Standing Together: The Spirit of Kyle Field

Standing Together

The Spirit of Kyle Field b y H o m e r J ac o b s & Ru s t y B u r s o n

Š 2007 by The Booksmith Group All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America by The Booksmith Group 2451 Atrium Way Nashville, TN 37214 1-800-358-0560 www.thebooksmithgroup.com

an imprint of

ISBN: 978-0-9799011-7-1 (Standard) ISBN: 978-0-9799011-8-8 (Premium) Publisher: Steve Giddens Managing Editor: Jennifer Day Lake Project Manager: Bobby Sagmiller,VisibilityCreative.com Text: Homer Jacobs and Rusty Burson Book Design: Kimberly Sagmiller,VisibilityCreative.com Photography: J. P. Beato III Manufactured in China First printing 2007

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .VI The Evolution of Kyle Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Greatest Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Game Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Poignant Moments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

RU S TY BU RS O N

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y wife and I are movie buffs, which is a draining pastime in today’s cesspool of cinematic flops. Nowadays we sit through at least ten dull or downright nauseating movies for every one that we actually like. Consequently, we recently agreed that

instead of wasting our rare date nights going to the movie theater and taking a chance on yet another loser, we’d rewatch some of our old favorites. Since we’re also both sports junkies, most of our favorites—Rudy, Field of Dreams, Hoosiers, Rocky, For the Love of the Game, Remember the Titans, Fever Pitch, Cinderella Man, etc.—feature football as the focus, baseball as the backdrop, or some type of crowd noise as the crescendo.

One of my all-time favorite sports scenes, however, occurred in a movie that wasn’t about sports. I’ll always remember it, from the 1991 movie City Slickers, when Billy Crystal’s character describes the best day of his life as being the first time he went to Yankee

Introduction

Stadium with his father. It’s a fictional movie, but Crystal said that it was a true story from his own childhood.The aroma of the ballpark grill, the majesty of the stadium, the excitement of the crowd, and the bonding time with his father generated one of the most cherished and precious memories of Crystal’s life.

That’s my story too. Growing up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, I can vividly recall the first time my father took me to Texas

Stadium, Arlington Stadium, the Cotton Bowl, and Floyd Casey Stadium (Dad was a Baylor grad). Many of the games we attended were duds, but the time with my dad was priceless. Those memories are as precious to me now as they were exhilarating at the time.

The stadiums helped to produce magic memories.

Now, as a father of three, I have been able to experience those moments from the other perspective. My wife,Vannessa, and I each

have our own personal collection of favorite Kyle Field games and favorite A&M players; and we can each detail stories about how this old stadium first tantalized us. But in the big picture, this stadium will probably always be most special to me because of the magic that it reflected in my children’s faces. At age 5 or 6, my son, Payton, wore a full uniform—helmet and shoulder pads included—to a game at Kyle Field, and some wonderful A&M students stopped him in the parking lot to ask him for his autograph. My daughter Kyleigh is named after this stadium, and I’ll never forget how she crawled excitedly through the Zone Club like she owned the place. And my youngest daughter, Summer, attended her first game in 2006—some five months before her second birthday. She loved Reveille’s bark, the band, the commotion of Kyle Field, and—most of all—the junk food, which she later deposited in Dad’s lap.

Kyle Field has certainly hosted its fair share of big games. It has generated big revenues and undergone major expansions. But it

has also fostered an immeasurable amount of childhood dreams, serving as the birthplace of familial bonding moments—unforgettable images in time—that will last a lifetime. As the song says,“There’s a spirit in Aggieland”—particularly inside Kyle Field—“that can ne’er be told.” No words are necessary for me, as I’ve been fortunate enough to see it written all over the faces of my kids.

Thanks for the memories, Kyle Field.You’ve helped to generate some of the greatest days in this father’s life.

VI

H O M E R JAC OB S

Introduction

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s I write this introduction from my office inside Kyle Field, it’s hard to imagine what my life would be like without this place.

I’ve worked in the stadium since 1996 and have watched games in it since 1978.

Sure, there are only six or seven times a year when Kyle Field is in official use. But there have been so many lifetime memories

created from games and poignant moments, that Kyle Field has become much more than a football stadium to me. It’s been a goosebump-gathering spot and a stage for the spirit.

It’s been home.

My first memory of Kyle Field is the 1978 game against Baylor, when I watched Walter Abercrombie run wild over the Aggies

in a 24-6 Bears victory. I soaked up every minute of that game from the second row on the 10-yard line. The yells in the stands were

mesmerizing, and the Aggie band’s performance at halftime was spellbinding. I think I knew right then, as a wide-eyed 13-year-old, where I was headed to college.

Little did I know I would be fortunate enough to cover the Aggies for a living as a writer and editor. And then, to be able to chronicle this magnificent old stadium in this book . . . well, it’s been an amazing experience.

Kyle Field means so much to so many people because the stadium is far more than a place to watch football. It’s been the front porch and the living room for the world to see just how special Texas A&M is.

Fans at Ohio State or Florida or Texas love their football programs, first and foremost. At Texas A&M, Aggies are certainly passionate about their football and winning ballgames; but at the heart of everything on this campus, including inside Kyle Field, it’s about

being true to your school. Aggies cherish the spirit and camaraderie at Kyle Field as much as they do long passes and highlight-reel touchdown runs.

And while other stadiums hold more people or register higher decibels on the field, none can really match the pageantry that

engulfs Kyle Field on Saturdays in the fall. Where else can you have a Corps of Cadets March-In (often in front of a former president

of the United States), 30,000 students standing all game long dating back to a tradition started in 1922, and 80,000 fans swaying to a “War Hymn” that causes the stadium to literally move? Where else would students start a T-shirt campaign to color the stadium’s decks in red, white, and blue to honor those who were lost in the September 11 terrorist attacks . . . and pull it off in just over a week?

There is no place else.

I will never forget my first game at Kyle Field as a spectator in 1978, my first game as a student when the 12th Man Kickoff Team debuted in 1983, or my first game as a Battalion sportswriter in the towering press box in 1986. The 1985 game with Texas and the 1999 Bonfire Game with the Longhorns are also forever ingrained in my soul.

There are many games I wish I had seen over the years, like the 1963, 1967, and 1975 Texas games. And having to miss the 1989

game with Houston still rankles me. But the beauty of the ritual that is college football is that more special moments and memories are on the way at Kyle Field. The place will shake and rattle again when the big games come to town.

To think how this classic stadium has evolved over time from Edwin Jackson Kyle’s rudimentary athletic field to a permanent horseshoe-shaped structure to a triple-decked, concrete monster . . . it just boggles the mind.

Kyle Field will undergo more makeovers and expansions in the next few decades.The coaches, the players, and the game of football inside the stadium will change as well. But the atmosphere that reverberates from deck to deck, the spirit that seeps through every nook and cranny of the stadium—those intangibles will always stand the test of time and keep Kyle Field forever standing apart from the rest.

VII

The of

Evolution

Kyle Field

As a fe w small hill s peek out of the green flatlands of Brazos County in central Texas, the change in to pography gives you the first glimpse.

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en miles or so from College Station, on either one of the two state highways that leads into this college town, the driver’s view yields the undeniable outline of a legendary college football stadium that shoots skyward out of the horizon.

Kyle Field, the longtime beacon for Texas A&M football fans, welcomes the travelers home each fall with its 82,600 seats, three-deck configuration, and unmatched pomp and pageantry. As longtime A&M Athletic Department employee Andy Richardson says so fittingly, if football is religion in Texas, then Kyle Field is the church.

It surely has been a sanctuary for the spirit of Aggieland, the palpable air of loyalty and passion that engulfs this campus of 45,000 students. e Aggies e in 1916, as th ce to play a gam pla ry r. ta ylo en Ba dim th ru in this game wi Kyle Field was a e forward pass tinkered with th

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y y Over 100 years ago, Kyle Field was nothing more

than a shack by the tracks.

d the re in 1894, playe team, shown he ll ba ot e. fo m M ga ial A& The Texas s’ first offic xas in the Aggie University of Te

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Aggie games at Kyle Field are as much about the fan experience of swaying and singing during the playing of the “Aggie War Hymn” as they are about the sport of football itself. Game days drip with tradition and history, dating back to when Texas A&M was a small, all-male military college that produced more heroes on the battlefield than on the football field.

Today, Kyle Field is a behemoth; at one time, it was the largest college football stadium in the state of Texas. Crowds surpassing 86,000 have packed the stadium for games ranging from nondescript affairs with Iowa State to biennial throwdowns with rival Texas.

Several national publications and media outlets have ranked Kyle Field as one of the nation’s most intimidating and spirited places to watch a college football game. It is simply a must-see destination for the football fan of any age and expertise.

But Kyle Field wasn’t always a cathedral of cascading noise, with its east-side decks filled with 30,000 students. It wasn’t always the concrete monster graced with high-tech video boards and posh, north-end suites. Indeed, while Oklahoma defensive lineman Dan Cody once said Kyle Field wasn’t a stadium but a coliseum, the early years on campus showcased neither of the two.

Over 100 years ago, Kyle Field was nothing more than a shack by the tracks.

From the Ground Up

From the Ground Up

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When the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas opened its doors on October 4, 1876, military training soon became a major mantra for this school, which is located nearly equidistant between Austin and Houston. As the college maintained its all-male, all-military flavor through the first decades of its existence, a drill field naturally became the center of activity on campus.

Located close to where the current Simpson Drill Field now resides, in the shadow of the Academic Building, the field also served as the home of the rudimentary Aggie football team, which played its first game in 1894 (a 38-0 loss to the University of Texas).

When A&M first opened, the game of football was more like a rugby match, and it held merely club-level status on the College Station grounds. But in the late 1880s, former Yale player and coach Walter Camp helped popularize the game nationally with a more defined set of rules and scoring, and three A&M pioneers—Charley Herndon, Art Watts, and Coach Dudley Perkins—organized the first official football team.

Early games were held on the drill field, with fans standing on the sidelines. The supporters even passed a hat to help pay for the team’s expenses. Recognizing there had to be a better way to promote athletics, a young horticulture professor named Edwin Jackson Kyle decided to cordon off a piece of land on the southwest corner of the campus to showcase athletic events, particularly football. Kyle already was using some of the green space for agricultural and horticultural experiments, but little did this president of the General Athletic Association know just how historic his original barbed-wired plot of land would become.

Edwin Jackson Kyle, the dean of agriculture and president of the Athletic Council, fenced off a section of land with barbed wire for athletic contests in 1904. One year later, he purchased lumber for a new fence and bleachers, offering his personal note for the costs.

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To really make the game of football take off in Aggieland, though—and to have it become more than just a small diversion from everyday TAMC life—Kyle knew that chalk lines and fencing

y y The old grandstand of Kyle Field was disassembled from the Bryan fairgrounds and moved to the Texas A&M campus.

The first athletic

action at Kyle Field

was actually baseball.

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needed to morph into some kind of seating for the Aggie fans.According to university archives, Kyle asked good friend and prominent Bryan citizen G. S. Parker for help in 1905. Parker came through, selling $312.63 worth of lumber to Kyle, who financed the building of two sets of bleachers that could hold approximately 500 people.

The A&M cadets were so grateful to Kyle for his foresight concerning the football facility that they unofficially named the field in his honor in 1906. It was fifty years later when the school’s Board of Directors officially named the stadium for Edwin Jackson Kyle, but the professor’s name had already been cemented in Texas A&M lore.

The first athletic action at Kyle Field was actually baseball, as the 400 x 400-foot field was the site of a few games in the spring of 1905. After expanding to 250,000 square feet, Kyle Field was finally ready for some football. Before a crowd of approximately 600 on October 7, 1905, the Aggies defeated Houston YMCA 29-0. While the game marked the true onset of Aggie football in College Station, the growth of Kyle’s old vegetable patch was just beginning as well. At Texas A&M, football’s increasing popularity at the turn of the century coincided with the arrival of Coach Charley Moran from Tennessee in 1909.

E. J. Kyle had already coughed up more of his own money in 1907 for the first expansion of the athletic field—this time for a covered grandstand he commandeered (in disassembled wooden pieces) from the Bryan Fair Association. But the success of Moran’s teams, which went 29-3-1 from 1909-12, really was the slingshot for further stadium construction.

By 1915, the grandstands by the railroad that led into College Station had expanded to 6,800 seats, this time financed with funds from the Athletic Association. As the Bryan Daily Eagle proudly reported, “The field is completely surrounded like the larger bowls of the East with well constructed bleachers.” Yet for twenty-five years, Kyle Field was, well, just that—a field with a fairground feel to it.The patchwork facility had served its purpose well, taking the infant sport of football toward maturity in Aggieland. But Professor Kyle’s field lacked permanence, if not prominence.

While the University of Texas had broken ground on its concrete Memorial Stadium in 1924, A&M’s Athletic Department was struggling in debt and shortsightedness. The Aggies needed another Edwin Kyle to step up and lead the way. Fortunately, Athletic Department business manager James “Sully” Sullivan realized the only way to ensure significant revenue for the department and the college itself was to erect a concrete structure similar to the one in Austin.

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Fans pulled up their automobiles right to the stadium, which was the sight of early baseball games as well.

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The horseshoe end of Kyle Field was built in 1929, two years after construction began on a permanent stadium.

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Layin g the Foundation

Layin g the Foundation

As fans file into their first-deck seats at Kyle Field today, they walk toward the portals through the original decorative arches designed in concrete in 1927. With James Sullivan’s desire and gumption to build a new and sturdier Kyle Field—and with $100,000 in Athletic Department funds—the first five sections of Kyle Field were cemented into the ground that memorable year. Two years later, sixteen more sections were added as the west stands expanded with a horseshoed end zone and attached east-side stands. The south end zone could hold 5,000 temporary seats, pushing Kyle Field’s capacity to an impressive 37,890 seats.

For a total cost of $365,000, Sullivan’s dream had indeed been realized. And on Thanksgiving Day 1929, A&M truly christened its new baby as the Aggies beat the Longhorns 13-0 before a packed house of college football fans and state dignitaries.

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Ten years after the memorable 1929 game with Texas, the Aggies celebrated one of their all-time classic seasons, shutting out Texas again (20-0) and winning the 1939 national championship in the Sugar Bowl with a 14-13 victory over Tulane. But the next fifteen years were not among the most glorious for the Texas Aggies.World War II depleted the maroon roster for several years, and it wasn’t until the hiring of Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1954 that Aggie football found another revival.

9) hn Kimbrough (3 Boyd (64) and Jo e Jo . e 39 lik 19 rs in ye p Great pla ampionshi the national ch led the Aggies to

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On November 24, 1921, Texas A&M students produced the first live play-by-play radio broadcast of a college football game, transmitting the action in special code from Kyle Field to Austin and some 275 other radio operators around the state.

Track & Field Track and Field at Kyle Field In the early days at Texas A&M, baseball was the first sport to use Edwin Jackson Kyle’s cordonedoff athletic field. But during much of Kyle Field’s history, football shared the stadium with track and field. In fact, a faded red track encircled Kyle Field until 1996.

And in 1965, Kyle Field became the site of more than just the goings-on of the Aggie football team, as A&M standout Randy Matson’s shot put of 70 feet, 7¼ inches set a world record. In fact, Matson— a basketball star at A&M as well—became the first man to ever throw the shot more than 70 feet.

Longtime A&M official and former athletic director Wally Groff was working the shot put pit during the Southwest Conference championship meet when Matson heaved his record-breaker. It happened in the northeast corner of the stadium, and Groff still calls it one of his most memorable days inside Kyle Field.

First Moon Shot The First Moon Shot

Mention “The Hit” to today’s Texas A&M fans, and there’s a good chance vivid images of Quentin Coryatt’s punishing blow against TCU in 1991 will instantly come to mind. But before CNN, ESPN, FOX, or even color TV, “The Hit” had an entirely different meaning for many Aggies. It also involved TCU and a midfield collision, but it had nothing to do with football.

Playing against the Horned Frogs in 1950, Texas A&M outfielder Wally Moon strolled to the plate in the rickety old baseball stadium that backed up to Kyle Field and launched perhaps the most monstrous hit in Aggie memoirs. The ball cleared the outfield fence and kept rising. Then it cleared the top of the first—and at that time, the only—deck of Kyle Field, continued traveling over the seats inside the football stadium, and crossed the old cinder track. When it finally came to rest, former A&M track coach Andy Anderson picked up the ball near midfield of the football playing surface.

Witnesses of the colossal crunch seem leery about estimating its distance, fearing a guess would fail to do it justice. But A&M historians claim it as the most unforgettable home run—at least in terms of pure length—in Aggie history. And it was done with a wooden bat. “And a dead ball, for that matter,” said Pat Hubert, a pitcher at A&M from 1949-51 and Moon’s former roommate. “It was unbelievable.

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I remember thinking, My God, that thing is never going to come down. It was easily 500 feet, maybe 550, maybe more. It was a hit I will never forget.”

Moon, a two-year letterman at A&M in 1949 and ’50, won All-Southwest Conference honors in 1950, signed with the St. Louis Cardinals later that year, and enjoyed perhaps the most distinguished pro career of any Aggie ever to make it to “the show.” After Moon spent 1953 in AAA, the Cardinals traded the legendary Enos Slaughter to make room for Moon in the lineup. As a rookie, Moon hit .304 and scored 106 runs and earned National League Rookie of the Year honors, beating out future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks.

A small second deck and press box were completed in 1954 at a cost of $346,000.

who had moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles the

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In 1958, Moon was traded to the Dodgers, previous season. He hit .302 his first season with the Dodgers, clubbing 19 homers over the short porch in left field at the LA Coliseum. It was a mere 250 feet down the line in left, but a 42-foot net prevented many balls from going out.

“We drove out to California to watch him, and

he was really something with the Dodgers,” said Al Ogletree, one of Moon’s teammates at A&M. “People out there were really excited about those homers over that short left-field fence. They became known as ‘Moon shots.’”

Moon shots helped propel the ragtag Dodgers

from a seventh-place finish in ’58 to a world championship in ’59. Playing in a lineup that featured future legends such as Duke Snider, Maury Wills, and Gil Hodges, and a pitching rotation that included stars like Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, Moon helped the Dodgers land the first West Coast World Series in baseball history.

But the first “Moon shot” of all took place in

Kyle Field—the baseball version—and reached all the way to Kyle Field the football stadium.

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Coinciding with Bryant’s ballyhooed arrival in College Station, Kyle Field expanded again as an awkward-looking, partial second deck was added to the west side. With a new press box, and at a cost of $346,000, the small deck was merely a stopgap.

Not until A&M completed second-deck expansions on both sides of the stadium in 1967 (taking capacity to 49,000) and finished other renovations—including installing the famed AstroTurf playing surface and a tartan track by 1970—would Kyle Field round out into a more imposing stadium in the football-loving South.

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and nd yet, there was still so much expansion on the way.

In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Texas A&M was transforming itself from an all-male military college to a world-class coed university. Enrollment was skyrocketing, from just over 8,000 students in 1962 to 28,000 in 1975.

No other university in the nation could match such staggering growth.

College football in Texas was booming as well. Before the old Southwest Conference splintered into a backbiting, scandalous outfit of probation-laden teams in the 1980s, the league boasted of great college football in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Stadium enhancements have continued throughout the years, but the 1970 installment of AstroTurf and the third deck and new press box additions in 1980 are memorable earmarks of the progress.

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For Texas A&M, the mid-1970s provided some of the school’s most memorable

Takiin g It to Another Level

seasons, particularly at Kyle Field. From 1974-76 the Aggies, under Coach Emory Bellard, won twenty-eight games and nearly played for the national title in 1975. In contrast, it took A&M nine seasons from 1960-68 to win the same number of games.

A&M lost just once at home during that three-year span and beat Texas in 1975, 20-10, as the second-ranked Aggies knocked off the fifth-ranked Longhorns in one of the most important and memorable games in Kyle Field history. A disheartening 31-6 loss a week later at Arkansas derailed any national title hopes, but A&M football was basking in newfound popularity, and demand for tickets in the always sold-out stadium was at an all-time high. And that meant one thing . . . it was time for the largest expansion in Kyle Field history.

Takin g It to Another Level While the two-decked configuration of the old Kyle Field produced a cozy and spirited place to play a college football game in the 1970s, the stadium still lacked the breadth and intimidation of some of the stadiums in the region and around the country. Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium, LSU’s Tiger Stadium, and even Texas’ Memorial Stadium were considered obvious, if not over-the-top, displays of commitment to excellence.

The Texas A&M fan set was as passionate as any around, but a smaller former student base from years as an all-male military college kept A&M from keeping up with the larger state universities in terms of alumni donations and overall campus resources.Yet with the revenue to be generated from the west-side suites (a rarity in college football in 1980), as well as monies tabbed from student fees, A&M was able to add the third deck and state-of-the-art press box to take Kyle Field to another stadium stratosphere.

Fortunately, the west-side suites sold out in one day—something a doting Emory Bellard noted, as the stadium plans were drawn up on his watch.“I’m very proud,” Bellard said of taking A&M to a new level with football and facilities. “That’s what I went there to do.”

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A ticket for a game at Kyle Field was tough to come by as two decks kept the capacity around 49,000.

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The stadium atmosphere, with the tight decks allowing fans to rain down noise on the opponent, had reached goosebump proportions.

The Aggies and their stadium had found the big time.

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While Bellard would resign his post midway through the 1978 season, the expansion of Kyle Field was on the fast track. Phases of construction during the Tom Wilson era forced A&M to play its 1979 opener against Brigham Young at Rice Stadium in Houston. The Aggies played an unyielding stretch of four straight road games before sections of the third deck were gradually opened for seating to finish out the ’79 season.

Finally, with a national television audience and Penn State in town, A&M showed off its 72,000-seat stadium under the lights for the third game of the 1980 season. The Nittany Lions were hardly gracious guests, blowing past the Aggies 25-9. But the stadium atmosphere, with the tight decks allowing fans to rain down noise on the opponent, had reached goosebump proportions. The Aggies and their stadium had found the big time.

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Kyle Field transformed from a two-deck stadium with painted grass end zones in the late 1960s to a three-deck stadium with artificial turf in the 1980s to an 86,200-seat monster with natural grass in the late 1990s.

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In Their Own Words

In TheI TheIr The Ir r OWn OWn WOrdS: WOrd WO rdS S EMORY BELLARD Head Coach, 1972-1978

“The first thing that comes to my mind about Kyle Field is the remarkable home crowd. I had a lot of good moments, although probably my favorite is the 1975 win against UT. That was such a special win because it involved the first senior class they recruited. It was a tremendous performance, and we played awfully hard and with tremendous enthusiasm. The crowd was unbelievable that day.

Texas A&M, at one point in time, did not have real rich traditions as far as winning football games.

There was always great spirit and enthusiasm, and a great band, but it took some time to get us to winning football games. I just remember when it all came together—the great passion of A&M fans and the winning . . .

“I look at A&M today, and I see an amazing football atmosphere. When I first got there in 1972, we had about 48,000 seats, but we were averaging a lot less than capacity. Three years later we were filling

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The Aggies’ 1985 game against Texas is considered by many to be the loudest game in school history, as A&M pasted the Longhorns 42-10.

the stadium with more than 5,000 over capacity and putting folding chairs around the track.

“Anyone who has been ever been associated with Texas A&M will say the stadium is special to them. I certainly feel that way. Kyle Field will always have a special place in my heart.”

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And from 1985-95, A&M lost just four home games. In the six years from 1990-95, A&M won thirty-one straight games.

“The crowd and Kyle Field are unique,” says former coach R. C. Slocum, who stayed with A&M as an assistant or head coach for more than three decades. “A lot of stadiums are loud, but the one thing that Kyle Field has that others don’t is unified yells going because of the yell leaders. Most stadiums have spontaneous outbursts, but at Kyle Field you have constant noise.”

With the Aggies dominating the Southwest Conference in the first half of the 1990s, and while the university and its fan base were growing to record proportions,

In Their Own Words

In TheIr OWn WOrdS: TOM WILSON Head Coach, 1978-1981

“There are so many special things about Kyle Field, but the one memory that’s most special to me

the last expansion of the century for Kyle Field came

is the march the team used to take from Cain Hall

to fruition in 1998. It was just two years after Kyle Field’s

start playing. It was such an emotional thing. I still

playing surface was returned to natural grass and the Aggies

to come into the stadium as the Aggie band would get goosebumps thinking about it. When we hit the dressing room, you felt like breaking down the door.

If you weren’t ready to play, there was something wrong with you. It was just a feeling. As we came

joined the Big 12 Conference.

out for pregame warm-ups, the crowd was also so

After dealing with complaints from fans about poor sight-lines in the original horseshoe seating area built in 1929, the leadership of the 12 Man th

Foundation (A&M’s athletic fundraising arm) and then-athletic director Wally Groff led the charge to demolish the old end zone seats, add 22,000 new seats, twenty-four more lucrative suites, and a glitzy end zone club.

The $33 million project drew jeers from some competing fan bases—most from rival Texas—as many of the uninformed thought building more end zone seats (and the perceived poor sight-lines that came with them) would be a losing proposition for seat sales. Groff and a team of A&M administrators and donors, however, had seen well-designed seating areas on a tour of college football stadiums from Florida to Alabama to North Carolina. “Everybody on that tour told us, don’t let anyone fool you . . . you can sell end zone seats as long as they’re good viewing seats,” Groff has said. “That was the point we stressed with the architects. ‘We can’t have any obstructed seats.’ That was a very tough engineering feat. But there’s not a seat in the north end zone where you don’t have a clear view of the field.”

He adds, “There are many of those well-known stadiums like The Swamp in Florida where you have to stand up to see the end zone. I think the engineers did a terrific job. We must have had twenty meetings on line of sight. In retrospect, it was certainly well worth it.”

impressive and uplifting.

“There is no particular game that is my favorite; I cannot pick a favorite. But when I think back to my days on the sidelines of Kyle Field, the traditions and the things that go on before and after the games are the most memorable to me.”

In Their Own Words In TheI TheIr The Ir r OWn OWn WOrdS: WOrd WO rdS S:: R. C. SLOCUM Head Coach, 1989-2002

“When you look at college stadiums—and a lot of stadiums are loud—the one thing that Kyle Field has that others don’t is through the Yell Leaders. What you get is one unified yell going. Most stadiums have spontaneous outbursts [where] it really gets loud, but I have never been anywhere louder than Kyle Field. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when we played Thanksgiving night against Texas, it was really unbelievable.

“I remember [in 1993] watching the Cowboys play in Irving in the afternoon, and they had snow, and then that night we had some snow flurries.

It was bitterly cold, and we were playing Texas for the conference title. I’ve never been anywhere as loud and electric as that crowd was that night.

“I also think back to the first game I had as head coach. We were playing LSU, which was ranked No. 5 in the nation. Larry Horton took the opening kickoff and ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown. At the time, I was [jokingly] thinking, There isn’t much to this head coaching deal.

“But there are so many games that stick out in my mind. I remember playing Arkansas a few years later in a game that would decide the SWC championship. They had the ball on a fourth-and-2 on about the 28-yard line and ran the option and pitched the ball to the outside. Kip Corrington came down from safety and stopped the guy for no gain, and we took the ball over and won the game and the championship. I remember when Houston came in with Andre Ware and the nation’s No. 1 passing attack. I remember Aaron Wallace back there sacking the quarterback. He and John Roper—the Blitz Brothers—had a field day.

“But probably the most special day for me personally was the 1999 Texas game after Bonfire collapsed. It was down to the wire, but when the game was over, it wasn’t a feeling of jubilation as much as it was a feeling of relief.

It was just a different feeling. I was so pleased for all the Aggie family, and our team had done their part to start the healing process. We couldn’t stand any more heartache; our hearts were already empty from heartache.”

The Bernard C. Richardson Zone at Kyle Field, named for the 1941 petroleum engineering graduate, is a physical and fiscal marvel. The new seating, with a large upper deck, took Kyle Field’s capacity to 82,600. And the revenue from suite sales and donations for the 1,948 seats attached to the 14,000-square-foot Zone Club will pay off the bond indebtedness ($3.05 million per year) in 2020.

The offices for the 12th Man Foundation, as well as the Lettermen’s Athletic and Sports Museum, are found on the first floor of The Zone, while an expansive Zone Plaza greets thousands of fans as the front porch of the stadium on game day. And in 2003, the Bright Football Complex, named in honor of longtime A&M supporter H. R. “Bum” Bright, opened to rave reviews just beyond the field’s south end zone. The sparkling $27 million complex serves as home to the Aggie locker room, coaches’ offices, training room, meeting rooms, and academic center.

It’s almost unfathomable how much Kyle Field has evolved since Edwin Jackson Kyle first fenced off part of the campus farmland for Aggie athletic contests. From the crowd of 500 fans who first watched an Aggie football game to the 87,555 who watched the 2001 game against Texas, Kyle Field has grown into a college football landmark, a stadium with an almost mythical reputation.

And it is conceivable that the expansions of the stadium will continue into the coming decades, forever reshaping this old stadium into a colossus in College Station.

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Durin g the course of his highl y successful collegiate and professional foot ball career, for mer Texas A&M and Dallas Co wboys linebacker Dat Ngu yen played in many of the most illu striou s, boisterou s, and monstrou s foot ball stadiu ms in America.

T

he one that he still holds in the highest regard, however, is the place where his big-time football career first began: Kyle Field.

Nguyen, the leading tackler in the history of Texas A&M and perhaps the most popular defender in Aggie annals, admits he is biased. He bleeds maroon, met his wife in Aggieland, and is still regularly treated to rowdy, standing ovations when he returns to A&M athletic events. During his playing days in College Station (1995-98), Nguyen not only rallied the A&M faithful; he captivated the crowd. He spilled his blood and poured his heart onto the playing surface. He gave every ounce of himself on every down he played. According to the unassuming Nguyen, though, he received much more from the crowd at Kyle Field than he ever gave.

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“Kyle Field is special for a lot of reasons,” says Nguyen, who played seven seasons at middle linebacker with the Cowboys before becoming an assistant coach with the franchise. “It’s impressive because of the height of the decks and it’s extremely loud. But I’ve been in other loud stadiums, and I’ve played in bigger ones. The thing that is really special about Kyle Field—what really differentiates it from other places—is the passion you literally feel from the fans. At some places in college and in the pros, it’s hostile, it’s angry, it’s even hateful.

But at Kyle Field, it’s all about the passion.You feel those students and former students with you.You feel the positive energy, and you don’t want to let those people down. We weren’t just playing for ourselves; we were playing for them. And in some of those really big games, we knew they were going to be there for us, and we were going to come through for them.

“

The thing that is really special about Kyle Field—what

really differentiates it from other places—is the passion you literally feel from the fans. At some places in

college and in the pros, it’s hostile, it’s angry, it’s even hateful. But

at Kyle Field, it’s all about the passion.

”

Dat Nguyen “I’m sure other players at other schools feel the same way about their stadium, but to me, Kyle Field is the best of the best in terms of big-game atmosphere and pure, positive energy. And you know the fans are going to be with you, rain or shine.”

Indeed, Kyle Field’s reputation as one of the most intimidating venues in college football is rooted in its energy, not its capacity. The facility is far more famous for its decibel level than its structural design. In banner years and bleak decades, the 12th Man has viewed game day in College Station with a sense of duty and purpose.While other fan bases come to support their teams, A&M fans pack the stadium to participate in the action. With unified yells and calculated clamor, mayhem is a mandate of game day in Aggieland. It’s an A&M tradition, born in the Corps of Cadets, embraced by the coeds, and nurtured by the kids of A&M graduates throughout generations.

Aggie fans expect to influence the outcome of games at Kyle Field with a feverish pitch that buoys the boys in maroon and sucks the life out of opponents. Throughout the history of the stadium, the crowd has usually been at its boisterous best when A&M has needed it most. And even in the worst of weather conditions, the crowd has usually been a factor until the end. With that in mind, here’s our list of the best games (and the best crowds) in the history of Kyle Field.

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November 11,1939 SMU at texaS a&M

regardless of their age, many a&m fans possess at least some fundamental knowledge of the 1939 season—the most glorious gridiron year in A&M history. Behind a defense that allowed just 31 points all season and the rugged running of Jarrin’ John Kimbrough, the Aggies blasted Texas 20-0 to finish a perfect regular season and then rallied to beat Tulane 14-13 in the Sugar Bowl to wrap up the school’s only national championship.

The Tulane game featured plenty of intrigue as the Green Wave took a 13-7 lead early in the fourth quarter, but A&M’s Herbie Smith blocked the extra point. Kimbrough, who began his collegiate career at Tulane, then led a 70-yard drive to college football’s ultimate prize.

But perhaps the most important game—and certainly the most perilous—in the ’39 season came on a miserably gray and dreary day in College Station. A&M entered the eighth game of the year on a remarkable roll, having outscored its previous four opponents (Villanova, defending national champion TCU, Baylor, and Arkansas) by a combined score of 100-13. In the mud and the mire of Kyle Field, however, SMU and A&M battled the elements and each other to a virtual standoff before an estimated crowd of 30,000—the largest ever to see a game in College Station at that time.

The 1939 Aggies played before 30,000 fans at Kyle Field on a dreary November day, holding off the SMU Mustangs 6-2 to keep their dream of a national title alive.

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With both teams struggling to do anything offensively, the

game was ultimately determined by a couple of breaks. Late in the second quarter, SMU’s punter fumbled a snap and A&M’s Tommie Vaughn recovered at the Mustangs’ 11. Three plays later, Kimbrough slammed into the end zone to give the Aggies a 6-0 lead with just seconds left in the first half.

It stayed that way until the fourth quarter when, with SMU driving deep into A&M territory, the Mustangs lofted a pass toward the end zone. It was caught, but the conditions were so miserable and the players’ uniforms were so muddied that it was initially difficult for reporters in the press box to determine who came up with the ball.

A&M’s Derace Moser made the interception, but he then tried to lateral the ball forward. A&M was penalized and took possession at its own 5 with a few minutes left in the game. SMU then stopped A&M and blocked Bill Conatser’s punt in the end zone. Scrambling through ankle-deep water, Conatser beat several SMU players to the ball to recover it for a safety instead of a Mustangs touchdown.

y y

John Kimbrough (39) became a national celebrity with his good looks and marketability as the Aggies became a national power in 1939 and 1940.

Three plays later,

Kimbrough slammed into the end zone to give the Aggies a 6-0 lead with just seconds left in the first half.

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Hot & Cold hot and Cold hot

The weather is always a hot topic in Texas, and during football season the heat and humidity can be unbearable for fans and players alike. But according to Billy Pickard, who has not missed a home game Coach Homer Norton still owns the only Associated Press national title in school history.

since he returned to campus in 1965, the hottest game at Kyle Field occurred in the season opener against LSU in 1995.

With a 2:30 p.m. kickoff, the game-time temperature read 101 degrees with a 110-degree heat index (the on-field temperature approached

Members of the ’39 team, including Kimbrough (back row, fifth from left), returned to Kyle Field for a special reunion in 1998.

130 degrees). Somehow Leeland McElroy gained 359 all-purpose yards in the Aggies’ 33-17 win over the Tigers on this sweltering September afternoon.

The Aggies’ game with LSU in 1989—R. C. Slocum’s first as head coach—also started off as a steam bath. The game-time temperature for the 5:47 p.m. kickoff at Kyle Field was 100 degrees with 60 percent humidity. Fortunately, the sun set after the first half, dropping temperatures into the 90s.

Pickard says the coldest game he’s experienced at Kyle Field came in 1993, when the Aggies outlasted Texas 18-9. A cold front that had dumped snow on the Dallas Cowboys’ game with the Miami Dolphins earlier on that Thanksgiving Day roared into Brazos County that night, icing up several roads along the way. The temperature at kickoff was 32 degrees with a north wind at 15 mph. Add in some freezing drizzle and a wind chill of 15 degrees, and you have a frosty football game to remember.

Spirits of Aggieland?

Spirits of Aggieland?

Kyle Field is home to a variety of critters that go bump in the night. From cats and bats to possums and pigeons, the grand old stadium houses them all. But the animals—and some late-night stadium workers—may not be alone. Some Texas A&M Athletic Department staffers claim Kyle Field could actually be haunted.

“We have had several encounters or experiences,” says longtime video lab employee Andy Richardson. “I haven’t been witness to all of these things, but I will say there were a couple of moments when these weird things went on.”

Richardson, along with director of 12th Man Productions

Thus the perfect season was preserved by the narrowest of margins, as A&M held on for a 6-2 win. Afterward, legendary Waco Tribune-Herald sports editor Jinx Tucker summed up the game with this colorful description:

Brandon Verzal and a host of student workers, spend late nights and early mornings in the underbelly of Kyle Field during football season as they prepare game and practice videos. Typically around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning, strange noises and creepy sensations sometimes fill the darkness.

“We’ve had several student workers working on projects late at night who have had some experiences, all unrelated to each other, that have been shared afterwards,” Richardson said. “We’ve had students who felt like they’d seen somebody in the hallway, and there was no explanation. But there’s always been a feeling in several of us . . . it could be the spirit of Aggieland. Who knows?”

Verzal has had the hair stand up on his neck after hearing loud bangs on a door or seeing shadows in the dark hallways.

thirty thousand fans, drenched to the skin, sat in rapt amazement at times and with maniacal enthusiasm at other times as they saw two of the finest teams in this country tear into each other with all the

Venerable Kyle Field caretaker Billy Pickard says unlocked bathroom

fury that their youthful, sinewy muscles could muster—with

doors on the upper decks of the stadium could be causing some

courage and energy that laughed at the elements, and as they did so they

of the noise. But Richardson disagrees somewhat with Pickard’s assessment. “There are a few sounds that are expected, but there

made it the greatest football game waged under adverse circumstances

a few that are unexplainable,” Richardson says. “We’ve had

that this country has ever seen. It was perhaps the largest crowd that ever saw a

videotapes just fall over for no reason. The common theme is a

football game at College Station despite the fact that the weather was the worst for a

sense that somebody else is in the room; the hair on your neck stands up, and all of a sudden you feel like you’re not alone.

game that this section had known since 1936, and if it was the largest crowd that ever

“We’ve heard sudden loud noises too. It very well could be

saw a game here, it was certainly the most enthusiastic. and as we write these lines the

pipes, but there’s no explanation, and therein lies the mystery.

Farmer alumnus of the early (1890s) is lifting his glass to his son and alumnus of the

It causes one to pause.” And to keep

younger generation, saying, “here is mud in your eye,” as he toasts the greatest texas

checking over your

a. and M. football team in the long gridiron history of the state institution. He toasts

shoulder, especially

Homer Norton, the coach the wolves were after a short year ago as the man who has

when working the night shift at Kyle Field.

given texas a. and M. the most devastating and most destructive football team in 50 years of the game.

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October 20, 1956 tCU at texaS a&M

the “all sold out” sign in the window of the a&m ticket office had been posted many hours before kickoff as 42,000 fans anxiously piled into Kyle Field on a sultry, stiflingly humid afternoon for a Southwest Conference showdown. Defending Southwest Conference champion TCU, led by Heisman Trophy hopeful Jim Swink, came to College Station unbeaten and ranked fourth nationally. Meanwhile, the 3-0-1 Aggies, under the direction of Bear Bryant, were ranked 14th.

A&M had been the only team to beat TCU the previous year, spoiling the Frogs’ bid for a perfect season.

“So, it was a big, big game,” former A&M star Jack Pardee recalled. “And since we were on probation, it was kind of like a bowl game for us. Bad weather was the last thing on our minds. In fact, as I recall, the only thing unusual about the weather prior to the start of the game was how hot it was. I’m talking about miserable heat and humidity.”

The game started innocently enough, as TCU took the opening kickoff under clear skies and marched to the A&M 28 before being stopped on a fourth-and-inches play.Then, on the Frogs’ next possession,TCU drove 73 yards and appeared to take the early lead when Swink dove into the end zone. But a penalty nullified the score, prompting a roar from the crowd. Moments later, the roar came from the clouds, not the crowd. In an instant, the heavens opened up. “And all hell broke loose,” said 1957 Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow.

The 1954 training site, in stark Junction, Texas.

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The force of the storm was so violent that spectators and participants—more than fifty years later—still refer to the 1956 showdown for SWC supremacy as the “Hurricane Game.” The wind whipped so hard that flags were shredded and the light standards swayed back and forth. Approximately 150 planes at nearby Easterwood Airport were damaged by the gale-force winds.And the sheets of rain were so heavy that officials had to hold the ball in place on the ground after marking it, because it would float away if not secured.

“The wind was blowing so hard you could barely breathe,” Swink told former Waco-TribuneHerald sportswriter Dave Campbell. “You had to turn your head sideways to get a breath. It was almost impossible to hear and visibility was almost zero.” Yet, the teams played on.

With TCU deep in A&M territory when the storm hit, the Frogs fumbled near the A&M goal line.

A&M recovered, but the Aggies fumbled it back a few plays later as TCU took over at the A&M 8.That set up one of the most memorable and debated series in the history of SWC football. Swink carried on three of the next four plays, plunging toward the goal line. Twice it appeared to the TCU players that Swink scored, and to this day, he claims he crossed the goal line. The officials ruled differently though, and the half ended in a scoreless tie.

In the days and weeks that followed the game, numerous articles were written about whether Swink scored or not. In each article, the TCU players and coaches swore that he did. “But he didn’t,” Crow said. “I was right there, and I saw it all. He did not score.”

Said Pardee: “[TCU’s] still bitching about it, and we’re still not counting it. He didn’t score.”

At the half, as players and coaches from both sides searched for dry clothing, Bryant called for assistant coach Elmer Smith, but there was no reply. After a few puzzling moments, Bryant realized that Smith had been left to weather the violent storm on a platform in the end zone.The phone lines between the field and the press box had been knocked out by the storm. But Bryant, always looking for an edge, instructed Smith to sit atop a tiny platform at the end of the stadium so that he could chart TCU’s line splits.

“Elmer took a student manager with him and climbed on top of the platform,” said former Houston Post sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz.“Even during the storm, he would chart plays on a piece of paper, stick the paper in a sock with a rock in the bottom of it, and drop it to the student manager, who would run it over to Coach Bryant. It was almost as dark as night, but Elmer stayed up there, clinging to the pole as the wind howled. At some point, in the excitement of the goal-line stands, the student manager stopped running back and forth, and the ladder he had used to climb up on the platform was blown over. It wasn’t until about ten minutes into halftime that Bryant realized Elmer was still out there, hanging on for dear life and screaming for somebody to help him. He sent somebody to rescue him, but poor Elmer could barely talk by then.”

In the second half, the storm blew through, and TCU converted an A&M fumble into a touchdown.The Frogs missed the extra point, but they seemed to be in complete control after recovering another fumble at the A&M 23. But Don Watson then intercepted a pass in the end zone to keep A&M’s hopes alive.

As the sun came out, A&M began its pivotal drive. Crow ran for 21 yards and Watson scampered for 37, setting the Aggies up on the TCU 7. Watson then took a pitchout, pulled up short of the line of scrimmage, and hit Crow in the end zone. A&M’s Loyd Taylor converted the extra point, giving the Aggies a 7-6 victory that propelled A&M to the ’56 SWC title. In the aftermath of the Hurricane Game, a reporter asked Bryant if the game had gone according to plan. He summed up the bizarre day by saying, “It went according to prayer.”

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Jack Pardee and Charlie Krueger (73) were key members of the Aggies’ resurgence under coach Bear Bryant in 1956.

Pardee, Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow (left) and influential A&M supporter John Lindsey enjoy a light moment.

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Edd Hargett helped pull the Aggies out of an 0-4 hole and lead them to a berth in the Cotton Bowl in 1967.

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November 23, 1967 texaS at texaS a&M

several years ago, bob Long entered the land development and real estate business in North Texas. But no matter how many deals he brokers and sales he makes in the future, Long will forever be remembered and adored by Aggies for the 80 yards of real estate he worked on a sun-bathed Thanksgiving Day in 1967.

Long, a stellar wideout, and Texas A&M quarterback Edd Hargett hooked up on the longest play of the season in the Southwest Conference. It remains one of the more memorable and talked about plays in A&M football history. “I still hear about it quite a bit, especially around Thanksgiving,” Long said. “A lot of people were there, but probably a lot more have claimed to be there.”

A record-setting crowd of 49,200 packed Kyle Field’s double decks that day, hoping to see the Aggies win their first SWC title since 1956 and earn their first Cotton Bowl appearance since 1942. Entering that game, the ’67 Aggies were on a remarkable roll, winning five straight games after starting the year with four frustratingly close losses.

A&M had dropped the season opener on the final play of the game, a 20-17 heartbreaker against SMU. That was followed by another tight loss to Purdue, a thumping at the hands of LSU, and a 19-18 loss at home to Florida State. A&M could have easily been 8-1 entering the Texas game with the SWC title already sewn up. But the close losses to begin the season made the Texas game a must-win. Lose to the Longhorns, and the Aggies would finish at 5-5 and spend the Christmas holidays at home looking toward next year. Again.

The Longhorns, who had won the national championship in 1963 and would go on to win back-to-back national titles in ’69 and ’70, seemed at least somewhat vulnerable in 1967.Texas had a six-game winning streak in the middle of the season, but the Horns came to College Station at 6-3 and fresh off a home loss to TCU four days earlier. Meanwhile, the Aggies simply seemed to be picking up steam. After a miraculous victory at Texas Tech snapped the losing streak, A&M had rolled past TCU, Baylor, Arkansas, and Rice prior to playing host to the Horns.

“If we didn’t beat Texas, I think Texas Tech was going to the Cotton Bowl,” said Hargett. “We had to win to go to the Cotton

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Bowl, but we felt good about winning. I think it helped us to be off just the four days.We played [at Rice] on Saturday and then we played Texas on Thursday.We were playing well, and I think it helped us keep that momentum going.”

The momentum continued on the Aggies’ side in the first half of the Texas game. A&M dominated much of the first half and took a 3-0 lead into the locker room on the strength of a 32-yard field goal by Charley Riggs in the second quarter. Riggs had missed another field goal attempt earlier in the game, but on his made field goal, it appeared the Aggies were finally getting some breaks: Riggs kicked the ball too low on his made attempt, and the wind sent the ball soaring toward the left upright. But the ball hit the upright and dropped over the crossbar to give the Aggies the lead at the intermission.

Then at the start of the second half,Texas lost Chris Gilbert, the leading rusher in the SWC, to a hip pointer. The Longhorns also were turning the ball over at an alarming rate. Texas was intercepted four times and lost two fumbles. The Aggies turned the ball over just twice all day.

Early in the fourth quarter, however, Texas finally put a complete drive together, and with 11:11 left in the game, Texas quarterback Bill Bradley scored on a 2-yard run to put the Longhorns up 7-3. Kyle Field grew eerily quiet, as nearly 50,000 spectators looked on blankly and tried not to think, Here we go again.

But it was difficult not to think that way. A&M had not beaten Texas at Kyle Field since 1951, and it had been eleven long years since A&M had beaten Texas anywhere.

Eleven years of frustration would be put to rest—ironically—eleven seconds later. Following the go-ahead touchdown, the Longhorns kicked off and A&M took over at its own 20. A first-down incomplete pass set up second-and-10 at the A&M 20. The next play was designed for a short pass to tight end Tom Buckman—the exact same play the Aggies had run one series earlier. But on the earlier play, Long had noticed that Texas safety Pat Harkins was cheating up, looking for the tight end and leaving the deeper route open. Harkins had intercepted Hargett earlier in the day, and the Aggie quarterback listened with great interest as Long described to him how Texas was playing in the secondary. “Bob said the [defensive back] was coming up,” Hargett recalled. “The safety would come up to cheat toward that inside guy, and Bob was able to get in behind them. I just laid it up there for Bob.” Long caught the ball at around the Texas 45 and outraced the Longhorn defenders into the end zone to give the Aggies a 10-7 lead.

Texas ran thirty-two more plays than A&M did in the second half, but that one, 80-yard play was all the Aggies needed to pull out the victory. A&M went on to the Cotton Bowl, where the Aggies beat Alabama to finish the season with a seven-game winning streak. With a 6-1 conference record, the Aggies also became the first team in SWC history to ever lose its first four games and still win the league crown.

“It just all came together perfectly,” Long said. “That [play against Texas] is still a memory that really sticks out in my mind. It’s easier to forget about the tough losses and the losing seasons before and after that when you have a memory like that one. I’ll never forget that one, and it’s pretty neat to me that a lot of other people aren’t on the Former A&M coach Gene Stallings verge of forgetting, either.”

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November 28, 1975 texaS at texaS a&M

In the early 70s, r. c. slocum sat down with Bubba Bean at Slocum’s brother’s house in Orange, Texas. Bean was a prized recruit who was considering several collegiate destinations and Slocum, then an assistant at Kansas State, gave the running back his best sales pitch, trying to persuade him to spend the next four years in Manhattan, Kansas.

Ring. Ring.

“We’re sitting out in the yard and [Slocum] got a phone call from [new A&M head coach] Emory Bellard,” Bean recalled. “So, he walks inside and takes the phone call from Bellard, who offered him a job at Texas A&M. R. C. comes back to me and says, ‘Well Bubba, you know all that stuff I was telling you about K-State? Forget it. Think Texas A&M.’ I didn’t know what the future would hold, but it turned out to be a really good move for me.”

Good for the Aggies too. In Bean’s first two seasons, A&M struggled to records of 3-8 and 5-6. But in Bellard’s Wishbone, Bean led the Aggies with 938 rushing yards in 1974 as A&M posted its first winning season in seven years. Only a 32-3 loss in Austin on the final game of the ’74 season prevented the Aggies from going to the Cotton Bowl.

Then in 1975, everything came together as A&M rolled to a 9-0 start and was ranked No. 2 nationally heading into the Texas game.The Longhorns (9-1 at the time and ranked fifth nationally) boasted the nation’s top-ranked offense. But the Aggies featured the nation’s most dominant defense, led by All-America linebacker Ed Simonini, linebacker Robert Jackson, defensive end Tank Marshall, and a secondary with future NFL All-Pros Lester Hayes and Pat Thomas.

“We knew in the fifth game of the season we were going to beat Texas,” tight end Richard Osborne said. “We were invincible.”

On the day after Thanksgiving in 1975, Osborne’s words certainly seemed fitting. In front of a fire-code-breaking crowd of 56,679 inside Kyle Field (9,000 more than capacity), the Aggies struck quickly. Carl Roaches took a reverse 47 yards on the second play from scrimmage to set up a Tony Franklin field goal that gave the Aggies an early 3-0 lead. And the Aggie defense knocked out notorious Aggie-basher, quarterback Marty Akins, with a knee injury in the first quarter. On A&M’s second possession, the Aggies drove 80 yards to take a 10-0 lead when quarterback Mike Jay hit Osborne for a 4-yard TD.

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s 7) were all smile d Ed Simonini (7 an g 4) in (4 at an in m Be a do Bubb anks to a Texas in 1975, th 8).

(2 as om Th when A&M beat t Pa fensive back defense led by de

“We were a very confident group of guys,” Bean said. “I know our fans were very worried because Texas had been so dominant in the series, but we felt very good about our chances, especially after we got off to the great start.”

Texas closed the gap to 10-7 on a 64-yard punt return for a touchdown by Raymond Clayborn, and it stayed that way until the fourth quarter.

But big George Woodard began to wear on the Longhorns, scoring on a 1-yard run early in the fourth quarter, and Bean sealed the game with a 73-yard run that led to a field goal. Fans spilled onto the field afterward, celebrating the Aggies’ historic victory. And a few days later, Bean appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

“I would like to see something happen to (No. 1-ranked) Ohio State, so that if A&M takes care of its business, we will have another national champion down here,” Texas coach Darrell Royal said after the Aggies’ convincing win.

Ohio State did go on to lose to UCLA in the Rose Bowl. But A&M did not take care of its business following the thrilling win over Texas.

A&M was originally scheduled to play Arkansas on November 1, 1975, but ABC executives orchestrated a made-for-TV move of the game to December 6. The Aggies, who had lost starting quarterback Mike Jay to an injury late in the Texas game, were not able to match the Razorbacks’ energy, falling 31-6.

A&M settled for a SWC co-championship, as Arkansas went to the Cotton Bowl and A&M was banished to the Liberty Bowl.

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October 18, 1986 BaylOr at texaS a&M

borrowing a theme from the movie Ghostbusters, Baylor defenders began referring to themselves as “Murray Busters.” Even fingernails scratching across a chalkboard couldn’t compare to what that term did to quarterback Kevin Murray’s skin. It implied that Baylor owned him. And perhaps it hurt the most because—at least in the summer of 1986—the Bears certainly appeared to own the Aggies.

From 1978 to 1985, that little private school on the banks of the Brazos River had its way with Texas A&M, tormenting the much larger state school at virtually every meeting.

During that time span, Baylor held a 6-1-1 advantage over the Aggies, including a 20-15 win over A&M in 1985 that saw Murray toss three interceptions in Waco.To add insult to injury, Murray was replaced in the fourth quarter of the 1985 game, giving way to Craig Stump.

“I can remember [A&M teammate]Todd Howard coming up to me in the summer of ’86, telling me that he had spent some time with [Baylor All-American safety] Thomas Everett and some of those other trash-talking Baylor guys,” Murray said. “Todd told me they were mocking me, saying they were the Murray Busters. That didn’t set too well with me. I thought about it all the way leading up to our Baylor game in 1986, and we know what happened there. That was a game that so many Aggies still love to talk about.”

Indeed, the 1986 A&M-Baylor game was one of the greatest—and quite possibly the most exciting—in the history of the “Battle of the Brazos” series. In the 1990 edition of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, the magazine labeled it as the Game of the Decade in the Southwest Conference. And until the 1998 Big 12 Championship Game victory over Kansas State, most Aggies—at least those born from the 1960s on—proclaimed it as the most unforgettable comeback in Texas A&M history.

“We had [74,739] fans packed into Kyle Field that day,” said Johnny Holland, the defensive leader of the 1986 Aggies.“But there are probably 150,000 or more Aggies who claim they were there. It was an amazing game, an amazing finish.”

The Spirit of Kyle Field

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it may have been the greatest game of any sport in the state that week, possibly overshadowing the amazing baseball game played three days earlier in the Houston Astrodome.

In the National League Championship Series, the New York Mets had slipped past the Houston Astros 7-6 in a sixteen-inning epic. The Mets went on to win the World Series.

Likewise, the October 18 football game definitely had title implications.

Baylor entered the contest at 4-2 overall and 2-1 in SWC play after losing to SMU 27-21 a week earlier. But since SMU was out of the title hunt because of NCAA probation, the battle between the defending conference champion Aggies (4-1, 2-0) and the Bears would go a long way toward determining who would be in Dallas on New Year’s Day 1987. But it certainly didn’t start off in splendid fashion for the home team.

Led by Cody Carlson on offense and Everett on defense, the Bears stormed to a 17-0 lead by the end of the first quarter. The Aggies were fortunate it was that close. The Bears had a chance to completely bury A&M in the opening quarter, but Howard stopped Baylor’s Matt Clark a foot short of the end zone on a key fourth-and-goal play late in the quarter.

“At the start of the second quarter, we were going toward the old horseshoe on the north end of Kyle Field,” Murray said. “I remember saying to the guys in the huddle, ‘Let’s go.’ Then I can vividly remember one of [the Baylor defenders] knocking me across the head, and somehow I managed to stay on my feet and make a big play scrambling. That was essentially the start of something. Then it was boom, boom, boom, three plays later we were in the end zone. The very next series, we shoved it right down their throats again to make it 17-14. Then it was a game. By the start of the fourth quarter, they had regrouped a little and were leading 27-17, but we knew we still had fifteen minutes left. We hadn’t played worth a crap the first fifteen minutes, but that final fifteen minutes, we were going to make some magic happen.”

That’s just what the Aggies did. Murray hit Keith Woodside in the back of the end zone early in the fourth quarter to make it 27-24, but Baylor added a field goal to up the lead to 30-24. That’s when A&M began one of its most memorable drives in school history, converting two third-down situations before facing another crucial third down at the BU 4.

“There was about four minutes left, but we knew we had to punch it in,” Murray said. “A field goal wouldn’t cut it, because there was no guarantee—with their offense—that we would get the ball back. So, for all intents and purposes, this was the ball game in our minds. I expected an all-out blitz, and that’s exactly what I got.Their linebacker, Robert Watters, came barreling down on me. I can still see that play so clearly in my mind. I had to keep the focus upfield, knowing this guy was coming with the hammer. I stepped a yard or two off the left hash to buy time, delivered the ball with this guy wrapped around me, put the ball where it needed to be, and Tony Thompson juggled it and then caught it. I was on my back, but I heard the crowd erupt. It was magic.”

The Aggies used the 31-30 victory over Baylor as a springboard to their second straight SWC title. And afterward, Baylor head coach Grant Teaff stated the obvious in summing up the hero of the day: “Spell it M-u-r-r-a-y,”Teaff said. “That’s all you can say. He escaped the pressure and did the job. On third down he was just incredible. Murray did the miracle things to win.”

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October 10, 1 998

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defending national co-champion nebraska entered Kyle Field on a picturesque october afternoon in with a No. 5 national ranking,a forty-game winning streak in regular-season conference games, and a 65-3 record in the previous five years. Meanwhile, the Aggies entered the game after struggling the previous two weeks against North Texas and Kansas, and with fresh memories of the previous year’s Big 12 championship game— a 54-15 manhandling the Huskers had put on A&M in San Antonio in December of ’97.

But as soon as he stepped onto the field and witnessed the first-ever Maroon Out (30,000 maroon T-shirts had been sold in the weeks leading up to the Nebraska game), Dat Nguyen sensed there could be something special about this day. “The crowd was incredible,” Nguyen said of the 60,798 fans who packed into the stadium (the north end zone was under construction, reducing the capacity of Kyle Field).

We just knew that if we could get off to a good start in our home stadium, it would be a lot different than the previous year in the Big 12 championship game.”

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That’s exactly what happened. Midway through the first quarter, the Huskers ran an option play to the right on third down, and to the left on fourth down from the A&M 31, needing one yard both times.The Aggies stuffed both attempts, and on third-and-25 from their own 19 on the ensuing drive, A&M quarterback Randy McCown dropped back under pressure, stepped up in the pocket, and delivered a perfect strike to Chris Taylor, who caught the ball in full stride and sprinted down the sideline for an 81-yard touchdown.

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“Everybody in the stadium knew it would be different at that time,” McCown said.

Randy McCown (15) and Ja’Mar Toombs (28) spearheaded one of the greatest wins in A&M history, when the Aggies knocked off No. 2 and defending national champion Nebraska, 28-21.

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“We knew we could not only play with them, but we believed we could beat them.”

That belief never faltered, even after Nebraska tied the game. Ja’Mar Toombs raced 71 yards to set up A&M’s second touchdown of the day, giving the Aggies a 14-7 lead at the half. Early in the third quarter, A&M sacked NU quarterback Bobby Newcombe on consecutive plays, setting up a third-and-19 from the NU 12. Ron Edwards sliced through a blocker and slung Newcombe toward the end zone, where Warrick Holdman pounced on the loose ball for a 21-7 lead.

The Aggies went up 28-7 when Toombs scored on a 3-yard run early in the fourth quarter. The Huskers rallied with two quick, impressive drives within a four-minute span to cut the lead to 28-21 with 4:39 left in the game, and NU would have one more chance on offense. But feeding off a frenzied crowd, the Wrecking Crew rose to the occasion as reserve cornerback Sedric Curry intercepted a Newcombe pass near midfield with 51 seconds left.

The win over the Huskers propelled A&M to its first Big 12 championship and sent some shock waves across the country. “We proved we were for real that day,” Nguyen recalled. “It gave us the confidence that we could beat anyone in the country. And we needed that belief to knock off Kansas State later that season.”

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The 12th Man Kickoff Team The 12th Man Kickoff Team

All season openers are laced with excitement, newness and, in some cases, novelty. New players, schemes, and stadium enhancements are paraded in front of the football faithful for all to see. But on September 3, 1983, the fans inside Kyle Field were treated to one of the most anticipated and unusual debuts ever in college football: Texas A&M’s 12th Man Kickoff Team, a frothing outfit of walk-on players, ran down the kickoffs against California. In an era of the elite scholarship athlete, the Aggies trotted out a kicker and ten Kamikaze-like players, most of whom had been nothing more than high school football players but who were caught up in the undying Aggie spirit.

At first, the idea of a kickoff unit comprised of only walk-ons seemed like a marketing ploy by Coach Jackie Sherrill, who was looking to drum up excitement following a 5-6 season in his inaugural year on campus. But Sherrill had experienced the passion A&M students exude, as he’d worked to wire logs on the stacks of Bonfire in the weeks leading up to the 1982 Texas game. Surely if these kids, who worked all fall on building the world’s biggest bonfire, could show this type of love for their university, then Sherrill thought he could find ten or twelve diehards to cover kickoffs.

After an ad was run in The Battalion, the school’s student newspaper, in the spring of 1983, 252 eager Aggie students showed up for tryouts. The final cut left seventeen on the original 12th Man Kickoff Team, which graced the pages of Sports Illustrated in a six-page feature just prior to the season. But questions abounded whether these walk-ons would flop or flourish, and most college football observers leaned toward the former.

The 12th Man Kickoff Team And the team’s first kickoff attempt gave credence

to the doubters. Sherrill called for an onside kick, and unfortunately for this jacked-up bunch of Aggies, the

ball traveled just six yards, negating any chance for a big hit or fumble recovery. California was awarded the ball on the penalty and promptly jumped out to a 17-0 lead. But when the Aggies kicked a field goal, Kyle Field began to buzz again as the non-scholarship players covered their second kickoff.

The ball was kicked two yards deep in the end zone, but Cal’s Dwight Garner made the fateful

mistake of running the ball out of the end zone . . . and into infamy.

Senior walk-on Ike Liles popped Garner inside the 20-yard line, sending the crowd into mayhem. And the legend of the 12th Man Kickoff Team was born, as Sherrill’s vision of connecting the football team to its one-of-a-kind student body paid off tenfold.

The 12th Man Kickoff Team became more than a one-game wonder, as the Aggies allowed just 13.1 yards per kickoff return in ’83 and didn’t allow a touchdown in seven home games. The 12th Man Kickoff Team was comprised entirely of walk-ons until 1991, a year after Rodney Blackshear scored a touchdown against the group in a 28-24 A&M victory at Kyle Field.

Blackshear’s scamper, along with reduced scholarship limits from 95 to 85 players (which made fielding kickoff coverage units for road games more difficult), forced coach R. C. Slocum to make modifications. Today, one walk-on player, wearing the cherished No. 12 jersey representing the 12th Man in the stands, runs down on kickoffs. And when the player makes a big hit, perhaps even causing a fumble, Kyle Field howls as if it were 1983 all over again.

Baseball To wel s of Kyle Field Baseball Towels of Kyle Field Prior to 1978, Texas A&M played its home baseball games at Kyle Field. Not in the football stadium per se, but it was impossible to attend a baseball game without thinking about the football stadium, for the right-centerfield fence of the baseball stadium joined with the west-side bleachers of the football stadium. It literally put the Aggie baseball program in the shadows of the football field.

“It wasn’t much of a stadium in the first place,” said the late Tom Chandler, A&M’s head baseball coach from 1959-84. “It was an old wooden structure that seated about 3,500 people. But being jammed right up against the football stadium gave it a weird feel.”

“Weird” isn’t the word that legendary Texas coach Cliff Gustafson, who retired in 1996 as the winningest baseball coach in NCAA history, chose when asked to describe the old Kyle Field. “Ugly” or “awful” were more appropriate descriptions in his thinking.

Baseball To wel s of Kyle Field “I never liked that old stadium, and I played

there as a player and then coached there,” Gustafson

said. “Because it was right up against the football stadium, it created a vacuum out to left-centerfield

that always made things interesting. And when they put the second deck in the football stadium, they

had to rearrange the outfield wall, which always gave you some bad bounces on balls hit off the wall.”

Gustafson said he also had some negative memories of certain fans at the old ballpark. Well, actually the memories were of fans who would watch the baseball game from the top southwestern edge of Kyle Field’s football stands. “They used to have some students get on the second deck of the football stadium and watch the game with their binoculars,” Gustafson said. “And I swear they were stealing signs from our catcher. If it was going to be a breaking ball, the students would hang a towel over the edge of the stands. If it was going to be a fastball, they wouldn’t hang the towel. It took me a while to figure that out, but it became obvious one day when Burt Hooton was pitching for us.

“Hooton was one of the best college pitchers I had ever seen, and he had some nasty breaking stuff. Anyway, he’s pitching at Kyle Field one day and the Aggies are just teeing off on him and laying off the breaking stuff. They were the only team we played that could lay off Hooton’s breaking pitches.

I’m convinced those towel signals were the reason for that.”

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Game Day From dottin g the “i” at Ohio State to splittin g the “T” at Tennessee, and from “Hail to the Victors” at Michigan to the “Victory March” at Notre Dame,

college football is an autumn bastion of revered ritualism.

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s the leaves turn at The Grove at Ole Miss or between the hedges at Georgia, college football fans delight in the sameness of each season.

At Texas A&M, a football game day is the epitome of timelessness and tradition. In a modern, fast-paced world, A&M has always been old-school, especially at Kyle Field.

While the stadium has grown into a concrete monster that dominates the College Station landscape, the goings-on inside the structure hearken back to the days when the all-male military college gathered on Saturdays to unleash the camaraderie and spirit forged during the busy week in the musty dorm rooms on the Quad or the dusty classrooms of the Academic Building.

In 1907, one of the oldest and most visible traditions at A&M was born when the Aggies were struggling on the football field.While Aggie students would often invite guests from Texas Women’s University to attend games, there were just a limited number of guest tickets. A&M upperclassmen owned seniority on just who could commiserate with the ladies from TWU.That left freshmen, or “Fish,” to concentrate solely on supporting the Aggie football team. But during one particularly lopsided game at Kyle Field, the TWU guests were struggling with boredom, threatening to take the next train back to Denton. A&M juniors and seniors therefore ordered the Fish to entertain the women somehow, and a legendary outfit—and their all-white outfits—was born.

The freshmen raided a janitor’s closet and found white coveralls and began leading the stands in yells, to the delight of the women in attendance. The move was so popular that it was deemed only upperclassmen could lead such yells in the future, and today, three seniors and two juniors form the Aggie yell leaders, still dressed in white and still a crowd favorite.

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All Together No w

All Together No w

While there are bigger college football stadiums across the country, and maybe some campuses feature louder venues, no stadium showcases synchronicity in its spirit like Kyle Field. Most schools unite during the playing of the alma mater or the fight song, and handsigns like “Hook’em Horns” can add to the pageantry of a game. But nowhere else in college football do 30,000 students occupy one side of the stadium and rain down longstanding yells on opponents all game long.Whereas Southern Cal’s Song Girls are better known for their white sweaters than their ability to control crowd noise, the Aggie yell leaders can work a crowd like no other spirit group.

Using hand signals (taught at the freshman orientation weekends at Fish Camp), the five yell leaders don’t need megaphones or microphones.

With students passing the hand signals up the three decks of Kyle Field, the yells are carried out in an orderly and voluminous fashion, often while opposing cheerleading groups look on in amazement. And when the entire A&M fan base locks arms for the singing of the “Aggie War Hymn,” turning Kyle Field into a swaying and shifting thrill ride, opposing players often take notice as well.

“That atmosphere is wild,” says former Texas Tech safety Joe Garcia. “When we were warming up, it was pretty neat and calm as everybody was getting in there.When we’d come back out of the locker room, that place would be rocking. Everybody was there. It was sort of intimidating.

It gave you chills sitting there watching everything. I think it’s totally neat to play for them because their fans are so diehard.”

The singing of the “Aggie War Hymn” is one of A&M’s most boisterous expressions of the togetherness and closeness that envelops this campus in central Texas. Written by J. V. “Pinky” Wilson, a former student standing guard on the river Rhine just after World War I, the song was adopted by A&M in 1920. It is played four times a game (including as the opener of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band’s halftime performance), and it never loses its goosebump feel.

“When I was being recruited out of high school, I was told that when the Aggie band plays the ‘Aggie War Hymn,’ it’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up,” said former A&M All-American and Houston Oiler legend Ray Childress. “And to this day, when I hear the ‘Aggie War Hymn,’ it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. And for me, it’s not just the volume of the crowd, but it’s knowing that the student body and the former students care so much about the team and the school . . . it’s got an aura beyond just a bunch of yelling fans.”

When 80,000 football fans belt out the “War Hymn” and then finish the rendition by locking arms to mimic “sawing Varsity’s horns off ” in reference to the rival Longhorns, Kyle Field does more than cause vertigo.

The stadium actually moves—as it was designed to do—between 3/16 and 3/4 of an inch.

Engineers vow the stadium is safe and inspect the concrete stands regularly. Yet, because the movement is more pronounced 120 feet above the ground, visiting media and guests are often startled by the swaying of the press box, which is supported by three concrete pillars.

Upon entering the press box, newcomers are greeted by a memo that explains just what to expect when the “War Hymn” reverberates around Kyle Field. Indeed, it is a subtle hint that the next three or four hours will be unlike most they’ve experienced on a Saturday afternoon in the fall.

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... To this day when I hear the ‘Aggie War Hymn,’ it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

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Former A&M All-American and Houston Oiler legend Ray Childress

The singing of the “Aggie War Hymn” is one of A&M’s most boisterous expressions of

the togetherness and closeness that envelops this campus in central Texas.

tHe

aGGIe War HyMN Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck all hail to dear old texas a&M rally around Maroon and White Good luck to dear old texas aggies they are the boys who show the real old fight that good old aggie Spirit thrills us and makes us yell and yell and yell So let’s fight for dear old texas a&M We’re gonna beat you all to Chigaroogarem Chigaroogarem rough, tough, real stuff texas a&M Good bye to texas university So long to the orange and the white Good luck to dear old texas aggies they are the boys who show the real old fight ‘the eyes of texas are upon you’ that is the song they sing so well Sounds like Hell So good bye to texas university We’re gonna beat you all to Chigaroogarem Chigaroogarem rough, tough, real stuff, texas a&M Saw varsity’s horns off Saw varsity’s horns off Saw varsity’s horns off Short! a!

Varsity’s horns are sawed off Varsity’s horns are sawed off Varsity’s horns are sawed off Short! a!

The second verse of the Aggie War Hymn was written by J. J. “Pinky” Wilson in 1918 while he was standing guard on the Rhine River during World War I. When he returned to the US, he wrote the first verse (the one no one sings) in lieu of the fact that we don’t always play t.u. However, the Ags of the time felt that the first verse was too much like the Ivy League fight songs and refused to sing it. As a result, it never caught on and that is why we sing the second verse twice.

The Singing Cadets sing both verses of the song to reflect the entire work of Pinky Wilson.

The Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band The Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band

Everyone who has ever seen Texas A&M play at

Kyle Field or been on the road when the A&M band

accompanied the team knows that the Aggies have never lost a halftime. Aggies everywhere remember the chills they felt the first time they heard the brass play the introduction of the “Aggie War Hymn” as they stepped off on “Hullabaloo”. Or the first time they stood and heard everyone around them announce in unison, “Now forming at the north end of Kyle Field, the nationally famous Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band!” Texas A&M’s band even routinely receives standing ovations on the road. And football fans from across the country still rave about the first time they witnessed the precision of the finest marching band in the country.

The Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band received its start

in 1894 from an unlikely source. Joseph F. Holick, a cobbler from Czechoslovakia, was visiting an uncle in Taylor, Texas, and saw an ad for sawmill hands in Orange. Holick took the train to Orange, but stopped in Bryan to visit his sister. What started out as a brief visit turned into a lifetime in Bryan for Holick.

Holick stayed in Bryan and took up his family’s trade of shoemaking, constructing and repairing the cadets’ shoes and boots. Corps of Cadets Commander Lt. Ben Morris discovered that Holick could also play musical instruments and asked him to play the bugle.

Holick agreed, and in 1894 he decided to form the first Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band. The band was comprised of just thirteen members, including Holick.

Holick continued making boots for the Corps despite his new project with the band, and in 1929 he moved his boot shop to the Northgate area.

Holick’s is still in business in Northgate, and to this day the shop makes Aggie boots for senior cadets.

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Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

Maybe it starts just past midnight the night before, when 20,000 students or more file into Kyle Field for an hour-long Yell Practice. It could be when a World War I howitzer blasts from the Corps of Cadets Quad ninety minutes before kickoff, signaling the beginning of a precise pilgrimage—known as March-In—through the oak-shrouded streets of the A&M campus en route to Kyle Field. Or possibly when the horde of recreational vehicles and tailgaters descend on Aggieland, catching a glimpse of the fiftyfive American flags (representing the number of Aggies who lost their lives in World War I) flying proudly above Kyle Field, it is then that it hits the soul of the Aggie football fan: you can go home again.

Tradition says it all. Unlike at most universities, there are no specified homecoming weekends at Texas A&M, as each football weekend is a maroon-and-white festival always on the to-do list. And while scores of college campuses are known for their party scenes and tailgating cuisines,Texas A&M one-ups them with all the peripheral pageantry, even if it just means former US president George Bush walking across the Zone Plaza in his maroon shirt and blazer as he takes in another game on the campus that houses his presidential library.

Fans from both schools always gather along the street to watch the Aggie band and the 2,000 members of the Corps of Cadets march toward Kyle Field, the signature “Noble Men of Kyle” anthem pulsating through the buzzing campus. While many more fans may stop at the graves of former Reveille mascots or read the inscription at the base of the 12th Man statue in honor of E. King Gill, there’s a sense of deep-rooted respect and dignity on the A&M campus, even just an hour before two rivals battle it out on a famed football field.

“A lot of people hear about Kyle Field on TV,” says former linebacker Dana Batiste, who played during some of the glory years of Aggie football in the mid-1980s. “But you have to come and experience it yourself and then you can understand what the whole Kool-Aid thing is all about.”

Once the outfits from the Corps of Cadets circle the stadium as fans file in, Kyle Field bathes in patriotism, from its military review by a VIP stand to the electrifying flyovers just before kickoff. For longtime Kyle Field patriarch Billy Pickard, the stadium takes on a whole new life because of the kids in khaki.

“To me, the whole atmosphere here is because of the Corps,” says Pickard, who first attended a game at Kyle Field in 1952. “The Corps is the main thing that sets this stadium apart. If you have a lick of patriotism and see those kids walk by, you know there are some who have walked by and won’t ever be back in the stadium. And they didn’t get killed in a car wreck.”

As game time approaches, Kyle Field is awash in maroon and comes alive as modern video boards recount great moments in A&M football history. A video montage of current and former players reminds the 12th Man of its vaunted reputation. Then drummers from the Aggie band, with the fans clapping in unison, lead the team out onto Kyle Field. It’s time to get ready for some football . . . and Kyle Field at its finest.

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The History of R eveille

The history history of reveille reveille

Texas A&M is not unique in possessing a dog as a mascot. The University of Georgia, the University of Washington, Mississippi State, Fresno State, Louisiana Tech, Tennessee, and various other schools are represented by canine mascots that appear on the sidelines of football games or at courtside at basketball games. But by and large, the stories of how they came to be the mascots of their particular schools are not extraordinary. At Tennessee, for example, the students in 1953 simply decided they wanted a live mascot. They conducted a poll, and at halftime of a football game later that year, Smokey, a blue tick hound dog, was selected among other hounds as the Tennessee mascot by the ovations of the crowd.

The original Reveille at A&M, on the other hand, earned her way into the hearts of Aggieland, and Reveille has played an integral role in the day-to-day life of the student body she represents ever since.

She is a visible part of university life throughout the year; she doesn’t simply show up at a stadium on game days or appear only at school fundraisers.

Reveille also doesn’t live on campus in a cage; she resides inside the dorm— and occasionally on a cadet’s bed. Reveille attends classes with the students every day of the week, jogs with Company E-2, and is even welcomed into the campus dining hall and in restaurants throughout the community. Reveille also owns a personalized student identification card, her own cell phone (the Mascot Corporal does the actual dialing and speaking), and her own credit card to cover travel expenses.

In Aggieland, Reveille is to the doggie domain what Lady Diana and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy were to femininity in their time—icons of class, grace, charm, style, beauty, and nobility. Of course, the Reveille of today—a regal, pure-bred collie—is much different than the original mutt who earned her way on campus. The most popular and widely accepted version of how the first Reveille arrived in Aggieland recounts how several Aggies returned from a Navasota bar (the town is some fifteen minutes south of College Station) late one night in 1931 and accidentally hit a small puppy with their Model T. The cadets backtracked and found the dog wounded but wagging her tail.

According to legend, they put the dog in the car and smuggled her back into the dorm, violating university policy regarding pets in the rooms. As the story goes, the cadets bandaged the pup that night, and the dog awoke to the sound of the bugler blasting “Reveille” the next morning, barking enthusiastically at the music. Her reaction to the song inspired the cadets to begin calling her “Reveille.”

The History of R eveille

The History of R eveille

That’s the neat, tidy tale that has been told, printed in official university

publications and immortalized throughout the years. But dying men have literally gone to their graves willing to take a lie detector test to prove that they either knew or participated in other origins of Reveille.

Files in the Texas A&M university archives contain dozens of versions

crediting at least ten different sources with bringing Reveille to campus. In fact, university archives and other published reports reveal that at least thirtysix people have publicly claimed involvement in bringing the first Reveille to campus. But regardless of how she actually arrived, it’s clear that Reveille, who was forty-plus pounds of pure compassion, warmth, and unconditional love, was definitely not an ordinary dog.

After being initially smuggled into the dorms and fed with table scraps from the mess hall, Reveille, for all intents and purposes, was turned loose. But instead of wandering away, she watched and learned. She roamed the 4,000 acres of the A&M campus on her own will and quickly learned that anyone in a khaki uniform was her friend, while those in civilian clothes should be viewed in a less trusting light. She also learned when and where to appear for “mess formation” as she marched with the cadets into the mess hall for meals.

In the public eye, perhaps the first Reveille’s No. 1 legacy was established at a football game during the fall of 1932, when she made the first formation with the Aggie band on Kyle Field, prancing in front of the drum major to the roar of the crowd. Reveille seemed to feed off the energy of the band and frolicked to the approval of the crowd. It was an impromptu move by the dog, but it was also the moment that officially earned her the designation as the school’s mascot.

When the original Reveille finally began to slow down in the early 1940s, the Corps of Cadets decided to immortalize her through the WAGS division of Dogs for Defense. With World War II raging overseas, any dog owner in the United States could purchase a rank for his or her canine. The donation ranged from $1 for a private to $100 for a general’s commission. Because of her importance on a military campus, a drive was launched among the students in the summer of 1943 to obtain the necessary funds to make Reveille a general. Even in difficult economic times, and with A&M’s enrollment greatly reduced because of the number of Aggies serving in World War II, the cadets opened their wallets to honor Reveille.

On January 18, 1944, Reveille breathed her last breath. The lovable mutt, who seemed to sense that she had a higher purpose to serve than most other dogs, died in the A&M Veterinary Hospital. On the following day, the entire Corps of Cadets, several hundred former students who were back at A&M for military training, and numerous residents in the Bryan-College Station area poured into Kyle Field for a full military funeral for Aggieland’s little lady. She was laid to rest in an infant’s casket covered with maroon velvet just outside the north end zone of the stadium. Her death and funeral made international news, reaching servicemen around the world and generating a flood of consoling telegrams, letters, and flowers. Since that time, every other Reveille has been buried outside the north end zone of Kyle Field.

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The Caretaker of Kyle Field

The Caretaker of Kyle Field:

Mr. Pickard Moments

While Kyle Field was born out of the vision of Edwin Jackson Kyle, the stadium has been raised and reared, nurtured and nuzzled by Texas A&M’s ultimate lifer—Billy Pickard.

Pickard began his longtime love affair with Kyle Field in 1952, when he first stepped foot on campus as a wide-eyed freshman student. Outside of a nine-year window from 1956-64, Pickard has been working in and around Kyle Field ever since. His titles and responsibilities have changed since his student trainer days under Coach Bear Bryant in the mid-1950s: his latest role is as A&M’s Director of Athletic Facilities. But Pickard is simply known by most as the crew-cut caretaker of Kyle Field.

Nearly every day since 1965, Pickard has arrived at his stadium office by 6 a.m., attacking his job like a recent college graduate trying to impress his first boss. “I’ve always considered myself a company man,” Pickard says. “You either do what the company wants or get the hell out. I’m no damn legend. How lucky can you be to be in one place for forty-three years, especially in athletics, and keep your health too?”

Pickard is definitely a creature of habit, sticking to his daily routine incessantly. He runs 3.82 miles along the same campus route every day, taking an office power nap in the early afternoon. During football season, he’ll work 120 hours a week for four straight months, arriving at 7 a.m. on game days to make sure the stadium is functional and clean. (He even clears the concrete ramps of cat and bat droppings.) From his home on game nights, he can see the lights turn off at Kyle, assuring him the day’s work is finally complete.

But while Pickard’s days may border on the mundane to some, his role in the history of Kyle Field—and the stories that have come with it—is priceless.

Who else can say they have worked alongside Bryant at the famed Junction Boys boot camp in 1954? How many people have seen every home game at Kyle Field since 1965? Who has worked for seven different head coaches, including Gene Stallings, Emory Bellard, Tom Wilson, Jackie Sherrill, R. C. Slocum, and Dennis Franchione?

“I knew I had a pretty good in with Coach Sherrill, because he was afraid I’d call Coach Bryant,” Pickard says with a laugh. “He had to keep me. I’ve asked each coach if I could stay when they first got here. I never assumed anything.

If (A&M Director of Athletics) Bill Byrne walked in that door right now and

The Caretaker of Kyle Field

said, ‘Billy, it’s about time you retire,’ I’d say, ‘Yes sir,’ and I’m gone.”

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BILLY PICKARD

Ashes to Ashes, Du st to Du st When asked in the spring of 2007 about the possible urban legend

that some Aggie fans have been buried beneath the sod at Kyle Field, Billy Pickard doesn’t hesitate with his response: “I had a funeral here yesterday. Here’s the DVD if you want to see it.”

No thanks. But Pickard has witnessed several spreading of the

ashes at Kyle Field through the years. And the AstroTurf surface in the 1980s and early 1990s didn’t seem to be a deterrent. “The strangest funeral we ever had was a family that came out here and took the guy’s ashes and scattered them from one goalpost to the other, north to south,” says Pickard. “When we went to practice, [former defensive coordinator] Bob Davie went out there and said, ‘Billy, what’s this stuff?’ I said, ‘Those are ashes, as we had a funeral here last night.’ He said, ‘What? You mean, that’s a human being?’ I said, ‘What’s left of him!’

“He turned and ran into the tunnel and said he wasn’t going back

out there until I vacuumed the field.”

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The Caretaker of Kyle Field

Pickard has witnessed countless memorable games at Kyle, and he has

taped the ankles of such Aggie legends as John David Crow, Edd Hargett, Jacob

and even the exchanging of the vows themselves have

Green, and Ray Childress. He has overseen every expansion of the stadium

transpired at Kyle Field, the field itself has also been the

since 1954, and he has frequently inspected all 82,600 seats in the stadium.

site of countless attempts at other forms of collegiate

So what has been his strangest day at work?

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While several marriage proposals, wedding photos,

“It was about 5:15 in the morning, and I see a pool of blood and a chunk

consummation.

Billy Pickard claims he and the A&M security force

of hair lying on the concrete,” Pickard recalled. “Of course, we have domestic

have run off their fair share of amorous couples from

cats here; skunks, possums, pigeons, owls, and thousands of bats. But the trail

midfield. “It was Jackie Sherrill’s first spring practice, and

of blood was going into a restroom. So I open the door, and I can see blood on

we had AstroTurf,” Pickard said. “And in the middle of the field is a wine glass and some

the floor and a guy sitting on the commode with the door closed. So I call the

‘leftovers.’ And Jackie says, ‘What the hell is this?’ I said, ‘Coach, what does it look like?’

police, and with guns drawn, we’re going in. But the guy had gotten drunk and

He said, ‘You mean, they do that out here? What are we going to do about it?’ I said,

gotten up on the roof and fallen off. He just had a big ol’ knot on his head.”

‘Nothing, Coach, it goes on all the time.’

Pickard’s memories are mostly good ones at Kyle Field, but he may never

“Since we’ve gone to grass, it doesn’t happen quite as often, although we still find

forget the bittersweet Texas game in 1967. The Aggies pulled off the upset 10-7

remnants out there. We don’t arrest the kids, but we threaten them and take their name

to reach the Cotton Bowl after an 0-4 start to the season. But during the game,

down and tell them to not come back.”

Pickard was called on for more than football-related emergencies: in a tragic bit

Rivalry Week Before the annual football clash between Texas A&M

and Texas, there have been mascots stolen and branded, and Longhorn students have even attempted to prematurely ignite A&M’s famous Bonfire. Yet Pickard claims the amount of hijinks between the two rivals is overblown, particularly when it comes to stadium vandalism and pranks.

Both schools still try and lock down their respective stadiums in the days leading up to the game on Thanksgiving weekend, and Pickard says twenty-four-hour surveillance at Kyle Field begins many days out from kickoff.

A nighttime security officer also sits inside the stadium each night the week before the game.

“We’ve never caught Texas students trying to vandalize,” Pickard claims. “The guys run people out of the stadium all the time, but it’s our own folks. I never thought in the past twenty years that there was much mischief between the schools as much as mischief by their own. We don’t have any trouble with Texas.”

of triage—and before the advent of on-site, first-rate medical response teams— Pickard came off the sidelines to care for three fans who had collapsed in the stands. “The last time I went into the stands was the 1967 Texas game, because three people died while I was up there working on them,” Pickard said. “That’s before we had EMS and all that. All three died of heart attacks.”

As Billy Pickard continues to care for his favorite building, he can rest knowing his legacy with Kyle Field won’t flicker when the stadium lights go dim.

He has sidled up to the front row of the outdoor pavilion, The Grove, when Bear Bryant gave his passionate arrival speech in 1954, and he eventually became one of Bryant’s favorite young staffers.

He has gone from mail boy in the old jailhouse-like locker room of the 1950s to being the man in charge of the entire stadium.

Pickard has seen a single-decked, archaic stadium transformed into a triple-decked modern giant with opulent offices and locker rooms.

He has worked for a football program that has won multiple conference championships and yet been saddled with desperate losing skids.

The company man has nearly seen it all.

“I feel very fortunate,” Pickard says. “I have never taken anything for granted. If you’re going to get paid to do a damn job, get your ass out of bed and go do the job. If it comes time when you can’t do it or don’t want to do it, go find something else to do.”

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texas aggies down in aggieland We’ve got aggie Spirit to a man Stand united — that’s the aggie theme We’re the twelfth Man on the team When we’re down the going’s rough and tough We just grin and yell, “We’ve got the stuff!” to fight together for the aggie dream We’re the twelfth Man on that fighting aggie team.

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Aggie Intimidation

Kyle Field is routinely ranked by college football observers as one of the loudest and most intimidating venues in the sport. Some claim The Swamp at Florida and LSU’s Tiger Stadium are the biggest

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soundstages in college football, but few—if any—college cathedrals across the country have the built-in intimidation factor of an entire side of the stadium being occupied by 30,000 students, standing the entire game in honor of the 12th Man tradition, which was first borne into lore in 1922 by E. King Gill at the Dixie Classic in Dallas.

With the Aggies struggling with injuries against Centre College, Coach Dana X. Bible called on Gill, a former football player who had left the team at the end of the regular season to concentrate on basketball. Gill, who was in the press box spotting players for a Waco newspaperman, pulled on the uniform of injured player Heine Weir and stood on the Aggie sideline in case Bible needed his services.

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Gill never entered the game, but his readiness to help the team spawned one of A&M’s most cherished and famous traditions.

With the 12th Man always in ready mode, and because of Kyle Field’s steep decks and colossal north end zone, the noise cascades down onto the field in stunning fashion. “It’s intimidating for the opposing quarterback,” says Aggie quarterbacking legend Kevin Murray, who starred for the Aggies in the mid-1980s. “Having played the position, there were many times I’d be over on the sideline and look up in the student section and see it rocking, and think that the other guy must be wetting his diapers over there. The student body is the best.”

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y y Adds Oklahoma defensive back Marcus Walker, who played in OU’s 17-16 win over the Aggies in 2006:

“Kyle Field is one of the hardest places to play. Great fans, great team, great coaches. It’s really loud and gets crazy. Kyle Field is rough.

They’ve got that 12th Man, and it’s true . . . it’s a 12th Man.”

Prior to the victory over the Longhorns in ’67 on a warm November day, the Aggies had not beaten Texas at home since 1951.And in ’75, the Thanksgiving tussle marked one of the most anticipated games in the long rivalry between the two schools, as undefeated A&M entered the contest ranked second nationally, while UT came to College Station with just one loss and a No. 5 ranking.

The Aggies won the huge game before a then-record crowd of 56,679 (9,000 more than capacity). But the setting—at least as far as stadium decibels—lacked two features: third decks on the west and east sides of the facility. The stadium, while rocking against Texas in ’67 and ’75, simply didn’t have the size, and therefore the crowds, to shoot off the noise meter.

The opportunity for complete bedlam inside Kyle Field would present itself multiple times once the stadium was expanded in 1980 and again in 1999.

There have been memorable ear-piercing moments, like when the 12th Man Kickoff Team debuted in 1983 against California in the season opener, or when the Aggies jumped to a 13-0 lead over second-ranked Texas in the same season. But the Aggies would end up losing both games.

The noise generated by the 12th Man, a tradition started by E. King Gill (opposite page) in 1922, helped topple Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware and Houston in 1989.

So, the oft-debated question arises: Just when has the 12th Man and Kyle Field been at its loudest and most intimidating? Unfortunately, spine-tingling moments are usually subjective and personal to the fan in the stands. Older former students can recite their favorite games from decades of rolling through the turnstiles. Current students base their memories on a much narrower window.

But there can be criteria to help decide once and for all which game has been the loudest at historical Kyle: size of the stadium, stakes of the contest, quality of the opponent, and nuances of the game. The 1967 and 1975 Texas games at Kyle Field certainly had high stakes, as a trip to the Cotton Bowl and a possible national championship were on the line respectively.

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The 1986 come-from-behind thriller over Baylor could be the most exciting game in Kyle Field history, but a 17-0 Bears lead silenced the crowd for much of the first half. The 17-13 victory over Houston’s run-and-shoot in 1989 was a classic where the crowd played a huge part in stifling the Cougars and quarterback Andre Ware from adjusting at the line of scrimmage.Yet a non-sellout crowd of 66,423 pushes this game down a notch on the loudest list.

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Jackie Sherrill started the 12th Man Kickoff Team in 1983, and Chet Brooks’ (27) destructive defense helped inspire the nickname of the “Wrecking Crew.”

There have been countless rollicking crowds when Texas Tech rolls into town, and home games with Oklahoma have consistently spiked the electricity inside Kyle Field. Kansas State even had to call three time outs in one offensive series in the first half of a 2004 game as a result of Kyle Field crowd noise. But there is one game, one damp and chilly night, that stands alone in the history of Kyle Field when it comes to noise, unbridled emotion, and championship stakes. The 1985 Texas game had it all.

The Aggies entered the ’85 season on a high note after winning the final two games of the 1984 season. In Jackie Sherrill’s fourth year as coach, it seemed the Aggies had all the pieces, from their flamboyant quarterback in Murray to a smothering defense that would lay the foundation for its future nickname as the Wrecking Crew.

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A&M started the season with a 4-2 record after a conference loss at Baylor. But then the Aggies won their next five games, including two nail-biters at home in November over SMU and Arkansas. At 9-2, and with Texas having upset Baylor the week before, the showdown on Thanksgiving night was set. It was a winner-take-all slugfest between two bitter rivals for the right to go to the Cotton Bowl, the big prize at the end of the Southwest Conference race.

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It had been eighteen years since the Maroon and White had reached Dallas for the New Year’s Day bowl game, and the team entered the game against its nemesis with unusual confidence.

For the fans, however, there was immense trepidation.

This, of course, was Texas—the team that had haunted and taunted Texas A&M for generations. If any team could keep the Aggies from their dream destination, it would be the bunch from Austin.

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Yet all day long, leading up to the night game on ESPN, the towns of Bryan and College Station were buzzing like rarely before. One radio station played the “Aggie War Hymn” every hour on the hour, and it seemed as if all 77,607 fans with tickets were gathering on campus just to soak up what could be one of the most memorable nights in A&M sports history.

As the teams came out for warm-ups, even the A&M punters and kickers were given rousing ovations.

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And then a sea of white 12 Man towels, conjured up by Sherrill earlier in the year to help incite the 12th Man Kickoff Team, greeted the Aggies as they came out of the tunnel. th

“That ’85 game was really unique,” says Johnny Holland, an All-America linebacker who was the rock of the ’85 defense. “That’s probably the most excited I’ve seen a football stadium during my college or pro career.”

While A&M led just 7-0 at halftime, the second half of the game would go down in Aggie annals as an annihilation of a proud Longhorn team that had dominated the series between the schools for so long. The Aggies erupted for 35 second-half points en route to the 42-10 victory, still the most lopsided Aggie win in series history.

At one point during the onslaught, Texas quarterback Bret Stafford made one of the biggest blunders in the history of the A&M-Texas game, refusing to take the snap from center because of the unfathomable noise. Stafford waited for over two minutes before snapping the ball, sending the crowd into even more of a frenzy. The Aggie defense was foaming as well, as defensive back Alex Morris swooped in for a devastating sack of Stafford once he finally decided to play.

Grab a To wel Grab a Towel

The Pittsburgh Steelers started the Terrible Towel tradition in the NFL in the 1970s, but Texas A&M and the 12th Man Kickoff Team brought terry cloth to the college arena.

Coach Jackie Sherrill said recently that in order to take some of the pressure off his players inside Kyle Field in the 1980s, he sought to divert a portion of the fans’ attention to another facet of his team.

The 12th Man Kickoff Team provided that extra entertainment value, as did the unit’s waving of 12th Man towels.

Sherrill also wanted the towels in the stands, however. But when he first contacted the Head Yell Leader about the idea, Sherrill was quickly rebuffed.

“The Head Yell Leader looked me square in the eye and told me there was no artificial anything in Kyle Field,” Sherrill said. “But we ordered 2,000 towels and asked everybody to take towels out of the hotels.”

A dormitory on campus quickly made it mandatory for its residents to wave the towels on game days, and by season’s end, the tradition was catching on. By the 1985 Texas game, a winnertake-all classic for the Cotton Bowl, 12th Man Towels had cloaked the stadium.

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As Texas A&M football unfolds over

the next decades, there will be many more goosebump games. . .

As the game wound down, cotton balls floated down from the top decks, and the Aggies were on their way to an SWC championship and a berth in the Cotton Bowl.

The Aggies’ victory—and the thunder of incessant noise that came with it—was apparently a topic of conversation well into the off season.

“You can go to Michigan, Notre Dame, or anywhere you want to go, but that night was the loudest,” Sherrill recalled some twenty-two years later. “I remember going to the meetings afterward for the Southwest Conference, and [Texas athletic director] DeLoss Dodds was upset that I had incited our students at the bonfire to get that loud. I was thinking, What are you talking about?”

As Texas A&M football unfolds over the next decades, there will be many more goosebump games, as the renowned Aggie atmosphere isn’t going to dissipate. Game days in Aggieland are about more than the sixty-minute game, and that’s what keeps the maroon-and-white faithful coming back for more.

Indeed, Texas A&M has always been about camaraderie and cohesion, patriotism and passion. The school song says it’s “a spirit that can ne’er be told . . .” For six or seven Saturdays a year, however, Kyle Field provides the stage to shout all about it.

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Poignant Moments No matter ho w many times he watches the replay of the 1 999 Texas A&M-Texas game, for mer A&M linebacker Brian G amble still feel s the hair-raisin g, heart-racin g chill s ru shin g throu gh his vein s.

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ormer wide receiver Chris Cole says he doesn’t even need to watch it to experience similar feelings; the goosebumps begin to rise on Cole’s arms whenever he thinks about November 26, 1999. And former running back Ja’Mar Toombs says that even if he lives to be 100, he will likely never be part of a more meaningful, memorable, and moving tribute.

Kyle Field has played host to an abundance of unforgettable games, where championships were won or lost and individual legacies were solidified or soiled. The stadium has been the site of gripping comebacks, agonizing heartbreakers, nail-biters, and blowouts that have shaped the school’s football reputation and transfixed its fans. Those games are forever etched in the memory banks of the participants and the multitudes who poured onto Kyle Field’s concrete decks to witness these prominent pieces of Aggie football history.

Throughout the years, though, Kyle Field has also occasionally been the epicenter of events that could only be described as “much more than a game”—riveting moments where the action on the field co-starred with a spellbinding element of human interest.You didn’t have to be an Aggie fan—or even a sports fan—to be captivated by these moments.The only prerequisite for enjoying these poignant times was a pulse.

While football was the setting and the focal point for each of these extraordinary occasions, the gridiron served primarily as a gateway to something more significant than a final score. None of these games led Texas A&M to a national title or even a conference crown. But they are some of the most heartwarming, uplifting, and memorable events in the annals of Texas A&M football.

In fact, the 1999 Texas game may represent the most meaningful game in Aggie history. Not because of what it meant to the ’99 season, not because of the rivalry with the Longhorns, not because of anything normally associated with college football. “It meant so much because we, as a university family, had already lost so much in the week leading up to that game,” says 1999 quarterback Randy McCown.

“The game paled in comparison to the twelve lives that had been lost when Bonfire fell. There was nothing we could do to bring them back. But our university, our community, and our Aggie family needed something to feel good about; we needed something to boost our spirits; we needed a win to help the healing process begin. Because of the circumstances surrounding the game, I felt like there was more on the line in that game than in the previous year when we were battling for the Big 12 title. It was more than a game.”

Indeed, it was. It was probably the most surreal and stirring day in the stadium’s history—a picturesque, sun-splashed moment in time when tears and cheers intertwined to produce memories and a memoriam that will never be forgotten. And it tops our list of the most poignant moments in Kyle Field history.

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November 26, 1999 texaS at texaS a&M

at : in the morning on november , , texas a&m was forever changed. Since 1909, when Aggies first gathered around a burning trash heap, Bonfire had served as a symbolic reminder that Texas A&M possessed a spirit like no other rival. As the years and decades passed, Bonfire grew from a garbage pile to a grandiose, sixtiered stack of some 6,000 logs. But no matter its shape or size, Bonfire was always primarily about bonding:Each year roughly 5,000 students would dedicate approximately 125,000 manhours to erect the monstrous structure. And on the night before the Aggies would play the Texas Longhorns in College Station, 50,000 to 70,000 current students, former students, and fans would gather around the stack to celebrate the Aggie spirit and to participate in one of the most cherished traditions in all of Aggieland.

Bonfire started out as an emblematic campfire of sorts, symbolizing Texas A&M’s burning desire to beat the hell outta Texas. But it became so much more than that. From the camaraderie of “the cut” to the final, frantic days of “push,” the building of Bonfire became an annual rite of passage for so many students. In fact, the building of Bonfire may have been more meaningful than the actual blaze.

Beginning in early October and continuing until late November, A&M students poured their hearts—along with their sweat and blood— into the construction of Bonfire. It took teamwork, tenacity, toughness, dedication, courage, and sacrifice to build the stack—characteristics that A&M has treasured since its earliest days as an all-male military college.

Upon his first trip to the Bonfire site in the early 1980s, former A&M football coach Jackie Sherrill was so impressed with the students’ efforts and courage that he conceptualized the idea of the 12th Man Kickoff Team. “I figured that if there were thousands of kids on campus willing to risk life and limb on that stack, I could find ten to cover kickoffs,” Sherrill recalled. “Watching those students work on the stack was one of the most impressive things I had ever seen on a college campus. I knew right away that A&M was special, and I realized that Bonfire was a bonding experience like no other. It was mesmerizing to watch it come together.”

It was coming together once again in the wee hours of the morning on November 18, as Push week—a time when students worked sixhour shifts, twenty-four hours a day—was in its full swing. The stack was buzzing with activity as fifty or more students straddled their swings, climbed up and down the logs, and barked commands to fellow workers in a ritual that was far more orchestrated than chaotic.

The smell of fall filled the air, and with the assistance of baling wire and plenty of elbow grease, the stack was already forty feet high in anticipation of the November 25 Bonfire. It looked like so many stacks from previous years, and the students confidently scaled it and raised it like generations of Aggie students had done before.

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Shortly after 2:30 a.m., the stack began to shift and sink.Then the grinding and cracking of monstrous logs pierced the air. Bonfire was coming down in a massive, morbid heap.The majority of the students on the stack survived the harrowing crash, riding the logs down to the ground like surfers. Others were thrown from the stack, breaking limbs as they hit the ground beyond the perimeter. Those were the lucky ones. By the afternoon of November 18, exhausted rescue workers had pulled eleven dead Aggies from the twisted, mangled stack. A twelfth victim—Tim Kerlee—was removed from the stack alive, but after battling severe internal injuries for forty-eight hours, the 17-year-old Kerlee was pronounced dead.

The university mourned. The community grieved. And Aggies around the world dropped to their knees as national newscasters delivered the inexplicable and shocking reports. Football practice was cancelled that afternoon as A&M players joined rescue workers and other students to remove logs. One blood drive in Houston collected 228 units of blood in just a few hours. And at a memorial service on the night of November 18, more than 12,000 Aggies and some Longhorns gathered inside Reed Arena to pray together and pay tribute to the injured and deceased.

In the days following the tragic collapse of Bonfire, there was some discussion about not playing the November 26 game against the Longhorns. “But very quickly, we decided that at some point we had to move forward and let the healing process begin,” said former A&M head coach R. C. Slocum. “We felt like getting all the Aggie family together for the game was an important step to moving forward. In hindsight, we made the right decision. But in all my years of coaching, I’ve never been a part of an atmosphere quite like that. The emotions of that day were the most unique I’ve ever experienced. Everything surrounding that game was surreal, unlike anything our guys had ever been through.”

But this would not be just another ordinary November morning in Aggieland. It would become a day of mourning like never before.

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The Bush family attended the 1999 Texas game at Kyle Field, one of the most surreal days in A&M history.

One of the most surreal events happened on the night before the game, when Bonfire had originally been scheduled to burn. Roughly 50,000 A&M fans and mourners gathered at the accident site for a candlelight vigil. Both the future and former presidents from the Bush family joined the tribute, as candles flickered in the breeze and hardly anyone uttered a word. Then, in a glowing procession, the crowd marched into Kyle Field for a modified Yell Practice that included as many tears as cheers. Injured students from the Bonfire collapse lined the field as a dozen cannon blasts saluted those who had lost their lives.

Before the ceremony concluded, Ja’Mar Toombs momentarily distanced himself from teammates in the bleachers and began raising his arms skyward and pumping his fists into the air. The crowd roared its approval as Toombs practically had to be dragged off the field by teammates and Texas A&M personnel. “We were on the field, and we had just done the ‘War Hymn,’ ” Toombs recalls. “We were walking off the field, and I turned around and saw those guys bandaged up and injured. I just ran over there and started shaking hands and hugging people. I just could not leave the field. I felt everyone’s emotions inside that stadium. I felt ready to play right then.The coaches were like,‘Save it for tomorrow.’ But I had enough emotion in me for two days.There was no way I was going to let those guys down; no way I was going to allow us to lose that game.”

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Toombs didn’t disappoint. His symbolic gesture to an audience in mourning the night before the game proved to be prophetic the following morning. The pregame ceremonies included tributes such as Air Force jets piloted by former A&M students flying over Kyle Field in the “missing man” formation.Twelve doves were also released in honor of the twelve victims, and a moment of silence was observed.

A&M players wore a special Bonfire logo on their helmets, and at halftime, the Texas band carried two A&M flags while performing “Amazing Grace.” The Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band left the field at the half in its traditional “Block T” formation, but did so in complete silence.

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All the tributes were touching. But nothing was more meaningful than the action on the field. A record-setting crowd of 86,128 had spent much of the previous eight days choking back tears. They needed a reason to smile; they needed a release; they needed a reason to cheer.Toombs and company gave them that and more. On a day charged with emotion and filled with meaning, Toombs carried the ball 37 times for a game-high 126 yards and two touchdowns.

A&M fell behind early, and the Aggies trailed 16-6 at the half. But as the game wore on, Toombs and D’Andre Hardeman began to wear down Texas’ outstanding defensive front. Toombs (and the point-after conversion) brought the Aggies to within three, 16-13, on a 9-yard touchdown run late in the third quarter, and the Aggie defense shut down the No. 5-ranked Longhorns throughout the second half, setting up a memorable fourth-quarter drive that Randy McCown engineered. With 5:08 left in the game, McCown hit his close friend Matt Bumgardner for a 14-yard touchdown pass that gave the Aggies a 20-16 lead.

“The ball came up and went right through the sun,” Bumgardner said. “So I lost it for a second. It’s weird to say you were thinking about something at that moment, because it happened so fast, but I do recall thinking, I don’t know where this thing is. I sure hope it doesn’t hit me in the face mask and bounce off. I just had my arms in a basket, and I was hoping it came out in the right place. Luckily, it fell right in. That whole game was surreal. In between whistles, it was still just football. But you could tell that even the Texas players were a little subdued because they felt bad about what had happened. But we needed to win that game, and to catch the game-winning touchdown was very special.”

The special victory was not sealed until the closing seconds of the contest. Texas inserted quarterback Major Applewhite into the game in the final minutes, and the Longhorns began mounting a drive that had Aggie fans holding their collective breath. Texas was AggielA n d

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7

near midfield when A&M defensive back Jay Brooks came on a blitz, stripping Applewhite of the ball. At the bottom of the pile, freshman linebacker Brian Gamble came up with the loose ball. Gamble dropped to his knees, holding his arms up toward the heavens to commemorate what is likely the most meaningful win in A&M history.

“There’s no doubt that, even at that moment, I knew that recovering that fumble and winning that game would be one of the most unforgettable moments of my life,” Gamble has said. “We never had a doubt that we would win that game; we always believed something would happen in our favor to help us win it. We had endured plenty of disappointments throughout that season, and Texas was probably a much better team—at least on paper. But we knew that was more than a game; we knew we had to win it.”

Following the game, A&M players, family members, and fans leaned on each other. When the players exited the locker room, they were greeted by hundreds of teary eyes, joyous high-fives, and genuine gestures of appreciation.

“We were exhausted and emotionally spent after that game,” Slocum recalls. “I’ll never forget jogging onto the field after halftime, coming around the corner to the field, and you could have heard a pin drop. In the history of college or professional football, there has probably never been a stadium as quiet as Kyle Field was that day. It was an eerie, eerie feeling. And the pressure we felt that day was unlike any other. We had to win that game, and we might have had some divine intervention on our side. I don’t think God usually cares about who wins or loses a football game, but because of the circumstances, He may have been interested in that one.”

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September 22, 2001

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Poignant Moments

Poignant Moments

September 22, 2001 OklaHOMa State at texaS a&M

In the early 00s, the official colors of texas a&m were actually red and white. The school colors did not change until almost thirty years later, when an order for football jerseys was placed and the supplier mistakenly sent maroon jerseys. Instead of returning the

jerseys, Athletic Department officials decided to keep them because so many other schools used red as their primary color.

Throughout its history, however, perhaps Texas A&M’s truest colors have been patriotic ones—red, white, and blue. Ever since Lawrence Sullivan Ross arrived as school president in 1891, A&M has prided itself on producing military leaders and serving the United States. Almost 20,000 Aggies fought in

World War II, and A&M has produced soldiers and officers who have fought for freedom in virtually every battle the US has waged since the 1890s.

Today, mandatory military training is nothing but a historic part of A&M’s past, as membership in the Corps of Cadets represents only a small part of the total student enrollment. Even through all the changes the university has undergone since World War II, however, patriotism is still a tremendous source of pride on the A&M campus. That was probably never more evident than in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On the day after hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, then-Texas A&M junior Eric Bethea visited a Web site called TexAgs.com, one of the most widely used independent college athletic sites in the country. Typically, the banter on TexAgs.com involves dissecting A&M players, coaches, and calls, and recounting recruiting successes or near-misses. But on September 12, 2001, TexAgs.com served as an emotional outpouring of therapeutic messages for a country in mourning. It was on that day, and while visiting that site, that Bethea called for a “Red, White, and Blue Out” game at Kyle Field.

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y y y y Three years earlier the “Maroon Out” tradition had been born prior to the 1998 A&M-Nebraska game. Thousands of maroon Tshirts had been sold on campus, resulting in a sea of maroon at Kyle Field. But Bethea’s idea would be much more difficult to pull off, as it would involve a remarkable amount of coordination and cooperation in a tiny window of time.

Fans began lining up to buy T-shirts

to match their seats.

By the time it was all said and done, roughly 70,000 T-shirts had been produced, delivered and

sold in the space of a week, including 30,000 on game day.

Despite the overwhelming odds of turning his idea into a real-life tribute, Bethea, along with four other primary student organizers (Cole Robertson, Nick Luton, Josh Rosinski, and Courtney Rogers), decided that the September 22 home game against Oklahoma State would be the right time to show the nation A&M’s true colors.While the idea had picked up momentum on TexAgs.com, the first organizational meeting for the event—held on a Sunday afternoon, six days before the OSU game—did not produce many volunteers. Nevertheless, the student leaders were undaunted, and through the power of the Internet and the generosity of a local T-shirt printing shop—C. C. Creations—the idea

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began to pick up steam. Ken Lawson, the president of C. C. Creations, placed an initial order of 15,000 red, white, and blue T-shirts, and on Monday morning, the sales began.

The shirts were sold for $5 each, and by midweek, T-shirt vendors from across the state of Texas began offering their services to accommodate the incredible demand for the shirts, which were emblazoned with the words “In Memory of 9-11-01, Standing for America, Aggieland, USA” across the front.

By 7 a.m. on Saturday—more than four hours before the 11:30 kickoff between the Aggies and the Cowboys—fans began lining up to buy T-shirts to match their seats: red on the third decks, white on the second decks, and blue on the first decks. Even the A&M coaching staff dressed in red, white, and blue T-shirts to support the effort, and many of the Oklahoma State fans purchased blue T-shirts, slipping them over their orange attire to be part of the tribute.

By the time it was all said and done, roughly 70,000 T-shirts had been produced, delivered, and sold in the space of a week, including 30,000 on game day. The sales and the students’ efforts produced a stunning and spectacular exhibition of patriotism that was unmatched anywhere in the country. The color-coordinated crowd of 82,601 was the fourth-largest at that time in Kyle Field history.

“Almost every single person in the stands had on red, white, or blue,” said former A&M quarterback Mark Farris, who guided the Aggies to a 21-7 win over OSU. “That’s unbelievable for that to happen. I’m going to go ahead and say it:There’s not another place in the country where that would happen.

People can say,‘Oh, we could have done it.’ No, they couldn’t have.That’s just a fact. It made you really proud to be an American.”

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The game was not particularly memorable, but the tribute will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it and took part in it. And it did not end when the crowd left the stadium on September 22. The Red, White, and Blue Out organizers raised $180,000 in T-shirt sales, and its organizers hand-delivered the money to the New York Fire Department and New York Police Department relief funds. Longtime A&M donor and former student David Evans, the president of the Baytown A&M Club, helped to organize the trip for the five students by contacting Continental Airlines and a Hilton hotel in New York City. The airlines and the hotel were both so impressed with the students’ efforts that they donated airfare and rooms for the organizers.

“The whole thing started with a message from Eric [Bethea] onTexAgs.com,” Robertson recalled. “Then others started getting involved. The students, campus officials, the community, and everybody just seemed to rally behind it.

I remember the first time that we sat down with Ken Lawson and began discussing how many shirts to print. I wanted to order 7,000, but Nick was saying we ought to do 10,000, and Ken was saying 15,000 because he knew it would take off. Well, we ended up selling 70,000 shirts.

The only thing I can say about that is, ‘Only in Aggieland.’ I’m just proud to be an Aggie and an American.”

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November 28, 1963 texaS at texaS a&M

on november , 6 , the nation ached over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in dallas. Unlike 2001, when the NFL, Major League Baseball, and NCAA cancelled games in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle decided to go on with the league’s regularly scheduled games two days later. It was probably a mistake, especially when so much of the nation’s anger was directed toward Texas, and particularly Dallas, where Kennedy had been killed.

The Dallas Cowboys played on November 24, 1963, in Cleveland, and as the team bus pulled in front of the old Cleveland Hotel that Saturday, bellhops refused to help the players with their bags. The following day the Cowboys were booed by Cleveland fans as they came onto the field because of the city they represented. In fact, former Cleveland owner Art Modell ordered the team’s public address announcer to refer to the visiting team only as “the Cowboys” and to not, under any circumstances, use the word “Dallas.”

Four days later, on November 28, 1963, the nation was still in stunned bereavement on Thanksgiving Day: Kennedy had been laid to rest and Lee Harvey Oswald had been slain. On the Texas A&M campus, there had been some discussion about postponing—or even canceling—the annual Lone Star Showdown between the Aggies and the Longhorns. But school officials chose to play the game as originally scheduled.

The only change of plans involved the dismantling of Bonfire. It marked the first time since 1909 that Bonfire did not burn.

“The whole country was still in shock,” said Jim Keller, the Aggies’ quarterback and safety. “The assassination was on everyone’s mind.”

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The rest of the country certainly didn’t think much of the Thanksgiving matchup between the Aggies and the Longhorns. Hank Foldberg’s Aggies entered the game with a 2-6-1 record and had not produced a winning record since Bear Bryant departed College Station in 1957. Meanwhile, Darrell Royal’s Longhorns entered Kyle Field ranked No. 1 nationally with a 9-0 record and a twenty-game winning streak. “Nationally, I think most people thought our chances of winning that game were less than slim and none,” Keller said. “But our whole campus was very supportive of us, and we thought we had a good chance.”

The Aggies also received some support from the greatest team in A&M history, as several members of the 1939 national championship team came back to campus several days before the game in an attempt to convince the ’63 Aggies that they were capable of upsetting the top-ranked team.

In 1940, Texas had ended A&M’s 20-game winning streak. “Those former A&M players wanted us to do to Texas what Texas had done to them in 1940,” said Ronnie Moore, a key lineman on the 1963 team. “As I recall, that was the first time that John Kimbrough had been back on campus since he’d graduated. By the time the week was over, we were really a fired-up group, and we really believed we could beat Texas.”

It didn’t start that way, however. Heavy rains leading up to the game left Kyle Field looking like a river bottom, and the Horns jumped to an early 3-0 lead. But early in the second quarter, Keller found Travis Regan on a 54-yard scoring pass that enabled the Aggies to take a 7-3 lead to the locker room. Then, after Moore recovered a fumble at the A&M 44 in the third quarter, Keller connected with George Hargett on a 29-yard scoring pass to put the underdog Aggies on top, 13-3.

Early in the fourth quarter, the Horns cut the lead to 13-9, but A&M seemed to be in control when John Brotherton intercepted a Tommy Wade pass at midfield with less than four minutes left in the contest. Instead of protecting the football, however, Brotherton attempted to lateral to a teammate. Texas recovered at the A&M 45.

That hurt. The ensuing near-miss still stings too. With 2:24 left in the game, Wade tried to hit George Stauer with a deep pass in the end zone, but the pass was overthrown and intercepted by A&M’s Jim Willenborg near the back of the end zone. Game films and photographs would later reveal that after making the catch, Willenborg’s knees hit about a yard in front of the back line before he slid out of bounds. The officials, however, ruled that Willenborg was out of bounds.

“It was pure robbery,” Moore said.

“It should have been our ball and we could have run out the clock. Instead, the officials gave them another opportunity.”

Hargett nearly intercepted Wade’s next pass, but the Longhorns dodged that bullet as well. And with 1:19 left, Texas’ Duke Carlisle scored the winning touchdown in the Horns’ 15-13 victory.

“This is the greatest injustice to a group of young fellows I’ve ever seen,” Foldberg told reporters after the game. “Willenborg was a yard inside the end zone. I’m fed up with keeping my mouth shut about it. I don’t think that Texas was No. 1 today. I thought our Aggies were. We played them right off their feet.”

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The 1 9 43 Season

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the 1943 Season

Prior to the start of the season, many southwest conference followers and most sportswriters believed that the aggies were destined for a devastating season. In fact, the media labeled the Aggies in the preseason as “the beardless boys of Aggieland” and a “glorified high school team.” One writer even asked A&M head coach Homer Norton if the Aggies might be better off following the lead of Baylor and sitting out the ’43 season altogether.

“Definitely not,” Norton said at the time. “If I can find eleven boys on this campus who will suit up, we will have a football team.” Norton found his boys, and those kids quickly became warriors, shocking the sportswriters, the fans of the SWC, and the nation by reaching the Orange Bowl.

Under normal circumstances, an appearance in the Orange Bowl for the early 1940s Aggies would not have been particularly newsworthy. The Aggies, after all, had established themselves as one of the nation’s elite programs by winning the national title in 1939, claiming an SWC co-championship in ’40, and winning another outright conference title in ’41. During that three-year stretch, A&M amassed an overall record of 29-3 and outscored its opponents 676152, surrendering an average of just 4.75 points per game. In those thirty-two games, A&M recorded fourteen shutouts.

There was a drop-off in 1942 as the Aggies struggled to a 4-5-1 season. Nevertheless, Norton and the Aggies were on a par with Orson Welles and Benny Goodman in terms of being national headliners in the early 1940s. But that began to change on December 7, 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. And for the allmale military school in College Station, war would bring about many changes.

Among them was A&M’s status as a football powerhouse.Through the Army’s A-12 program and the Navy’s V-12 program, thousands of A&M upperclassmen were drafted into officer training schools. By the spring of 1943, the A&M football roster was decimated by the draft. In fact, only one varsity player from the Aggies’ 1942 roster returned for the ’43 season.

Red Burditt

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“I came to school here in ’43, and that was the year they had just cleaned out all of the upperclassmen because of the war,” said former A&M star Red Burditt. “But here’s the thing that is really interesting.

If you were an upperclassman and a football player, you weren’t going overseas directly.They sent you to college for a couple of semesters first.

So, all of these other schools—Rice,Texas, and so forth—that had A-12 and V-12 programs would recruit the best players. And ol’ (Earl) Red Blaik really cleaned up at Army, picking up guys like Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis.

“These military bases also picked guys up, and they played against college teams too. Randolph Field in San Antonio had sixteen AllAmericans on its team. And when we played Rice in 1943, there were seven guys on that team who had been playing at A&M in 1942.

Practically all of our upperclassmen were gone.”

But Norton wasn’t going to throw in the towel before the season ever began. In the true spirit of the 12th Man, he solicited what remained of the Corps of Cadets for football tryouts. When practices began in late July of 1943, 130 young men showed up in tennis shoes and shorts. The average age of the 1943 Aggies was only 17.5 years old. But even as the sportswriters snickered, Norton assured Aggie fans in early September that the ’43 team would definitely be worth watching.

“These boys will make lots of mistakes that older boys with more experience would not make,” Norton told reporters just before the season opener against Bryan AFB.“And they will take chances that will have the coaches chewing on everything in sight. But they will be the liveliest and most entertaining team that I’ve ever fielded, and I know I will enjoy coaching them more than any team that has been under me.”

Norton was dead-on in his assessment. The Aggies opened the year by trashing Bryan AFB 48-6 and blanking Texas Tech 13-0. By the time A&M pulled off back-to-back road upsets at LSU and TCU, the Aggies were 4-0 and developing some legitimate star power as Hallmark, Marian Flanagan, Goble Bryant, and M. E. Settegast would go on to earn All-SWC honors.

“We just believed we were supposed to be good because we were Texas Aggies,” Burditt recalled. “And for me personally, it was a dream come true to be playing for the Aggies. I was born an Aggie, and my father was class of ’21. From the first day I can remember, I dreamed of becoming the next Joe Routt and then the next Dick Todd. The only thing I ever wanted to do was go to Texas A&M and play football. But coming out of Abilene High School [where he graduated at midterm],

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I arrived at A&M in the spring of ’43 thinking I had no chance to play. I didn’t even come to spring practice because I weighed only 158 pounds. But that summer [Norton] put out an article in the paper saying that he needed football players. I was pretty cocky and said, ‘Hey, give me a uniform and I think I can make your football team.’ I wasn’t very big, but I had run a 9.7 in the 100-yard dash in high school. And I had a burning desire to prove I could play.”

Burditt and the rest of his teammates did just that, and heading into the regular season finale against Texas, the Aggies were 7-0-1, with the only blemish coming in a tie against North Texas Agricultural College (now UTA), which was loaded with V-12 players. With the SWC title on the line against Texas, the Aggies again ran into a buzzsaw, as the Longhorns were also stocked with “lend-lease” players. Texas prevailed 27-13 and went on to tie Randolph Field in the Cotton Bowl.

Meanwhile, the second-place Aggies were still extremely attractive to the bowl representatives. Nobody was snickering anymore at the youthful Aggies, who became known in media circles as the “Whiz Kids” and the “Kiddie Korps.” A&M’s 1943 defense recorded shutouts in six of its first eight games and set an SWC record for fewest pass completions allowed in a season (33) in the history of the league. The record has never been broken.

With a 7-1-1 record the Aggies accepted a bid to the Orange Bowl for a rematch with LSU. “We only took thirty-three kids to the game,” Burditt said. “You have to remember that this was during the war and times were tough.” So tough that each of the Aggie players was forced to share a bunk with another teammate for the entire trip. But the cramped confines of the train didn’t diminish A&M’s excitement about the trip. And the Aggies were even more excited when Burditt caught a 17-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter to give the Aggies a 7-6 lead over the Tigers.

Unfortunately for A&M, LSU’s Steve Van Buren proved to be too much to handle.Van Buren rushed for 172 yards and two touchdowns and passed for another score as LSU beat A&M 19-14. The Aggies’ magical 1943 run had ended with a two-game losing streak. And by 1944, many of the key contributors of that team had been “drafted” into other lendlease programs. As a result, A&M would not return to another bowl game until 1950. But because of the extenuating circumstances, the 1943 season remains as one of the most poignant in Aggie football history.

The draft separated the men from the boys, but the A&M boys still proved they had plenty of fight.

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SpIrIt

tHe OF

aGGIelaNd

Some may boast of prowess bold Of the school they think so grand But there is a Spirit can ne’er be told It’s the Spirit of aggieland We are the aggies — the aggies are we true to each other as aggies can be We’ve got to fight boys, we’ve got to fight We’ve got to fight for Maroon and White after they’ve boosted all the rest then they will come and join the best For we are the aggies, the aggies so [true] We are from texas a.M.[U.]

The Singing Cadets sing the official version of the Spirit. When the school became an actual University in the 1960s, Mr. Dunn rewrote the words to acknowledge this accomplishment.

The original words — “the Aggies are we . . . are from Texas A. M. C.” —are still sung by the student body in keeping with tradition.