One of the great joys in my life was getting to know Gordon Wood. He was probably a lot of things most people don’t believe he was. I got to know him pretty personal and again, it’s one of the great privileges in my life, getting to know him and learning a lot of stuff from him. The thing I’m going to tell you about is something that happened late in his career. This was 1980 or so and he retired in 1985, so he has already won most, if not all of his State Championships. So, as I said, this was late in his career.
We were playing Killeen High School in Killeen. They had no artificial turf. It rained, and rained, and rained some more. It was a quagmire in Killeen. The same score that the ballgame started with is what it ended with – 0-0, and I’m not sure either team got to the opposing 35 yard line. It was nothing but a mud bath! It didn’t even resemble football. It was just terrible (I thought).
So, in the second half of the ballgame I started getting, as some people would probably tell you, a little nasty. You see, if I didn’t get my way and have a great ballgame, I wasn’t happy. If it was a blowout, I was OK, but certainly, a game like this you didn’t want to be around me or I would let you know. So, I started displaying my unhappiness on the radio and I wasn’t real kind to anyone. I said, “This is the worst football game I’ve ever seen!” I said a whole bunch of other stuff I probably shouldn’t have said. But the bottom line is that I just told people that it was a “bad” football game and I felt bad putting it on the radio. This game accomplished nothing and I bashed it over and over.
I got home that night, late as usual, couldn’t sleep, but I had trouble doing that after any game, especially a game like this. I probably dozed off somewhere around two or three in the morning and all of a sudden there’s a knocking on the back door. I jumped up and looked at the clock and it was 7:00 in the morning. Saturday morning!
The knocking kept on and on until I finally got up and put enough on that I could be half respectable at the door. I went and opened it. It was Coach Wood. He said, “I need to talk to you about something.” It was 7:00 in the morning. He sat me down and in no uncertain terms he told me that there has never been a “bad” football game. He said, “I know what you said because I’ve had several people tell me.” “There has never been a bad football game.” So, he sat there for an hour, or maybe the better part of an hour and a half, and he went over that ballgame with me. In that length of time, he pretty well convinced me that I had never seen a bad football game.
That’s the only point he made that morning, but it’s a point that has stayed with me. Fact is, that very night, back home, I did a Howard Payne game that also ended up 0-0 (a mud bath) but I told people how good it was. As a radio guy I sure thought I had seen some bad football until Gordon showed up that morning.
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].