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All-SWC quarterback in mid-60s
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Wilson recalls
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By GAYE DENLEY
Battalion Staff
At a scrawny 140 pounds, Corsi-
ana High passing wizard Tom
Wilson had only a handful of scho
larship offers to choose from.
“I really wasn’t a very good foot
ball player coming out of high
School, and I really didn’t have
that many offers, ” the Texas A&M
lead football coach and former all-
SWC Texas Tech University quar
terback said.
| “As a matter of fact, I felt like all
during the time I was in high
school I’d end up at Baylor, be
cause I’d been going to Baylor and
those were the years they had the
great passing coaches,” Wilson
said.
“But somewhere along the way
in March of my senior year I got
married, and Baylor had a rule
that said you couldn’t be married
when you were a freshman. And
so really Texas Tech was the only
Scholarship offer that I had.
Red Raider Coach J.T. King’s
fconference in rushing in 1964 and
in passing in 1965, the two years
that Wilson started in the quarter
back spot. Pound for pound, the
flyweight quarterback packed the
meanest punch in the conference,
setting several Red Raider passing
records that still stand. By a mar
gin of several hundred yards, he
tops Texas Tech’s list for the most
iyards passed in a single season,
Icompleting 172 of 283 attempts in
g|gll965 for 2119 yards and 18 touch-
: [downs.
I He also holds the records for
i the most completions in a single
game, 26 against the University of
Arkansas in 1965, and the most
completions in a season, 172 in
1965.
‘‘We were a passing offense —
we were an T formation team. We
dropped back and threw the ball a
great deal,” Wilson said.
‘‘I became the starting quarter
back my junior year, and we led
the conference in rushing —
didn’t throw the ball very much.
Then in our senior year, we were
playing Texas, and they were just
beating the dickens out of us.
‘‘The second half we started
throwing the ball, and it was very
effective. And so after that, we just
threw the ball all over the lot ev
ery game.”
King once called Wilson the
smartest player he ever coached
and granted him the rare privilege
of calling his own plays his senior
year. Wilson remembers one play
in particular he called against
Texas A&M in 1965.
“The game had bounced back
and forth. We were ahead, and
then (Harry) Ledbetter, the A&M
quarterback, had thrown a long
touchdown pass to go ahead with
just about a minute left.
“A&M had kicked off to Tech,
and we had moved the ball down
to about the 30, about 70 yards
away, and it was third and 10. We
were in the huddle and we really
didn’t know what to do, so we
made up a play in the huddle...it
was kind of a flea-flicker type of
thing.
“And we did it, and it scored.
And we won the ball game with
just a few seconds left. ”
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After receiving his degree in
education in 1966, Wilson spent
nine more years calling the plays
for Tech, not from the huddle but
from the press box as an assistant
offensive coach. In 1975, he came
to Texas A&M as offensive coordi
nator in an effort to broaden his
coaching experience.
“I wanted to be a head coach. I
think everybody’s ambition is to
be a head coach,” Wilson said. “I
had always been there at Tech,
and I needed to work under some
more people and another
program.”
In just three years, Wilson saw
his wish come true. He assumed
the position of head coach halfway
through the 1978 season when
Emory Bellard resigned, and has
since compiled a career record of
16-15 three games into the 1981
season.
As a coach, his philosophies re
flect King’s faith in his abilities and
Wilson’s own determination to
excel.
“I didn’t weigh but 140 pounds
when I played, and it really took a
lot for him back in those years to
name me and give me a chance to
play as his number one quarter
back,” he said. “When I was a
player, I didn’t have a great deal of
ability. In order for me, personal
ly, to play, I had to do the right
things, I had to want to, I had to
have a strong desire. I still believe
in those things.”
Although his original intention
when he left Texas Tech was to
gain enough experience to some
day return to his alma mater as
head coach, Wilson said his pers
pective has changed in his six
years with the Aggies.
“I think that’s everyone’s dream
(to return as head coach) when
they leave somewhere, when they
were as close to the situation as I
was and have all the memories
that I do,” he said. “When I left,
that was what I was going to do —
go out and prepare myself, hoping
someday to come back as the head
football coach.
“I had an opportunity last year
to go back, but I’ve got a job that’s
not finished here yet.”
THE BATTALION Page 13
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1981
Schramm denys rumors
that Kush going to Dallas f
United Press International
DALLAS — Tex Schramm says
he has never talked to Harold Bal
lard and apparently he is not all
that anxious to start now.
It was Ballard — owner of the
Canadian F ootball League’s
Hamilton franchise — who started
the “Frank Kush rumor, ” Tuesday
and it was Schramm — president
and general manager of the Dallas
Cowboys — who shot it down ev
ery way he could.
Ballard was quoted Tuesday as
saying he had been told by NFL
sources that Kush, the former Ari
zona State and current Hamilton
coach, was being considered as
either a replacement for Dallas
coach Tom Landry or for an assis
tant’s job on Landry’s staff.
Nothing, Schramm said, could
be further from the truth.
“It’s an irritation to me to even
have to recognize that kind of
story, Schramm said. “It beats
the hell out of me (how the story
got started). Somebody up there
must be smoking something.”
Schramm said he had never hack.
an occasion to visit with Ballard. *
But he said the Cowboys scouting ~
department, headed by Gil *
Brandt, kept up a relationship «
with most coaches in Canada as l
well as collegiate coaches through- *
out the United States.
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