When you walk around with a moniker like Ollie Matson Jr., you expect to live in your father's shadow.
Ollie Matson Sr. is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He spent 14 seasons as an NFL running back with four teams. Matson Sr. was a five-time All-Pro and the Most Valuable Player of the 1956 Pro Bowl.
In 1952, Matson Sr. won a bronze medal in the 400-meter race and a silver medal in the 4x400-meter relay at the summer Olympic Games. In 1951, as a senior halfback on the University of San Francisco's football team, Matson Sr. led the nation in rushing yardage and was named an All-American.
You can't gauge how good Matson Sr. was just by looking at his NFL stats. The poor man had to suffer for five seasons playing for the perennially hapless but nonetheless entertaining Chicago Cardinals. In 1959, the Cardinals traded Matson Sr. to the Los Angeles Rams for nine players.
And some observers still feel the Rams got the better part of that deal.
Matson Jr. was no slouch as an athlete either, excelling in football, basketball and baseball. When it came time for him to go pro in a sport, Matson Jr. gave hoops the thumbs up.
"I chose basketball because I enjoyed it more," Matson Jr. said during a recent interview, "and to get out of my father's shadow."
But tonight Matson Jr. will stride back into that shadow. He'll do it proudly, and with joy. He'll be at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., when Matson Sr. and his teammates from that 1951 USF football squad will be honored in a pregame ceremony.
In 1951, USF's football team won all its games; members of the squad expected to get a bowl bid. Matson Jr. still remembers what his father told him about the team's anticipation before they won their last regular-season game.
"He told me they knew in their minds they had one more game to play and if they won it, they would go to a bowl game," Matson Jr. recalled.
They did win, and got their bowl invitation. But they were asked to leave Matson Sr. and Burl Toler, the only two black players on the team, at home. They wouldn't be welcome if they played against teams from the then-still-segregated South.
Members of the USF team took a vote: Either the entire team - including Matson and Toler - would go, or the team wouldn't go. The squad, which featured future Hall of Famers Bob St. Clair and Gino Marchetti - who's fairly well known in these parts - never got to play in a bowl game. The team members took a principled stand and showed extraordinary character in an era when character still mattered.
