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America’s Greatest Generation returns from WWII to lead Arkansas Tech football to a historic undefeated season.
College Football’s Return in 1945
In August 2025, Mother Nature saved some of her most unpleasant summer days for the week college students reported for the fall semester. With temperatures reaching 100 degrees in most of Arkansas’ college towns, the only fall-like atmosphere on campus was created by preparation for football season.
Teams practiced at dawn, while cheerleaders were hard at work in a broiling sun. Regardless of the late-summer heat, the band’s halftime show had to be ready in a few weeks. Despite the last symptoms of summer, the exciting promise of cooler days at festive college football weekends was in the air.
Suddenly, as if the calendar and the sights and sounds of college football controlled the weather, September brought those chilly, invigorating mornings, a few leaves trickled down from the maple trees, and college football was in full swing. Football season is a special time on college campuses, but perhaps no return to football weekends in Arkansas was as welcome as the historic fall of 1945.
In mid-August 1945, when the capitulation of Japan was a foregone conclusion, the members of the Arkansas Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (AIC) met hurriedly to determine if a fall football season was possible on such short notice. Motivated by a bolstered enrollment and a determination to return to normal college life as soon as possible, all four of the conference champions from the five seasons before the suspension of sports in 1942 were all-in for football in 1945.
Non-conference opponents were located, and a home-and-home schedule was created. In the fall semester of 1945, Ouachita Baptist College, Henderson State Teachers College, Arkansas State Teachers College, and Arkansas Tech returned to a campus alive with the sights and sounds of college football.
Most of the conference teams lamented the size and inexperience of the players who reported for practice. State Teacher’s coach, Charles McGibbony, described his team as “More like a high school team” than a college roster. At Ouachita, champions of the league’s last season in 1941, Coach Bob Cowan reported his squad was the “lightest team the school had fielded in 40 years.” The players who reported to Arkansas Tech were exceptionally different.
In Russellville, most of the men arriving for practice on September 9 were on the Tech campus for a second time. Their first experience as Wonder Boys had been four or five years earlier. At that time, they were 18-year-old teenagers with no college football experience. In 1945, these men were veterans of World War II. Hardened by physical training and matured by war, most of Tech’s returning players were in their mid-20s with previous football experience.
Arkansas Tech also had Coach John Tucker. Tucker had inspired the term “Wonder Boys” by his play as a football star in the early 20s. An unusually scholarly student-athlete, after playing six seasons at Tech and a stint as an assistant coach, Tucker enrolled in a master’s degree program at Alabama. He was a starting halfback on a 1930 Crimson Tide National Championship team that also won the Rose Bowl.
While at Alabama, Tucker was also chosen as the outstanding student in the master’s degree chemistry program. Equipped with experience at college football’s highest level and the analytical mind of a scholar, he would become a legend in Arkansas college football coaching.
Of the 30 young men who reported for football at Tech in 1945, more than 75% were WWII veterans, and eight members of the usual starting lineup had worn a Tech uniform in a previous season. Two of the regulars, Cobb Fowler of Dumas and Morrilton’s Bud Mobley, had been part of the 206th Field Artillery team. The much-publicized military squad stationed at Camp Murray, Washington, was christened “The Arkansas Travelers.” The Travelers dominated West Coast Military football in 1941. The departure of the 206th National Guard Unit from college life to active duty was big news in 1940. Life Magazine ran a feature pictorial in its February 2 issue.
The 1945 Season
Game 1. Arkansas Tech 80 – Bacone 0
On October 4, 1945. Arkansas Tech defeated Bacone College of Muskogee, Oklahoma, 80-0, in the first college game played on the Russellville campus since November 2, 1941.
Game 2. Arkansas Tech 14 – Louisiana Monroe 0
The Arkansas Gazette estimated a crowd of 4,000 packed Buerkle Field on the afternoon of Thursday, October 11, to see the Wonder Boys defeat a formidable team from Northeast Center (University of Louisiana, Monroe) 14-0.
Game 3. Arkansas Tech 22 – Henderson State Teachers – 0
On October 18, the Wonder Boys ran up 254 yards rushing, highlighted by a 59-yard run by superstar halfback Aubrey “Cobb” Fowler. The tough little running back from Dumas would eventually star for the Razorbacks and play pro football for the Baltimore Colts.
Game 4. Arkansas Tech 31 – Ouachita Baptist – 0
For the first road game of the season, Tucker divided his team into two teams, a strategy he had learned as a player on the University of Alabama National Championship team of 1930. Tech dominated from the beginning. “Fowler ran for an 84-yard touchdown before the fans had settled into their seats and led 19-0 at the half.” – Arkansas Gazette, October 25
Game 5. Arkansas Tech 65 – Arkansas State Teachers (UCA) 0
By November 1, the question was not, would Tech remain undefeated, but would they allow a team to score? The Wonder Boys scored at will in a 65-0 rout of Arkansas State Teachers (UCA).
Game 6. Arkansas Tech 25 – Henderson 6
In the 1945-1946 Tech yearbook, the staff described the 19-point win over Henderson at Arkadelphia on November 16 as an “Oh, Unhappy Day.” Tech students would forever rue the day the Wonder Boys allowed an opponent to score. A member of the 1945 squad laughed when he recalled, “We were mad at Coach Tucker for leaving the subs in and allowing a touchdown, but no one dared to let him know.”
Game 7. Arkansas Tech 26 – Ouachita 0
“If Aubrey Fowler made a mistake today, it was not calling on himself more often.” -Orville Henry, Arkansas Gazette. Fowler scored every Tech point on four touchdowns and two extra points in a 26-0 Dad’s Day victory over Ouachita, played on November 22.
Game 8. Arkansas Tech 48 – Arkansas State Teachers 0
Arkansas Tech closed its historic undefeated season on Thanksgiving Day, November 29, with a 48-0 rout of rival Arkansas State Teachers. It was a season for the ages and a triumphant return for a group of men who had been away from the normalcy of college football for four years.
Tom Brokaw would later include the young men and women of the World War II Era as part of “America’s Greatest Generation.” Their sacrifices and accomplishments remain a source of state and national pride, 80 years after the end of WWII.
Similarly, the story of the 1945 Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys endures in the annals of Arkansas Tech history. In retrospect, the 1945 Tech squad produced the most dominant football season by any team in Arkansas college football history: a conference championship, an undefeated season, 311 points scored, and only six points allowed.
1945 Arkansas Tech Football Roster
| *Aubrey “Cobb” Fowler, Dumas | Howard Faulkner, Conway |
| *John “Bud” Mobley, Morrilton | Alton Shockley, Lamar |
| Jack Willis, Bald Knob | Earl Dean Crosswhite, Harrison |
| *Harold Wilson, North Little Rock | Herman Crabtree, Atkins |
| Jesse Lee Grace, Danville | Darrell Baker, Russellville |
| Caroll Trimble, Springdale | Gail Westover, Rogers |
| *Steed White, Bauxite | Kennith Gray, Paris |
| Carl Sorrels, Atkins | J. C. Bohannan, Mulberry |
| *James Tomlinson, Hamburg | Blake Partain, Booneville |
| *Roy White, Benton | Harold Smith, Little Rock |
| Bill Cloer, Springdale | Paul Watkins, Rogers |
| J. C. Dodd, Benton | Thomas Vines, Russellville |
| Phillip Wilcoxen, Van Buren | Leroy Fitzhugh, Manager |
*All Conference
Special thanks to Arkansas Tech University, Dr. Tom DeBlack, and Director of University Relations, Sam Strasner.
Cover Photo: 1945 Wonder Boys lineup; Back row: Carl Sorrels, Jesse Grace, Jack Willis, Aubrey “Cobb” Fowler – Front row: Alton Shockley, Herman Crabtree, Steed White, Jimmie Tomlinson, Harold Wilson, Bud Mobley, Thomas Vines (photo 1945 Agricola)
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