Michener, James A. (169 page)

'Who did they play?' Rusk asked. The Sisters of Mercy?'

'The best. Of course, there was one game with the Corsicana Orphans Home, one hundred nineteen to nothing.'

'Did the Orphans have eleven men?'

'Only thirteen, but they were a real team.'

'No real team loses by a hundred points.'

'Against Waco they do,' the worried coach said, and he continued: 'They brought down a team from Cleveland, Ohio. National championship. Waco, forty-four, Cleveland, twelve. And in their best year, Waco, five hundred sixty-seven, opponents, zero, with no opposing team ever moving the ball inside the Waco thirty-five-yard line. And you ask me if I'm scared.'

But Rusk and his optimistic oilmen were not, and when the Fighting Antelopes won their thirteenth straight game—for high schools played barbarous schedules—the big showdown with Waco for the state championship became inevitable. Most of Larkin and all of Waco found ways to get to Panther Park in Fort Worth that memorable Saturday afternoon. For a mere high school game, more than twenty thousand showed up; the newspapers had skillfully promulgated the myth that in this age of miracles, Antelopes had an outside chance of defeating Tigers.

It was a day Floyd Rusk would never forget; it eclipsed in significance even that wonderful morning when Rusk #3 came in with its verification of the Larkin Field, because this game would be remembered as one of the extraordinary events in the annals of Texas sporting history, but not in a way that Rusk would have wished: Waco Tigers 83, Larkin Antelopes 0.

Before the excursion train left Fort Worth, copies of a Dallas newspaper with mocking headlines were available: it really was tigers eating antelopes, and during the train ride home, Rusk took an oath. Brandishing the offensive paper in the faces of his friends, he swore: 'This will never happen again. If we have to chew mountains into sand, it will never happen again.'

Assembling any oilmen who had gone to the game, he extracted promises that Larkin would regain its honor, regardless of cost, and Dewey Kimbro supported him: 'Whatever you need, Floyd. The dignity of our town must be restored.'

Prowling the train to locate the unfortunate coach whose prophecy of Waco invincibility had proved correct, the fat man snarled: 'You're fired. No team of mine loses by more than eighty points. Tomorrow we start searching for a real coach.'

Revenge for the dreadful humiliation in Panther Park became Rusk's obsession, and as he roamed the state looking for what he called 'my kind of coach,' he kept hearing of a man in a small school near Austin, and men who knew football assured him: 'This here Cotton Harney, he's a no-nonsense coach, knocks a kid on his ass if he don't perform,' so Rusk telegraphed three of his oilmen to come down from Larkin to look the young genius over.

As soon as the committee met Harney they knew they had their man. He had gone to A&M to learn animal husbandry, but had been so good at football that he switched to coaching, with the not unreasonable hope that one day he might return to his alma mater in some capacity or other, line coach perhaps, or even head coach, for he had the intelligence to handle either job.

They met a man who stood only five feet eight but who was still a crop-headed bundle of muscle and aggression. In college he had been such a relentless opponent that sportswriters had started a legend, which still clung to him: 'At the training table they feed him only raw meat, two pounds with lots of gristle at each sitting.' Nicknamed Tiger, he told one sportswriter: 'I like to play in the other team's backfield,' and this imaginative reporter produced a great line: 'Tiger Harney invades the opposition backfield, grabs three running backs, and sorts them out till he finds who has the ball.'

The oilmen got right down to cases: 'Did you see the state championship?' and Harney said: 'That's my job,' and Rusk asked: 'What did you think?' and Harney said: 'Your team had no right being on that field.'

if you had unlimited power, and I mean unlimited, could you build us a championship team for next December?'

Harney rose and walked about the meeting room, flexing his

muscles. He was an attractive young man, quick in his movements, intelligent in his responses to questions, and compact both physically and mentally. He wasted little time on nonessentials: i can get you into the play-offs, and Waco is losing many of its best players. But I don't think I could beat Paul Tyson next year.'

'Could you beat him year after next?' Rusk asked, and Harney said: 'You get me the horses, I'll get you the championship.'

'You're hired,' Rusk said. He had no authority to hire or fire anyone, for that was the prerogative of the school board, but when a Texas town set its heart on a state football championship, everything else had to give, and when the oilmen returned to Larkin, the board quickly confirmed the appointment of Cotton Harney as teacher of Texas history. On the side he would also do some coaching.

Now it became the responsibility of the wealthy oilmen to provide the horses, and as soon as Harney was relieved of his duties at the small school near Austin, he moved to Larkin. On his first day in town he gave Rusk a list of nine boys living in various parts of Texas whom he would like to see in Antelopes uniforms when the season opened in September. When Rusk visited these boys he found they all had certain characteristics: 'They seem to have no neck. Their legs aren't all that big, but their shoulders . . . carved in granite. And they all look about twenty-two years old.' Rusk said on one return to Larkin: 'Coach Harney, I don't think any of those boys can run,' and Harney explained a fact of life: 'To produce a really good team, you have to have linemen. That's where the battles are determined, in the trenches.'

'But you will get some runners?'

'I have a second list, almost as important.' And when the oilmen went to scout these boys, they found quite a different set of characteristics: 'None of them much over a hundred and sixty. But they are quick. And only half of them seem to be in their twenties.'

When they reported back to Harney, Rusk asked: 'Aren't some of these boys a trifle old?' and he said: 'You move them in here. I'll worry about their ages.'

So now the oilmen began prowling the country, visiting with the parents of these young fellows and offering the fathers good jobs in the oil field, the mothers employment in the local hospital 01 in stores. One widowed mother said she gave piano lessons, and Rusk said: 'You get two pianos. One for you, one for your students.'

In some twenty visits the question of grades was never raised, for it was supposed that if a boy was good enough to play foi Cotton Harney, some way would be found to keep him eligible

and as July came. Rusk could boast: 'Not one player on that pitiful team last year will even make the squad this time ' 1 le was wrong. Part of the greatness of Harney as a coach was that he could take whatever material was available and forge it into something good, so he found a place for more than a dozen of last year's Antelopes; but he also knew that if he wanted a championship team, he had better have an equal number of real horses, and when August practice started, he had them, brawny young men from various parts of Texas, practiced hands of twenty and twenty-one who had already played full terms at other schools, and two massive linemen who must have been at least twenty-two, with college experience In this frontier period the rules governing eligibility in Texas high school football were somewhat flexible.

On the eve of the first game, Coach Harney convened a meeting of his backers: 'We have a unique problem. We must not win any of these early games by too big a score. I don't want to alert teams like Abilene or Amarillo. And I certainly don't want to let Waco know we're gunning for them.'

'What are we goin' to do?' Rusk asked.

'Fumble a lot. When we get the ball, we'll run three, four powerhouse plays to see what our men can do.' He never used the word boys. 'And when we're satisfied that we can run the ball pretty much as we wish, we'll fumble and start over. I don't want any Waco-type scores, eighty-three to nothing.'

'I want to win,' Rusk said, and Harney snapped: 'So do I. But in an orderly way. When we go into Fort Worth this year to face W'aco, I want them to spend the entire first half catching their breath and asking: "What hit us?" '

So in the first seven games against the smaller teams of the area, Coach Harney kept his Fighting Antelopes under wraps; 19-6 was a typical score, but as the Jacksboro game approached, at Jacksboro, Rusk begged for his team to be unshackled: 'Erase them. Leave grease spots on the field. I believe we could hammer them something like seventy to seven and I'd like to see it.'

Harney would not permit this, and the game ended 21-7, enough to keep the record unblemished but not enough to alert the public that Cotton Harney had a powerhouse. However, in the Wichita Falls game, everything clicked magically, and at the end of nine minutes the Antelopes led 27-0, and the first team was yanked. 'It could of been a hundred and seven to nothing,' Rusk said.

The Antelopes won their division, undefeated, and then swept the regionals, which placed them once more in the big finals against the supermen from Waco.

The big newspapers ridiculed the match-up, pointing out that something was wrong with a system which allowed, in two successive years, a team as poorly qualified as Larkin to reach the finals against a superteam like Waco, and all papers had long articles about the disaster of the previous year, with speculation as to whether or not the Antelopes could keep Waco from once again scoring over eighty.

There were a few cautions: 'We must remember that Cotton Harney does not bring any team into a stadium expecting to lose. This game is not going to be any eighty-three-to-nothing runaway. I predict Waco by forty.'

Because the Larkin Antelopes appeared to be so weak, the crowd in Fort Worth was not so large as the previous year, but those who stayed home missed one of the epic games of Texas football, because when Waco received the opening kickoff and started confidently down the field, they were suddenly struck by a front line which tore their orderly plays apart, and before the startled champions could punt, a huge Antelope with no neck had tackled a running back so hard that he fumbled. Larkin recovered; and in four plays had its first touchdown.

On the next kickoff almost the same thing happened. Larkin linemen simply devoured the Waco backfield, again there was a fumble on third down, and once more the rampaging Antelopes carried the ball into the end zone: Larkin 13, Waco 0.

But Paul Tyson, considered by many to be the best high school coach ever, was not one to accept such a verdict, and before the next kickoff he made several adjustments, the principal one being that against that awesome Antelope line, his men would pass more, depending upon the speed of their backs to outwit the slower Larkin men.

Now the game developed into a mighty test of contrasting skills, and for the remainder of this half the Waco men predominated, so that when the whistle blew to end the second quarter, the score was Larkin 13, Waco 7.

But the power of the new Larkin team was obvious to everyone in the stands, and people who had tired of Waco's domination during the Tyson years began to cheer in the third period for the Antelopes to score again, and this they did: Larkin 19, Waco 7.

That was the last of the Antelope scoring, for now the superb coaching of the Waco Tigers began to tell, pound at the line and get nowhere; a quick pass for nineteen yards, deceptive hand-off. a deft run for seventeen yards. Three times in that third quarter the Tigers approached the Larkin goal line, and three times the Fighting Antelopes turned them back in last-inch stands, but at

the start of the fourth quarter the Waco quarterback pulled a daring play. Faking passes to his ends and hand-offs to his running backs, he spun around twice and literally walked into the end zone: Larkin 19, Waco 13.

The fourth quarter would often be referred to as 'the greatest last quarter in high school history,' because the Waco team, smelling a chance for victory, came down the field four glorious tunes, bedazzling the Antelopes with fancy running and lightning passes, but always near the goal, the Antelope line would stiffen and the drive fail. After a few futile rushes, the Larkin kicker would send long punts zooming down the field, and the inexorable Waco drive would restart. Four times Coach Tyson's men came close to scoring, four times they were denied, and from the stands a leather-lunged spectator cried: 'They sure are Fightin' Antelopes.' But on the fifth try, with only minutes on the clock, the Waco team could not be stopped, and the score became Larkin 19, Waco 19.

Then one of those beautiful-tragic episodes unfolded which make football such a marvelous sport, beautiful to the victors, tragic to the losers. With little more than a minute to play, Waco fielded a punt deep in its own territory, and instead of playing out the clock, unleashed three swift plays that carried the ball to the Larkin eleven. Time-out was called, with only seconds left, and Waco prepared for a field-goal attempt. 'Dear God, let it fail!' Rusk prayed and he could see around him other oilmen voicing the same supplication: 'Just this once, God, let it fail.'

The stadium was hushed. The teams lined up. The ball was snapped. The kicker dropped the ball perfectly, swung his foot, and sent the pigskin on its way. With never a waver, the ball sped through the middle of the uprights: Waco 22, Larkin 19.

On the train trip home, Floyd Rusk surprised himself, for he could feel no bitterness over the loss; passing back and forth through the train, he embraced everyone, spectators, team members, his fellow oilmen, and to all he said: 'This is the proudest day in my life.' Then he would begin to blubber: 'Who said our Antelopes couldn't fight.'

But when he reached Coach Harney, who also had tears in his eyes, he said: '1 want the names of fifteen more men we could use next autumn. I want to crush Waco. I want to tear 'em apart, shred by shred.'

'So do I,' Harney said grimly, and within a week of their return home he had given Rusk eighteen names of high school players whose presence in Larkin would reinforce the already good team. Before the first of January, Rusk and his oilmen had more than a dozen of these fellows transferred into the Larkin district, where