1936 Minnesota Football Team Hotel Fire: Timothy Brown detailed an incident from 1936 where the University of Minnesota football team, coached by Bernie Beerman, experienced a hotel fire while traveling for a game against Washington. While the team was staying at the 175-room Florence Hotel in Missoula, Montana, a fire broke out at 4:00 in the morning. Because the building lacked an alarm system, a newspaper reporter discovered the smoke, prompting a manual evacuation. Although two players were initially missing, they were safely located after using a fire escape. While the team lost many personal belongings, such as watches, jewelry, and national championship charms, their game equipment remained safely on the Pullman train cars. The team traveled to Seattle and won their game 14-7, and the Minnesota company Joins later replaced the lost championship charms.

The conversation is based on Tim's recent article titled: When The Gophers Played With Fire (1936)- https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-when-the-gophers-played

⏰ Timecodes ⏰

00:06 The Gophers and Their Fiery Challenge

02:35 The Lawrence Hotel Fire Incident

04:25 The Aftermath of the Fire

06:16 The Aftermath of the Fire

07:16 Exploring the Depths of Football History

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Imagine losing your gear to a devastating fire right in the middle of a grueling road trip.

Do you fold or do you fight?

Today, football historian Timothy P. Brown joins us to discuss a football archaeology article he wrote, when the Gophers Played with Fire.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey there.

Good to see you once again and look forward to chatting.

I do want, instead of starting out with a dad joke, I want to do a quiz and I want to see how smart you are.

So finish.

Everybody already knows I'm not very smart.

So.

Well, let's, let's see just how smart or not smart.

Okay, so finish this sentence.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

You got it.

Wow, you're good at this stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

They went back there in like 41 as well.

But anyway, so, you know, it was a big deal for them.

And their coach at the time was Bernie Beerman, who had played at Montana and coached at Montana before.

He went to like, Tulane and then he ended up at Minnesota where he had his greatest success.

But anyway, so what they ended up doing was they took the train with Pullman cars, so sleeping cars from Minneapolis out to I to Missoula, Montana, which is where the University of Montana is.

And, you know, I think, you know, Bernie wanted to meet, meet up some people and they practiced there and stuff like that.

So anyways, they, you know, they were staying overnight.

So they stay at this Lawrence Hotel, which was a 175 room hotel, so pretty decent size hotel.

And yeah, so that's kind of a boring story until 4 o' clock in the morning rolls around and one of the reporters, newspaper reporters who's accompanying the team, awakens to smoke.

And initially he thinks it's a forest fire, but realizes, no, this is you know, he, like, opens his door, there's smoke in the hallway, so he runs downstairs.

You know, at the time, there's buildings didn't have alarm systems, right.

You know, so he ran downstairs, alerted the front desk, and they're calling, you know, using the switchboard to call the rooms, the bellboys, running through the floors, knocking on doors, waking people up.

And so they end up in a situation where they kind of do roll call.

You know, the team does roll call out in front of the hotel, and they're missing two guys.

They're both ends.

And so the end coach runs back into the burning building to try to rescue them, and he, you know, it was.

The environment's too terrible.

He ends up backing out.

But luckily, these two guys had escaped, like, through the back end of the hotel and some fire escape.

So they were safe.

And in fact, you know, pretty much everybody was safe.

There were some people affected by smoke, but nothing substantial.

But the building burned down completely.

So all these guys lost, you know, whatever personal belongings if they didn't grab it on the way out.

They lost everything.

A lot of them didn't have shoes.

They, you know, their, you know, their books.

They didn't have laptops at the time, so they didn't lose those.

But like, a lot.

A lot of guys, they lost their watches, they lost jewelry, and including charms from their previous national championships.

So, you know, different awards they'd received.

So pretty much everything was gone.

And so they end up sleeping the night in the Pullman car and.

Or pulling cars.

And they eventually arrive in Washington.

And during the game, somebody broke into their locker room and stole other stuff that they, you know, so if you didn't lose in the fire, you probably lost it while you're playing.

Tim was there.

Football equipment must have been on the train then.

They didn't take it into the hotel.

I went back and looked in the.

In the articles, and I didn't see anything about their equipment.

So I assumed that their equipment was largely on the train, at least they're, you know, the.

The gear, Their.

Their game gear.

You know, they probably worked out, but just did it in, like, shorts and T shirts or something like that, you know, when they were in Missoula.

But anyways, they made it to Seattle like, the following day and, you know, played a game.

They ended up winning.

They won, like, 14, seven.

So, you know, and that.

But.

And then even stuff like, you know, Jostens, which at least at the time was a Minnesota company, and they were the ones that had made all those charms.

They Said, okay, hey, we'll.

We'll redo all the charms for everybody that lost them.

So, you know, the guys were able to get those things back, but.

And then the team ended up going on.

They actually finished second in the Big Ten to Northwestern, but they were the national champions that year.

So.

Anyway, it's just one of those crazy things.

You just imagine, you know, a team experiencing a fire like that.

Right.

And basically losing everything.

You know, I mean, they basically had the clothes on their back and that's it.

So some guys were in pajamas, some guys, you know, sweatshoots or whatever they had.

So anyways, just.

They're obviously fortunate that no one was injured, at least seriously.

And so.

But just kind of a crazy story.

Yeah, still.

Still, you would think, you know, just to have some of the trauma of.

Of having that, you know, you know, a near miss, really, to.

To the whole team that.

And then they're still traveling, going and playing a game a couple days later, and, you know, they gotta travel all the way back across the country and.

And have their stuff stolen and go through all that, and to still play that.

Well, that's.

That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, and they were, you know, they were guys playing for Minnesota, so they wouldn't had any books with them, you know.

Yeah, that's the Wisconsin.

Oh, boy.

It says that by a Wisconsin guy.

I'm sure.

I'm sure you'll get some letters for that.

Maybe one of the guys had a book.

Yeah, the smart guy on the team,.

And he did.

He gave the Cliff Notes everybody else, right?

Yeah.

All right, Tim, that is really pretty cool that you go back and you find this story that, you know, I know a lot.

I've heard a lot of college football stories all the time, and I did not know that story until I read your tidbit.

And, you know, but you do this all the time, finding these things that are buried through history, and maybe you could share with folks where they can enjoy some of these.

Yeah, let's just go to footballarchaeology.com it's substack site, so you can subscribe there.

And if you subscribe, you'll get an email every time that I send out a new story.

Otherwise, you can follow on substack, which means, you know, you kind of get put in the queue, just like on, you know, Twitter or Facebook or anything like that.

And, yeah, that's about it.

So come and check it out whenever you want to.

All right.

Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming here and sharing this story, and we would love to have you investigate and research another story and come back next week and share it with us.

I'll do my best.