I am apparently in a period of my life where I do too much looking back.
I understand psychologically that one does this in order to recapture the feeling of their youth. I believe this theory, in that I find it quite enjoyable. I do try to keep it in the minority of my thoughts, embracing all the excitement and gee whizzes of all the great technology today in the majority.
But in my recognition of this, ironically, I recalled back to the middle of August of 1969 when I was 17 years old. My mother had driven me to the airport in Charleston, WV to board a prop airplane to take me to Tulsa, Oklahoma to begin preseason football practice for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane Football Team.
Tulsa, which was then and continues to be the smallest school in the Nation playing Division I athletics.
The previous Fall the Fighting Golden Hurricane had played their oil city rival, the University of Houston in the then new Astrodome. Unfortunately for the boys from Tulsa the Cougars of Houston scored 100 points and Tulsa only one touchdown, that's right 100-6. Larry Gatlin, later of the Country Music Gatlin Brothers as a fourth string receiver caught the last touchdown pass bring the score to 99.
For this humiliating reason and that the monied supporters new multi million dollar LaFortune Hall, a dormitory exclusively for the student athletes had just been built. It was decided rather than to drop football they would throw more money at the Program. Hiring the Defensive Coordinator from a powerful Michigan State University team who had featured players like Bubba Smith and George Webster. Vince Carillot was to be the head coach and bring the magic of his boss legendary Coach Duffy Daughtery that had been so successful in East Lansing and is credited with the quote "Football is not a contact sport. Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport" The first time I heard the quote was from Carillot on my previous recruiting trip to visit the campus and the City of Tulsa. I'll have to confess for a 17 year old kid that had done everything humanly possible to get my weight up to 210 pounds, the quote gave me some pause.
When I landed at Tulsa's sparkling new and vast International Airport there was a Graduate Assistant there to meet me, notice I didn't include greet. Bob Junko. Junko, who hailed from Washington, PA had been the only bright spot on the previous years team as a fearless linebacker of which legends were made of, he is not a big man. But he has that same look in his eyes that is usually found in those housed on Death Row. Accompanying Junko that day was the guy who was to be roomate, Gary Tretter from Monessen, Pennsylvania. This was as much of home as they could offer, in that it was somewhere near West Virginia and there was not one other student in the school from the Mountain State. Less than a week later Gary snuck off from the dorm and went back to Monessen leaving all of his clothes and belongings behind. Some indication of what preseason training was like in the 100 degree Oklahoma sun. From that point forward when any player had reached near his breaking point he would verbalize that he was thinking about pulling a "Tretter" Last I heard the guy whose name had become a disambiguation of a verb was the Police Chief in Monessen, which would seem to be to be more of a collision sport in itself.
Junko turned out to be as crazy as he looked while on the practice field, but a pretty supportive friend when you weren't donning the pads. He had explained to us that in signing our letter of intent that we had sold our bodies to the University; therefore we had no right to even consider not attacking the man with the ball with reckless abandon and absolutely no consideration for the body that was no longer owned by us, but by the Trustees of the good old University of Tulsa. Nothing, absolutely nothing excited Junk more than extolling a hit that would draw blood. I remember one of my proudest moments, in that we were trained there to spear tackle which was legal at the time In doing it properly you drove the point of your helmet into the chin of the man you were tackling and then continued to drive him back to the ground. This one day I performed, the now illegal act to perfection, but in doing so caused myself to have a bloody nose, which bled profusely all over my face and jersey. Well Junko could not have been happier had he seen his first born, he was giddy with excitement and praise declaring that I now, had in fact sold my body to the School. Bloody noses really don't hurt so I was basking in the glory and gladly letting my hemoglobin shine for this fine Presbyterian Institution located in the great plains oil fields. Junko is now and has been for years the Director of Football for Pitt, there is probably some symmetry to that, I am just not sure what.
During that era Freshman still were segregated from upperclassmen in their practice and games. Playing an abbreviated schedule of only four games. The"Gales", as the Freshman team were known, opened their season against the University of Oklahoma, OU. This was a very big deal because Tulsa is a weak stepchild in Oklahoma, as an understatement to the Big Red of Norman. Oklahoma had had a great recruiting year with some real blue chippers, best of which was a running back, Greg Pruitt who later played for the Browns. OU was always known to have some, if not all the best high school players that money could buy from Texas and Oklahoma and this year was no different. Though this year Oil Barons of Tulsa had ponied up some cash for a pretty good team too. We had Drew Pearson from South River, New Jersey who later was an All Pro with the Dallas Cowboys as our quarterback, Drew is the guy who caught the original "Hail Mary" pass. His high school quarterback had been Joe Theisman, who was then playing for Notre Dame and later the Redskins. Steve King from a small town in Oklahoma and now a one of my Linked In contacts, as a linebacker who played several years as a starter for New England and about 5 other guys who made it into the NFL. My bloodletting did not trump my lack of speed so I knew that I had no chance nor desire to "go pro" Pearson's first year as a Cowboy he made $11,000 and had to have a second job at first to survive. Things were different then.
The night had come and I remember standing in the tunnel of Skelly Oil Stadium waiting to run onto the field, standing there seeing the lights reflecting off of the bright red OU helmets that I had watched on television for years, and now in just a few minutes I would be on the same turf with these guys and then it occurred to me I was 1500 miles from Oak Hill, WV and there was not one person in the stands that cared whether I was there or not. I wasn't in high school anymore and this football was different and I had sold my body and it was a collision sport, still fun but not like it had been on sandlots and high school.
We played the "Little Boomers" even most of the night and only lost by a field goal. This was a huge moral victory for the Investors, I mean supporters of the Program. We were the toast of the town and the great hope for the future. This was also only the second year Tulsa had allowed Blacks on the team.
The next week we played the University of Arkansas again at home, they were also loaded with studs, their quarterback was Joe Ferguson who was the second coming of Terry Bradshaw; from the same Shreveport High School as Bradshaw. At that time there were no limit on the number of scholarships a school could award and Arkansas had given scholarships to every starter on Ferguson's high school team in order to sign him.
Building upon our momentum from Oklahoma and the rumor that one of the car dealers in Tulsa may be offering some of the more outstanding players some "really good" deals on new Pontiacs. We soundly beat Ferguson and all of his blue chip teammates. ferguson lived on to have many better days and for several years was the starting quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.
We went on to beat Wichita State of which a couple of years later would lose all of their team to a plane crash. We barely lost to a Junior College team Northeast Oklahoma State in Miami, Oklahoma. When the coaches had recruited us they had promised we would have a trip to Miami, and as God is my witness I did not know there was a Miami in Oklahoma, and that it was a damn long bus ride from Tulsa.
The strategy that had brought and bought this team together drew the attention of the NCAA, Tulsa, the School that I had contractually sold my body to, was suspended for the entire balance of my classes tenure there. Coach Carillot was forced to resign. I had blown out my shoulder and many of us were considering either pulling a "Tretter" or transferring to other schools.
Drew Pearson had been offered a scholarship to Marshall prior to Tulsa, he liked Huntington. We liked each other and seriously looked into transferring back there together. We didn't and the next Fall was the year of their tragic crash, so that decision was fortuitous.
So I transferred back to WVU where Bobby Bowden had just taken over for Jim Carlen. I had met with Coach Bowden and was considering sitting out the required year and playing for him after my shoulder healed. Bowden always referred to me as the "Oak Hill Flash" in reference to my lack of foot speed.
I tell folks that are not real familiar with the sport that if I had been one second faster in the 40 yard dash I could have been an All Pro. They find this small measure seemingly very close to greatness. I used the line once when introducing Larry Csonka, the former Miami Dolphin great at a banquet comparing my speed to his using this, Csonka saw no humor in the remark.
I had received a grant for my tuition, fees, and books. I got a work study job appropriate for a jock as a Librarian for the Physical Education Department, and a small academic scholarship in my field of advertising. So after a year of healing having a better "ride" than a "student athlete" being reunited with my high school sweetheart, I decided I had played major college football and it was time to move on forward never to don the pads again. But with these and many more great experiences and stories.
Several years later I overheard my mother telling a friend of hers about taking me to the airport that day in August. Unlike today, there was no security then and she described to her friend how she noticed after hugging her goodbye. when I walked through the chain link gate onto the tarmac to climb the steps used at that time she said "he never once looked back, not once"
Now some four decades later I am giving myself permission to do just that.
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