No. 2: Miller-era uniforms were one of a kind
Fashion in the ’80s was something esle.
This was the decade that gave the world leg warmers, neon shoe laces, acid washed Bugle Boys, jelly bracelets, and parachute pants. The basic message was more is better, and during an era many would claim was marked by excess in general, everyone wanted more.
In times like those, it makes sense that Tyrone’s football team would reimagine the team’s game-day gear and in the process completely break the mold for football uniforms in the borough.
However, far from accentuating a team that was dressed for show and not for dough, the uniforms of Tom Miller’s 1980s Golden Eagles functioned like the power suits one might have found stock brokers wearing on Wall Streets. They marked a team that was there on Fridays for business, and business in the 80s was pretty good.
Under Miller’s guidance, Tyrone brought home its first championship since the 1960s, and set itself up to win the program’s first District 6 championship before the decade was finished. And in pursuit of a championship no team had won before, it donned a uniform that was just as groundbreaking.
Miller took over the program in 1979, replacing John Shonewolf, who had just wrapped up his second stint as Tyrone’s coach. Miller was a Tyrone football lifer, having starred for the Golden Eagles as a quarterback in the 1960s before going on to play in college at Colorado State. He had taken a job as Tyrone’s elementary physical education director in 1968, coached with both Shonewolf and Steve Magulick, and essentially spent a decade immersed in youth athletics in Tyrone.
The uniforms he inherited were simple but clean: orange pants with black stipes on the legs; white helmets with black/orange/black racing stripes and number decals; plain black jerseys with white trim. It was a neat look, and it remained for Miller’s first season.
But when the 80s rolled around, Miller made changes. The jerseys stayed black with white trim, but Miller added orange stripes on the shoulders in a look that had become common on hockey sweaters like the New York Rangers. The pants remained orange, but the single black stripe on each leg was replaced with black squares, like a dotted line.
On top, Miller had a new decal placed on his helmets, an angry eagle that became ubiquitous Tyrone iconography as the decade moved forward.
These were uniforms unlike any other Tyrone had worn or any they would see on their schedule.
After some rocky times in the 1970s, Miller established the program as a consistent winner, with records on the plus side of .500 in each of his first three seasons. By 1982, the team was ready to level up, and while Miller is generally remembered as an offensive coach, the Eagles went to another level on the back of one of the most outstanding defenses in program history.
In ’82, Tyrone surrendered 105 points, a strong number in line with some of Miller’s previous teams (85 in 1980 and 101 in 1981), but what made the defense special was its proclivity for creating turnovers. That season, Tyrone forced 37 turnovers, including 23 interceptions. Kevin Jenkins alone had seven.
With Marty Kimmel running well enough to become the Eagles’ first 1,000-yard back since 1978, Tyrone opened the season with seven straight wins and looked like a lock to win its first Big 8 championship.
But the football gods have a strong sense of irony. In the team’s first loss of the season in Week 8, a 27-10 non-conference defeat at the hands of Bedford, two Tyrone turnovers in the second half opened the doors for the Bisons, which had fallen behind 10-0. The giveaways weren’t unusual because during the ’82 season, when the defense was generating almost four turnovers a game, the offense fumbled 29 times, losing 19.
Cue Alanis Morrissette.
A week later against unbeaten Chief Logan, in a game that meant the Big 8 title, Tyrone’s secondary, which had registered more than two picks per game to that point, was diced for 287 yards through the air. So although the Eagles once again jumped to a 10-0 lead, they were unable to keep pace with the Mingoes passing game and lost 21-10.
It was like rain on your wedding day.
District 6 was still three years away from instituting a playoff system, so the loss to Chief Logan meant no Big 8, no Western Conference, no nothing, despite the team’s best record since 1970.
But when District playoffs arrived in ’85, Tyrone was there, bowing out in the semifinals. It would take one more year of seasoning before the Eagles were ready to finally get Miller the championship he had always sought but never won at Tyrone, going back as far as 1961 when a pair of 1-point losses kept his senior team from harvesting gold.
In ’86, the team needed few changes because so many talented players returned. The one thing that did change was the team’s helmets when Miller opted for orange lids, breaking away from white on top for the first time since his own playing days under Ron Corrigan.
Led by senior vets like Kevin Ferner, Steve Weyer, and Roger Branstetter, the Golden Eagles went 7-2-2 and defeated Philipsburg-Osceola in the semifinals to advance to Tyrone’s first District football championship game. There, they faced rival Huntingdon, with whom they had tied in Week 2.
It was a nip-and-tuck game played in the frigid cold at Hollidaysburg’s Golden Tiger Stadium, and like ’82, the least likely events were the ones that cost Tyrone most dearly. The ‘Cats were led by Scott Hoover, a back who would accumulate more than 2,700 yards in his career, but the game turned on the one pass Huntingdon attempted – a 57-yard bomb from Tom Hudy to Matt Elder in the second half that was the difference in a 6-0 game.
But while Tyrone didn’t win Districts, the Eagles were awarded the Western Conference championship – the program’s first title since 1964.
The championship game would be Miller’s last at Tyrone for a while because he stepped down after the season, opening the door for a new coach to take a crack at winning the program’s first District title.
Like Miller, Chuck Hoover was a Tyrone alum who played football in the ’60s. Unlike Miller, Hoover had become a Huntingdon guy, a coach in the Bearcat system since 1975. And in ’87, being a Huntingdon guy was akin to being a Bellwood guy. It was like the school district had gone out and hired the enemy.
After dropping season-opening games to B-A and Huntingdon, fans had to wonder if the plan was for the Bearcats to somehow get one of their own on the inside and destroy Tyrone from within, but Hoover was thinking just the opposite. In fact, he was sure he and his staff of Huntingdon loyalists would get run out of town with losses to the program’s two biggest rivals.
Through two weeks, it seemed, nothing was working. Well, nothing except the uniforms. There, Hoover towed the line and kept Miller’s classics, including the orange helmets.
But things turned around with a Week 3 win over Lewistown, and soon after was born the legend of the Cardiac Kids. Over the next month, Tyrone would win three games with no time on the clock, improving to 5-2 and putting itself in a position to win every title on the table.
It started with a 7-6 win over Bellefonte where the Golden Eagles lost four fumbles, threw two interceptions, had a punt and a field goal attempt blocked, and put the Red Raiders in position to attempt two game-winning field goals inside the Tyrone 7, the last one sailing wide with no time left.
The next week, Tyrone defeated Bald Eagle Area 21-14 without scoring a single offensive touchdown. The Eagles’ own Scott Hoover returned a first half kick for a score and then, after BEA had gone ahead 20-14 with seconds left, he returned the final kickoff for another touchdown and the win.
The capper came in Week 7. Playing on Homecoming against Philipsburg-Osceola, the teams were tied 7-7 with time enough for one last play from the P-O 37. A tie would have dashed Tyrone’s hopes for a Big 8 title.
Quarterback Bob Mertiff dropped back and threw a bomb into coverage to tight end Bill Kimberling, but the ball was tipped and sent end-over-end into the air. Falling on his back, Kimberling made the catch, and the Eagles had stolen a 13-7 win. (You can watch the play here.)
Tyrone would ultimately win the Big 8, Western Conference, and Central Counties, but their biggest test came in the District championship game, played once again against Huntingdon, this time on the ‘Cats’ home field.
Once again, the Eagles fell behind, and once again it took late magic to secure a win. Down 19-13 in the fourth quarter, Tyrone drove as far as Huntingdon’s 10 on its final possession. There, the Eagles dialed up the Friday Special, a halfback pass to Tom Getz, who corralled the pass in the back of the endzone to tie the game. John Supina, who threw the pass, then kicked the extra point for the victory.
Tyrone had won 10 in a row, and Hoover became the best rookie coach in program history before Jason Wilson repeated the first-year championship feat in 2014. But the road ended there because the PIAA wouldn’t hold statewide playoffs for another year.
Hoover stuck around two more years, going 8-3 in 1988 and 2-8 in 1989, and Tim Stone took over for one season in 1990. But the uniforms remained unchanged (although the Eagle helmet decals were out for ’90).
With the exception of one season when Shonewolf returned to coach in 1991, the orange pants with black squares and jerseys with orange stripes remained the Eagles’ go-to stylings all the way up to the Franco era in 1994, and even he used them for a season, with minor changes.
More championships were on their way, along with a totally new look that tossed aside the bright colors of the 80s and reached for something much more traditional.
The Franco era will forever be linked to the single-most prodigious period in the history of Tyrone’s football program, one that saw Tyrone play for state championships three times. In that way, the black squared pants of the generation prior are kind of like the act opening up for Taylor Swift. No matter how good it gets, what’s coming next is going to be better.
But they were good, and they will forever be linked to the program’s first District championship.
ORANGE AND BLACK 