Former players gather to pay tribute to Mather

If ever there were a game for the Kansas University football team to “win for the Gipper,” Saturday’s matchup with Nebraska would be it.

Former KU coach Chuck Mather, one of the last coaches to claim a victory over the Cornhuskers, will be on hand and will receive recognition during the game for his accomplishments with the university from 1954 to 1957.

“It would be tremendous,” former KU quarterback Duane Morris said of the Jayhawks’ pulling out a victory. “I think coach Mather would be overjoyed.”

Morris, who quarterbacked the KU teams that won three straight against NU from 1957 to 1959, has set up a reunion of former players from the Mather era, and they’re coming in from all over the continent — even Canada.

The 61 players and spouses, and the 91-year-old former coach’s date, will reminisce over cocktails and dinner tonight at the Adams Alumni Center and have breakfast together before heading to Saturday’s game.

“We’ll sit around and tell lies about one another — embellish all the stories,” Morris said. “We’re going to kind of roast Mather, in a good-natured way.”

Morris already began recalling his time as a football player at KU, including the 1959 game for the Big Eight title against Oklahoma that ended in a 7-6 loss, thanks to an official who received a ball to the side of the head when Kansas attempted a fake PAT.

There also was a story of the pep talk by former KU captain Lynn McCarthy — with no coaches allowed in the locker room — prior to their 14-12 upset at Nebraska. In Mather’s last year as coach, the team was 1-4-1 heading into the game and was a 27-point underdog.

“Lynn made us all sit down, and he stood up on a bench and he said, ‘You know, the coaches aren’t playing any of these games, and we are,'” Morris recalled. “And he said to the team, ‘I better have everyone of you guys putting in 110 percent in this game. And if you don’t, I’m personally going to kick — kick your butt,’ and he could. And we went out and beat them, played them nose-to-nose and really overpowered their team.”

In the 5-4-1 1957 season, which also included victories over Kansas State and Missouri, Mather was voted Big Eight coach of the year.

Although he had many game memories to talk about, it was his coach that Morris was most content discussing.

He had nicknamed Mather the “Apparatus Man” for all the inventions he set up for practices.

“He had more apparatuses on the field than a carnival,” Morris joked. “I mean, it was covered with ‘toys’ that he made us all run through and hit.”

But it was Mather as a person that had Morris gushing the most. The former player, who still resides in Lawrence, said the “Apparatus Man” never had lost touch with him.

“Any time a coach gives you a chance, it’s a lifetime dream. The best part of it is, I graduated January 1960, and he’s probably called me three to four times a year ever since I graduated,” Morris said. “That’s 50 years. He knows where all of his players are, knows what they’re doing, how they’re doing, who they’re married to — stays in touch every year.

“There’s not many coaches in this world that do that.”