You've Gotta Be a Football Hero

In the fall of 1950, I began my sophomore year of high school at Clyde.   I still visualized myself as a great athlete.   I had played on the football team in the 1949 season, but I only got into games when we were about fifty points ahead.   Our team was exceptional that year.   Some of our guys later played major college football, and one of them went on to an outstanding career in the NFL.   That’s not bad for a “Class B” high school in West Texas.   Of course football is king in West Texas during the fall of the year.  No other area of the country is quite so fanatical.  Bill Hart, who grew up in nearby Baird, later wrote sports for a newspaper in upstate New York.   When a preacher moved to New York from Texas he told Bill that he would like to attend an Ivy League game with him.  Bill said, “O.K., but it’s about like AA high school ball in Texas.”   He wasn’t exaggerating by much.  One football coach told me that one of his somewhat mediocre players ended up on the football team at Bucknell.   The Bucknell coach told him, “I’ve never seen a kid right out of high school who knew so much about football.

High School football is a religion in Texas.  They have church on Friday nights during the fall.  The most talented high school players go on to greater things.  When I was in high school, Doak Walker won the Heisman Award while playing for SMU.  “Slingin’” Sammy Baugh was near the end of  his career with the Redskins.

I was never cut out to be a football player, but I desperately wanted to belong, and playing football was my ticket to social acceptance.

When I attended the pep rallies, they always sang,

“You’ve got to be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls.

You’ve got be a touchdown getter you bet,

If you want to get

A baby to pet.

The fact that you are rich are handsome won’t get you anything in curls.

You’ve be a football hero,

To get along with the beautiful girls.”

I didn’t think myself attractive to females, so I guess I probably thought they might have some strange attraction to a guy in shoulder pads, thus I sweated through two a days, and for some strange reason the coach never cut me from the team.  Mainly I sat on the bench.   From my vantage point on the bench I became quite a student of the game, and for a time I entertained the thought of becoming a football coach.

I did manage to earn a “reserve” letter during my sophomore year.  That meant I got to play at least one play in eight quarters during the season.  I managed to earn full letters in my junior and senior year, but I was never a candidate to replace Doak Walker or Sammy Baugh.  In fact I played center.  Today centers usually weigh 150 pounds or more.  I was my at heaviest during the senior year.  I was 6’ 2’ tall and weighed all of 137 pounds.  I must have struck fear in the opposition by my sheer size.