THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS

Aggies, Re-hashed & Warmed Over.

1974- Texas upsets A & M 32-3.

A&M is ranked #9, and Texas is ranked #17. Don’t tell anyone, but Texas’s record against A&M in Memorial Stadium since 1924 was 23-1-1. A&M had three fumbles in the first quarter, and Texas scored points on all of the errors.

 Larry Carlson stirs the pot with three favorite seasonal Texas A & M memories. The 1974 game is one of the Texas vs Aggie trilogies that he captures for the TLSN historical website site.

Click on the link below for the 1990 Aggie game

https://www.texaslsn.org/1990-aggies-by-larry-carlson

Click on the link below for the 1998 Aggie game.

https://www.texaslsn.org/1998-texas-vs-a-m-game-by-larry-carlson

BUMBLING, FUMBLING AGGIE JOKE 1974 Austin, November 29

     It was Thanksgiving week of 1974 and I was 21 years old.  Top o’ the world. But it was the first time I had ever worried that the Aggies might somehow beat my Longhorns.  Unthinkable.

     Now it seemed like a cruel possibility.  What a strange season it had already been.

     Texas coach Darrell Royal, taking aim at his seventh straight SWC championship, had been featured on the cover of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine.  The word “dynasty” had appeared.  Jinxed.

     In the conference opener out in Lubbock, a Red Raider team that would lose four conference games peaked early and mashed a startled herd of Horns, 26-3.  The sky was falling.  Then Texas lost a rough one, 16-13, to OU, its fourth straight loss in the series.  But the Horns won three straight league games and the world was back to spinning properly on its axis.

       Then the graying, granite planet went terribly awry one unfathomable day in Waco.  In his 18th matchup with Baylor, Royal finally lost one. Tragicomically, the SWC title would now come down to Mickey or Goofy, Baylor or A&M.  The Ags had bested Baylor earlier but had lost to SMU.  Royal, visited the jubilant “Miracle on the Brazos” Baylor locker room after losing to the Bears.  He reportedly told them to go on and win the title now. “We’ll take care of the Aggies,” DKR promised.

     One week later, Texas sledgehammered TCU in Fort Worth, 81-16, the most points one SWC team had ever rung up on another.  Demons had been purged, but the Horns were no longer playing for all the spoils.

      So as the Friday after Thanksgiving dawned cold and blustery in Travis County, all the visiting jarheads from A&M needed was a win against their arch-rival.  No problemo.  Heck, the Ags had already pulled that off in Austin before.   Exactly one time since 1922.  Maybe this would be the next triumph.  This time, it was the Maroons ranked in the top ten, playing for high stakes.

      Gametime arrived uncustomarily early, at noon that Friday.  The wind was whistling at a robust 30 mph, making for a nasty wind chill of 20 degrees.  Longhorn kicker Billy “Sure” Schott, readying for his senior class’s final Memorial Stadium game, recalled just this week that he was just hoping UT would have the wind in the first and fourth quarters. Pre-game warmups served irrefutable evidence that it would be a factor.

      “Kicking into it was like kicking into a tall wall,” Schott said.  “Knocked everything down in a hurry.”

      Schott got his wish.  Texas took the wind and the Aggies would get the ball.  I remember telling my best buddy, as we shivered in the north end zone, that it was the coldest I had ever been in my life.

      Just a few minutes later, I was already hoarse from yelling, but had an acute case of warm fuzzies.  And I hadn’t even remembered the bourbon.  No matter.  The eighth-ranked Ags, bless their little hearts, had seen title hopes and Cotton Bowl dreams gone with the wind, in a flurry of fumbles.  Three possessions, three turnovers.  Texas led 17-0 with less than five minutes gone.  Hell, it took less than 60 ticks to produce a 14-zip chill down Aggie spines.  A&M fumbled on its inaugural play from scrimmage and UT got an 18-yard TD run from Raymond Clayborn on its second snap.  Then the Farmers fumbled again, straight into the arms of freshman defender Lionell Johnson who stomped 28 yards into the end zone for another score.  Schott’s 33-yard field goal salted the wound, and Texas never let up.

     Texas controlled the ball.  Tyler freshman FB Earl Campbell rumbled for 128 yards on 27 carries, and QB Marty Akins rushed for 65 yards and a pair of touchdowns.  Defensively, senior stalwarts Doug English and Wade Johnston were among those roadblocking every Aggie drive.

     With what would be the final score of 32-3 holding steady at the end of three quarters, I somehow convinced my buddy to stay for the whole game, just to savor the ass-whipping.  When it was over, I vaulted the rail as if I were still ten years old and went out to join the exultant Horns so I could pat Johnston, the sturdy linebacker from minuscule Agua Dulce, on the shoulder pads.  That fall, I had begun training my 2 1/2 year-old nephew, Chad, to go crashing into my unsuspecting friends as we’d toss the pigskin outside,  savagely yelling “John-ston!”   It had become quite a deal, this honoring of the previous Cotton Bowl’s Defensive MVP, and the guys had begun to blindside each other before getting into cars, ordering a burger, whatever.  Great fun.

      As a footnote, I have to share this.  A few months later, I started bugging the heck out of my sister, then pregnant with her and her husband’s second child, to name her next kid Wade, should she be fortunate enough to have another boy.  In the fall of ’75, Diana came through.  Wade would join Chad in the Longhorn indoctrination.  

      Some fifteen years later, I had a friend who was an administrator at Leander High, where Wade Johnston was the head football coach.  I told her the background on a family member’s name, and she arranged a lunch meeting.  When I informed Coach Johnston of his namesake, he seemed amused and at least mildly mystified as to why someone would name their kid after him.  But when I ate lunch with him again a few weeks later, Johnston brought something special for me to pass along to young Wade, who was now starting to play high school football.  He bequeathed his old Cotton Bowl T-shirt.  Unbelievable!  My youngest nephew, now 46, still has the prized possession.  And my buddies, nephews and I, now creaky of knees and backs, still occasionally surprise each other with a quck “John-ston!” crash.

      But back to the glowing aftermath of that ’74 rivalry game.  It completed a perfect run of home games for the seniors, the last bunch who had only three years of eligibility.  They were 15-0 in Austin, putting a punctuation mark on UT’s seventh consecutive year of no losses at Memorial Stadium.  

      “I really didn’t want to leave the field,” Schott recalls.  “I would have sat there in the cold in my uniform all night if I could have.   Because I knew that taking it off would be one of the most difficult things I’d have faced in my 22 years,” he says, wistfully. 

      The Longhorns, 8-3, on the strength of the victory, accepted an invitation to Florida for a date in the Gator Bowl against Auburn.  The Aggies?  Suddenly left out in the cold for Baylor’s advance to the Cotton Bowl, A&M, also 8-3, had nowhere to go.  All eleven bowl matchups  were set.  It would be a long, frigid ride back to College Station to begin studying for final exams.  The Ags had flunked this crucial test.

                                                        *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *