Dick Gutting

The Florida State University Gymnastics Dynasty · Part 1

Florida State’s First Seminole Mascot

Newspapers and publications across the United States have recently published an array of articles concerning the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) attempt to make 18 colleges and universities remove and change their Indian mascot names because the NCAA Executive Committee banned the use of American Indian mascots, nicknames and imagery finding them “hostile and abusive.” The penalty for defiance of the ban is automatic suspension from the post season tournament schedule of NCAA sports. In other words, hurt the defying institution in the pocketbook to make it comply. Florida State University won their appeal of the ban, the only institution of the 18 to date to do so, because the Seminole Tribe of Florida has long supported the use of the Seminole name as Florida State’s mascot. The Seminole Tribe of Florida passed a unanimous resolution reinforcing its position of supporting Florida State’s use of the Seminole name.

Bill Durham, a Tallahassee businessman with Cherokee bloodlines, takes credit for introducing Bobby Bowden, Florida State’s new head football coach in 1976, to the idea of the time-honored tradition of having a student dressed as Chief Osceola, on an Appaloosa horse named Renegade, riding from one end of the football field to the middle and thrusting a flaming spear into the ground. Durham claims to have thought up the idea when he was an FSU student in 1962. Durham’s idea went on deaf ears until Bowden who liked the concept, made it a reality in a football game on September 16, 1978.

The question is; “what might have given Durham the idea in the first place?” After all, the student body had voted in the “Seminole” as the mascot name the same year that Florida State became co-ed in 1947 to accommodate the GI Bill after World War II ended. What happened during the 50’s in football games that Durham observed that could have given him the idea that he suggested to Bowden? The answer could be Dick Gutting, Florida State’s tumbling and trampoline champion. Florida State initiated its football program under coach Don Veller in 1950 with meager success in the won and loss column. Dr. Veller left football and became the golf coach. Tom Nugent took over the football program in 1953. Nugent was an innovative genius who created the “I Formation”. Under Nugent, Florida State became a big school football program finally able to schedule the University of Florida in 1958 and even have a victory over the University of Miami. Gutting approached Nugent with the idea of having himself dressed up as a Seminole Indian and tumble in front of the football team as they came onto the football field. Nugent liked the idea and Dick performed the tumbling for home games in exchange for a few free meals in the football team dining hall. After all, Gutting was a poor non-scholarship athlete from Chicago and every little bit of financial and living expense helped Dick to get by. Nugent went so far as to create a play with Gutting tumbling while carrying the football until the NCAA said the play was illegal.

Gutting admits he was full of a lot of crazy ideas! Dick dropped out of high school after his freshman year in Chicago. Dick fast talked his way into being admitted to Florida’s new co-ed college music department. Jane, the facility manager at Katherine Montgomery Gymnasium was a part time seamstress. Dick had Jane make some special long pants that he intended to wear in trampoline competition. This was an unusual idea because trampolinists of the day always competed wearing shorts. Dick felt that long pants projected better form with the judges, an idea he picked up from his gymnast teammates who always wore form pants on the apparatus when competing. The pants were made in school colors. They were gold in the front and maroon in the back that showed off his twisting movements during competition routines. The pants had bell bottoms so he could grab a tight tuck when performing his double backs. On another project, Dick had Jane make maroon and gold square flaps with the Seminole logo to slide on a waist belt. Dick and other tumblers he recruited wore the belt with flaps over their shorts when they portrayed Seminole Indians tumbling during football games.

When Dick graduated in 1955, New Yorker Chick Cicio took Gutting’s place as the football team tumbler. Fans began calling Chick Sammie Seminole and the name stuck. Chick, the 1956 NAAU Floor Exercise Champion was also a non-scholarship athlete. Chick would accompany the football team to the bowl games and tumble. Jack Ryder, the 1961 NCAA Tumbling Champion, became the second “Sammie Seminole.” Joe Greene, a transfer student from Dade Junior College where Gutting later was the head gymnastics coach, became the third “Sammie Seminole” in the years 1961 and 1962. Rick Miller followed Joe in 1963. Rick was followed by Bob Gramling in 1964 and 1965. Barry Rowars was the last “Sammie Seminole” in 1966. It appears that the name Sammie was chosen because it rhymes with Seminole and it was not meant to be derogatory in any manner.

Vaughn Mancha, the former Alabama All-American who had been assistant football coach under Nugent returned to Florida State as Athletic Director in 1960. Mancha never liked the gymnastics program. Perhaps Mancha was jealous of the five National Championships the gymnastics team had won in the fifties while football struggled. As Athletic Director, Vaughn Mancha took away the gymnastics team’s varsity status making gymnastics a club program.

As for Dick Gutting, he took several teaching jobs in South Florida including Southwest H.S., South Broward H.S. and Dade County Junior College–now called Miami Dade Community College. He earned his Masters Degree from the University of Miami and ended his career teaching history at North Miami Beach Senior H.S. Gutting also served as the Chairperson of the American Red Cross safety and aquatics programs for twenty years.

Professionally, Dick performed in professional trampoline acts with partner Whitey Hart called “Two Flips and a Flop” and “Dick Gooding and Whitey Hart” for twenty years. Television appearances included: The Steve Allen Show, Jan Murray’s Treasure Hunt, The Dave Garroway Show, and Jack Palance’s Greatest Show on Earth. Some of Gutting’s professional water show performances were: “Aqua Wonderland”, Bob Maxwell’s “Aquarama”, Sam Snyder’s “International Water Follies”, Henry Vee’s “Aqua Frolics”, and over fifteen years of fancy diving and tower diving on the Miami Beach hotel circuit.

Dick can remember coming in second only once in trampoline competition. He won the 1952 NCAA Trampoline Championship defeating the great Frank LaDue. He won the 1953 NAAU Trampoline Championship. He perfected the concept of connecting his hard tricks together in short 25 second routines in his long pants with impeccable technique rather than doing a long routine with weak connecting skills to fill up the 90 second time limit which was a permitted rule for trampoline competition in those days.

Gutting arrived at Florida State as a trumpet playing music major who introduced the new Chicago sound, “Be Bop”, to Tallahassee and the rural South. Dick fronted a 12-14 piece band which played weekends at numerous military bases in four Southern states and at campus fraternity and sorority parties. It helped pay Dick’s way through college. For Dick’s post freshman musical recital Dick was asked to perform a Franz Joseph Haydn classical piece. Dick instead chose ’Round Midnight from the Thelonious Monk repertoire playing it in what Dick called “a Haydnish Style”. Everyone who heard it bought it except the music Department Chair. Needless to say Dick changed his major to physical education the next day.

On another occasion, Dick was asked to be a guest conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of Florida conducting the William Tell Overture at a “high Jinks” concert. Acting as the confused conductor, Dick suddenly fell into the orchestra pit landing on the trampoline that had been hidden from the audience in the pit. Dick proceeded to perform a perfectly timed “hi ho silver” bounce routine to the “Lone Ranger” music. On occasion, Dick attempted playing tunes on the trumpet while bouncing up and down on the trampoline during his shows.

Gutting can be found pictured in the Ft. Lauderdale Swimming Hall of Fame with his diving buddies. Dick is one of seven gymnastics program members inducted into the Florida State University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1983. Dick’s son, David became the Greater Miami Athletic Conference gymnastics all-around champion in the late seventies and went on to Ohio State University on an athletic scholarship. I trained David at Gymiami during David’s high school years.

As a youth in Chicago, Dick tumbled and performed in Acrotheater at the University of Chicago under the direction of Bud Beyer. Dick wondered why all the military personnel were always around the University of Chicago when he was on campus for Acrotheater. Dick did not know that the atomic bomb technology was being developed in the basement of a campus building at the University of Chicago. As a teenager Dick developed his tumbling, trampolining and diving skills at the Hyde Park YMCA under the direction of coach Dick Zuber.

Dick and his wife Susie were residents of North Miami Beach. Dick was an active member of the World Acrobatic Society. Dick is one of the great American pioneers of trampoline and professional diving. He turned ideas into realities and showed us that anything was possible if you put your mind to it!

By Bruce A. Davis, Professor Emeritus, Miami Dade College. © 2009, 2010, revised 2026.