Size doesn't determine stature if your name is Buck Flowers, Shorty Roberts, Johnny Bosch, Jimmy Jordan or . . . Jimmy Thompson.
THE smaller THEY COME
J
IMMY
THOMPSON
is a short
(5'
6"),
bullnecked (16 inch), fireplug-built, 148 - pound halfback whose perpetual choir-boy grin masks the talent and determination of a great athlete. He also happens to be the heir apparent of a tradition unique in collegiate football circles—Tech's great-little-man dynasty. Since 1918 when a 152-pound halfback named Buck Flowers first started remaking the record books, the little man has been an integral part of Tech's football history. Over the years, names like Roberts, Bosch, Eldridge, Peek, Jordan and Rudolph appeared in Tech lineups, wrecking havoc on opponents all out of proportion to their own physical size. Some of them like Bosch were passers, others like Eldridge were running stars, and still others like Jordan and Rudolph were defensive operators. But they all had one thing in common: they stood 5' 7" or under and weighed less than 1 55 pounds. If you were Jimmy Thompson, you would have been aware of this tradition when you were just a 120-pound sophomore at Bessemer Ala. High School. And it stayed in your mind while you starred at halfback for two consecutive statechampionship years in high school.
When it came time for you to select a college, you picked Tech over Alabama, Vanderbilt and others who bid you, because you knew that the Tech coaching staff always gave the little man an equal chance to make the team. During your freshman year at Tech, you made the Baby Jackets, but you weren't a sensation by any means. But in the spring game of 1954, you suddenly blossomed out into a star, catching the eyes of the fans as well as the coaches. That fall, though seldom a starter, you still managed to set a new modern record of 9.4 yards per try during the regular season, eclipsing Leon Hardeman's record of 5.8 yards per try. But your true worth to the team wasn't only in your ability to carry a football. You were a good blocker and an exceptional defensive performer. Your defensive coach, Lewis Woodruff, ranks you with the best he has coached and calls his present trio of deep backs (Wade Mitchell, Paul Rotenberry and you), "the best I have ever coached." Those who saw you flip Georgia's huge Foots Clements in last year's mud battle in Athens rank it as a game-saver along with that magnificent stop of Bobby Marlowe by another Tech little man, Jakie Ru-
JIMMY SCOOTS THROUGH A FIELD OF ALABAMA GIANTS I N 1 9 5 4 September, 1955
dolph, in the '52 Tech-Alabama game. If you were Jimmy Thompson, you'd tackle and block and run as low to the ground as you could. For this is the way a little man must do it if he wants to stay in the game. In your own mind, your size is of little disadvantage. You don't think about your size when you come up to hit a big player. Again you can't afford to. Your motto is an old saw, "He who hesitates is lost." And you live by it. You have all the little man's advantages —speed, change of pace, quick reactions and confidence. And you use them every second. You offset your size disadvantage in pass defense by always playing the ball. And in your first season no one completed a pass over you. You like football and give it everything you have every second that you're playing the game whether it's scrimmage or a bowl game. The game has been good to you. Your ability to excell in it has meant a chance at a college education to you, and you're not forgetting that important point. You would have gone to college anyway, but it would have been a financial struggle for you without football. You feel strongly that the game owes you nothing, but that you owe the game a great deal. And you repay it by your determination to succeed. If you were Jimmy Thompson, you'd be a hero to the Tech fans at the moment. But what to you is even more important, you'd be a hero to every little man who ever wore the White and Gold. Buck Flowers and Jimmy Jordan have called you a solid football player regardless of your size. And they are as proud of your accomplishments as are your own parents. For there is a great bond of mutual admiration between little men. And you are their boy in this era. If you were Jimmy Thompson, you'd still wear the same helmet size as when you came to Tech. All that's happened to you in the past few years hasn't changed that. It's still 67s's—the smallest of the Jackets of the year 1955.