The 1950 Cotton Bowl Classic featured the Rice Owls and the

North Carolina Tar Heels The North Carolina Tar Heels are the college sports in the United States, intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The name Tar Heel is a nickname used to refer to individuals from the stat ...

Background

The Owls won the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

for the fourth time in 15 years. This was their second appearance in the Cotton Bowl Classic and their first since

1938 Events January * January 1 ** The new constitution of Estonia enters into force, which many consider to be the ending of the Era of Silence and the authoritarian regime. ** State-owned railway networks are created by merger, in France ...

. The Tar Heels were playing in their first ever Cotton Bowl Classic and their third bowl game in Coach Snavely's fifth season with the team. They were champions of the

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly k ...

for the 2nd time in three years. They were looking for their first ever bowl win.

Game summary

The Owls would score 27 straight points before the Tar Heels got on the board, and the Heels never recovered, despite scoring two touchdowns late. The Owls scored early in the second quarter on a Billy Burkhalter touchdown catch from

Tobin Rote Tobin Cornelius Rote (January 18, 1928 – June 27, 2000) was an American football player who played quarterback for the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL), the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football Le ...

and Bobby Lantrip scored before the half ended to make it 14–0. James "Froggy" Williams scored in the third quarter on a catch from Rote to make it 21–0, and Burkhalter ended Rice's scoring with his touchdown run to make it 27–0. Not deterred, Paul Rizzo caught a touchdown pass from Charlie Justice to make it 27–7. But the Heels only scored again on a Rizzo run with only 47 seconds left, as the Owls won their second ever Cotton Bowl Classic.

Aftermath

Snavely would not appear in another bowl game, and he left in 1953. Ten years later, the Tar Heels returned to a bowl game, which they won. The Owls would play in two more Cotton Bowl Classics after winning two more SWC titles before the decade ended, splitting the two.

Statistics

References

Cotton Bowl Cotton Bowl Classic North Carolina Tar Heels football bowl games Rice Owls football bowl games Cotton Bowl

Cotton Bowl Classic The Cotton Bowl Classic (also known as the Cotton Bowl) is an American college football bowl game that has been held annually in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex since January 1, 1937. The game was originally played at its namesake stadium in ...

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