Jan. 11, 2002
Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Dave Campbell appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.
Back last summer, Michael Butler and the good people at "Inside Baylor Sports" came up with a fascinating assignment. They asked several longtime observers of the Baylor sports scene to provide them a list of the 10 greatest moments in Baylor sports history. Then they compiled those lists, came up with a consensus and turned it into an hour-long show certain to rekindle memories and wake up the echoes.
Probably it was no surprise to find that of the 30 different "moments" nominated by the voting panel, Baylor's "miracle" football season of 1974 led all the rest. And in that season, of course, the comeback victory over Texas reigned supreme.
It's difficult to argue with that choice -- although I did.
My No. 1 choice was that 11-day period in 1948 when Baylor basketball became a favorite topic in sports conversations from sea to shining sea. More about that in a moment.
The remainder of my Top 10 vote went like this:
2. Jan. 1, 1975: Halftime of Baylor versus Penn State in the Cotton Bowl.
3. Jan. 1, 1957: Baylor defeating No. 2-ranked Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl.
4. Nov. 9, 1974: Baylor's 34-24 victory over Texas in the game that has become popularly known as "the miracle on the Brazos."
5. Feb. 12, 2001: Baylor's basketball victory over No. 6-ranked Kansas at the Ferrell Center.
6. Michael Johnson's double victory (in the 400-meter and 200-meter competition) in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
7. Nov. 8, 1941: Baylor's 7-7 tie against No. 1-ranked Texas at Waco's old Muny Stadium.
8. Jan. 1, 1981: The Cotton Bowl and Baylor's 1980 football championship season.
9. Feb. 10, 1990: Baylor's basketball victory over unbeaten and No. 3-ranked Arkansas at the Ferrell Center.
10. May of 1960: Baylor's first Southwest Conference track and field championship, won at Fort Worth's Farrington Field.
THOSE WERE MY Top 10. Obviously, there are some interesting and even worthy omissions.
Example: Knowing the average Baylor fan's feelings about both Texas and Texas A&M, he or she will have to wonder about the sanity of any voter who would turn his back on Baylor's 50-7 victory over Texas in Austin in 1989 or the Bears' 46-7 victory over the Aggies at Kyle Field in 1980. Baylor hasn't played -- and won -- many games that were more down-to-the-last-minute exciting than the Bears' 32-28 win over SMU in 1980. And who among us could forget that famous "worm game" ? Grant Teaff telling his "worm story," going through the motions of swallowing a worm to climax the tale, and then sending his 27-point underdogs out to upset the bowl-bound Longhorns, 38-14 -- at the time, Baylor's most lopsided victory in history over UT.
Those are just a few of the great moments in football that come quickly to mind.
And there have been compelling victories on other, non-football fronts -- example: a 69-58 basketball victory at the Heart O' Texas Coliseum over an Abe Lemons-coached Texas team that was unbeaten after 14 games and ranked No. 5 nationally. And there also was that unbelievable victory over a Phillips 66 team in 1949 at the Marrs-McLean gym, and that was less than a year after Phillips had proved itself to be best in the nation in the U.S. Olympic Basketball Trials. Also, super basketball victories (upsets) over a New Mexico State team in 1969 that went on to the Final Four, and over Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1979 and over the Hogs in overtime in Waco in 1982, and over SMU in Waco in 1985. Those were victories over teams ranked in the Top 10 in the nation.
Great victories, great memories.
LET US NOT FORGET the Baylor men's tennis team's shocking upset of Stanford's perennial national champions in the NCAA tournament just three years ago. Or the baseball team's march to the Big 12 championship in 2000, Baylor's first undisputed baseball title since 1923. Also, Baylor's incredible baseball comeback against Rice in the NCAA tournament last spring. And Baylor's breathless victory in the 4x400-meter relay in the NCAA championships last spring, and the Bears' winning their way to the College World Series in 1977 and '78. enabling the Bears to finished third nationally in the NCAA championships.
As tough as the Big 12 Conference is, any championship won in that league has to be special. Thus the soccer championship won by the Lady Bears in 1998, and the men's golf crown won by Tim Hobby's team last spring, and the men's first-in-history tennis championship won by Matt Knoll's netters in 2000 are worthy of mention.
Well, the list is not endless but it is long. To each his own. Feel free to get out pen and paper and make your own list. As for me, I still like these 10, and for these reasons:
1. Baylor basketball from March 19-30 of 1948
First, a confession. I just automatically started to put down Baylor's unforgettable and delicious comeback victory over Texas in 1974 as my No. 1 moment in Baylor sports history.
I'll bet nine out of ten Baylor fans would start their list with that nomination. And wondrous things did stem from that victory.
But my vote goes to an extended "moment" -- that 11-day span of days in late March of 1948 when Baylor basketball became sprinkled with star dust and coach Bill Henderson's Bears became a prominent part of the national basketball spotlight and national basketball conversations first in Kansas City and then at New York's famed Madison Square Garden.
What you must understand is that pro basketball in those days was mainly a fad. Where the hoops game was concerned, college basketball was it. And at the end of the regular season that year, Baylor was undisputed Southwest Conference champion for the second time in three years -- but expected to accomplish little beyond that.
Instead, the Bears won their way to the NCAA Western Regional by defeating U. of Arizona in two straight games in the NCAA District playoffs in Dallas. Other Southwest Conference teams had won their way to the Western Regional. But SWC teams simply did not win the Western Regional. Didn't happen.
But the Bears made it happen. In two shocking upsets founded on Baylor displays of monumental effort, poise and execution, the Bears defeated Washington, 64-62, and then toppled highly-favored Kansas State, 60-52.
Those twin victories sent them on their way (by rail) to New York to play a super Kentucky team (Alex Groza, Ralph Beard) for the national championship.
And right there you have the reason why I have to pick the Bears of 1948 and their late-March odyssey to Kansas City and New York for providing us the greatest moment in Baylor sports history.
Because, pray tell, what other Baylor team has ever advanced to a national championship game? What other Baylor team has ever fought its way to such a lofty level where such national attention was focused, where such national acclaim was at stake?
Baylor lost to Kentucky but that glorious March moment was not quite over for the 1948 Bears. Having made the NCAA finals, having been stamped as the No. 2 basketball team in the country, they automatically qualified for the Olympic Basketball Trials that were held immediately following the NCAA tournament.
Baylor's first opponent was NYU (New York University), the winner as I recall of the prestigious National Invitation Tournament and highly favored over the Bears because of the home court advantage it would hold at Madison Square Garden. According to the Waco Tribune-Herald's famed sports editor Jinx Tucker, who was there reporting on the game, the home-town NYU team got all the officiating breaks -- but the Bears finally prevailed, 59-57.
That victory matched them against Kentucky again, and again they lost. And then they lost to the Denver Nuggets, eliminating them from the Trials (which were eventually won by Phillips 66, a super AAU team). But for those few days, Baylor basketball had lived at the national summit, had played for the national championship, had been spotlighted by the national media and played in the nation's most famous playpen, which Madison Square Garden certainly was in those days.
2. Baylor versus Penn State on Jan. 1, 1975
This game and this day get my vote for the second greatest moment in Baylor sports history because of what they represent -- the culmination of a 50-year dream of Baylor sports fans everywhere.
And if you want to narrow the moment still further, the choice would be the halftime of that game. Because the Bears led Penn State at halftime, 7-3.
The sublime moment didn't last, of course. Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions came back to win that game, 41-20. Even so, it had been an unforgettable trip for Baylor fans.
Indeed, I can still remember encountering age-old partisans of the green and gold walking the State Fair grounds, awaiting the opening kickoff, saying over and over again, "I had given up. I never thought I'd live to see this day. I never thought Baylor would ever get here."
The late Field Scovell, who was "Mr. Cotton Bowl" in those days, was the official host of the Baylor team for the Cotton Bowl festivities. Scovell went around with a constant smile on his face. Why? "You always have fun taking a kid to his first circus," he explained. It was that way for the Bears and their fans.
Every member of the Southwest Conference had won their way to the Cotton Bowl as SWC championships several times over. But never Baylor. The Bears had not win a football championship since 1924, and they didn't have a Cotton Bowl in those days. The Baylor frustration had grown so deep and become so well known that a Fort Worth Star Telegram sports columnist on one occasion in the late 1950s had predicted Texas Tech's Red Raiders would make it to the Cotton Bowl before Baylor, "and they ain't in (the SWC) yet," he wrote.
But in 1974 -- a season of magic -- the Bears did break through. They won the title, they won their way to the Cotton Bowl, they put a stamp of enduring acclaim and affection on Grant Teaff for getting them there in just his third year at the Baylor helm.
And they left us with golden memories that just live on and on.
No. 3: Baylor's victory over Tennessee in the 1957 Sugar Bowl
This victory gets my vote for the third greatest moment in Baylor sports history for two reasons: it came against Volunteers who were rated the No. 2 football team in the nation (just behind Oklahoma) and were drawing a lot of No. 1 votes themselves, and it remains the only victory Baylor has ever won in one of the so-called "major" bowls (Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Cotton in 1957, and you would have to substitute the Fiesta for the Cotton as a BCS bowl now).
Baylor was a distinct underdog in that game but the Bears by the end of the season were an outstanding team. The Southwest Conference was very strong that season, Bear Bryant's Aggies, led by John David Crow and Jack Pardee, were unbeaten and once-tied, and defending champion TCU lost only one game -- the famed "Hurricane Game" to the Aggies at College Station. Baylor only lost to both teams -- 19-13 to the Aggies on a game that turned on a late and controversial ruling on a Baylor fumble recovery, and 7-6 to TCU the following week in Fort Worth.
But by the end of the season the Bears, potent from the start defensively but inconsistent on offense, had grown to their full potential. They had proved that in their final three games -- after scraping past a sub-par Texas team in Waco, 10-7. They then had done an about-face on offense, blistering Nebraska, 26-7, SMU, 26-0, and a Jess Neely-coached Rice team, 46-13.
Teams just didn't beat a Neely team like that in those days. The 46-point Baylor outburst was the most points Rice had given up since the end of World War II.
That runaway victory over Rice sewed up the Sugar Bowl invitation for the Bears. Athletic director and former Baylor head coach George Sauer, sports information director George Wright and I went to New Orleans a couple of days before the Bears were to arrive. Walking Bourbon Street one night, George Wright and I talked about the November renaissance of the Baylor offense.
"You know what happened, don't you?" I remember Wright asking me. "After the Texas game, Sam Boyd (Baylor's head coach) went to George (Sauer) and asked him what in the world was wrong with the offense. George diagrammed some trap plays that he suggested they put in. After that, we really had an offense."
The Bears beat Tennessee (All-America Johnny Majors, et al) that afternoon, 13-7, and it was no fluke. Baylor people (and all those SEC fans who didn't like Tennessee, and plenty of them wrote me letters confirming their feelings after the game) celebrated for weeks.
In my opinion, that 1956 Baylor team (Del Shofner, Bill Glass and friends) and the 1951 Bears remain among the four most talented teams in Baylor history, although the 1974 and 1980 Bears rank ahead of them in achievement because those two teams won the SWC crown, the '51 and '56 teams did not.
No. 4: Baylor over Texas, 34-24, on Nov. 9, 1974
Lives there a Baylor partisan with soul so dead that he or she doesn't still get goose-bumps reliving the Bears "Miracle on the Brazos" victory over the Longhorns that day? Baylor had not defeated Texas on a football field since 1956, Baylor had never defeated a Darrell Royal-coached UT team. And Baylor trailed at halftime that afternoon, 24-7. Auto engines were being turned on in the parking lot, Baylor fans had seen enough.
And then everything suddenly changed, for that afternoon and for the remainder of the season.
The Bears charged back to win the game. And after that, it was Cotton Bowl, here we come.
The way the Bears won that game made it unforgettable. But it was what happened in the next three weeks -- a comeback victory over Texas Tech and decisive victories over SMU and Rice -- and what it led to (the SWC crown and Cotton Bowl) that made it a game for the ages.
No. 5: Baylor over No. 6 Kansas in basketball last February
Considering who the Bears beat that night of Feb. 12, 2001, the size of the audience (a capacity crowd at the Ferrell Center, plus a nationwide audience numbering in the millions watching on ESPN2), and the message it sent both to Baylor fans and the Big 12 (coach Dave Bliss' teams not only could compete but would compete against quality teams in the power-packed league), this game has to command a special place among Baylor's greatest sports moments.
Incidentally, the Bears got well out in front by halftime and won decisively, 85-77, and in so doing made possible one of the best retorts to come out of a Baylor interview room in years. A week or so earlier, when Kansas lost back-to-back games to Missouri and Iowa State, the Jayhawks' Kenny Gregory waved aside the losses. "It's not like we lost to Texas A&M and Baylor," he said. "We lost to two good teams." After the Bears had whipped Kansas, Baylor's Terry Black was asked to comment on the significance of the victory. "We felt like we only beat Kansas," he replied. "It's not like it was Duke or North Carolina."
No. 6: Michael Johnson's historic double victory in the 1996 Summer Olympics
For several brief shining moments in Atlanta, Ga., flashbulbs were popping like fireflies in the huge stadium and Michael Johnson was doing something no man in recorded history had ever done before: he was becoming the first Olympian ever to win both the 400 and 200 in the same Games, and he was running the 200 meters faster -- much faster -- than anyone before him had ever run it.
And after that, Michael Johnson's name was on tongues world wide. He had done the impossible and he had done it in such compelling fashion that one has to wonder if anyone will ever reach that particular level of excellence again.
So why doesn't Michael's fantastic conquest rank No. 1 on this list? One reason mainly: he did it as a former Baylor student-athlete, not a current Baylor student-athlete, and he did it as a member of a U.S. team, not a Baylor team.
Certainly, in this book, Johnson's performance in Atlanta overshadows any particular performance produced by several other Baylor athletic icons, Mike Singletary with the Chicago Bears, Ted Lyons with the Chicago White Sox, Vinnie Johnson with the Detroit Pistons.
But I find it difficult to rank what he did as a former Baylor student-athlete (although still coached by BU's Clyde Hart) ahead of the great moments given us by Baylor teams or by student-athletes who were still wearing Baylor colors, playing for Baylor teams.
Even so, all hail to Michael, truly a giant among all Baylor athletes who came before him and probably those who will come after him.
No. 7: Baylor's mind-boggling 7-7 "upset" of Texas' No. 1-ranked Longhorns in 1941
That Texas team, coach D.X. Bible's masterpiece, had not had so much as a close game before taking on the Bears at Waco's Muny Stadium that Nov. 8, 1941. The Longhorns were about to have their faces plastered on the cover of Life Magazine. Baylor two weeks earlier had lost to A&M, 48-0. Texas was such a heavy favorite the game was off the charts. Texas was thought to be Rose Bowl-bound, the ultimate destination for a team in those days. Baylor "won" the game by tying Texas, 7-7, wrecking those Rose Bowl dreams. Years later, a wire service survey rated that the biggest upset in Southwest Conference history.
No. 8: Baylor's entire football season of 1980, climaxed by a date against Bear Bryant's Alabama team in the Cotton Bowl
This really is a vote for the many delicious things the Bears did in that star-spangled 1980 football season: defeating two-time SWC defending champion Houston in a pulse-pounding battle, 24-12, staging a super comeback to beat an unbeaten SMU team, 32-28, walloping A&M in a College Station rainstorm, 46-7, mauling Arkansas at homecoming, 42-15, handing Texas the last shutout the Longhorns have suffered even to this day, 16-0, finally, winning the Southwest Conference by a record-tying margin of three games. Those were all high-water occasions.
The fact that the Bears lost to Alabama in the Cotton Bowl by a 30-2 margin does not begin to tell you what a defensive struggle that game was until the late going, or how well Mike Singletary and several of his fellow Bears played.
No. 9: Baylor's upset victory in basketball over No. 3-ranked Arkansas in 1990
The Arkansas Razorbacks came to the Ferrell Center that Feb. 10, 1990, as a team that had won its last 18 games in Southwest Conference play and was unbeaten after its first 12 games that 1990 season. Baylor was hardly a powerhouse, the Bears finished 7-9 in league play.
But the Bears, paced by future NBA star David Wesley, were a powerhouse that day. They beat the team that had been unbeaten, 82-77, after which their fans stormed the court in the same manner they did after the Bears beat No. 6 Kansas last February.
No. 10: Baylor's first SWC track title, won in Fort Worth in 1960
What you must remember is that Baylor had never won a conference track and field championship until George Sauer hired Jack Patterson away from Houston to take over the Bruin program. Texas, Texas A&M and Rice had won multiple track crowns, but not Baylor. People were saying it couldn't be done.
And then one bright day in May in 1960, Patterson took his Bears to Fort Worth and turned that Saturday into an over-achieving afternoon. Baylor performer after performer just outdid himself as Patterson worried and fretted and crossed his fingers and uttered silent prayer after silent prayer. And when it was all over, Patterson's jubilant Bears, who worshiped their coach, tossed him in the shower in celebration, and Baylor fans -- so many had turned out that they dominated the stands -- stayed around Farrington Field whooping and hollering almost until the sun went down.
"It's a great day in this house," I remember Patterson saying.
And it was. The Bears had broken a six-year domination of the SWC by the Longhhorns, they had proved it could be done. That fall, John Bridgers' football team had a big season (8-3-0) and John credited the performance of Jack's track team for being a prime motivating force for his gridders. And just to prove it was no fluke, the Bears won the outdoor track crown again in 1962 and '63, giving them three conference track championships in a four-year span.
No Baylor team has dominated in one of the so-called "big four" sports (football, basketball, baseball, track) in such fashion again.
OKAY, THOSE ARE my choices. Now you make yours.
Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Dave Campbell appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.
