Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This February 1975 article chronicles the highs and lows of a Baylor football team that ultimately made it to the Cotton Bowl.
In the middle of November 1973, in the depths of the Bears’ disastrous 2-9 season, came the beginnings of change that was to take them to the Cotton Bowl this year. It was then that Steve Beaird had a talk with Grant Teaff, citing the junior college All American credentials he had brought to Baylor and telling his coach that he wanted to run with the ball.
On the Saturday before Thanksgiving in 1973, Beaird got his chance against SMU, taking a handoff from Neal Jeffery on the first play from scrimmage. In fact, he carried the ball seven times consecutively, concluding with a touchdown. SMU went on to win that game, 38-22, and the next week in Houston the Bears suffered their only shutout of that unhappy season, losing 27-0 to Rice. In Beaird, however, Baylor had found a consistent runner, a pair of legs to match the throwing arm of Jeffery. Beaird’s driving ability meant that a speedster like Phillip Kent would get a step or two on the Beaird-conscious defenses of the opponents the next year.
Only the few Bear fans who saw the 1973 Baylor team walk disconsolately off the Rice Stadium turf can appreciate what Teaff, his assistant and those same players, plus some new ones, did this year.
Apparently the 1973 losers took to heart the philosophy of their All Southwest Conference teammate, wiry split-end Charlie Dancer, whose major talent seemed to be an intense concentration and determination to make the plays work.
Teaff and the other coaches put 1973 behind them quickly and recruited successfully, beginning with two new coaches. Teaff brought Corky Nelson, coach of state champion John Tyler High School, to Baylor as defensive coordinator. Nelson turned the defense around, just as Dal Shealy, who came to Baylor from Carson-Newman, did the backfield. Shealy was signed on as Teaff’s new assistant head coach.
The Bears also recruited top players like high school All American Ron Burns, who switched to Baylor after first choosing Oklahoma. In the defensive backfield Burns dealt misery to runners and pass receivers all of 1974.
It was the change in the holdover 1973 Bears that made the newcomers’ talents meaningful however. On the defense, for example, Derrel Luce took off No.55 and ceased to be “Goree End”—so named for 1972 All America Roger Goree. He put back on No.46, which he had worn as a sophomore, did his own thing and emerged at season’s end with second team All America honors himself.
Aubrey Schulz was not even a starter in 1973, but in 1974 at offensive center he sparked a line that met head on with the Selmons of Oklahoma and Louie Kelcher of SMU and assorted other all-stars. Schulz won Football Writers All America first team honors.
Such examples illustrate the change that took place in the entire team. This was a Baylor team that in 1974 lost only to a team that was No. 1 in the nation throughout the season and to two others that were nationally ranked when the Bears played them. The Bears beat the rest including three teams that went to bowls; and they won eight of their last nine regular season games. Not bad for a 2-9 1973 cellar-dweller. Sports writers began calling the revitalized Bears the Cinderella team of the conference.
Most Baylor fans did not want to think about their 1974 season-opening game against Oklahoma in Norman. Approving funds to send the Golden Wave Band to the game. Executive Vice President Reynolds had quipped that he wished he could also send along a band of angels. But as the third quarter of that game ended, the No. 1 Sooners led by only two points, 7-5. The Sooners won 28-11 in the end, but at least two people in Owen Field knew that the Bears were back. By his own admission, Teaff knew by the half that his team could play with the best, and OU coach Barry Switzer was the first of several opponent coaches to visit the Baylor dressing room to congratulate the team on their performance.
The next week at Columbia, Missouri, Beaird ran for 134 yards, sparking Baylor touchdown drives of 80 and 65 yards. A third Baylor touchdown, which tied the score 21-21, came on the longest Baylor scoring play in eons. Luce jarred the ball loose from a Tiger at the Baylor one, and Charlie McClanahan seized it in mid-air and ran the length of the field. But Missouri won the game, 28-21.
With nine consecutive losses behind them, the Bears opened at home September 28 against Oklahoma State, victor over Arkansas and Wichita State. More than thirty thousand showed up for the Parents weekend game. Beaird’s 84-yard touchdown run after taking a screen pass in the third quarter was the highlight of Baylor’s 31-14 win. Teaff, who had challenged the team at the beginning of the season to emerge from each game a better team than when it entered, told the press he thought the Bears were accomplishing that goal.
The next Saturday night at Florida State the Bears behind 17-0 at half time, endured a forty-minute tribute to FSU ex-student Burt Reynolds and his movie, “The Longest Yard.” For the eager Bears it was the longest half time. But when they finally went back to play, Baylor shut down the Seminoles, scored on their first two possessions and went on to win the game 21-17. Four games deep into the season, they had as many victories in all of 1973 and were batting, 500.
In Fayetteville, Arkansas, the following week, Baylor depth and stamina were apparent. With Jeffery out midway in the first quarter with a nose injury, sophomore Mark Jackson moved the Bears for two touchdowns and a 14-0 lead. After the Hogs closed the gap and went ahead 17-14 and a Bear drive sputtered, the Baylor defense made it happen. Tackle Wharton Foster recovered a Razorback fumble. Jeffery reentered the game and drove the Bruins to their second come-from-behind 21-17 victory in as many weeks.
Spontaneous expressions of joy erupted at Baylor, and four thousand exuberant fans welcomed the team home at Waco’s Madison Cooper Airport that night. Teaff promised them that the victory wouldn’t be the last one.
Homecoming came two weeks later against league-leading A&M with a record 51,000 people in the stadium seats and on temporary end zone bleachers. A&M’s defense shut down the Bears for the only time in 1974, winning 20-0. There was no way for the disappointed fans to know that there would be no more Baylor defeats.
With two thousand Baylor fans in the stands at Fort Worth, Jeffery dazzled the TCU homecoming crowd with seven completions of eleven passes in the first half. In that half Beaird ran ten times for 67 yards. The reserves saw lots of second half action and Baylor won 21-7. The victory meant that Baylor would confront Texas in Waco the next Saturday with a 2-1 conference record.
At half time of the Texas game, Baylor fans were nursing the bright memory of Jeffery’s pass to Alcy Jackson on the opening series of plays that resulted in a 69-yard touchdown. Threatening to engulf the memory were images of the familiar plunges of Roosevelt Leakes, Earl Campbell, Marty Akins and Raymond Clayborn. Texas led 24-7. Then, with the poise provided by half a season of playing top teams, Baylor asserted itself. The defense, led by Luce, Dennis DeLoach, Ron Burns and Tim Black, adjusted to stop Texas at the line. Then Johnny Greene blocked a Texas punt and Johnny Slaughter covered at the Longhorn 17. Plunges by Beaird moved the ball to the one. Jeffery faked two beautiful handoffs and bootlegged the ball around right end to the end zone flag.
Later Ricky Thompson scored on a 54-yard pass play, and Phillip Kent moved six yards on a reverse for the winning points. Bubba Hicks’ two field goals iced away Baylor’s first victory over Texas since 1956. The 34-24 score was Baylor’s maximum point total against Texas ever. It eliminated Texas from serious Cotton Bowl consideration.
Jeffery, who had completed 20 of 32 passes for 351 yards and moved the team most of its 476-yard total offense, commented, “We were down in the valley, and now we are on the mountain.” Beaird proved prophetic when he said, “If you can beat Texas, you can beat anybody.” Bedlam, rejoicing and celebration ensued. The scoreboard lights burned until noon the next day. Vice presidents Reynolds and Tom Parrish, Dean John Belew and superfan Ralph Storm spent the night in the stadium to mark the occasion.
On November 15, Texas Tech came to Waco and gave the bears their last real scare of the regular season. The Raiders moved well early in the game and led by seven points at the half. In the second half the Bears limited them to 76 yards total offense while rolling up 201 yards of their own and winning, 17-10. With Tech keying on Beaird and Kent, fullback Pat McNeil rushed for 89 yards, including a 20-yard touchdown run for the winning score. And Teaff assured his first winning season at Baylor.
Baylor practically had a homecoming game away from home against SMU in Cotton Bowl Stadium on November 23 when twenty thousand or more green and gold-clad Baylor fans showed up with visions of cotton in their eyes. They were not disappointed. Baylor held the team that upset A&M to 284 yards total offense while rolling up 452 yards of their own. Steve Beaird ran for 133 of those yards and three touchdowns. Jeffery drilled home 11 of 17 passes for 166 yards, and Don Bockhorn stifled the only display of SMU momentum with a stunning 59-field goal. The score: Baylor 31-SMU 15.
A&M, with its 12th Man tradition, still had the inside track to the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day, but Baylor had a 12th game this season—the A&M-Texas shootout in Memorial Stadium. Starting right after the SMU victory. Bear fans were lifting forefinger and pinky in the Longhorn manner and yelling, “Sic ’em, Horns” Texas responded with 14 points in the first minute of the nationally televised game on the day after Thanksgiving, winning 32-3 and sending Baylor to the Cotton Bow.
The Bears secured sole possession of the Southwest Conference title before forty thousand freezing fans the next by defeating Rice 24-3. Steve Beaird rushed for 134 yards for a season total of 1104, becoming the first four-figure Baylor rusher. Jeffery hit 8 of 15 passes and recovered three fumbles.
The Bears had their first conference championship since Calbin Cooldige was President, their first New Year’s Day bowl game since Eisenhower was President, and their first trip to the Cotton Bowl ever.
The honors rolled in. UPI and National Football Writer named Teaff national Coach of the Year, and he was the unanimous SWC Coach of the year. Wyoming and Texas Tech made overtures to hire him away, but he signed a new five-year pact with Baylor. Schulz was first team All America on the National Football Writers team. Luce was named to the UPI All American second team. Eight Bruins won first team All Southwest Conference honors on one team or another. Schulz, Luce, Beaird and Jeffery were unanimous choices. Defensive backs Tommy Turnipseede, Ron Burns and Ken Queensberry, along with wingback Phillip Kent, made at least one All SWC first team. Second team honors went to defensive end Tim Black, offensive tackle Gary Gregory and offensive guard Rell Tipton. The whole team got keys to the city at a gigantic open house sponsored by the Waco Chamber of Commerce.
Then Houston Post honored Beaird as the SWC’s Most Valuable Offensive Back. Exxon presented the Kern Tips Award as the SWC’s outstanding senior player to Jeffery, who accepted it on behalf of the team and said, “The credit belongs to my Maker.”
Teaff’s early season goal for the Bears was for the team to emerge improved from each game. Then it was to win one game at a time. Then to have a winning season. Finally, it was to win the conference.
Ruben Santos and his crew spent six hundred man-hours building a real cotton boll Cotton Bowl Christmas tree in the Union Building. Student Union director Marie Mathis manned the phone and a radio in her office during the November games so that distant fans could get to listen to three minutes of Baylor football. After the Rice victory the Book Store blossomed with bumper stickers, buttons, souvenir T-shirts and windbreakers, commemorative Dr Pepper bottles, posters and even a country-western recording scored by a UB maintenance employee entitle “The Bears are Back.” (We all know what a Bear is,” it twanged., “but what is a Nittany Lion?”) Dave Campbell’s firm turned out a special edition of Texas Football magazine. A couple of enterprising exes made cotton boll cordages and marketed nearly one thousand of them to Cotton Bowl-crazy Baylor backers.
The season became an intensely personal thing, too, because so many people had hoped and tried for so long for something that was now finally happening. For me, watching Jeffery, Beaird and the rest of the starters sitting on the bench in the fourth quarter of the Rice game—the victory won—was fulfillment.
Then Robert Armstrong, the high school All America quarterback who had played very little the past two years, went into the game and threw a halfback pass to Alcy Jackson for 51 yards. He remind me of all the players I was familiar with who represented the best of those who had donned the green and gold: players like Botchey Koch, whom I had met when I was a child: Kit Kittrell, whose exploits I had heard on the radio: Gabby Sims, from my student days: Bill Glass, whom I had watched in the 1957 Sugar Bowl telecast: Ronnie Bull, whom I had seen in the Gotham Bowl: and Mike Bourland, who had become my brother-in-law. This was a championship for all those who had reached for the stars before.
I thought, too, of my freshman roommate, Moe Keller from Mineral Wells. He had gone out to practice every day from August to December. I don’t think he ever got to suit up for a game, and he had to borrow $2 from me to buy a corsage for his date to the football banquet. This was a championship for him, and for the thousands like him, and for me, too.
