Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Coaches are under greater scrutiny than at any other time in athletics. It doesn’t matter if it’s junior high school or the NFL, everybody is an expert, and everyone can do it better than the clueless coach.
While we’re busy second-guessing coaches, and Monday morning quarterbacking, what we should be taking a look at is the loyalty of players to the program.
High school kids routinely leave programs with their parents often getting so involved that they’ll sell their home and move to another district, a district where little Johnny or little Nancy can play more often.
Jump to the college ranks and its NIL (Name Image Likeness) paying big bucks for even mediocre talent, and if the kids don’t play, it’s off to the portal to jump to another program with no penalty.
It’s killing mid-major athletic programs like the University of Wyoming. I’ll be honest, I don’t even pay attention to Cowboy basketball any longer, but I follow the Cowgirls.
Why the break from the men’s program and attention to the women? First, the gals stay in the program, and second, a lot of them are from Wyoming, not foreign imports. The guys don’t go to class, leave after a season and aren’t part of the college at all. Perhaps Gillette native Sundance Wicks can change that as head men’s coach, I hope so.
It wasn’t always this way, players used to be loyal to a program, win or lose, and often, as freshmen, it was no box of chocolates.
Until 1972, freshmen couldn’t even play at the varsity level in any sport.
UCLA head coach John Wooden’s teams won the 1965, NCAA National Championships in men’s basketball with a 28-2 record. That fall, they scrimmaged the freshmen on November 27 at Pauley Pavillion in front of 12,000 fans.
The freshmen beat the defending national champions 75-60. Yes, Wooden had a bright future ahead for the Bruins. He also had 7-1, Lew Alcindor (later changing his name to Karem Abdul Jabbar) and three other All-Americans in Lucius Allen, Kenny Heitz, and Lynn Shackelford.
They rolled to a 21-0 record in 1965-66 against other freshmen teams and junior colleges.
They didn’t get any money, they had to go to class, they were students first and athletes second. When did that all change?
My late friend Carl Andre had an entertaining story of his freshman year at Wyoming. Carl played high school football in South Dakota and came to Wyoming as a quarterback in the fall of 1946.
In the days of leather helmets, free style blocking and frequent concussions, Carl ran the scout team against the Cowboy varsity.
“Those guys had bullet wounds, burns and were all combat veterans,” Carl once told me. “I didn’t impress them at all.”
After repeated beatings by the defensive line and linebackers as the varsity defense rolled over the 18-year-old offensive linemen trying to stop them, Carl had enough.
“The middle linebacker was a mean SOB. Sometimes after practice he’d stuff me upside down in a garbage can,” Carl said. “But I had an arm and I could throw a football hard. One practice after he pounded me three or four times, I drilled him right in the face as hard as I could with the ball. He was out like a light. The coach said “Andre, you better disappear for a few days.” I came back a few days later and he was still mad at me, but he didn’t pick on me as bad.”
Carl transferred to the University of South Dakota the following year.
There has been a lot of superfluous talk of retiring Josh Allen’s jersey at the University of Wyoming. It’s like he is the first kid to ever play quarterback for the Cowboys. Sure, he’s had a great professional career, but he was only 16-11 as the starting quarterback and left with a year of eligibility remaining. That’s not Hall of Fame in my book.
Instead, how soon we forget. The “Greybull Slingshot” Jim Crawford led the nation in rushing his senior year, outgaining Jim Brown of Syracuse. He was the starting running back for Wyoming’s last undefeated team in the 1956 season. He went on to five years with the Boston Patriots after graduation.
If you want to retire a number, how about Jim’s?
Football practice was far from easy for freshmen back in the 1950s and 60s.
Don Ricks, a writer and columnist shared this story online of his freshman class at Wyoming back in 1955.
When we newly recruited freshmen reported to the Cowboys in August 1955, our introduction to college football is abrupt. We worked out in sweat suits for three days. We are issued pads Friday after practice. Saturday, we scrimmage the varsity. Twelve freshmen repack their bags that weekend and go home.
Three weeks later Phil Dickens, the head coach, calls the whole team together at the end of practice. He scolds us freshmen for disrupting workouts. He says we are picking too many fights with the varsity. That has to stop.
All along John Townsend, who coaches the freshman team, has insisted we fight. He demands belligerent aggressiveness, even when we are lined up against players who are second and third year starters. We like Coach Dickens’ idea better.
Looking back, I believe Dickens instigated the brawling behind the scenes, then intervened publicly to shut it down when it accomplished two objectives. More recruits, disheartened by the violent football, have been culled from the team. And although those of us who remain are still freshmen, we are no longer kids just out of high school.
We are the Green Shirts. Every week that season we learn the basic playbook of a new team. Our job during practice is to play aggressive football against the varsity in the style of their next opponent. The Cowboys win 7 of 10 games. We help them get ready for the Sun Bowl. They beat Texas Tech 21-14.
Back at the start of the season, 55 of us arrived as freshmen on scholarship. When spring practice begins in April 25 are still on campus. The following August 12 report as sophomores. That season 8 of us letter on an undefeated, nationally ranked Cowboy team.
Many of those who were no longer with the team had been more talented athletes. But they didn’t pass one or both of the two critical freshman tests: they needed to become university students; and they needed to become NCAA football players.
There are currently seven high school football players getting paid between $900,000 and $1,900,000 in NIL money. Imagine being their high school coach.
Discipline, dedication, loyalty, three attributes that are sorely missing at all levels of athletics these days.