The Battalion
PORTS
Football and family
[Rings applies winning attitude in football to raising son with Down’s Syndrome
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W â–  Photo By Brandon Bollom / The Batialion
â– me:' Texas A&M football coach Gene Stallings signs a copy of Another Season
Bobby Brewster at Barnes and Noble.
By Jeff Webb
Sports Editor
ff Harvey Road near the Woodstone Shopping Center in College
IStation, Stallings Drive winds its way among shade trees and res
idences for a short distance before ending at a stop sign that
|rces a traveler to take another road.
Bsrhaps the person who planned that road had the Texas A&M coach-
g t reer of Gene Stallings in mind when he designed it. Curves at each
â– with a smooth spot in the middle sums up the tenure of Stallings as
lefhead of the Aggie football program.
ji&L'spite six losing seasons in his seven-year reign, Stallings is most re-
“lefribered for his emotional 20-16 defeat of eighth-ranked University of
Bama in the 1968 Cotton Bowl that pitted him against his former coach
aul "Bear" Bryant. However, Stallings' most meaningful accomplish-
tem in life isn't based on football; it has to do with his 36-year-old son,
alui Mark, who suffers from Down's Syndrome.
â– The worst thing that could have happened turned out to be the best,"
itallings said. "If I could go back 36 years and God asked me if I wanted a
( Bthy John Mark, I'd take my Johnny every time."
â– tailings signed copies of his book. Another Season, for over an hour and
a half on Friday evening at Barnes and Noble bookstore on Texas Avenue.
He began writing the book when he was the coach of Alabama. The
book deals with his son's bout with the disease and the way the family
has dealt with the situation. The writing process took Stallings four years
and sales of hardback copies have reached 90,000.
"This book is about raising a handicapped child," he said. "The bot
tom line is, when you have finished the book, I want you to have a bet
ter understanding of the child."
Stallings was a three-year letter winner at A&M as a player from 1954-
56 and began his coaching career in 1965. Stallings suffered through a 3-7
initial campaign and improved to 4-5-1 in his second year. However, in
1967, Stallings coached A&M to its most memorable campaign of the
decade with a 7-4 record and a Cotton Bowl victory over the Crimson Tide.
The victory ended a 25-year Cotton Bowl slide and a decade-long
If I could go back and God asked me if
I wanted a healthy John Mark, Fd take my
Johnny every time.”
— Gene Stallings
Retired Texas A&M football coach
post-season drought. Stallings fell back to 3-7 the next season and post
ed losing campaigns until 1971 when he joined the coaching staff of the
Dallas Cowboys as an assistant.
In 1986, he was hired as head coach of the St. Louis/Phoenix Cardi
nals, a job he left in 1989 to coach the University of Alabama.
Patience for losing seasons is harder to come by in the win-now sports
world of today, a fact that seems apparent to Stallings.
"Now we want instant tea, instant coffee and instant pudding," he said.
"You see a coach that lias three or four great years and then has one bad year
and the school lets the coach go. That's not what college athletics is all about."
Current A&M football coach R.C. Slocum said new kinds of media may
be responsible for the skewed perception of collegiate athletics today.
"On the Internet and in radio talk shows, you get a perception that
everything is all bad," Slocum said. "Some of those people have no quali
fications at all to be saying things like that."
"Society needs to get a bigger picture of college athletics that goes be
yond the wins and losses. My worth as a coach will not be based on wins
and losses, it will be based on the influence that I had on these young men."
Today, Gene Stallings occasionally finds time for fishing and relaxing,
although he said it seems he is on the road now more than when he was in
coaching. Requests for speaking engagements arrive a dozen at a time.
Perhaps the worth of Gene Stallings' coaching career can be judged by the
same standards. Throw out the wins and losses. He affected the lives of
numerous young men in college football in a positive way and affected the
life of one young man in ways that only a father and son will ever know.
* *•- -
â– -Tern
* *'â– : ^ * .
Photo Courtesy of Sports Information
Gene Stallings (right) faced Texas’ Darrell Royal seven times, winning 10-7 in 1967
on the way to a Cotton Bowl. Stallings went 1-6 against the University of Texas at A&M.
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presents a concert of chamber music on
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Sontina for Trumpet and Plano
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CLAYTON W. WILLIAMS, JR. ALUMNI CENTER
DEADLINE: June 9, 1998
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your first semester at Texas A&M University was January 1994 or thereafter, or if you do not qualify
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after you graduate and your degree is posted on the Student Information Management System.
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providing that prior to January 1, 1994, you were registered at Texas A&M University and
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If you are a August 1998 degree candidate and you do not have an Aggie ring from a
prior degree, you may place an order after you meet the following requirements:
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