Greatest Husker to wear 24: Lloyd Cardwell, Halfback, 1934-1936In the early 1930s, radio usage was exploding nationwide. However, radio coverage of college football did not. Many schools - including Nebraska - allowed only one radio broadcast per season.
Why? Money, of course.
Schools feared that if the meteorological forecast was bad, potential ticket buyers would choose to stay home and listen on the radio. These folks became known as "fair-weather fans." Since many schools were trying to pay off their newly constructed stadiums, they wanted fans in the stadium, not gathered around the family radio. The lone game broadcast on the radio was usually one likely to be sold out.
Without radio broadcasts, fans had two options for keeping up with a Nebraska game:
Wait for tomorrow's newspaper.
Find a Grid-Graph near you.
What the heck is a Grid -Graph, you ask? It was an early way to allow fans to follow along with a game, on a lit-up scoreboard.
Picture a 15'x12' scoreboard, shaped like a football. In the middle of the ovular board is a glass football field with yard lines, five feet high and ten feet long. Above the field is basic scoreboard information - score, quarter, time and down. On the left and right sides are the names of the 11 players for each team (remember - this was an era where players played both ways). Below the field was a bunch of words corresponding to common football plays (forward pass, end run, punt, touchdown, penalty, etc.) Everything surrounding the field has its own light bulb next to it.
Here's how a Grid-Graph worked:
Somebody at the game would send a telegram - usually in Morse code - with the details of what happened in the previous play.
A telegraph operator would receive and decipher the telegram. Depending on how far he or she was from the Grid-Graph, a courier might be used to relay the messages.*
The Grid-Graph operator would read the telegram containing details of the last play and light the corresponding bulbs on the Grid-Graph board to match.
A second Grid-Graph operator, standing behind the glass field would represent the movement of the ball. He typically knew what yard line to end up at, but often used artistic license (and some flourish) to show the path taken. A 10-yard run up the middle might be shown as a double reverse.
*Prior to the invention of Grid-Graphs, some outlets would "megaphone" games. They'd follow steps 1 and 2 above. Step 3 was "shout the play into a megaphone." The Lincoln Star did this for games in the 1920s at Notre Dame and Pittsburgh.
Many colleges purchased Grid-Graphs in the 1920s to allow fans to stay informed on road games. Some schools placed their Grid-Graphs indoors and charged fans an admission of 50 cents. An Omaha business had one on the side of it building near 15th and Farnam Streets that had fans flooding the streets. I have read two accounts that make reference to Lincoln having a Grid -Graph as well, but the locations are conflicting.
Grid-Graphs were not always accurate. Due to the timing and logistics involved, it was easy for operators to fall behind. There is one account of a Nebraska-Illinois game where the Grid-Graph operators were so off that they had to improvise a 70-yard Red Grange touchdown run (that never happened) in order to get the score to be accurate.
Maybe in those days it was better to stick with the newspaper - even if the scribes of the day enjoyed using their own artistic flourish.
In October of 1934, sophomore halfback Lloyd Cardwell - already a rising star - got a carry against Iowa State.
According to reports, he "stormed around end, knocked several of Iowa State's would-be tacklers off their feet and ran 45 yards for a touchdown."
After the game, Frederick Ware of the Omaha World-Herald wrote: "It's his roaring, tearing, gay, freebooting way that reminds me of the defiant, joyous, speeding wild horse that loves to run with the wind on the plains."
This beautiful piece of prose begat one of the great nicknames in school history: Lloyd Cardwell, the Wild Hoss of the Plains.*
*Ware's original nickname was "Wild Hoss," although several publications referred to Cardwell as "Wild Horse." The newspapers also liked to call him "Cardie."
Like a galloping horse, Cardwell took powerful strides, seeming to glide on top of the field. Where some players would run around would-be tacklers, the Wild Hoss of the Plains knew the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. He was going through, thank you, not around.
In the 1935 season opener, Nebraska hosted the University of Chicago and its star back Jay Berwanger. Berwanger scored on an 18-yard run. The Wild Hoss of the Plains had a 7-yard touchdown run, a 9-yard touchdown reception and a 86-yard kickoff return touchdown. The Lincoln Star wrote, "With Jay Berwanger galloping hither and yon no margin was considered safe. He did all that was expected of him. The difference between he and Cardwell was that Cardie did more than any human could or should expect."
Berwanger would win the first Heisman Trophy later that year.
A Seward, Neb., native, Cardwell scored 20 touchdowns in his 24-game career. He helped lead the Cornhuskers to back-to-back Big Six titles and the program's first-ever ranking in the AP poll (ninth in 1936, the first year of the poll). Cardie's final carry as a Cornhusker? A 58-yard touchdown run against Oregon State in 1936.
The Wild Hoss of the Plains could not be stopped.
As for radio, schools eventually eased up on the one-broadcast-per-season rule. Radio stations realized businesses would pay to advertise during games and universities and/or conferences found a way to get a cut of that money by signing contracts with broadcasters.
