It’s always difficult as you get ready to start football season. You wonder about what players are going to be playing where. Who is going to be the key contributor and on and on and on. But, we don’t talk about coaches much and I thought I would talk about, not “the” coach, Gordon Wood, but about the collection of coaches that we’ve had.

Gordon Wood was obviously one of the great coaches of all time. I mean, he had more wins than any coach in history – up to a point. But, Gordon Wood was magnificent in so many ways. I’ve heard of him going to a coaching convention and they had speakers. I”m talking about the great coaches in American history, and Gordon would get up there. He might be there on the third day or something and he would have a crowd. I’m not talking about a crowd as far as the coaching thing is concerned. I mean, these guys like Darrell Royal and all of them, would draw maybe half a room. Then you would see Gordon Wood go in and not dress near as nice as these guys – old shoes on his feet – and he would sit down and start talking. It wouldn’t be half full, it would be totally full. He would outdraw most any speaker! I’m not sure Brownwood ever knew what they had, but they had him for twenty-five or so years. He could motivate and not tell us. In other words we could go in, even those of us that knew him, we could go in and come out and be motivated. He was an amazing craftsman.

I didn’t want to spend time just on him though. I want to say something about Morris Southall because he was “the one” that I think could team with Gordon and make it all work. Gordon won a couple of State Championships before he came to Brownwood, seven more at Brownwood and they were all with Morris Southall. I don’t think Gordon could have had what he had without Morris. Morris was very special to me, but special to me more than just coaching because for about as long as he coached he worked along side me.

What a joy! You could tell the man something in year one and you might hear it in year six, exactly like you wanted. He was an amazing man. He talked like a country hick, but coaches at least knew who to listen to. It was Morris.

The other one I want to mention is Kenneth West. I often told people if you didn’t have Kenneth there, Gordon and Morris would have run things like Grambling, which was not altogether different than today. What Grambling did back then was frowned upon by the coaching profession, unless you were liberal enough to know that might work. Gordon and Morris used Grambling stuff. I’m telling you, if it had not been for Kenneth West, they would have renamed the high school Grambling Tech or something. It was amazing to watch Kenneth. I used to go down to Palace Drug and watch Gordon and Morris draw up plays. Draw up plays! Then do you know what they would say? “I don’t know if Kenneth will let us run this.” That was the beauty of that team. You had the conservative Kenneth West allowing what he allowed, and Gordon and Morris trying to do everything their way, adjusted just a little by Kenneth.

They were an amazing team – really amazing. I’m still amazed at this day and this age that we were able to witness football history. Gordon Wood, Morris Southall, and Kenneth West. They could coach.

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].