When I think of Christmas and what it means to me, two things jump to the front of my mind. Number one is Jesus Christ. He is my Savior. He is my God and this is His birthday. Number two is my wife, Linda, and that’s IT. There is no number three. I’ve got a one and a two and that’s good enough for me.
Sometimes I’m asked, “football wise, what’s the best gift you’ve ever been given?” Gift number one, I was given the opportunity to be the voice of the Brownwood Lions for over 50 years. That’s a big deal for me! I’ve also had the great opportunity of working with people like Gordon Wood and Morris Southall and Glen Whitis, James Cameron, and Bob Derryberry. In other words, I’ve been blessed twice because I not only had the sports with Brownwood High, but I’ve had the sports with Howard Payne for over fifty years as well.
If there’s one game – and they don’t let you do this – you don’t get
“do-overs” in life – but if I had one, it would be very simply be to give the 2010 Brownwood Lions the State Championship that they certainly deserved. They went fourteen and one that year. They lost to State Champion Carthage in the Semi-Finals. The game ended with us down by seven but sitting at their one yard line. We just didn’t get it done. You’ll remember that an officiating crew out of Houston called the game and on Monday Bob Shipley got a call from their head of officials. He said in watching the film, he found four bad mistakes that the officials made in the game. Obviously, had those been corrected, and probably just one of them been corrected, we would have won the State Championship. But, oh well.
Sitting in my living room and watching the State Championships on TV I got to thinking about the time that WE were up there. That’s not where we played Carthage but earlier in the 2010 season we played a team called Fort Worth All Saints at Jerry World. They are a private school and totally outclassed. We’re up forty something to seven at half time and just having a ball. We rolled over them and had a great time. Never, in my wildest imagination did I think that we would continue to play them for a few more years and not only would we never beat them again, we never came close to them again! I learned a lesson about private schools. If they have a year where they get whacked around pretty good, they simply unfold their wallets and they go get them some more players. It’s as simple as that. That’s why, at that time, they never let the private schools go against the public schools in games that really mattered. Anyway, they were a really good football team from 2011 on, but in 2010 they really weren’t a bad team. Brownwood was simply that good. A GREAT football team. I’ve been asked by many people if they were the best Brownwood team ever. That’s so hard to even talk about. You’re talking about a span of fifty years from 1960 to 2010. That’s fifty years where kids got bigger. Kids got faster. Kids got stronger. You can’t compare them to the team in 1960 or even the team in 1981, but we were a VERY good team. Fact is, I think we were the best team in the state in our class.
All I can do is say that because one thing I’ve learned in football, you don’t get any “do-overs”. If we did, we would have more than 7 titles.
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].