The Record - 50 Years Later - Oregon State University Athletics

By Kip Carlson

It was the afternoon of September 28, 1968 and Oregon State's Steve Preece was in the wrong stadium.

The Beaver quarterback had been injured the week before and thus wasn't in Salt Lake City where his teammates were taking on Utah. Rather, he was in Eugene with several fraternity brothers, watching Oregon lose to Stanford from good seats on a sunny afternoon.

The group had the OSU game on the radio, and they kept hearing broadcaster Bob Blackburn call the name "Enyart."

"The entire game they were talking about it," Preece recalled. "I remember when he got to like 100 (yards) in the first quarter – Geez Louise."

Fifty years ago this fall, Enyart – the Beavers' fullback that season – had a game for the ages, one still holding two huge places in the school record book a half-century later. In a 24-21 win over Utah, Enyart carried 50 times for 299 yards and three touchdowns; the carries and yards remain OSU single-game school records.

That's averaging just a smidge under 6 yards per carry – for 50 carries.

"And I'll bet you he got hit by three people at least on every single play," Preece said. "And he loved it."

It wasn't for nothing that OSU athletic publicist John Eggers gave Enyart the nickname "Earthquake." (To his teammates, Enyart was known as "Buff," as in "Buffalo Bill.") The 6-foot-3½ , 230-pound senior from Medford had a running style, as described by Preece, as "Take no prisoners."

"If he broke loose on a run, which he did probably three or four times a game, I don't remember him going straight for the goal line," Preece said recently. "He'd go in that direction, but he'd go find somebody to hit. He'd change direction to go take on a defensive back. He'd be in the locker room before the game talking about which defensive back he wanted to hit.

"I remember before we played USC, he was saying he was going to find Mark Battle, who had kind of a big mouth, and crush him."

Enyart was a perfect fit for head coach Dee Andros' "Power T" football – in fact, when Andros literally wrote the book on the subject, it was Enyart's photo that graced the cover. The name evokes a bruising straight-ahead game, but it was an option-oriented offense that could include plenty of carries for halfbacks and the quarterback, depending on what the defense offered.

AN INJURY AND AN ADJUSTMENT

Oregon State entered the 1968 season fresh off the 1967 "Giant Killers" season that brought national notoriety with a win over No. 2 Purdue, a tie with No. 2 UCLA and a win over No. 1 Southern California. Enyart, moving over from the linebacker position he played as a sophomore in 1966, had rushed for 851 yards in 1967, earning All-Pacific-8 honors.

Now the Beavers started the season ranked No. 8 nationally and harboring Rose Bowl aspirations.

In OSU's season-opener at Iowa, Preece ran for 55 yards on eight carries before being knocked out of the game midway through the third quarter with a dislocated left shoulder. The Beavers, leading 20-14 at that point, couldn't hold the lead and lost 21-20.

Hence, Preece wasn't on the trip to Utah for the season's second game; he'd miss that game and likely the contest against Washington the following week. The Beavers' backup quarterback was sophomore Gary Barton, but the offense coughed up a few late turnovers that assisted Iowa's rally. Looking for someone with more experience, Andros and his staff turned to senior Bobby Mayes, a former high school quarterback who was playing wingback for the Beavers that fall, to step in and run the offense.

The coaches let Mayes know on Tuesday that he'd be taking snaps at Utah. He got to practice the position Tuesday and Wednesday, then the Beavers left for the game on Thursday.

"Steve (Preece) had his arm in a sling, and he worked with me on footwork and how to do that," Mayes said recently. "So I only had two days of the plays and what we would do. I was a high school throwing quarterback, but not college. I was average. I could pass, but it wasn't my strength."

Mayes had some things going for him, though. He was also a sprinter on the OSU track and field team, clocked at 9.8 seconds in the 100-yard dash, so he could add speed when the Beavers opted to take the ball outside. Mayes had also played several positions at Oregon State and knew the offense from a variety of perspectives.

"I kind of paid attention to the plays as we got our playbook every week," Mayes said. "But for that particular time it was really rushed. I had not played or even thought about playing quarterback that year."

SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE

That Saturday morning in Salt Lake City, Mayes was more than a little nervous and that didn't get his day off to an ideal start. At the team's pregame meal, he mistakenly put sugar on his steak; Mayes pretended to eat it while surreptitiously dropping the pieces under the table and settling for the accompanying baked potato and side dishes as his fare.

Before the game, Mayes talked with Enyart.

"I said, 'Bill, you know the team needs you, you know the University needs you – but I need you,'" Mayes said. "You've got to give me everything today. I mean everything.' And he said, 'You got it. I'll give you everything I have. And I'll raise my hand when I don't have anything left.'"

They knew Enyart would be a key to the game. With an inexperienced quarterback, the least-risky option in Oregon State's offense was to hand the ball off to the fullback, and that's what the Beavers decided they'd do until the Utes showed they could stop it.

"The coaches said, 'Let's start with Enyart and we'll see how that goes,'" Mayes said. "And you've got the speed, we can use you on the sweeps, and you've got (wingback) Billy Main and (halfback) Don Summers. So we're going to take a running attack at them and we'll go to the pass if we need to.'

"But we never needed to."

Preece's recollection of what he heard on the radio was correct: Enyart had 104 yards on 17 carries by the end of the first quarter. He added 41 yards on 11 carries in the second quarter, 100 yards on 15 carries in the third, and 54 yards on seven carries in the fourth quarter. By then, he'd scored on runs of 7 yards in the first quarter, 25 yards in the third quarter and 14 yards in the fourth.

On none of those 50 carries was Enyart thrown for a loss, and only twice was he limited to no gain.

"They just couldn't stop him," Mayes said. "I mean, he was an amazing guy. What I worried about a lot was making sure the handoff was right because if he ran into me, I'd be out of the game. But he kept coming into the huddle saying, 'I'm okay, I'm okay.' And that was the Buff … It was like a rhythm we had. I kind of understood the time in the huddle, and for him to catch his breath if he'd just run."

Mayes had a 6-yard touchdown run of his own in the third quarter, and Enyart's final scoring run had put the Beavers up 24-7 as they'd missed all four of their conversion tries. At that point, Andros pulled Enyart and most of his other starters, only to send them back in after Utah managed a pair of scores to get within 24-21.

The Beavers attempted just four passes in the game, completing none and having one of Barton's throws intercepted.

"Coach Andros always said, 'If you pass the ball, two out of three things that can happen are bad,'" Preece said. "That was his favorite deal. And you knew that this was going to be a game where if he could hand it off to Bill Enyart every time, he would."

Take Enyart's carries and add eight more by his backup, Duane Barton, and fullbacks carried the ball on 58 of OSU's 97 plays on the day. For his part, Mayes finished with 21 yards on 12 carries; Summers added 53 yards on 12 carries and Main 22 yards on six carries.

Mayes pointed out that racking up 427 yards rushing meant a lot of great work by the offensive line: center John Didion, guards Rocky Rasley and Clyde Smith, tackles Kent Scott, Lee Jamison and Roger Stalick, and tight end Nick Rogers. Enyart's gains also took blocking by the other backs.

"All of the offensive line blocking was terrific and those other backs – Billy Main, Donny Summers and Bryce Huddleston – put on some great blocks," Enyart told reporters after the game. "I used to play against Summers when he was at Grants Pass, and I'm real happy to be with him here. He had another fine game."

Mayes laughed when recalling Summers' day at Utah.

"Donny Summers was pound-for-pound the toughest guy I've ever seen," Mayes said. "And he came in, he's maybe barely 5-foot-9, and he came into the huddle with maybe two or three minutes left in the game. You don't talk in in huddles, but he said, 'Jesus Christ, Mayes, I was 6-foot-3 when this game started and look at me now. I have to take out that linebacker every time.' And everybody started laughing, and we had to call time out. It was just a classic."

Mayes went on to earn an MBA from Harvard, have a successful business career and mentor students at Oregon State; he is currently an executive coach, helping business leaders identify ways to improve their organizations. He remembers that afternoon as a day when a Beaver team that had lost one of its natural leaders – Preece – had the rest of its 20 or more natural leaders step up to get a job done.

"I never thought we'd lose," Mayes said. "It's really interesting. The score of the game never entered my mind. It was, 'How's the energy of the team?' … I just thought, 'What do we do when they stop him?' And then the time ran out. I just wish he would have gone one more yard (to reach 300)."

THE AFTERMATH

As the Oregon Journal's Bill Mulflur summed it up for his readers: "The most devastating earthquake to ever hit the Intermountain area left frustrated Indians (one of Utah's nicknames at the time was "Redskins") lying all over Ute Stadium. Bill (Earthquake) Enyart convulsed the Utes with seismic shocks which called for a maximum 8.9 reading on the Richter Scale."

Mayes didn't know Enyart's numbers for the game until he saw a stat sheet in the locker room; he doesn't think anyone on the OSU sideline knew the sort of yardage or number of carries the big fullback was rolling up while the game was going.

The obvious question Enyart got after the game: Are you tired? Yes, he admitted. "But it wasn't bad," he said. "That break I got early in the fourth quarter gave me enough rest."

In addition to being a new OSU record, the 299 yards was a Pacific-8 record, besting the 296 yards gained by Washington's Hugh McElhenny against Washington State in 1950. The former Beaver record had been Dave Mann's 233 yards against Utah in 1951. His 50 carries bested his own OSU mark of 35 set in the 1967 Civil War at Oregon.

"He's the toughest, strongest running back I've ever seen," Utah coach Bill Meek said. "But don't forget he's got a big, strong line in front of him."

Andros, who had coached a number of standout fullbacks – including Pete Pifer in the years preceding Enyart - called Enyart the best of the bunch

"He hangs in there and he showed he can cut and run for daylight," Andros said. "He's more physical."

Enyart would go on to rush for 1,304 yards and 17 touchdowns in 1968, earning All-Pac-8, All-Coast and All-America honors. The Beavers finished 7-3, with a 17-13 loss at No. 1 Southern California costing them a trip to the Rose Bowl. Ten players from that team would eventually be selected in the National Football League draft.

ABOUT "BUFF"

Enyart's interests and abilities extended far beyond the football field. He'd been an outstanding basketball player and baseball pitcher at Medford High. Preece, who went on to play nine years in the National Football League before embarking on a real estate career in the Portland area, said of Enyart: "He was a great athlete. He played basketball here in all the intramural leagues and he was a great baseball pitcher, thought about playing baseball here at Oregon State. He could do anything."

At Oregon State, Enyart was also a two-time Academic All-American, earning a degree in Economics.

"The thing people don't know about Bill is, he was brilliant," Preece said. "He crazily read everything he could get his hands on, whether it was fiction or non-fiction or schoolbooks. He would just read.

"Someone would be talking about something in a physics class, and the next thing you know Buff would have a physics book and want to talk about it. He looked to engage with professors. I had him in a couple classes where he would continually get in these raucous discussions with professors."

Enyart's studiousness also included his sport. Preece recalls teammate Jerry Belcher sharing some of Enyart's inquisitive nature.

"They loved to have discussions about football plays like they were geometry questions," Preece said. "It was just very analytical, good stuff. We had a lot of guys like that."

In the socially turbulent late 1960s, Enyart found himself fully engaged, often taking the liberal position on a relatively conservative campus.

"He was always that way," Preece said, noting Enyart often attended campus events with Dick Fosbury, a Medford High classmate who was revolutionizing high jumping. "The protests weren't just about Vietnam, they were about a lot of issues. Buff was just wired that way. And he was probably my first lesson in that kind of an attitude."

Preece had grown up in Boise, a devout Mormon from a conservative family. Enyart, according to a 2015 Portland Tribune story by Kerry Eggers, was born in Oklahoma and moved to Oregon at age 11; his family settled in Hood River and his parents worked as fruit pickers, then moved to Medford when Bill was entering ninth grade.

"Buff was from the same kind of background, but really out there as far as his thinking on social issues and taking on different kinds of things I never would have even thought of," Preece said. "Most guys didn't think of that."

Part of that could have come from those Hood River days. The Tribune story quoted OSU teammate Tom Greerty as saying Enyart worked alongside adults in the orchard because his family needed the money.

While his political views may not have meshed with all his teammates, they didn't separate Enyart from them.

"Buff was probably closer to more teammates than anyone else," Preece said. "He had 30 best friends. He and Jerry Sullivan were inseparable; they'd grown up together. But Buff would laugh, discuss, have fun and give solace to everybody."

POSTSCRIPT

In the 1969 professional football draft, Enyart was taken in the second round by, fittingly enough, the Buffalo Bills. He spent two seasons blocking for O.J. Simpson, then one season as a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders before injuries hastened his retirement.

By 1995, he was in Bend, Oregon, to begin a long career as a case manager for Medicaid.

Enyart was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2011. He had been inducted into the State of Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 2003 and the OSU Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.

Enyart's 299 yards and 50 carries at Utah stood as the conference's single-game records until 1976, when USC's Ricky Bell went for 347 yards on 51 carries against Washington State. As the 2018 season began, Enyart's 299 yards still rank No. 11 in the Pac-12 record book for rushing yards in a game.

On February 10, 2015, Enyart died in Turner, Oregon of prostate cancer.

"I've met a lot of athletes," Sullivan, his Medford pal and OSU teammate, told the Tribune at that time. "But I haven't met anybody like Bill Enyart, the person he was. If he hadn't played sports, he'd still be the most interesting person you could meet.

"Just an amazing man."

The Record - 50 Years Later

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