WAS IT A MIRACLE?

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

More than 50 years later, Derrel Luce still remembers the pain of Baylor's 27-0, season-ending loss to Rice in 1973, when "we just didn't show up."

"By the end of the year, we were just as bad as you could be," he said. "We had people walking off the sidelines, throwing their helmets down."

The promise and momentum from a surprising 5-6 finish in Grant Teaff's debut season were completely washed away when the Bears fell back to 2-9 overall and last in the Southwest Conference at 0-7 in 1973.

"Nothing was expected of us (in 1974)," Luce said. "Nothing."

Certainly, no one saw the "Miracle on the Brazos" coming. A year after finishing in the cellar, Baylor won its first conference championship in 50 years and became the first team in NCAA Division I football history to go from a winless league campaign to a league title.

Fifty years later, that 1974 team will be honored next weekend during Baylor's game against Air Force.

"The reality is we're old," said Johnny Greene, a sophomore defensive back from Mt. Pleasant who made the biggest play in the Bears' 34-24 win over 12^th-ranked Texas on Nov. 9, 1974.

"Fifty years is a long time. You have class after class that don't know anything about this. Maybe they don't care. But I wish there was some way they could understand what happened there and how we got to where we are now and the part we played. I get it, and our team gets it. I'm just grateful that I had a little providential part to be in the right place at the right time."

The story of the 1974 team actually began in December 1971, when New Mexico coach Rudy Feldman initially accepted and then turned down the Baylor job a day later. Eventually, Baylor turned to a relatively unknown coach named Grant Teaff from Angelo State.

Teaff inherited a team that won just three games in three years under Bill Beall, including a 1-20 mark in the SWC.

"It wasn't like we were considered a factor (in the SWC)," said Ricky Thompson, a wide receiver from Gatesville who is now in his 25^th season as sideline analyst for Baylor football radio broadcasts. "We weren't even considered a factor to finish in the middle of league, much less win it. There was no consideration of us doing anything like that. That's kind of those once-in-a-lifetime deals. Of all the years that I was able to play, that's right at the top of the list."

A constant in the Bottom 10 rankings that were created by the Los Angeles Times' Steve Harvey, the Bears were picked last in the 1974 SWC preseason poll and featured on the Texas Monthly preseason cover story, "Death of the Private Schools."

"People weren't expecting anything from us," said All-American center Aubrey Schulz, a transfer from Tyler Junior College. "But in spring training, it just seemed like the unity was there, the excitement was there. Why was it there? I don't know. We didn't have anything to be excited about from what we had done. It was just there. We just had the type of chemistry that you can't write or create. Going into the season, we all felt confident."

In a staff makeover following the '73 season, Teaff promoted offensive line coach Bill Yung to offensive coordinator, hired Tyler Junior Tyler High School coach Corky Nelson as defensive coordinator and brought in Carson-Newman head coach Dal Shealy as assistant head coach.

"I don't know if I can fully describe what kind of difference (Nelson) made," Greene said. "He was brilliant at what he did, and he made you want to play for him. That was one of the key factors to our turnaround in '74, in my opinion."

Blown out 42-14 by eventual national champion Oklahoma the year before, Baylor trailed the top-ranked Sooners, 7-5, going into the fourth quarter of the 1974 season opener in Norman before falling, 28-11. OU coach Barry Switzer came into the Baylor locker room after the game to commend the Bears for playing hard and "giving us a run for our money."

"I think we were 50-point underdogs . . . and it's 7-5 with 12 or 13 minutes to go in the game," Thompson said. "At that point, I think we knew we were pretty decent. Now, I don't know that we knew we'd go out and win the league, but we knew we were pretty good. I think everybody was really confident that it wasn't going to be a replay of '73."

While Baylor obviously had good athletes, "we didn't have the speed that Oklahoma had," Greene said. "But we had heart, and we were cultivated in chemistry. And it just came together more and more every week."

Starting out 0-2, the Bears lost a close game to Missouri on the road, 28-21, before an eye-opening 31-14 win over 12^th-ranked Oklahoma State. After coming from a 17-point halftime deficit to beat Florida State, 21-17, on the road, they opened league play by beating No. 14 Arkansas by the same score.

"At that point, that was by far the biggest win of Coach Teaff's era," Thompson said. "(On the flight back), the pilot comes over the speaker and says, 'You guys aren't going to believe it, but we're going to have to taxi, because there are 4,000 or 5,000 people at the airport.' I'd never seen anything like that. We're walking through the terminal, and it's like the team is now, coming through the Baylor Line. There were so many people there, it was incredible."

A deflating 20-0 Homecoming loss to Texas A&M was followed by a 21-7 win at TCU. But with four games left in the regular season, the Bears were 4-3 and trailed the Aggies by a game in the conference standings.

"Sometimes, when you lose, it motivates you to do things a little differently," said Joe C. Johnson, a 6-0, 221-pound noseguard from Bryan, "that you can change and make the difference in winning the other ones. If you get kind of complacent or thinking, 'We've got this,' then you get blown out."

The very next week, the Bears seemed to be on the way to getting blown out by Texas (again) and lose to them for the 17^th time in a row, trailing 24-7 at the half.

"We're down 24-7, and there wasn't anything about that game that looked very good," Thompson said, stating the obvious.

As the story goes, when Teaff asked quarterback Neal Jeffrey why he was smiling, he said, "Coach, we got 'em right where we want 'em."

"That could have happened, I don't know," Luce said. "But I'd be lying through my teeth to say I thought we had them, that we're going to come back and beat them. It was looking grim, but momentum is everything."

Schulz said the Bears "were so close" in the first half, we were just inches away from making a big play."

"We all felt like we could play with these guys," he said. "I don't know if we all said, 'Hey, we're going to beat these guys!' But we did say, 'Hey, we can play with these guys.' We felt confident that we could do that."

Adjusting to the Longhorns' wishbone attack, Nelson inserted the bigger Leslie Benson (6-3, 248) at noseguard, walked the linebackers up to the line of scrimmage "and just played a seven-man line, and said, 'Hey, just try to beat us,''' Luce said.

"And Corky came up with a play that wasn't run much back then, a corner blitz. When they ran the option, he'd have the corner change assignments with the defensive end. They'd hit (Texas quarterback) Marty Akins and make him fumble," he said.

When the defense forced a quick three-and-out, Greene blocked a Mike Dean punt that was recovered by linebacker Johnny Slaughter at the Longhorns' 17-yard line. Game on.

"We saw some things in film that we thought we could take advantage of," Greene said. "So, we put a stunt in for a punt block that was called on the first series of the second half. I was just in front of the group, made the leap and blocked the punt. Had I not blocked it, I don't know if somebody would have blocked it. Maybe. But in my view, it was providence that I was there, and I did what I was supposed to do. It's gotten bigger through the years, and I've gotten a lot of attention. Honestly, I think the light should have shined more on other players."

Jeffrey scored from a yard out to close the gap to 24-14, but he "took like a week to get in," Luce said.

"I can remember it like it was yesterday," he said. "He's wide open, he's wide open. Oh, he's not going to get there. And he kind of crawls in."

With the defense completely shutting down the Longhorns' all-star backfield of Earl Campbell, Roosevelt Leaks, Raymond Clayborn and Akins, the Bears pulled within a score on Jeffrey's 54-yard TD pass to Thompson and then took their first lead of the game early in the fourth quarter on a six-yard TD run by Phillip Kent and Bubba Hicks' extra point.

By this point, Baylor fans that had left were returning to the stadium as quickly as possible to witness one of the greatest upsets and comebacks in college football history.

Teaff remembers assistant coach Cotton Davidson telling him from the press box, "Coach, you won't believe what I'm seeing. All those people that left are coming back. They're just stopping out on the streets, leaving their cars running and their doors open. And they're rushing back into the stadium to watch Baylor beat Texas."

"And Baylor did beat Texas," Teaff said. "And it changed everything in the conference, because they had been dominant for so many years. And that turned everything around."

Hicks capped the scoring with fourth-quarter field goals of 35 and 25 yards, Baylor beating Texas for the first time since 1958, the year before coach Darrell Royal arrived in Austin.

Much like Switzer, Royal made a locker room visit to congratulate the Bears, telling them, "You beat us tonight, and you beat us good. Now, go on and win the conference. We'll take care of Texas A&M."

Opening that window to a championship for Baylor, the Aggies lost to SMU, 18-14, that same day. And then, true to his word, Royal and the Longhorns "took care of A&M," to the tune of a 32-3 victory.

"The Texas game was on a Friday, and we all went to the Lettermen's Lounge and watched that game," Thompson said. "And fortunately, Texas got up 14-0 really quick, and we were going crazy. And I can tell you, there was no way on earth Rice was going to beat us. It was just not going to happen."

The Bears clinched the outright conference title and Cotton Bowl bid with a 24-3 win over Rice before a crowd of 40,500 at the old Baylor Stadium.

"I had no fear of Texas," Teaff said. "I was sort of amused at the fear I could see in the Baylor people. And the reason was that they had long held the power over Baylor. The '74 game was referred to as the 'Miracle on the Brazos.' But for me and our team, we never considered it a miracle. A miracle is when you don't expect to win, and then somehow, strangely, you win.

"But quite frankly, as a coaching staff and as a team, we expected to beat them. For us, it was not a miracle."

Similar to the season-opening loss to Oklahoma, Baylor led seventh-ranked Penn State 7-3 and was up 14-10 in the third quarter before falling to the Nittany Lions, 41-20, in its first-ever Cotton Bowl.

"Being able to play against Joe Paterno and Penn State was a great opportunity," Greene said. "But when I walked out on the field, it was obvious. It seemed like they had twice as many players as we did, and they were twice as big as we were. They were massive. Their fullback was 240, and in those days that was huge. It was close until the end of the game, and they kind of wore us down."

Prior to Teaff's arrival in 1972, the Baylor regents had discussed dropping down to NCAA Division II or possibly even dropping football altogether. But the "Miracle on the Brazos" changed everything, with the Bears going on to win five more conference championships since then and move into the on-campus McLane Stadium 10 years ago.

For the most part, Thompson said the players were "immune to all of the talk, but we've got ears just like everybody else."

"I think it was impossible not to hear that," he said. "Baylor was just so lowly thought of, particularly in the football world. Which, at that point, is really what the image of the school was based on, to some degree, athletically. It worse than not good, it was terrible. And that's why it was such an amazing turnaround. If Coach Teaff wouldn't have been successful, I think we're looking at a completely different view of Baylor Athletics today.

"We're not looking at a Robert Griffin Heisman or any of those things that have been so special since then. And it makes you feel pretty good, even if it's not completely accurate, to be considered as maybe being part of the group that really saved that legacy."

More than 60 former players and all the living coaches are expected to come back for next weekend's reunion that will include a "Lunch with a Legend" on Friday, Sept. 13, and on-field recognition during the Baylor-Air Force football game the next day.

"Every time we get together, it's just great," Greene said. "Sadly, we see each other at some funerals now. But even that is kind of like a reunion. This is a special group."

WAS IT A MIRACLE?

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