The Gaels headed East [to New York] to face [traditional rival] Fordham. New Yorkers readily accepted these "Singing Saints" as worthy heirs of the Slip Madigan dynasty. Wedey and his teammates had no difficulty garnering publicity:
"Whether Herman John Wedemeyer looks sharp, feels sharp, and is sharp, is not precisely pertinent to the subject, thank goodness; but he is by all odds the most furiously ballyhooed football player to arrive from California since Pat O'Brien.
"The young man is here with St. Mary's, which revives the old trumpeting, turbulent series with Fordham at the Polo Grounds on Saturday. It is assumed St. Mary's brought along the requisite number of muscular hulks, but if so they are sheathed in icy anonymity: it's only Squirmin' Herman you hear about:
"What a football player!
"What a baseball player!
"What a boxer!
"What a golfer!
"...besides which, he can tend bar. That what he did last summer while waiting for school to open. And his ardent admirers maintain he was the best bartender on the Pacific Coast.
"In football, he runs, passes, and kicks. Last season he achieved one of those all-all-all ratings. He must be pretty good because the professional teams on the Coast tried to dissuade him from returning to school. One of them went as high as $20,000 and a card in the Bartender's Union.
"Parties who ought to know tell you he's even better in baseball, where he plays the outfield and hits the long ball for .400 marks. Both the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs have been wooing him with neat stacks of U.S. currency. Up to now he's shown a glacial indifference to fiscal temptation. The old school tie comes first."
"Herman Wedemeyer," [the New York Times wrote after St. Mary's romped over Fordham 32-3], "is fast and one of the slickest things seen around here in a long time." Even Time magazine featured him in a story: "Everybody but Hollywood has scouted hula-hipped Herman Wedemeyer, St. Mary's Hawaiian-born 170 pound halfback. Last week, making his Manhattan debut against Fordham, Wedemeyer, a quadruple threat man, ran, kicked, and blocked, and threw three touchdown passes. St. Mary's smart coach Jim Phelan explained it: 'He's a cross between [ballet dancer] Pavlova and [ice skater] Sonja Henie...and he has that Hawaiian rhythm."
Wedey's theatrics and their Gaels wins continued. [Following another spectacular demonstration against Nevada], Wedey had to fight his way past bobby-soxed members of the "Herman Wedemeyer Fan Club." Some of the organization's more zealous members actually crashed the locker room gate.
The Gaels concluded their regular season against USF. Enterprising USF students even wooed Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall to their cause: "It should be disconcerting to the St. Mary's football team, and those jeune fille worshippers of Herman Wedemeyer, to learn that Humphrey Bogart and his prim little helpmate favor the Dons of USF to beat the Gaels Sunday at Kezar." [It didn't work.]
The 1946 All-American teams were released shortly thereafter. To the horror of his fans from coast to coast, Herman Wedemeyer was demoted by several selectors to second team status. Writers often apologetically introduced such teams with an explanation of why Wedey was dropped...Wedey was spectacular, but had not enjoyed as successful a season as the year before.
Wedey's proponents were emphatic in their response to this injustice...Had Wedemeyer played behind Notre Dame or Army's line, he would have won the Heisman Trophy. He was obviously the most complete football player in the country, perhaps the finest all-around player ever.
One New York writer responded: "It seems that I put Herman Wedemeyer of St. Mary's on the second team when I picked my personal All-American football team. It would have been safer to wrestle Gargantua in a telephone booth.
"From the bulging mail bag received today, the most complimentary epithet is a three letter word pronounced "bum." There are references to my antecedents that some of them probably had tails and one customer even went so far as to insinuate that I wear a white robe with KKK emblazoned on the front."
Wedemeyer's drawing power and the Gael's admirable record prompted Oil Bowl officials in Houston to invite St. Mary's to face Georgia Tech on New Year's Day...The game itself is best forgotten. On a muddy field in subfreezing temperatures, Phelan's offense was immobile...None realized that the Oil Bowl appearance marked St. Mary's last foray into big time college football.