p.1 STANFORD UNIVERSITY PROJECT: Bob Murphy Interviews INTERVIEWEE: Payton Jordan Robert W. Murphy, Jr.: [0:00] Hello again everybody, Bob Murphy here and a very special chapter in Stanford sports today because one of the dearest friend I've ever had in my life and one of my great pals, Payton Jordan, is with us. Payton, this was scheduled long before you hit your little speed bump a week or so ago. So we'll tell the folks about that, but as we start doing this, I think of you and I sharing the better part of the last 50 years telling stories to one another. Laughing with one another. Laughing at one another. [laughter] Murphy: [0:38] But here we are to recap this. Tell the folks about your little speed bump, you're doing fine, you look great, things are gonna be fine. Payton Jordan: [0:46] I'm sure everything will be fine, I had a slight bump in road, had a little lump on my neck. And they found out it was a very rare cancer and we had to do a little cutting and we'll be doing some radiation and in no time at all, I'll be back up and at them. Murphy: [1:00] They didn't give you a face lift, too, because you're looking so pretty here. [both laugh] Jordan: [1:05] They kind of knit my nerves on one side a little bit, but I'm going to be OK. Murphy: [1:09] We're going to have fun talking about this, we're in no hurry, we're just gonna kind of ramble on. Born in Southern California, you were a Southern Californian guy all the way. Talk about those early years a little bit. Jordan: [1:20] I came out of the town of Pasadena and we had a great tradition there of people who loved sports. We all took part in athletics most of the time and I had idol that I thought a great deal of, Charlie Paddock, the world's fastest human, who was my p.2 inspiration as a young pup. Thus, I became vitally interested in my sport of track and field as well football and other high school athletic events. Track and Field became the major thrust in my life. Murphy: [1:50] As you go older you ended up at USC, you played football there, you were also a great track and field athlete, your time as a Trojan, Dean Cromwell. Boy, going back to those years, there were some wonderful things happening down there. Jordan: [2:04] I had probably two of the greatest coaches you could have asked to have. Dean Cromwell and Howard Jones were probably known at that time as the premier coaches in America for track and football. So I was blessed to have good high school coaches and very, very excellent college coaches. Murphy: [2:20] Now Payt, as you got out of school, we're talking into the '30s now and coming up on the late '30s and early '40s, gosh, I was a little bit younger and I remember the guys going off to war and going into the service and all that. After getting through SC, with a great career at USC, all of a sudden the Navy and how life changed, can you talk about that a little bit? Jordan: [2:41] I'm always impressed with how much we learn when we went into the service. I happened to go into the Navy Air Flight Program, the V5 program they called it, we were very fortunate in that we had great people, lots of coaches were involved, lots of ex-athletes were involved, and as a result it was a second college education for me. I came out of there knowing a lot more than I would have known had I gone direct out of the university into my profession. Murphy: [3:12] Talk about that a little bit more. It always seemed to me as a young kid, and even now as I look back, that the navy skimmed up the really top guys. They were looking for pilots that could fly airplanes off of aircraft carriers in the Pacific and I remember St. Mary's pre-flight because they had a great football program over there that was part of the pre-flight program. I remember you were over there and I remember Franky Albert was over there and just names come to me like Dale Gentry and Ed Mansky. Great names, All-American football players from all over the country. Great p.3 bunch of guys. Kenny Casanega from Santa Clara and people like that. Talk about that a little bit. Jordan: [3:49] Nello Falaschi from Santa Clara, one of the great football players of all time. That was a great group of people, I happened to be fortunate enough to play during that period with Frankie Albert and Vic Bottari of Cali, one of the great all-time football players from the University of California. It was a great moment in our lives to have the opportunity to pursue additional years of our career in athletics. We learned a lot, we enjoyed a lot, we compete a lot, and as a result there were many things we learned that we didn't get in college that taught us to be better administrators and better coaches when we went into the field later on. Murphy: [4:27] I'm not sure a lot of the young people can understand it now. Of course, there's difficulties in the world and there have been ever since World War II, we thought that was going to be the end of all wars. It was the start of a lot of them, I suppose. But you talked about great coaches like Howard Jones and Dean Cromwell. At some point in your life, a seed was planted that you wanted to be a coach. You just had something in your inner being that had you destined to be a coach. When did you start feeling that? Jordan: [4:54] I believe it was in high school. This sounds kind of strange. Even before high school. In 1932 my mother knew that I liked athletics. I was running in junior high school. During the junior high school sports that we did in Pasadena, we had five junior high schools so the opportunities were great. [5:13] The 1932 Olympic games were in Los Angeles. I just was excited about a the idea that they were having this kind of a thing in an area nearby. My mother took me. Paid 50 cents for the ticket to get me into the meet or the competition. I saw the great runners take part. Ralph Metcalfe and Eddie Tolan and Simpson and Saling and all of those old names that you'll remember. Babe Zaharias, the great woman athlete of the era. [5:44] At that moment, I was sitting there. I'd been reading in the paper. Dean Cromwell's name, of course was in the picture. There was some Trojans running in track and field and in Southern California, that was the thing you read about most of the time. As I sat there, I turned to me my mom. I don't know why it came out of my little mouth at that p.4 time, but I said, "You know, Mom, I really want to do this someday." Then I thought about it and I said, "I want to go to USC, too, where Dean Cromwell is." Murphy: [laughing] [6:13] Jordan: [6:15] Then I thought about it for a minute and I said, "You know, I'd like to be a coach someday." I thought later years, dreams do come true. Those three things were very, very important to me at age 13. Murphy: [6:32] OK, Payt, let's talk little bit about that. You decided you wanted to be a coach. When did that become a burning ambition? You had the idea. It kind of heated up for you, didn't it? Jordan: [6:44] I think it was really magnified when I was in high school. About the time I was a junior I had a coach by the name of Carl Metten [spelled out] who was a very, very inspirational fellow. Murphy: [7:00] I went to school with Fletcher Metten. He was from down there. I wonder if they're related. That's an unusual name. Jordan: [7:05] It is an unusual name. I don't know that they were related or not. But he was a Pasadenian and a very, very strong personality. [7:15] He grabbed me by the arm and he said, "I'm going to keep my eye on you, young man. You're going to be here every day at the right time. You're going to take care of your academics. You're going to take care of your athletics. If you don't, I'm going to be there to tell you about it." [7:29] I needed that at that time. I was kind of running from this sport to that sport and doing other things. He directed me a little more definitely toward my specific skills. I was pretty good at football and pretty good at other sports, but track and field was my best sport. He knew it. He made sure that I spent plenty of time on getting things done right for that particular interest.