You have some major historical errors in your most recent piece on UB football history.
1. The 1951 USF team turned down an invitation to the Orange Bowl and not the Fiesta Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl did not come into existence until 1971.
2. The Run to Division I did not begin in 1980. It began in February 1986.
3. President Sample did not create the Intercollegiate Athletics Board (or the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee as you called it). It was already in existence.
4. When football was brought back in 1977 UB was not stuck in Division III. In the 1976-1977 school year UB competed in all sports at the Division I level. There was a plan to drop to Division III before football was announced as coming back to UB. For the 1977-1978 baseball remained at the Division I level (and did so until it was dropped at the time of move back to Division I) and hockey remained at the Division II level until it was dropped at the same time as baseball.
5. You refer to the first African America “ref” in the NFL on the 1951 USF team. Burl Toler was not a referee in the NFL. He was a Field Judge and Head Linesman. He was the first African American official in the NFL.
6. Also left out in referring to the 1951 USF team was the student publicist. It was Alvin “Pete” Rozelle.
7. In addition to the obvious links between the 1951 USF Dons and the 1958 Bulls, I believe that Coach Dando was also on the staff at SMU when they integrated the Southwest Conference with Jerry LeVias in 1965.
8. Calling the original stadium on the Amherst Campus the first on campus stadium is wrong. When football was brought back, as it was before football was dropped, the games were played on the Main Street Campus at Rotary Field. It was a fine facility, which had fallen into disrepair from nonuse, and in my opinion was a better facility for football, than where they moved to. Also the Stadium they moved to is now Walter Kunz Stadium, not Kuntz.
9. In the award winners it should be Steve Nappo not Nappa.
10. You also left off the list of award winners under Coach Dando. The first honoree was Larry “MMLL” Rothman. He was 1978 All ECAC Upstate New York Division III as a defensive tackle. He won the award basically for his dominating performance in the win over Albany. That was the first big win for the program as Albany had been to the NCAA Division III playoffs in 1977 and the loss basically knocked them out of a return trip in 1978.
11. In your last chapter you initially had President Ketter as a villain in the demise of UB football. Now you make him out to be a hero in the return of UB football. If you are writing history there are a set of proper facts. When it was pointed out that Ketter was not the President of UB when football was dropped you just changed the name to the correct person but not the reasons why they did what they did. Changing a name does not mean that what was written about what a person did is true. What you did was to speculate as to what a specific person did 40 years ago and you speculated about the wrong person. If you do not know why something happened you have two options. The first is to say something happened without giving the reason why it happened. The second is to do more research as to the why.
UB Football 101 - A Summer Long Series on UB Football's Past
