Isn't the 'Wildcat' really the Wing-T ?
I don't know why they call football's trendy new formation the "Wildcat" when it's really the old Wing-T? Chardon's been running the most extreme version of the Wing-T for years. Mayfield has been running a less extreme version. You saw the highlights almost every Friday night on Fox 8.
It's nothing new. It dates back to the 1950's. Football's next regression will be the single wing and then they'll retreat to the Notre Dame box formation of the 1920's. The ultimate archaeological breakthrough will be the old flying wedge popularized by Princeton and Rutgers in the late 1800's which was eventually outlawed because it was dangerous.
When Benedictine Changed the Game
While we're exploring the past, let me mention Benedictine's city championship basketball team of 1945-46 which changed the way the game is played. Under coach Norb Rascher, the Bengals ran, ran, ran. Until then, high school basketball was a plodding, half-court game. In fact, that's how the game was played on most levels. But Benedictine stunned everyone by averaging 63 points per game with a fast break offense and permitting an average of only 30.5 with a switching man-to-man defense. They won some games by as many as 50 points and they earned a national reputation.
The star of that team was the legendary Mike Medich, one of the most fascinating high school stars in Cleveland history. Medich, at 6-5 and 230 pounds, was the most dominant scholastic athlete of his era and the most controversial. His size alone was stunning. Pro football players didn't come that big in those days.
He and his teammate, Rudy Schaffer, came to Benedictine as boarding students at the start of their junior year. This was not unusual. At the time out-of-town students frequently lived at the abbey where they were kept on a tight leash under the thumb of the monks. .
Medich and Schaffer transferred from the town of Duquesne, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where they led their high school team to the Western Pennsylvania state championship in basketball. Medich was immensely talented, but he had a wild streak. Somewhere along the way an advisor suggested he would do well under the influence of the tough Benedictine monks in Cleveland.
The authorities, however, viewed this through a different prism. It looked like recruiting, and Medich and Schaffer were ruled ineligible to play sports their first year at Benedictine.
However, when they stormed out of the gate their senior year, it was Katie bar the door. In back-to-back games Medich scored 41 points against Barberton and in the next game he scored 59 against West High, a state record. Eighteen years later Phil Argento of West High scored 66 points in a game against South High.
The Dunkel national rating service ranked the Bengals third in the country, but Benedictine couldn't even play for the state championship. Benedictine was a member of the East Senate and the Senate did not participate in any state tournament in any sport in those years. There seemed to be a difficult relationship between Cleveland school officials and the victorian state governing body.
Here's how bitter it was. After Benedictine finished its unbeaten season with a record of 15-0, the Bengals were invited to New York to play a post-season charity game at Madison Square Garden against a New York, City power. The game was promoted by the New York Herald Tribune. The Ohio High School Athletic Association would not permit Benedictine to accept the invitation, despite appeals from Cleveland mayor Thomas A. Burke and Ohio governor Frank J. Lausche.
As a result, the Bengals' last game was against West Senate champion West Tech in the city championship game at Public Hall, which Benedictine won, 49-44.
The game was sold out, but no exact attendance is readily available because the Sportsman Show had just closed and was not entirely broken down. As a result, not all 10,000 seats were available. Both schools sold their allotment of 2,000 tickes within hours. The reset were quickly gobbled up.
Because of the demand to see this great Benedictine team, radio station WJW 850, which is now WKNR, broadcast the game live, which was unusual at the time. Because there were only four mainstream radio stations in the Cleveland market in 1946, high school games were rarely, if ever, broadcast. High school sports appeal to a niche market. Today more than 20 stations carve up the Cleveland market. There is a niche for every interest. Not so in 1946. Network dramas, soap operas and comedy shows dominated most of the broadcasting hours. With the exception of heavyweight title fights, sports got little attention. The Indians were not even on the radio when the 1946 season began.
But the Benedictine-West Tech game wa a big deal and Cleveland's leading sports announcer, Earl Harper, delivered the play-by-play in confident tones.
There was a little soiree one afternoon last week at the "Home of Champions" to listen to Harper's radio broadcast which was recently discovered on 78-rpm 12-inch long playing discs. The records survived more than 60 years because they are plastic, not the fragile ceramic discs we remember from our youth. The coach's son, Jim Rascher, discovered them in his attic. They have been converted to CD's which are available through the school.
Medich went on to West Virginia University, where he started three games as a freshman, but he left after one semester and joined the merchant marines. He never reached the age of 30. He died under mysterious circumstances in South America.
