Stanford Romped To National Title in 1928

How good was Stanford’s 1928 NCAA championship team?

The Cardinal’s 72 points more than doubled the total of its closest challenger.

Stanford also had five different athletes win individual titles: That’s a combination no other program has yet matched in the same meet.

Adding to the impressiveness, all five of the Cardinal’s individual champions that year were (or would become) world record setters and/or Olympic medalists, and no points were scored by a sixth athlete with that same illustrious distinction.

Bud Spencer was captain of the squad and scored Stanford’s only points on the track, winning the 440 yards in a meet record 47.7. Spencer, who had broken the 400-meter world record at 47.0 a month earlier, had the fastest split on the U.S. 4×400 quartet that won gold with a world record in the 1928 Olympics later that summer.

Also setting a meet record – two, in fact – was pole vaulter Ward Edmonds with a final height of 13-6½ (4.13m). Earlier in the year, Edmonds had equaled the world record and became history’s third-ever 14-footer. Edmonds, who in 1929 became the first repeat NCAA vault champion with a co-title (and another MR at 13-8¾ or 4.18m), died suddenly in 1930 from polio at age 22.

Robert King won the high jump at 6-4½ (1.94m) and afterward was allowed to continue jumping, scaling a PR 6-6½ (1.99m). A month later, King would only need just 6-4¼ to earn the gold medal at the Olympics in Amsterdam.

Stanford could have won the meet just in the throwing events, where they earned 34 points (team runner-up Ohio State had 31), led by sophomore Eric Krenz with 18.

It was Krenz who actually got Stanford’s celebration started early, setting a meet record in the discus qualifying on the first day. His MR 149-2 (45.48m) carried over the next day to win the final and he added a runner-up effort in the shot put, losing to teammate Harlow Rothert.

For Rothert, another sophomore, it was the first of three-straight shot put titles to become the meet’s first three-time champion in a field event (Krenz was second each time). Both throwers were Olympians, though only Rothert would earn a medal – silver in the shot put in 1932, by which time teammate Krenz – a three-time world record setter in the discus – had died in a boating accident at age 25.

Not even scoring for Stanford was Ross Nichols, who finished sixth in the 120-yard hurdles but was disqualified for knocking over a hurdle. A month later, Nichols earned a similar DQ in the Olympic Trials 110-meter hurdles, in which he equaled the world record of 14.8 in the semifinals without knocking over any barriers.