The photo comes from a Texas A&M yearbook. It’s found on the first of many pages dedicated to Aggie football that season. It has a caption: Initial Kick-Off.
What does “Initial” refer to? The beginning of a particular game? Maybe. Or perhaps it refers to the initial kickoff of the football SEASON?
If the latter, then you are looking at a photo of the Austin College Kangaroos vs. the Texas A&M Aggies at Kyle Field. The date of the game is October 5, 1917.
One hundred years ago TODAY.
Texas A&M claims three national titles in 1919, 1927, and 1939. They might as well claim four. The 1917 Aggies were undefeated and unscored upon, and were retroactively awarded a national championship by two separate entities. Members of the 1917 team left for war in Europe a year later, returning in 1919 to repeat their earlier success.
The Kangaroos, not surprisingly, fared poorly that day against Dana X. Bible’s squad. But it wasn’t the worst loss of the day in college football. Over in Kentucky, Centre College was routing Kentucky Military Institute 104-0.
Centre College is a school that traces its roots to the antebellum south and has strong ties to the Presbyterian church. That probably sounds familiar to Roo fans. One Centre graduate who walked in 1859 decided to join the ministry and head to Texas. In 1871, he accepted the presidency of a Presbyterian college in Huntsville, facilitated its move to Sherman in 1876, and officially sanctioned athletics in 1896. Centre graduate Samuel Luckett is today synonymous with Austin College. Many of us old timers called his dormitory home.
AC athletics was born on a playing field not far from campus in 1896, when the Aggies of Texas A&M came to Sherman to take on the Roos. It was A&M’s first football game against a college opponent, and the beginning of a rivalry that covered nine football games up to that 1917 game in College Station. AC was an all-male military school at the time, and the cadets of Texas A&M won a 22-6 decision from the cadets of Austin College. A recap of the game was printed in the Austin College newspaper, “The Reveille.”
Two years later, the Kangaroos journeyed to College Station and became the first visiting collegiate opponent to score a touchdown against the Aggies at home. AC never beat the Aggies, though they often came close. The most dramatic game was in 1913, when Charley Moran’s A&M team just edged Cecil Grigg and the Roos by a score of 6-0 at Kyle Field. By 1917, At a time when SMU and Rice were mere babies, and Texas Tech, the University of Houston, and a dozen other Texas colleges did not yet exist, the Roos & Aggies had already been competing for nearly a quarter century.
The post WW1 period was a golden age for both Austin College and Centre. While the Kangaroos were competing with some of the best teams in the Southwest Conference, the Colonels were doing likewise against teams from the east. The highlight of that period was 1921, when Centre shocked the country by defeating Harvard 6-0 in Cambridge, MA. It was Harvard’s first loss ever outside of the Ivy League, and the game has been ranked as the #1 upset of all time by the AP and the New York Times. The “impossible formula” of “C6H0” is still a common sight on the campus of Centre.
One week before the Harvard-Centre game, Austin College had traveled to Fair Park stadium in Dallas and had defeated SWC member SMU by a score of 17-7. By the end of that season, it was Centre’s turn to visit Fair Park Stadium and take on a SWC power. At the inaugural Dixie Classic, the undefeated Colonels arrived in Dallas to face Dana X. Bible’s Aggies.
Centre was coached by former Aggie Charley Moran, who had barely bested the Roos back in 1913. When A&M began to endure a significant number of injuries, Bible asked student E. King Gill to come down from the stands, suit up, and be ready to enter the game. His services were never needed, A&M held on for a 22-14 upset win, and a new tradition at Texas A&M was born.
Centre College and Austin College have much in common. They are both Presbyterian schools with tremendous history. They are small D3 schools with sports stories to tell. And neither school has ever defeated the Aggies on the gridiron. But their contributions to the history of that school in College Station, which by some measures is the largest university in the nation, are unique. You might even call the Roos and Colonels historical 12th men in the story that is Texas A&M.
AC and Centre are once again conference rivals, now that the Roos have joined the Southern Athletic Association (SAA). The SAA is something akin to a D3 SEC, full of schools with tremendous athletic history in the region. Austin College’s decision to join Centre in the SAA is a re-orientation towards the southeast. Sounds like that school in College Station with which we are all familiar.
In 1924, the Austin College Kangaroos traveled to Waco and beat the undefeated SWC champion Baylor Bears. That same year, the Centre College Colonels traveled to Birmingham and shocked the undefeated SEC champion Alabama Crimson Tide. Austin College and Centre face off this weekend in Kentucky. The Aggies meet the #1 ranked Crimson Tide at Kyle Field.
Defeating the best team in the nation is a tall order. But nothing is impossible at Kyle Field, with 100,000 E. King Gills at your back. Go Roos, beat Centre. Gig ‘em Aggies, beat ‘Bama.
It's a dramatic scene in a great football movie. In "Remember The Titans", Coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) leads his recently integrated T.C. Williams High School football team out of the Gettysburg College dorms, through the woods, and into a Gettysburg graveyard. There, he urges his diverse team to come together and avoid the fate of those around them.
The scene was filmed at Berry College in Rome, GA. The dorm, the woods, and the graves are all a part of Berry's campus. Its been consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful in America. At 27,000 acres, it is also the nation's largest. The campus of Berry College is larger than the city of Sherman.
The struggles at T.C. Williams were the norm. The end of American apartheid was painful throughout the south. Austin College and Berry College were no exception.
The arrival of the first student of color at AC led to the resignation of one trustee. An incoming student de-enrolled when he learned of his new neighbor in Baker Hall. That first non-white student rarely left campus for the city of Sherman out of fear. This was, after all, only 3 decades removed from the infamous and disgraceful events at the Grayson county courthouse.
Integration at Berry College, which lies just a stone's throw from Stone Mountain, was equally difficult. The first three African American students to arrive were burned in effigy. Out of safety, none of them chose to live on campus. Just before their arrival, one Berry College administrator suggested that they not be allowed to dine at the Ford Dining Hall. He was overruled.
Oh yeah. Ford Dining Hall at Berry College. The site of another scene from "Remember The Titans". While the team dines, Coach Boone demands that each member of the team spends time with a teammate of a different race, with 3-a-day practices to occur until they report back.
The reversal of racial injustice was likely less painful at AC & Berry compared to society at large. Athletics deserves a significant amount credit for the positive, race-transcending role at both schools. Equally deserving of praise, however, are the institutions of faith associated with the two colleges. Religious leaders at the Grand Avenue Presbyterian church in Sherman and Berry's Inter-denominational church in Rome worked closely with administration officials to facilitate integration. They also provided a refuge for those students bearing the burden. The first African Americans at AC & Berry lived restricted lives in many ways, but they were always welcome on Sunday at the houses of worship.
This is not surprising. After all, the strongest advocates of ending separate and unequal were men and women of faith. This was a movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and headed by a man named "King" who was in reality a "Reverend".
As the years went by, change became accepted at the two schools. At Berry, the students who had integrated the school began to return at the invitation of the college to assist those who followed. In Sherman, the first student of color had been reluctant to travel off campus as a freshman. By his senior year, he and white students were actively teaming up to successfully end "whites only" businesses practices around town. In 1970, just a decade after the end of campus segregation, Darwin McKee was elected student body president of AC. His election was historic; it was the first instance of an African American winning such a post at an historically white college in Texas.
If race and politics are the wounds of America, sport is a balm. Sport has been one of the most successful American vehicles to soothe the original sin of this good nation of ours. And the reason for that is simple. When our men and women suit up, they become one unit regardless of background or heritage. And we fans in the stands? We only see Berry blue and silver, or AC crimson and gold.
Spirits were high as the Hendrix Warriors traveled north to Fayetteville in October 1920. Their goal was a daunting one: defeat Southwest Conference member Arkansas on their home field.
The Razorbacks dominated the game statistically, as they moved the ball at will. But each time Arkansas approached the goal line, the Hendrix defense stiffened. Fumbles, missed field goals, and turnovers on downs frustrated Arkansas the entire game. When the officials called the game in the late afternoon, Hendrix celebrated. They had fought the mighty Razorbacks to a 0-0 draw.
Later that month, Hendrix traveled to Sherman to take on the Kangaroos of Austin College. The outcome would not be nearly as pleasant. AC was led by what Texas sports writers called the "fastest backfield in the state of Texas". The star of that backfield, Ray Morehart, was nearly unstoppable. Against Hendrix, Morehart notched three touchdowns. By the time the merciful final whistle blew, AC had defeated the Warriors 61-0.
The Hendrix game was par for the course for Austin College in 1920. The Roos that year won the TIAA, and did so in impressive fashion. In addition to the Hendrix win, AC also defeated SE Oklahoma (62-0), SMU (42-0), Southwestern (28-0), Trinity (21-0), and Daniel Baker (now Howard Payne) by a school record 109-0. Morehart scored 5 TDs in the Daniel Baker game. Fortunately for the Razorbacks, Sherman and Morehart were not on the schedule.
Morehart's true passion was baseball, and a professional career awaited after Austin College. After years in the minors, he was called up to the big leagues by the New York Yankees in 1927. That year, he played an important utility/pinch hitter role for the greatest team in baseball history.
On June 8, 1927, Morehart was placed in the starting lineup alongside Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig in a Yankee Stadium matchup against Chicago. The White Sox held a 5-run lead in the ninth, but a Yankee rally that included a Ruth single and Gehrig double tied the game and sent it to extras. In the 11th, Morehart walked up to the plate with a runner on third. He slammed a walk-off single to right to win the game in front of a vocal home town crowd of 25,000. The Babe and the Iron Horse met him on the first base line to celebrate.
Ewing Freeland, coach of the 1920 Roos, soon left Sherman to tackle a new challenge. He was named as the first head coach at Texas Tech University in 1925. Tech's second game ever was a home game against Coach Pete Cawthon's Kangaroos. AC kicked a field goal, becoming the first school to ever score on the Red Raiders. On that dusty field in Lubbock, the former Roo coach and current Roo coach battled to a 3-3 tie.
Former and current Roo coaches will face off once again this weekend in Arkansas, when Coach Loren Dawson's Roos square up against Coach Buck Buchanan's Hendrix Warriors. Good luck Roos. Beat Hendrix! And an early congratulation to the Roo coach who is certain to notch an SAA victory.
In his book "Football Texas Style", legendary SWC broadcaster Kern Tips described the birth of college football at the end of the 19th century in the Lone Star state. Among the rise of programs in Austin & College Station were "denominational little giants as Austin College" and others.
Tips continues: "This latter group of schools was comparatively small in student numbers, but their pioneer football teams mustered the skills of some of the all-time great individual stars...players who labored brilliantly in the comparative privacy of the Southwest's football frontier. These were the early-day 'spoilers' who gloried in cutting the prideful larger schools down to size."
Austin College was the first little giant to join the fray, when the Kangaroos took on Texas A&M in Sherman on Thanksgiving Day, 1896. In doing so, AC became the third school to play football in the state of Texas, behind the Longhorns and Aggies. Texas A&M secured its first ever victory over a college opponent by a score of 26-6.
On that same day in 1896, they were playing football in Nashville. Vanderbilt 10, Sewanee 4. Back in 1891, the little giants of Sewanee had become the third school to play football in the state of Tennessee (after the Commodores and Volunteers). Those freshman in 1896 that day were just getting started.
By 1899, they were seniors leading the Tigers to a 12-0 record and pulling off the most famous road trip in college football history. Over the course of 6 days, the Tigers defeated the following 5 schools:
Day #1: University of Texas in Austin (12-0)
Day #2: Texas A&M in Houston (10-0)
Day #3: Tulane in New Orleans (23-0)
Day #5: LSU in Baton Rouge (34-0)
Day #6: Ole Miss in Memphis (12-0)
The trip is appropriately referred to as the "Texas Trip". In addition to playing two Texas schools, four starters on the Sewanee team were native Texans (Dallas, Marshall, Victoria, & Bryan). Texas was seeking revenge after an 1898 loss to Sewanee, but came up short at Clark Field in Austin on Day #1. Texas A&M had a home victory over Austin College in 1898, but was unable to replicate with a Sewanee win in 1899 on Day #2. According to rumor, a few Sewanee players "drank heavily" in New Orleans on Day #4 on their day off.
And........"on the seventh day, they rested."
In 2012, the College Football Hall of Fame held a tournament to determine the greatest college football team of all time. The 1899 Sewanee team won easily, ahead of some of the best teams from Nebraska, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Alabama.
Austin College and Sewanee were both battling again in 1905 against the best the state of Texas had to offer. On October 21, A&M traveled to Sherman and just got by the Roos, 18-11. A few weeks later, Sewanee made their way to Austin and fell to the Horns 17-10. These Roo/Tiger close calls became increasingly common for larger schools from Texas to Virginia in the early 20th century. As AC became an "SWC giant killer", Sewanee transformed itself into an "SEC giant killer" on steroids. See photo in the comments of every southern school that has fallen short against the Roos (red) or Tigers (yellow).
Like the Roos, the Tigers slowly settled into their current D3 level home as college athletics grew dramatically after WW2. Austin College and Sewanee enjoyed a competitive rivalry at this level in the 1960s and 1970s. It was renewed a second time in the first decade of the 21st century. The third installment of the rivalry begins on Saturday. Austin College is now a member of the Southern Athletic Association (SAA) and takes on Sewanee Saturday in its first ever conference game in Sherman.
The two schools have combined for 249 years of college football. That's just a bit more than the age of the United States. The postponed Miami-Florida State game combines for only 161 years. You'd probably have to head to New England to find a larger number this weekend.
Collegiate athletics has been dominated by larger D1 programs for nearly all of our lifetimes. But there was a time, many decades ago, when those same programs approached a game against current D3 schools with angst and trepidation. Those D3 schools continue to play, and they have stories to tell.
AC suited up in both 1898 and 1900, but did not field a team in the year 1899. As a result, the Roos missed an opportunity to take on the greatest team ever. If you ask me, that was awfully fortunate for the Tigers. 😉 This weekend, a 2017 version of the "Texas Trip" takes place as the Tigers travel to Sherman. Go get 'em Roos. And a hip of the hat to the Tigers of Sewanee.
It’s a rainy, windy evening in Austin, TX. Harvey continues to meander northward towards Travis County. But we still have power. Sounds like a good opportunity for a mini-Roo Tale (a Joey Tale!) before the lights go out.
“We come to practice. We play the game. We win. We lose. We go home.” – Gregg Popovich, San Antonio Spurs
I love wins and championships like everyone else. But writing 100-year-old sports stories has a way of changing one’s priorities over time. The simple idea of being a “man in the arena”, as Teddy Roosevelt famously said, becomes elevated.
Austin College has a long history of competition against schools with which you might not be familiar. Eastman College? Ever heard of them? What about Burleson College? Have you visited Hughey Turner College? Know a graduate of Epworth University?
I doubt it. Those schools no longer exist.
More common is the abrupt termination of competition as competitor schools drop individual sports, or athletics all together. More than a few SCAC rivals simply disappear from the record books after deciding to no longer suit up.
The history of Austin College is surviving adversity. The school somehow stayed afloat during and after the Civil War years, in part due to the move to Sherman. The downturn of 1913 hit the school hard, and the Great Depression even harder. Those familiar with Dr. Light Cummins’s work know just how close the school was to folding in 1933.
Athletics is no exception. The decision to go non-scholarship in the 1950s was controversial, and it may have hurt football competitiveness. But it was at the end of the day a financial decision to preserve athletics itself. Baseball was in jeopardy three decades later, but the commitment of a core group of Roos rescued that program as well.
Here’s another school from the history books. Ever heard of Fort Worth Poly?
In 1903, the Polytechnics of Fort Worth traveled to Sherman to take on the Roo football team at Luckett Field. That same day, the Oklahoma Territory (!!!) University of Norman headed to College Station to face Texas A&M. At the time, the number of Texas schools participating in collegiate athletics could easily be counted on two hands.
The Roos dominated the second half, and won convincingly by a score of 29-0. Starters in the game included Thomas White Currie, a distant relative of Kate Currie Carey and Chad Parker Carey. Austin College finished the season 3-0. Soon after the last victory, Orville and Wilbur Wright took off at Kitty Hawk, NC.
Austin College and Fort Worth Poly faced off again in 1940. Only that year, they weren’t the Polytechnics. They were the Rams of Texas Wesleyan, and were Texas Conference rivals. As the Battle of Britain raged, the Rams got a measure of revenge against the Roos with a 16-6 victory at their brand new stadium………..the 1-year-old Farrington Field near downtown Fort Worth. Farrington Field was a product of FDR’s depression fighting public stimulus. The Roos finished 1940 with a 5-5 record.
The Rams returned to the gridiron for the 1941 season, which ended with a 39-0 victory over Trinity at home on November 15th at Farrington Field. Texas Wesleyan never played again.
Pearl Harbor occurred three weeks later, and America’s entry into war suspended athletics on campuses across the country. After 1945, play resumed in Sherman and elsewhere across the nation. But not football at Texas Wesleyan. TWU administration decided to abandon the sport.
Until now.
Football is back at Texas Wesleyan after 76 years. On September 2, the Rams will open up their NAIA schedule in Kansas. A week later, they’ll return for their first home game against Millsaps at…………historic Farrington Field. Yup, it’s still around.
It seems likely that Texas Wesleyan football will find its way back to the Roo schedule sooner rather than later, and the competition will resume. Welcome back Rams! The Roos will be ready. Because we come to practice. We play the game. We win. We lose. We go home.
The Cowboys open up the 2017 football season today, taking on the Cardinals at the Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio.
Canton is the home of the NFL Hall of Fame in part to honor the Canton Bulldogs, one of the first professional football dynasties. Behind the running of tailback Jim Thorpe (Carlisle Indian School, PA) and the passing of quarterback Cecil Grigg (Austin College, TX), the Bulldogs won back-to-back NFL titles in 1922 and 1923.
Grigg was an Austin College fullback in 1911 when the Roos faced the Bears at historic Carroll Field in Waco. According to the press, Grigg “played a fast and heady game, defense and offense” while Baylor was “outplayed by the fast bunch from Sherman.” The Roos returned to Sherman with a 9-0 victory.
Grigg was still playing professional football in 1924, another year of progress for the Baylor Bears in their effort to establish themselves as a 1920s Southwest Conference power. The Bears in the SWC were every bit as dominant as the Bulldogs in the NFL during that era. 1924 in particular would be the year when no conference school, large or small, could tame that squad in Waco.
But where the best teams in Texas failed, little Austin College succeeded.
It’s Legends weekend, and the 2017 Hall of Honor will be inducted on Saturday:
2017 Hall of Honor Inductees: Dr. Paul Alexander, Dale Huggins, Maggie Roe, Bob Sheffield, Jeff Timmons, Katy Williams
2017 Hall of Honor honorary inductees: Dr. E. Don Williams, Dr. John Prudich, Dr. Jack Pierce
2017 Coach Joe Spencer Award: Mike Sorrells
Today’s story is dedicated to the 2017 inductees, and is titled:
“The 1924 SWC Champion Baylor Bears, and the greatest Kangaroo victory ever.”
Looking forward to toasting all of you in Sherman.
Chapter 1: Baylor resurgence
Head Coach Frank Bridges had turned things around. After a mediocre first season in 1920, the Georgia native had led Baylor to three winning season from 1921 to 1923 and had compiled a 21-7-2 record. The highlight of this period was a 1922 Southwest Conference championship.
Baylor nearly repeated as conference champions in 1923, but a loss to SMU on the last game of the season gave the Mustangs their first SWC crown. Baylor had most of their 1923 squad coming back, however. Bear Nation had tasted football glory, and wanted more.
A championship in 1924 though would be a tall order. In addition to the always tough Arkansas Razorbacks and Texas Aggies in Waco, Baylor had away dates with the Texas Longhorns in Austin, the defending SWC champion Mustangs in Dallas, and John Heisman’s Rice Owls in Houston. Conference play opened for Baylor when the Razorbacks came to town on October 18th.
Arkansas was coming off of a 6-2-1 season that included wins at LSU and over Rice. The Razorbacks were 3-0 when they arrived at Carroll Field on the campus of Baylor. Carroll Field was the home of Baylor football from 1906 until 1935, and was located just west of Waco Creek next to the administration building.
The 5,000 who saw Baylor defeat Arkansas was the largest ever to witness a football game at Carroll Field. The Bears scored early, and the defense shut down the Arkansas passing attack. In the second half, the Bears added another score and Arkansas failed to move the ball. The game ended as a decisive 13-0 victory for Baylor. Arkansas’s 1924 squad couldn’t score on the Bears, but did finish the 1924 season 7-2-1 with wins over Ole Miss, TCU, and LSU once again.
Baylor’s quest for a conference title was off and running. The Bears had a non-conference game scheduled the following week, before resuming conference play against Texas A&M. The Aggies were on the mind of Frank Bridges to such a degree that the coach made a fatal mistake. He skipped the game to head to Dallas and scout the A&M-SMU game. His assistant would be in charge of the non-conference matchup back home. And the one lesson competitors never seem to learn is………never, ever, give your opponent bulletin board material.
Chapter 2: The Greatest Kangaroo Victory Ever
Waco’s answer to the Texas State Fair was the Cotton Palace. Every fall, the citizens of McLennan county would gather to enjoy the fair’s commerce, exhibits, and family entertainment. Highlights of each year’s Cotton Palace events were Baylor football games. Scheduled for the 1924 clashes with Baylor were Austin College on October 25th and Texas A&M on November 1st. The Cotton Palace was located at the corner of Dutton and 15th, just south of downtown.
Bridges’ decision to scout at Fair Park stadium was a huge error. The Kangaroos might have been a TIAA opponent, but they were a worthy adversary. Austin College had won conference titles in 1920 and 1923, and had defeated numerous SWC schools along the way. In fact, the Sherman school had considered requesting SWC membership that past spring. SWC schools were nearly unanimous in their concern for scheduling Pete Cawthon’s football teams during the early 1920s. But the Bears had overcome their reluctance. The game was on, even if only one head coach would be making the trip.
James Creighton, manager of Roo football, recounts the days leading up to the big game. “As the Baylor game approached, [Cawthon] increased the tempo of the Kangaroo workouts. [Defensive standout] Butter [Allred] tackled incessantly for two days straight while the rest of the squad was driven to the point of exhaustion.”
At the Cotton hotel in Waco, Cawthon let it be known that Baylor had no respect for the Roos. Where was their coach? Did he even think the Bears needed him to whip AC? His squad was challenged to silence the partisan crowd and teach the Baptists a lesson.
From Creighton: “If Mr. Bridges, coach of the Baylor team, could have seen the Kangaroos as they filed into the Cotton Hotel, he doubtless would have chartered a special interurban and returned from Dallas where he had gone to scout. Baldheaded as goats, their faces scratched and covered with bruises, the Kangaroos had the long, hungry look of a team which had come to play.”
The raucous Cotton Palace crowd that came to witness an easy Baylor win quickly realized their enthusiasm was misplaced.
The game started well enough for Baylor. The Bears kicked off and the Roos immediately fumbled. First-and-10 deep in Roo territory. But then, disaster. Bear RB Benny Strickland got the call, was hit at the line, and fumbled.
Creighton again: “The ball went one way, Strickland another, but it was [Russell] “Dutchy” Smith who gathered in the popped up fumble and raced seventy-five yards for a touchdown. Halfway down the field [Dell] Morgan looked back, discovered a lone Baylor pursuit, which he promptly demolished. Butter [Allred] kicked the extra point and the score stood Austin 7, Baylor 0.”
From that point on, the game became a titanic battle of wills. On the one side was Baylor’s dogged determination to find the end zone. On the other was Austin College’s bend-but-don’t-break refusal to grant the Bears that real estate. Over and over the Bears would drive into Roo territory. Each time the drive would stall. Fumbles, interceptions, and turnovers on downs. Three times the Bears failed to convert on fourth down within the 5-yard line. One of those three, near the very end of the game, was stopped just inches short of the goal line. Only a third quarter field goal prevented the shutout. Final score: Austin College 7, Baylor 3.
The Roos erupted in celebration as they ran out the clock and the game was called. AC returned to Sherman as SWC conquering heroes, a position they had enjoyed many times in the past. While most sports writers conceded that statistically Baylor was the clear winner, the consensus was that the Bears “were outfought and outgeneraled by their lighter opponents.” Nobody outgenerals Pete Cawthon, especially an opposing coach scouting in Dallas.
While the Cotton Palace faithful left the game disappointed, the reaction among the Bears squad was interesting and positive. They shook off the loss. Baylor knew they had a quality team, knew AC was a strong opponent, and began to refocus again on the conference schedule at hand. If anything, the Kangaroo loss was a wakeup call for Baylor. They wouldn’t be unprepared again.
Chapter 3: An Historic First
The scouting must have worked.
The Aggies came to Waco for the 2nd of two Cotton Palace football games sporting an undefeated 5-0-1 record and outscoring opponents 181-7. Many in the press were predicting a title for the Aggies, and most gave Baylor little hope after their performance a week earlier against their TIAA rival in Sherman. But the Bears had renewed focus and were hungry once again. They wouldn’t be embarrassed two weeks in a row in front of a home crowd.
25,000 crammed into the Cotton Palace, the largest crowd ever to see a Baylor football game at the time. Dana X. Bible’s Aggies put up a fight, but the Bears would not be denied. Captain and star Billy Pittman put the Bears on the board with a 60-yard TD run, and a second score late in the game gave Baylor the lead for good. A 40-yard field goal late in the game, a kick of considerable distance in 1924, iced it for Baylor. The Aggies headed back to College Station on the short end of a 15-7 loss.
There was little time for Bridges and Baylor to celebrate. Defeating the Aggies at home was an accomplishment, but the following weekend required a road trip to Austin. UT was coming off of an 8-0-1 1923 season, which included a win over Austin College. The Longhorns are always tough at home, and that would certainly be the case on November 8th. The University of Texas was inaugurating a brand new field on November 8th, 1924: the massive Texas Memorial Stadium.
The stadium was the brainchild of UT President Robert Vinson. After acquiring legislative approval for UT to purchase the land east of campus, President Vinson began a massive university fundraising campaign to raise the monies needed for construction. By 1924, the stadium was ready to replace old Clark field, in use since 1897. Dr. Vinson resigned in 1923, just before completion. But he did get to enjoy more than a few UT football games at Clark Field against his alma mater during his tenure. Vinson was a Roo, Class of 1896.
UT probably should have picked a different opponent for the grand opening. Baylor fans descended from Waco and paraded through Austin in the days up to game day. They comprised a good portion of the tens of thousands who witnessed the game, and their Bears gave them plenty of reason to continue the party.
Baylor dominated UT 28-10 in the first game ever played at what is now DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. At the time, it was the worst home loss ever suffered by the Longhorns. Bear Bill Coffey scored the first ever TD in the stadium, and Pittman found the end zone as well. Late scores by the Horns made the game a bit more respectable, but the outcome was never in doubt.
The win over UT was historic. For the first time in Texas college football history, a team had defeated both the Aggies and the Longhorns in the same season. All that was required to achieve this historic first, apparently, was a motivating loss to the boys from Sherman.
While the Bears were celebrating in Austin, the Roos were doing likewise in Houston. Cawthon and Austin College had slayed another SWC giant when the Roos knocked off John Heisman’s Rice Owls on the road by a score of 6-2. Like Baylor, Rice was undefeated in SWC play at the time of the AC loss and had a matchup with Texas A&M which followed. Unlike Baylor, the Owls would stumble in College Station after the falling to the Roos.
The Rice loss to the Aggies left only two unbeaten teams in conference play, Baylor and SMU. And SMU was up next for the Bears. The two schools were scheduled to face off on November 15th at Fair Park stadium in Dallas. The game was touted in the press as a pivotal contest in the SWC race, with most writers picking the Mustangs. After all, they were at home, and they were the defending SWC champions.
Chapter 4: The Baylor Bears, 1924 SWC champions
The Mustangs needed a win, and they didn’t get it. With the score deadlocked 7-7 late, SMU staged a late drive that fell short. The game ended in a tie. Baylor celebrated with relief, while SMU left dejected. An earlier Mustang tie with Texas A&M meant that (3-0-1) Baylor owned sole possession of first place in the Southwest Conference. Just one win stood between the Bears and a championship: A Thanksgiving day tilt in Houston against Heisman’s Rice team. A Bears loss would give the title to SMU for a second straight year.
The outcome of the SWC race had come down to a battle between two SWC schools. And AC had beaten them both.
After giving up a second quarter touchdown, Rice battled back to take a 9-7 lead heading into the 4th quarter. But the Bears regrouped. A field goal gave Baylor a lead early in the quarter, and a costly Rice interception gave the ball to the Bears at the Rice 25-yard line. RB Bill Coffey slipped through the line and crossed the goal line to put the game away. After a failed desperation drive, Baylor ran out the clock. Bear fans who had traveled from Waco carried off the team in celebration. Back in Waco, citizens celebrated into the night.
The Baylor Bears were 1924 SWC Champions.
Austin College’s quest for another TIAA title came up short. The Roos had to decide whether to take on Heisman’s Owls in Houston on November 8th or honor an Armistice Day clash with Howard Payne in Sherman 3 days later on November 11th. In the end, they decided to do……………….both. The decision was costly. Howard Payne established a 15-0 lead in the 4th quarter, before AC finally started its comeback. The Roos were only down 15-10 and had the ball inside the HP five-yard line when they ran out of time. The game ended, and Howard Payne was on its way to the 1924 TIAA title.
Creighton again: “…it was truly asking the almost impossible when [Cawthon] proposed to play Howard Payne at Sherman on Tuesday after the long trip back from Houston on Saturday and Sunday. Just why such a schedule should have been made is something of a mystery to this day, unless the Rice game came up at the last moment, and [Cawthon], rather than forego a chance at the [unofficial] Southwestern Conference title, decided to take that risk.”
According to Creighton, “the iron in the Austin team had finally succumbed to time and fatigue.” But the season was still an unqualified success. After the 1924 campaign ended, Coach Cawthon declared his Roos the “unofficial Southwest Conference champions”. No disagreement was heard in Waco.
Chapter 5: Aftermath
For Baylor, the drought lasted for 50 years. The Bears failed for five decades to win a championship. But the magic finally returned.
During the 1974 season, head coach Grant Teaff decided to honor the members of the 1924 SWC championship team during halftime of a Baylor Bear football game at Floyd Casey stadium. And then a funny thing happened. The Bears started to win.
Arkansas fell in Fayetteville, and TCU lost in Fort Worth. It seemed academic at the time, as Darrell Royal’s Longhorns were headed to Waco on November 9th. Texas had won 6 conference championships in a row, alongside two national crowns in 1969 and 1970. Baylor had not beaten the Horns since 1956, and it appeared that nothing was going to change when UT took a 24-7 lead into halftime.
But Teaff’s words at halftime must have been special. The Bears bolted out of the locker room and scored 27 unanswered points, defeating the Horns 34-24. Bears fans remained in the stadium for hours after the final gun, soaking it all in with amazement. According to Teaff, “they announced the attendance for that game as 43,000, but I’ll guarantee you I’ve had at least 80,000 people tell me they were there to see every play in the second half.” Ask anyone from Waco, and they’ll tell you all about the 1974 “Miracle on the Brazos.”
Baylor was not done. Texas Tech was defeated at home, and SMU fell on the road. Like 1924, a final game against Rice would determine Baylor’s fate. The Bears won easily in Waco, 24-3.
Grant Teaff spent two decades at the helm of Baylor. His Hall of Fame career, however, was bookmarked by Austin College.
Coach Teaff was an offensive lineman for McMurry in 1953 when the Indians traveled to Sherman to take on the Texas Conference leading Kangaroos. AC stood at 5-0-1 and was led by future NFL RB Gene Babb. But the Roos had no answer for the dominant running game of McMurry at Bearkat Stadium. McMurry 47, AC 21.
Coach Teaff retired as Baylor head coach in 1992. One of his last acts at Baylor was the hiring of offensive assistant and Austin College Kangaroo Larry Fedora. Aided by the coaching of Fedora and the passing of QB Jeff Watson, Baylor won its last SWC championship in 1994.
Austin College Athletic Director M. L. Cashion tried in vain to schedule games against SMU, Rice, & Baylor in 1925. All three declined. The risk of defeat was simply too great, and the rewards of a TIAA win were not valuable enough. Membership in the Southwest Conference was suggested by Baylor as a possible solution.
Eventually, games against SMU, Rice, and other SWC schools returned. But only sporadically. And Austin College never again faced Baylor after 1924.
100 seasons of SWC / Big12 football have been played since America’s entry into WW1. Over those 100 seasons, 47 SWC / Big12 champions went undefeated in conference play.
It’s tough for a non-conference team to beat an undefeated SWC / Big12 champion at home. How many times has it occurred in those 47 years? Just five times:
1924: Austin College 7, Baylor 3 @ Cotton Palace Stadium. Go Roos.
1952: Notre Dame 14, Texas 3 @ DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. The Irish finished 1952 #3 in the nation after a late season loss to #1 Michigan State.
1980: San Jose St. 30, Baylor 22 @ Floyd Casey Stadium. The 1980 team was arguably Teaff's best and dominated the conference. But they were shocked at home in a Roo-like stunner.
1990: Colorado 29, Texas 22 @ DKR Texas Memorial Stadium. The Buffaloes finished 1990 as national champions. With a little help from the officials. ;)
2016: Ohio State 45, Oklahoma 24 @ Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. The Buckeyes lost to eventual national champion Clemson in the BCS playoff just a few months ago.
Pete Cawthon was asked to coach professional football in 1943 after decades in the collegiate ranks. Cawthon took over the reins of the NFL’s Brooklyn (football) Dodgers, who played at Ebbets Field just years before Jackie Robinson.
That year, Cawthon was tasked with hiring assistant coaches. He settled on an old friend and colleague from his Texas days………Frank Bridges of Baylor University. Twenty years after the fact, the Roo & Bear coaches were finally on the field together. Only this time, they were on the same sideline.
Notre Dame Coach Knute Rockne was a believer in Texas football. As a player, he had moved the center of football gravity from the East to the Midwest. As a coach, he believed the future lied in the South. And he was determined to capitalize.
During the camp, Rockne had high praise for the level of football in Texas, and predicted that Baylor would repeat as conference champions in 1925. It was understandable why Baylor was on the mind of the legendary coach. His Irish would open up the 1925 campaign against the Bears in South Bend.
In Austin that August, Rockne and Cawthon spent time talking about life, football, and the Baylor Bears. How was Austin College able to accomplish what Arkansas, A&M, UT, SMU, and Rice could not? That Roo advice for Rockne will never be known. But whatever it was, it worked. Notre Dame defeated the Bears in September to open the 1925 season.
It took the defending national champions to finally defeat Baylor and match the greatest Kangaroo victory ever.
