The Best of the Texas Century—Sports
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Football Player of the Century
There have been many great passers, receivers, kickers, kick returners, and defensive backs in Texas, but running back Doak Walker was on a whole other level. He did it all, and did it better than anyone. From Highland Park High School to Southern Methodist University to the Detroit Lions, he was the most graceful and accomplished player this state ever produced. The only three-time All-American in Southwest Conference history, Walker took SMU to two conference titles, led the Lions to two NFL titles, and secured a place on the all-time college team and in the NFL Hall of Fame. Runner-up: all-pro defensive tackle Bob Lilly, whose strength, agility, and feel for the game was the essence of Dallas Cowboys’ Doomsday Defense. Gary Cartwright
Catch of the Century
Imagine bringing a thrashing bowling ball into your boat. That’s the way it was on a cold January morning in 1992, when Barry St. Clair reeled in the all-time Texas champion, an 18.18-pound largemouth bass. At 25 1⁄2 inches long, St. Clair’s bass wasn’t the longest one ever caught in Texas—that honor goes to Tommy Shelton, who reeled in a 28 3⁄4-inch bass in Sam Rayburn Reservoir on May 31, 1997—but it outweighed the previous record holder by more than half a pound. It’s no surprise St. Clair was fishing Lake Fork, just northeast of Emory, which is known worldwide for its bass; 34 of the 50 biggest bass caught in Texas were from that impoundment. And that’s no fish tale. Runner-up: The biggest tarpon ever caught off the Texas coast was landed in the Gulf of Mexico on November 13, 1973, by Thomas Gibson, Jr.; at 210 pounds and more than seven feet long, the silver king was longer than San Antonio Spurs star Tim Duncan. Brian D. Sweany
Rodeo of the Century
Long after the real Wild West was tamed, its old ways managed to live on in the sport of rodeo, where cowboys rode broncos and bulls and horses and wrestled steers and roped calves while cowgirls on horses raced around barrels—sort of like it used to be back on the ranch. In Western towns and cities where cowboys once gamboled and ranching still means something, the sport has endured and evolved into something bigger, in the manner of what used to be called the Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth, which was and still is the city’s social event of the year. Rodeo has grown so big in Houston that crowds in excess of 60,000 attend individual performances of the 25-day event (though usually for the musical entertainment), and the weekly Mesquite Rodeo Championship even has luxury sky boxes. Those kinds of exhibitions are a far cry from what was billed as the world’s wildest rodeo—the Texas Prison Rodeo, which was held in Huntsville every weekend in October for more than fifty years. If there ever was a bunch who had nothing left to lose on a ride, it was these convict cowboys, who bucked crazier, rode harder, got thrown farther, and ate more dirt than anyone, putting it all on the line for just $10. Runner-up: the Pecos Rodeo in Pecos, the first rodeo to award prizes. Joe Nick Patoski
Fitness Guru of the Century
In 1968, before Dallas physician Kenneth Cooper published his strangely-titled book Aerobics, fewer than 100,000 Americans called themselves joggers. But Cooper’s theories about exercise (“Vigorous activity has more and more proved worthwhile both as preventive medicine and as a cure”) got us moving. Today, more than 34 million people run regularly, and everyone who reads knows they should be doing some form of aerobics. Cooper, meanwhile, is pushing the exercise envelope again, encouraging anyone who exercises regularly to take large doses of a group of vitamins called “antioxidants” to keep their immune systems from breaking down. Runner-up: angry, burr-headed Dallas screamer Susan Powter, whose moment in the national limelight was brief—but will anyone forget those years in the early nineties when she had millions of women eating plain baked potatoes? Skip Hollandsworth
Streak of the Century
On October 1, 1954, the Abilene High School Eagles’ coach, Chuck Moser, saw his hopes for an undefeated season dashed in a 35—13 trouncing at the hands of the hated Breckenridge Buckaroos. It would be his last depressing night for quite some time. The Eagles would not taste defeat again until December 14, 1957, after 49 straight wins. Along the way they outscored their opponents 1,774 to 311, earned three state championships, and produced fourteen all-state selections. Runner-up: the Cuero High School Fightin’ Gobblers, who logged 44 consecutive victories from 1973 to 1975. Jordan Mackay
Football Game of the Century
The verdict was unanimous. Both Grantland Rice, the best sportswriter of his time, and Dan Jenkins, the best of a subsequent generation, proclaimed that the 1935 battle between Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University was the ultimate college football game. It doesn’t matter that Jenkins was only seven years old when his daddy took him to TCU that November day. Though the stadium seated only 30,000, more than 40,000 stormed the portals, the largest crowd of its time in Texas. “Fans drove their cars through the wire fence,” Jenkins writes in his recently published history of the Southwest Conference, I’ll Tell You One Thing. “And other fans leaped over the fence from the tops of automobiles.” The stakes that day were enormous: the Southwest Conference championship, the first-ever national championship won by a SWC team, a trip to the Rose Bowl, and the civic pride of Fort Worth. (“Dallas had already been chosen as the official site for the upcoming Texas Centennial celebration of 1936,” Jenkins recalls. “And this had annoyed the hell out of Fort Worth’s bidness leaders.” In retaliation Amon Carter announced that the Fort Worth Frontier Centennial would open the same time as the Dallas pageant and hired Broadway showman Billy Rose to arrange the entertainment.) The game matched two of the greatest players of all-time, TCU’s Slingin’ Sammy Baugh and SMU’s Bobby Wilson, the Corsicana Comet. SMU won it, 20—14, on a stunning 50-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter from Bob Finley to Wilson, who made a leaping, diving catch in the end zone. Runner-up: the 1969 Texas-Arkansas game, in which a sellout crowd that included President Richard Nixon watched the Longhorns win a national championship. Gary Cartwright
Speed Racer (Two Wheels) of the Century
After successfully battling cancer, he became the second American ever to win bicycling’s most grueling event, the Tour de France. No wonder the French press accused Austin’s Lance Armstrong of taking drugs to enhance his performance: No mere mortal could have done what he did. Runner-up: Kevin Schwantz of Houston, who logged 25 wins in the 500cc Grand Prix class of motorcycle road racing and took the 1995 Grand Prix world title before embarking on a new career on the NASCAR four-wheel circuit. Joe Nick Patoski
Team of the Century
Five Super Bowl titles speak for themselves. The Dallas Cowboys are one of the most overpowering and popular franchises in NFL history, and probably the most colorful. Starting with Tex Schramm and Tom Landry, the club has placed seven in the NFL Hall of Fame. At least two current Cowboys—Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith—are certain future picks. Lest we forget, this isn’t merely our team, but America’s Team. Runner-up: the Aggies of Texas A&M, not just for their consistently good football, but for their indomitable Twelfth Man spirit. Gary Cartwright
Underdogs of the Century
The 72—65 final score of The Game, as the 1966 NCAA basketball championship is known in El Paso, is nowhere as significant as its role in breaking the unspoken color barrier in college athletics, when Don Haskins’ Texas Western squad started five black players against Kentucky’s five white starters. By pulling off the upset, the Miners opened the door to every athlete in every sport, regardless of race. Runner-up: The undersized, outmatched teams of fatherless boys who played for Fort Worth’s Masonic Home Mighty Mites improbably constituted a state basketball powerhouse in the twenties, thirties, and forties. Jordan Mackay
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