I finally decided to do a column on football rankings. The reason I decided to do this is that 1963 is the year I started doing Brownwood football. I think ’63 was one the first that Texas won the National Championship. They won in 2006 or whatever, and I think there was one in between there between ’63 and ’06 but I’m not sure. You can probably tell I don’t look up a whole lot of these things before I start them, and I don’t have any facts to back me up. I do know that ‘63 was a National Championship year. They won again in the ‘60’s and then won the National Championship in 2000 whatever. So much for Texas.
I was talking about ’63 being a year that the Brownwood Lions didn’t do anything. I mean didn’t do one cotton picking thing. They were picked Number 1 in the State before the season started and of course we had only one playoff team from each District. So, it was a lot different back then. I don’t ever remember polls being a start of anything. Were there polls, yeah, varied. You had a 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A. The 4A was as high as it got. It didn’t take long for me to win a State Championship. With Gordon Wood at the helm, they won in 1960 and then took a five year hiatus before they settled in in 1965 as State Champions. I think that was the year that it didn’t bottom but, but it was a strange year in 1965. They started taking about it general terms. In other words, in ’63 and ’64 you had a little bit of a – the Harris Rating System started in about ’62, 1963, somewhere along in there. There was none until that time. Now the son has taken over the dad who has passed away and he does a good job.
The funny thing is that it has developed now to where every team in top four in the District qualifies for post season. It’s been that way for a few years. So, the playoffs have gone from one and done basically – I mentioned 1963,’64, ’65 – you were knocked out by a fluke. There are probably, I don’t know, if there are ten State Champions there are probably eight of them that don’t make it.
The Brownwood Lions made it in 1965. Fact is, they were voted the best team to ever win in 1965. The best team ever! In other words, in 1960 when they had it, it was kind of laid out in front of you and you might accidentally win a State Championship. But in 1965, we had a State Champion. They polled all of the coaches in all of the Divisions, and they said Brownwood is probably the best team in Texas. They were better than us in 4A and even though it doesn’t count as a poll or anything, it is something that’s kind of interesting. Brownwood won again in ’67, ’69, ‘70 and it almost got to the point of being “We’re out of it this year. We lost a game. There’s no way we can win any more” but we did because we won again in ’78. We won it again in 1981.
Seven State Championships! It’s not the “gold standard” any more, but I’ll tell you for a fact, it’s pretty dog gone close.
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].