The University at Buffalo football team didn't need to take a vote that November afternoon in 1958. The decision was unanimous and instantaneous.
If Willie Evans and Mike Wilson -- both blacks -- weren't going to be allowed to play in the Tangerine Bowl, then their 46 white teammates wouldn't play, either.
So despite the Bulls receiving their first bowl invitation in the then-64-year history of the program, they were steadfastly one for all and all for one in rejecting it.
"There wasn't even a discussion," Evans said from his Buffalo home Thursday night. "Coach [Richard] Offenhamer explained the situation, that the owners of the stadium didn't allow blacks to play against whites.
"One of my teammates immediately said, 'Then we're not going.' And that was it."
Fifty-three years later, Chattanooga resident Carley Keats, an offensive and defensive end on the team, remembers that meeting exactly the same way.
"We were called down to the ROTC room in the old gym," Keats said. "There was no discussion, no vote. We weren't going to play without Willie and Mike. Everyone was obviously disappointed, angry, puzzled by the rule. But the decision was easy."
Buffalo will bring more than 60 players to Neyland Stadium today to face Tennessee in a 12:30 p.m. kickoff. Included in that group is freshman linebacker Wonderful Terrific Monds II, whose father once starred at Nebraska.
To show how much society has improved since the Bulls went 8-1 in 1958 and won the Lambert Cup as the best small college team in the East, there are no statistics telling how many Bulls on the current roster are white and how many are black.
Unfortunately for Evans, Keats and the rest of the Buffalo program back then, it took nearly 50 years for their decency and courage to be recognized.
"We actually dropped football in the 1960s," said Evans, a Buffalo native who spent his professional life working for the city's public school system as well as becoming a past president of UB's alumni association.
"The students voted to drop their fees. We went without a team for several years, then returned as a club team, then Division III, then Division II, and finally D-I. It was tough to watch."
It was anything but tough to watch the Bulls in 1958, however.
"We started out playing Harvard in Boston," recalled the 73-year-old Keats, now retired and playing golf every chance he gets at Valleybrook. "We won 6-0. We also beat Columbia and Lehigh that year. We finished 8-1. The only game we lost was to Baldwin-Wallace, which was coached by Lee Tressel, the father of [former Ohio State coach] Jim Tressel."
Oddly, Keats believes his best and worst moments came in the same victory over Lehigh.
"The high point was probably when I rushed the quarterback, jumped up and intercepted a pass," said the Transfer, Pa., native who once played basketball against Mike Ditka, describing the legendary NFL player and coach as "pretty rough."
But no rougher than the final minutes against Lehigh.
"Late in the game, Lehigh had scored and needed to recover an onside kick to have a chance to win," Keats related. "I was in the game presumably because I was a 'good hands' person. The kick came to me, I dropped it and Lehigh recovered. That was pretty low."
The program sank so low after that season that it took 50 more years for the Bulls to receive another bowl bid. This time they played in the International Bowl in Toronto after beating Ball State in the Mid-American Conference championship game. Alas, the Bulls lost to Connecticut, but at least they got there.
And because they got there, the nation finally discovered the character of Evans, Keats and the rest of the 1958 team. ESPN made a documentary titled "All or Nothing." The school flew them to Toronto, paid for their room and meals and honored them at the bowl game. The next fall -- the Bulls playing at Central Florida -- the mayor of Orange County proclaimed a "do-over" in order to "once and for all give the team the Central Florida welcome they so richly deserve."
Finally, on May 10, 2009, at UB's commencement ceremony, school president John Simpson awarded the Charles P. Norton medal -- the school's highest honor -- to the entire 1958 squad.
In explaining why, Simpson said, "The decision made by the 1958 team to take a stand against racial discrimination continues to be a defining moment for UB, embodying values of leadership, courage, honor and integrity that are vital to our university community, then and now."
Said Evans: "I accepted the medallion on behalf of the team. It's the only time a team has won the award. And it was all because my teammates drew a line in the sand and said they wouldn't cross it. There's so much good that come out of athletics."
Even when it takes 50 years for the rest of the world to notice.