The 1959 Columbus High School football team is the last in school history to finish undefeated. The squad will be honored at Columbus North’s home game against Roncalli on Friday.
The Columbus North football team is hoping to post the school’s first undefeated regular season in 65 years.
The last Bull Dog team to do it was the 1959 Columbus High School squad. That team will be honored at the Bull Dogs’ Sept. 13 game against Roncalli.
“It was an unusual group of guys as I look back over the years and think about it,” said Bill Spicer, a fullback and inside linebacker on the 1959 team. The coach, Max Andress, before the season told The Evening Republican, he said we might go 5-5. He said there wasn’t a star among us, which we took with a little chagrin. I’ve played on some other teams after high school, and I never played on a team where everybody was pretty much friends or buddies. I had that feeling, particularly with the seniors. We had all been starters either on offense or defense as juniors, and we didn’t have a particularly good season. We were talking before the season, we were going to be one of the smaller teams in the league, but we had the attitude, ‘If they can’t score on you, they can’t beat you.’ Everybody just did their job to the best of their abilities.”
That included a collection of mostly undersized seniors. They had gone 6-3-1 the previous year and weren’t feeling particularly optimistic about their senior season.
“I remember (quarterback) Skip Lindeman and I were talking one day, and we thought we could beat this team or that team, but we didn’t think we could beat Southport or Jeffersonville,” Spicer said. “We had lost to Jeffersonville in the Jamboree, and four people ended up getting hurt. We just never really thought much ahead. We just took it one game at a time.”
Lindeman remembers the conversation, as well.
“The summer before the season, we both parked cars out at the fairgrounds, and of course we talked football,” Lindeman said. “We had a good year our junior year, and I felt if we were up, we could have had an even better year. I told Bill if we could just get up for every game, we could win every game. He said, ‘Skip, I hope you don’t think anything bad of me, but I just don’t think we can beat Bloomington.”
The Bull Dogs opened the 1959 season with a 25-6 win against Franklin and a 22-7 win against Martinsville. Then, in a battle of 2-0 teams, North, which had lost a close game to Seymour the previous year, blanked the Owls 28-0.
“I remember the busride home, we were just ecstatic,” Lindeman said. “They were supposed to beat us. Then, when Bloomington came to town the next week, it was 0-0 in the first half. I threw a pass that was just behind Dan Mobley, and Graham Updike, our halfback, was standing in the end zone looking upward. So I went over the sideline and told our coach, if we run that play again, we can score. So I faked to Dan, and I just lobbed this ball that Graham ran under. Coach Andress said, ‘It’s too soon to talk about an undefeated season, but you know and I know if we win this game, we can go all the way.’”
Columbus did win that game 21-6, snapping a five-game losing streak to Bloomington.
The Bull Dogs posted home shutouts of Shelbyville (27-0) and Greensburg (31-0) to improve to 6-0.
“LSU had a really good team, and they called them the, ‘Chinese Bandits,’” Spicer said. “So they started calling us the ‘Blue Bandits.’ Our offense was pretty good, but our defense was even better. When you shut out half your opponents, you look back years later, and that’s pretty impressive.”
Columbus faced a stretch where it had to play three games in nine days. The Bull Dogs beat Jeffersonville 21-7, undefeated Southport 13-7 and North Vernon 26-0.
After that, all that stood in the way of a perfect season was a game at Connersville.
“We got to Connersville, and all of the community was all abuzz, but as far as the team goes, we just went through those games, and when we went to play Connersville, the first play of the game, they ran a trick play on us,” Spicer said. “The wide receiver that we thought was going out of the game didn’t step off the field, and they threw him the ball, and they scored. I remember saying to them, “OK, I’ll give them six points on a damn trick play, but those are the last points they were going to score. At the half, it was 21-6, and in the locker room, Max said, ‘You guys have played a hell of a good half of football, but you can still lose this game,’ and he turned around and walked out. I stood up and said, ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I didn’t go through all this hell to lose this game. Let’s go win it.’”
The Bull Dogs won 40-13 to finish the season 10-0. But the IHSAA did not implement a playoff system for another 14 years.
Several Columbus players did receive postseason recognition. Guard John Gentry was named first-team All-State; and Spicer, Updike and center Jack Hinkle were honorable mention All-State.
Spicer, Updike, John Moore, Hinkle and Gentry made first made first-team All-South Central Conference. Lindeman, offensive and defensive tackle Al Betz and tight end Mobley were named honorable mention All-Conference. Andress was chosen as SCC Coach of the Year, the first of four times he would win that award.
Larry Long, a 160-pound offensive tackle, also credited swimming coach Duane Barrows, who was an assistant football coach, with getting the team ready physically.
A few of the Bull Dogs played a little college football. Jim Rapp played at Indiana University, then became a Colonel in the Marines and served in Vietnam. He has been head of Buliders Association in Virginia.
Spicer played one year at Louisville and one year at Franklin, then joined the Marine Corps and became a Colonel. He did three tours in Vietnam and taught the British how to fly their Harrier Jets. He now lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and has written 11 books, including “Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine,” Volumes 1 through 5 that have been inducted in to the Library of Congress.
Lindeman played two years at Wabash. He has spent most of his adult life in California and still works as a minister in Upland, California, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
“I feel that I was very fortunate to be the quarterback because my freshman year was priming this very good freshman quarterback to be the quarterback for our team, and his family moved away,” Lindeman said. “I was a fourth-string end on the freshman team, so when there was a vacancy at quarterback, I asked if I could try out.”
Paul Pringle graduated from Dartmouth, earned a law degree from Michigan and was managing partner of the San Francisco office for Sidley Law Firm. Gentry and Dan FitzGibbons were Green Berets, Tony Patterson was Air Force Major, Mike Burt became a surgeon, Long received an MBA and at least five others were attorneys.
Of the 440 kids in the Class of 1960, four of the top 10 academically were on the football team. Most of the players have been married to their original wife for more than 50 years.
“Even after we graduated from high school, it’s always interesting how close contact we’ve had with each other for a long time,” Spicer said.
Long has published a 51-page magazine-style book called “Columbus Bulldog Football 1959 Perfect Season” based on the writings of George Abel, who died in 2019.
“It was an unusual group of guys,” Spicer said. “Nobody felt like they were a star or anything like that. Everybody just did their job.”
