Gordon Wood, the legendary head football coach, had been at Brownwood for about sixteen or seventeen years, when they almost got rid of him. It was a very small minority that decided to move him out. Unfortunately, most of them were on the School Board. Gordon’s teams had won State in 1960, ‘65, ‘67, ‘69, and ‘70 at Brownwood and all of a sudden, he was getting too old. They had it figured where he was within about a year of getting canned. You see at Brownwood ISD, in their by-laws, school employees had to retire at age sixty five. That was the school district policy. When you hit sixty five, you were out of a job. So, back in 1976 or so, the Board decided that Gordon’s time was up. This was not a community deal but it was about four school board members who were trying to get rid of him.
A lot of people – Bill Stovall at the Bulletin was writing editorials, I was doing editorials on the radio – and I guess we were making a little bit of progress, but what really turned things around was that back then, Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California and he was thinking about running for the presidency. Actually, he did four years later. On this day, he came to Brownwood and he appeared at the Coliseum then they had a question and answer session. One of the questions was, “Mr. Reagan, if you had a football coach who had won seven State Championships at two different cities and was renowned as one of the great coaches in the State of Texas, and was still active and still winning at the age of sixty-five, would you fire him because of his age?” Reagan, who obviously was battling an age situation himself, lit up a lot of people. He blasted whoever might suggest something that ridiculous! So, all of a sudden, most of Brownwood got fired up because they had Reagan on their side, and the heat got so bad that the school board voted to raise the age limit. They just said anyone over the age of sixty-five will be evaluated on a year by year basis. Anyway, what it amounted to was that Gordon Wood kept his job at Brownwood.
Oh, and in 1977 he led the team to the State Championship game. In 1978 he won another State Championship and then another in 1981.
One thing is for sure, he was not too old.
Gordon retired a few years later at Brownwood, and by the time he did he had nine State Championships, seven at Brownwood, and had won close to 400 games. So, I have never felt like age was really an issue with a coach and after that happened, I certainly believed it even more. Fact is, he may have been a better coach at the end than he was at the beginning. I have a feeling that was probably the case.
Of course, had that policy stayed in place, yours truly would have been kicked out in 2007.
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].