Flying Wolves of Autumn the feature of Nov. 16 Frances Humphrey lecture at Nevada State Museum
The UNR Wolf Pack and USC Trojans football teams met for just the sixth time back on Sept. 2, 2023. Prior to that, the teams had last played each other 94 years earlier on Nov. 9, 1929 at the Los Angeles Coliseum in a landmark game.
The 1920s saw the emergence of college football as one of the nation’s most popular sports. Thousands of fans across the country attended games and millions more listened on the radio. Two powerhouse teams of that era were Notre Dame and the University of Southern California (USC). Both had won national championships, and after their annual series started in 1926, football fans looked forward to their meeting as one of the premier games of the season.
In 1929, the University of Nevada football team’s schedule placed them right into the storyline of this emerging rivalry, since, one week before the Notre Dame-USC match-up in Chicago was to take place, the Wolf Pack had a game against the defending national champion USC Trojans in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Nevada captured national attention for a brief few weeks before the game by announcing that the team would fly in airplanes to southern California. Nevada Airlines provided nine Vega Lockheed monoplanes, eight four-passenger planes, and one six-passenger to take the 32 members of the team, student body president, athletic manager, team trainer and its equipment to Los Angeles.
The Flying Wolves, as they were called by the media, were the heavy underdogs. But the novelty of air travel at the time and the closeness to the date of the upcoming battle in Chicago made the Nevada game against the Trojans on November 9 a special part of football sports history.
This lecture will be presented in person and virtually through Zoom Meeting on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Nevada State Museum, 600 N. Carson Street in Carson City. Admission is $10 for adults, while members and children age 17 and under are free.
Visit https://www.carsonnvmuseum.org/event/frances-humphrey-lecture-series-the... to register in person or for the Zoom presentation.