerful and was overshadowing Ohio State's academic mission. When the result of the secret vote was revealed, there were two days of rowdy protests on campus in Columbus.

"This was our second chance at the Rose Bowl," Loechler said. "We were much better prepared. Sandy played great; everyone played great."

The Gophers whipped UCLA 21-3. Stephens was the game's MVP. And Loechler, the senior tackle and placekicker from Robbinsdale, kicked three extra points.

As his four daughters came along, they were told of those three splendid PATs in Pasadena, and that "Golden Toe" was an acceptable way to refer to their father.

"I got to college and thought I should be a starter," Loechler said. "The coaches disagreed. They thought Bobby Bell and Carl Eller were better than me.

"Do you think they might have been right?"

That second trip to Pasadena became such a rewarding experience for Loechler and the Gophers that he came up with this fiscal plan:

"Once I got my first teaching job, I started putting $100 a year into a 'Rose Bowl fund,' " Loechler said. "The next time the Gophers went to the Rose Bowl, I wanted to have enough money to take my family there."

Tom and his first wife, Karen, were divorced. They had four daughters: Laura, Jane, Susan and Beth. He was remarried to Sandy before the family finally made it to the Rose Bowl.

Sandy died and Tom was single for many years, before marrying Sue five years ago. She has two sons. The gang is now six children, 11 grandchildren, four great-grandkids and there's also Agnes, Tom's 94-year-old mother and still a hardcore Gophers fan. She was in the group of Loechlers that went to the Northwestern game at TCF Bank Stadium in October.

Tom and Sue had dipped into the Rose Bowl fund and went to the 2012 Rose Bowl — on the 50th anniversary of the Gophers' Pasadena victory — with former teammate Dave Lothner and his wife.

Wisconsin lost. That was good, right?

"No, I root for the Big Ten in every bowl game," Loechler said. "Even the Badgers."

Finally, 53 years after the Rose Bowl victory, Tom Loechler — 74, well retired as a teacher and a coach, and refusing to give into the diabetes that has him moving slow — will get to see his beloved Gophers play in a New Year's Day bowl game.

"Missouri beat us in the opener [6-0] in 1961," Loechler said. "This is a good chance for revenge."