Back in the old days, if your team got in the playoffs, it usually meant that you had to do a lot of face to face meetings with opposing coaches to negotiate to see where your next playoff game was going to be, the time, the officials, things like that. They probably do most of it via Face-time today, but it was certainly interesting in the old days and in particular, 1978.
We were approaching the regional round of the playoffs. Crosby had won their Bi-District game on a Friday night and we were playing our Bi-District game on that Saturday. It was against Belton, and we were at Memorial Stadium, the UT stadium in Austin and we won comfortably by a 20-0 count. Crosby was coached by a young guy and Gordon Wood, of course, the coach at Brownwood was already a legend. We were the visiting team against Belton and I couldn’t help but notice that we were sitting in a radio booth about the size of a closet while the home radio booth was massive. It was two levels with leather-backed chairs and, I mean, it was NICE!
So, Coach Wood was up there in that closet after the game giving me his coaches comments, and he said, “Well, I’ve to go downstairs to the meeting room and meet with the Crosby coaches and see where we’re going to play next week and all of that stuff,” I said, “Well, when you negotiate, try to get us a better radio booth.” He said, “You mean like the one next door” and I said “Well, that would be great.” He said, “Why don’t you come down with me”?
So for the only time in my life I went to one of these sessions. We get in the meeting room and they start flipping coins and doing all kinds of things and eventually both teams decided to go back to Austin for the Regional game. Now, they got to the home team flip and it was apparently very important to Crosby because they loved playing in their solid red uniforms. I don’t think Coach Wood gave a flip what uniforms we had on. So, they flipped and we won the toss. Their coach almost fell in the floor and he said, “Oh man, that’s the one toss I wanted to win.” So, Coach Wood said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll let us have the home radio booth we’ll wear white and you can wear red.” The guy said, “Man alive, I can’t pass that up!”
So Coach Wood got me the radio booth I wanted. The uniform situation certainly didn’t hurt us. Turned out the Lions won 28-14 and I had a very comfortable
broadcast. Then, we went on and beat Bay City 33-28 in a classic the next week. Eventually we played Gainesville and ended up winning the State Championship, 21-12. It was number 6.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].