From 'Fridge to Frisco
12/17/2019 5:04:00 PM | Football
KENT, OHIO- Â It has been 65 seasons since Kent State appeared in its first bowl game.
The 1954 Refrigerator Bowl begins a list of Kent State post-season appearances that reads more like a memory test (Refrigerator, Tangerine, Go Daddy, Frisco) than it does a bowl history. One person has been with the Golden Flashes in some capacity across those 65 seasons and all three (now four) bowl appearances. Â
Dick Kotis is a 1948 graduate of Kent State. A product of the G.I. Bill, he got his start with the Golden Flashes as a three-year member of the team. He was one of the few who were able to make the final roster in 1946. There was great interest in playing football after the war and head coach Trevor Rees had to cut a number of players because there wasn't enough equipment for everyone.
"I was one of the younger guys on those teams," Kotis remembers. "We were all veterans, and I had only served the final two and a half years in the war, mostly in the Pacific. Those teams were really well-established with the veterans, playing three, four years together."
After three successful seasons on the gridiron, Kotis turned his attention to coaching, joining Rees' staff in 1951 after coaching two seasons of high school football in Cleveland.
Kotis was the backfield coach for Rees and Kent State. In his fourth season, the Golden Flashes were able to get over the hump, posting an 8-2 record and finishing second in the Mid-American Conference. The Flashes had been knocking on the door in Kotis' first three seasons at Kent, posting a winning record in each, including a 7-2 mark in 1953.
"That 1954 team, was a unique, special team," Kotis said. "Some guys were veterans and some just had very unique stories. Lou Mariano was our best player," Kotis recalled. "We were able to get him to come to Kent State because he was completely deaf. We had to alter hand signals and make sure he could read our lips, but he and Jack Rittichier were our stars."
Mariano, a product of Canton McKinley, averaged over 10 yards per rush that 1954 season, still a school record to this day. But the 1954 season is probably best remembered for the infamous Rittichier run to help beat Bowling Green, a play that is personified in trophy form in the Kent State Football offices. Â
"Jack had these really long legs, they made him almost glide across the field," Kotis said. "He was able to turn the corner against a really good Bowling Green team. He must have run 90-some yards on one of the last plays of the game to win it for us."
The Flashes went on to win their final three games of the regular season after that 28-25 comeback win over the Falcons. They finished the regular season 8-1, with only a 14-7 loss against Ohio standing in the way of a perfect season and a MAC title.
"We thought the season was over," Kotis said. "There were probably only eight, ten bowl games at the time. We were pleasantly surprised when we got the call from the Refrigerator Bowl, we had honestly never heard of it until then."
The Refrigerator Bowl was started in 1948 by the Evansville, Indiana Junior Chamber of Commerce and JayCees as a publicity stunt. They saw a bowl game as a way to attract attention to the town while raising money for area children's hospitals. By 1954, it had outgrown the local Evansville Purple Aces to attract the likes of Arkansas State, Sam Houston State and Idaho. Kent State and its opponent, Delaware, were the biggest names in the bowl's history. By 1956, the game was finished. The draw of playing a December Bowl at an Evansville, Indiana high school was not as lucrative a draw as the JayCees had hoped.
"The whole game was quite odd," Kotis recalled. "They flew us in which was nice, but then they drove us around in firetrucks wherever we would go. Then they had each team's star player run through an old refrigerator out onto the field. For us that was Lou Mariano (seen right)."
The Bowl got its name from the three-major refrigerator manufactures located in the city's downtown. For much of the 20th century, Evansville was considered the refrigerator capital of the United States. On that December day, the game lived up to its moniker. Torrential rains and heavy wins put temperatures into the 30s at kick off. Â
Both Delaware and Kent State showed up wearing blue and gold uniforms, the bowl forgetting to coordinate with the teams ahead of time. Normally, this would be a major cause of concern, but the rain and field conditions made the colors of the uniforms irrelevant in just a few plays.
"We outsmarted ourselves in that game and made a terrible, terrible coaching mistake," Kotis said. "We thought it would be smart to have the guys change into dry, fresh uniforms at halftime. It was quite obvious in the second half that the guys wanted to stay dry, nobody wanted to hit or get hit!"
A 7-6 halftime advantage for the Golden Flashes turned into a 19-7 loss for Kent State after two fourth quarter touchdowns by Delaware were too much to overcome. That game would be the only post-season contest that Kotis coached in, resigning his post after the 1957 season to pursue a post-graduate degree in business from the University of Colorado.
"Best decision I ever made," Kotis chuckled. "It was in Colorado where I was able to meet some businessmen who were getting a fishing lure company started. I loved to fish and I figured if I could put on football clinics, why couldn't I help put on fishing clinics?"
Kotis taught the likes of President George Herbert Walker Bush and baseball hall of famer Ted Williams how to fly fish and his clinics took him all over the world. But he remained ever loyal to the Golden Flashes.
"I was a member of the Blue and Gold Club for the 1972 season," Kotis said. "A bunch of us got together to make the trip down to Florida, that was a great team."
The 1972 team consisted of hall of fame linebacker Jack Lambert and future head coaches Gary Pinkel and Nick Saban. Longtime NFL coach Dom Capers was a GA on the staff led by a hall of famer in his own right, Don James.
"That was probably our best coached team," quipped Kotis. "James was very careful, very meticulous on how he did things and he taught the guys the right way. That was evident not only in the play on the field but the number of people associated with the team that went on to become coaches themselves."
The Flashes went 6-5-1 on the year in 1972, but 4-1 in the Mid-American Conference for their first conference crown since joining the MAC in 1951. Their reward was a trip to the Tangerine Bowl, a pre-cursor to the Citrus Bowl to take on the University of Tampa Spartans. The Spartans were led by their own whos-who of talent including future Ohio State head coach Earl Bruce.
Kent State committed seven turnovers in the contest against the heavily-favored Spartans. But a dominate second half nearly erased a 21-0 Spartan lead, falling just short in a 21-18 setback.
"The biggest mistake of the whole bowl wasn't made by the Flashes, even with the turnovers," Kotis recalled. "The bowl committee had the teams staying in the same hotel! I don't know if you know this about Jack (Lambert) but he loved contact, both on AND off the field. Let's just say we had a devil of a time separating him from some of the Tampa players in the hotel."
The 1972 Tangerine Bowl was the last Kent State bowl for 50 seasons. The Flashes, despite having some NFL talent in the likes of Josh Cribbs and Julian Edelman, had just six winning seasons between 1972 and 2012.
"That 2012 season did so much for the community," Kotis said. "When we traveled down to the Go Daddy Bowl, we were surprised with how many people had followed us down there. And the community sat through that awful weather in Mobile but it was nice to see the fans rally around the team like that."
Kotis sees a lot of similarities between the 2012 and 2019 teams. Both he says have that "knack for winning games." He credits the resiliency and demeanor of the team and staff for becoming bowl eligible after the "brutal" non-conference schedule.
"It really says something about the team and staff to be able to finish off some games," Kotis acknowledges. "It'd have been really easy to pack it in after those first few games, but to rally back and finish strong, that really says something about the job Coach Lewis and his staff have done."
While the rigors of travel are proving too much for him to make the trip to Frisco this Friday, he'll be on "pins and needles and the edge of my seat" cheering on the Golden Flashes. And while a victory over Utah State in the Frisco Bowl would mean the world to him, it'd only be his second-favorite victory this season.
"I am proud to say that in my time as a player and as a coach, I never lost to The School Down the Road," Kotis exclaimed. "That is a tradition that never gets old."
