Archives: Championship and culmination

This is an excerpt from my 2004 book, "Warbirds – How They Played the Game," a story about how the 1954-57 Abilene High School Eagles became the "Team of the Century" in Texas high school football. The book, in my mind, began as a recreation of forgotten details about the Eagles' 49-game winning streak, but it quickly became a story about how they played the game. That's the only way to understand this excerpt, describing the 1955 Texas Class AAAA state championship game. "Moser" in the first graf is Abilene head coach Chuck Moser.

DECEMBER 17, 1955

During the week in the statewide media, Abilene was established as a one-touchdown favorite over Tyler, and the feeling was that it would be something like 21-14, based on the Eagles’ power to score. Moser himself felt that way. For several weeks he had been telling his coaches (but no one else) that the 1955 Eagles were the best offensive team he ever saw.

“If we can hold them to two touchdowns,” Moser told the Eagle Booster Club, “we’ll win, I believe.”

Abilene, in West Central Texas, and Tyler, way over in East Texas, had never met on a football field. They had some mutual adversaries in Waco, Wichita Falls and Dallas Highland Park, but their meeting at Amon Carter Stadium for the 1955 state championship would be their first.

Having won the Love Field coin toss, Abilene, as the home team, got to pick its jerseys. Moser told his team leader, quarterback David Bourland, that new white jerseys had arrived. Bourland quickly voted in favor of the old gold jerseys. The belly series depended on deception, particularly on the part of the quarterback, and Bourland had become very good at it. He always liked to wear the gold jerseys, because the ball was too easy to see against the white.

Moser had taught his quarterback a trick that made the belly option even more effective. Bourland walked into Moser’s office before the Lubbock game and the coach tossed him a deflated football from off his desk. “Pass it behind your back,” he said, and Bourland did, first right to left and then left to right. “Can you do that with a real ball?” Moser asked. “Sure,” Bourland said. In the game, when Bourland faked to the fullback, he then passed the ball behind his back, from right hand into left or vice-versa depending on the direction of the play, making the ball actually disappear for an instant. It was a very deceptive move. The Eagles’ dark gold jerseys with black numbers helped the illusion. So the Eagles would wear gold and Tyler would wear its white jerseys with shiny blue numbers.

Abilene and Tyler both had 12 straight victories against no defeats. In the playoffs, Tyler first defeated Corpus Christi Miller, 22-7, then Baytown, 20-0. Abilene had averaged 39 points a game, Tyler 29. The Eagles had surrendered 10 fewer points than the Lions, 77 to 87. Against their lone common opponent in 1955, Abilene had beaten Highland Park, 34-0, in the season opener; Tyler beat the Scotties, 33-13, in their next-to-last district game. Abilene’s scouts, Blacky Blackburn and Wally Bullington, told Moser the Lions were a great team. Moser told the Eagles they would have to do “everything right” to win.

The Lions were big and fast. Center Jim Davis and tackle Billy Sims both weighed 200 pounds and both were all-state candidates, as was 186-pound halfback Joe Leggette, who had 980 yards rushing. But the star of the team, and probably the best all-around high school football player of the 1955 season, was 6-2, 190-pound quarterback Charles Milstead.

“Another Walt Fondren,” Jack Holden wrote, “a Doyle Traylor,” comparing Milstead to star Southwest Conference quarterbacks of the era. Tyler ran the same belly option offense as Abilene, and Milstead’s ability to run or pass gave the Tyler system a dangerous extra option.

Members of Abilene’s state championship teams of 1923, 1928, 1931 and 1954 were special guests at the Friday pep rally. The team left for Fort Worth on the Eagle Bus right after the pep rally and headquartered at the Texas Hotel. More than 5,000 Abilenians made the 140-mile trip the next day, including almost 1,000 on a special Texas & Pacific train. The Victory Bell went in a truck and the 100-plus members of the Eagle Marching Band went in buses. After about 8 a.m., two-lane U.S. 80 was lined up with cars going east, through Baird, Cisco, Eastland and Ranger, streaming black and gold crepe decorations, headed for Fort Worth. About the same number of fans came from Tyler. Crowd estimates at kickoff went as high as 30,000 in the 37,000-seat stadium, meaning as many as 20,000 people from Fort Worth and other parts of the state came to the game. It promised to be a big game between two powerhouse teams, maybe even a classic. It turned out to be a classic, all right, one that had fans shaking their heads that afternoon and 45 years later.

In Fort Worth it was a beautiful Texas December afternoon for football, but windy. During warm-ups, the teams had trouble making the football stay on the kicking tee. Moser argued for taking the wind if Abilene won the coin toss. “I was afraid we might bog down and have to kick into that wind,” he said.

But his assistants talked him out of it. When they won the toss, Eagle co-captains Sam Caudle and Henry Colwell chose to receive. Then, disaster. Glynn Gregory had trouble fielding the opening kickoff and slipped on the badly worn turf and went down at the Abilene 5. Immediately five white shirts were around him. Tyler had come to play. “I really thought we were in trouble,” Moser said. So did everyone else. Tyler fans roared, Eagle fans caught their breath. This was a game in which breaks could make the difference.

The Eagles lined up at the 5 in the straight-T. On Moser teams, the quarterback called almost all of the plays. But to start the game, Moser sent the quarterback in with the first three or four plays. Abilene’s first play was a straight-ahead handoff to right halfback Henry Colwell. The line’s rule blocking for the play was also straight ahead. Colwell picked up five yards behind blocks by guard Sam Caudle, tackle Homer Rosenbaum and end Jerry Avery.

The second play had been created for this game. The Eagles never went into a game without some special play or strategy based on scouting reports. This play was designed to exploit the Tyler defensive line’s quickness and ability to penetrate. It also addressed the scouts’ assessment that most of Abilene’s plays should be run to the right side. In the Eagle playbook it was named “Tyler 4 Trap.” It began as the same straight-ahead dive, only to the left side, to Gregory. Bourland took the snap, pivoted left, and handed to Gregory, moving forward. The other backs, Colwell and fullback James Welch, sprinted to the left and the Tyler line and linebackers leaned toward that flow.

But as he took the handoff, Gregory cut sharply to the right. In front of him, left guard Stuart Peake had “pulled.” He had taken one step back and was now streaking across to block Lions’ left defensive tackle Tracy Webb who had in fact been allowed by Rosenbaum to penetrate across the line of scrimmage. Caudle and center Elmo Cure sealed off the inside, Peake hit the tackle square – in the next three minutes, Webb would see enough of Stuart Peake to last him several lifetimes – and the hole at right tackle was wide open. Leggette, rushing up from his defensive back position, almost got to Gregory but Avery cut him off.

Gregory veered outside, got two more blocks, and was off, up the sideline, for 48 yards. He was caught, amazingly, by a linebacker, attesting to Tyler’s team speed, but the Eagles were out of the hole. It was the biggest play of the game. “I know that stunned Tyler,” said Abilene assistant Bob Groseclose. “Those Tyler boys didn’t believe their big linemen could be moved that easily.”

First and 10 on the Tyler 42. Gregory went straight ahead for six yards. On second down, fullback James Welch ripped through the middle, a standard fullback trap play just off the center’s right hip, for 13 yards. Bourland ran the same play again and Welch got 15 more. Eagle blockers Cure, Caudle, Rosenbaum and Peake were chewing up the left side of Tyler’s defensive line and Peake, pulling on every play, was more or less dismembering Tracy Webb.

From the Tyler 8, Bourland faked the trap to Welch and handed to Gregory coming across, who followed yet another Peake block to the 3. Gregory carried again on the straightaway play to the 1, then Welch burst through cleanly on the trap play again for the touchdown.

On either side of the field, people didn’t quite know what to think. After a nerve-rattling start, the Eagles had moved 95 yards in eight plays, all of them rushes inside the tackles, and they did it in three minutes and seven seconds against the unbeaten Tyler Lions, who had allowed only one touchdown in the playoffs and only 87 points all season. On the field, the Lion players were shocked.

“They were twice as good as we thought they were,” said Milstead, a safety on defense. “We had no idea they were so terrific,” said all-state end Mickey Trimble. “They played like they knew they were going to win from the start.”

After a wind-blown kickoff, Tyler had the wind at its back and excellent field position at its 38. Two belly options and a fullback dive netted eight yards. Moser said line coach Hank Watkins “did a tremendous job with our line in setting the strategy to stop Tyler’s option stuff.” Defensive ends Peake and Guy Wells were coached to turn all of Tyler’s option plays inside. “Hank worked with those ends all week and really did a tremendous job,” Moser said.

Milstead punted and Gregory let the ball roll dead at the Eagle 10. Fifteen rushing plays later, the Eagles scored their second touchdown, on a four-yard sweep right by the fullback Welch. Milstead had a shot at him at the 2, but Welch muscled underneath the Tyler star and dived across the goal line just inside the corner flag with 43 seconds left in the first quarter. The key play in the drive came on third and six at the Eagle 14, after Abilene was penalized five yards for moving before the snap. Bourland faked to Welch up the middle, then waited for Gregory, who was circling around to the left, and thrust the ball into his belly. But then the quarterback pulled the ball out again and as defenders veered left toward Gregory Bourland took off around right end. He got a clearing block from Colwell and broke up the sideline for 18 yards and a drive-saving first down.

Tyler all-state center and linebacker Jim Davis thought that second drive broke Tyler’s back. “When they stopped us on our first drive and then they drove 90 yards for their second TD, we never could get going,” Davis said.

The first quarter ended. Abilene was leading, 13-0, and Tyler had run five offensive plays for a net of 11 yards. In the second quarter Colwell made a leaping interception of a Milstead pass at the Tyler 48 and returned it to the 25. Three plays and a penalty later, Abilene faced fourth and 25 from the Tyler 40, out of field goal range. The way his defense was playing, Moser didn’t mind running a play on fourth down from the opponent’s 40. He sent in a play to Bourland.

The Eagles came to the line in a flanker left, with Colwell lined up far outside left end Freddie Green. Bourland took the snap and dropped back. Welch moved to the right to pass block. Three white shirts surprisingly broke through and rushed toward Bourland. The first one reached him and hit him, but at that instant Bourland handed the ball to Gregory who had taken a couple of stutter steps to the left, then circled back and with perfect timing crossed behind Bourland for the handoff.

It was the Statue of Liberty play. Gregory took off to the right, his cleats kicking up chalk dust at the 50 as he turned upfield. The right side of the Eagle line sealed off Tyler defenders, while the left side had brush-blocked their defenders and then sprinted downfield. In front of Gregory was left tackle Rufus King. Gregory galloped across the 40, then the 30, with King five yards in front. At the 20, running at full speed, the 185-pound King hit Milstead with a block that knocked the 6-2, 190-pound Milstead five yards backward and to the ground at the 15. Behind King’s block, Gregory cut back across the field. Of the nine players near him, six wore gold jerseys. Green, racing across in front of Gregory, knocked down one defender who in turn rolled into a second Tyler back. Near the goal line, Colwell set up to screen off the last defender, who wasn’t going to catch Gregory anyway as he strode into the end zone.

The Eagle line of 1955 got downfield to block with a speed and intensity rarely seen at any level of competition on a football field, then or since. “They had terrific blocking,” said Tyler coach Buck Prejean, “by far better than we’ve faced this year.” “They had lots of speed,” said defensive back Joe Leggette, “but their blocking was the difference.” Gregory missed his second PAT in the strong wind and the Eagles took a 19-0 lead to halftime. They hadn’t thrown a pass.

“I told David to lay off throwing,” Moser said. “Heck, we could make five yards running our handoffs, so why risk passing? I’ve never seen as fine a blocking line in my life. We’d run a handoff on first down, and then we’d have second down and five to go, or three, or one. That kept the pressure on Tyler the entire game.”

Colwell, who was born in Tyler, scored the Eagles’ fourth touchdown on a one-yard run to climax a 45-yard drive late in the third quarter. Gregory closed out Abilene scoring with a four-yard run two minutes deep into the fourth quarter, and Abilene led, 33-0. In three quarters against Abilene’s first-team defense, Tyler had managed a total of two first downs. And Milstead looked nothing like the Charles Milstead that had led the Lions to 12 straight wins. Moser thought it was because of the pounding Milstead took while he was playing defense.

“We were sticking a helmet in his stomach on those blocks every play,” Moser said, “and that took a lot out of him. I know he didn’t look at all like he did in earlier games.” Specifically, Moser cited Rufus King’s block on Milstead during Gregory’s 40-yard scoring run in the second quarter.

In fact it was Ken Talkington, Tyler’s backup quarterback, who led the Lions to their first touchdown in the fourth quarter. Talkington threw a 33-yard scoring pass to Newell McCallum with 4:32 left in the game, and then Milstead came back to lead a short drive after a fumble recovery that ended with Leggette’s 10-yard TD run with 2:26 remaining. For the game, the Lions finished with 52 yards rushing and 80 passing, on five completions. Gregory had 171 of Abilene’s rushing total of 351. The Eagles tried only two passes, completing neither. “Abilene was brutal,” summarized the Associated Press.

Milstead, approached after the game by a young Tyler fan wanting an autograph, told the boy he should go get Abilene players to sign instead. “Everybody on that team was great,” Milstead said, “simply great.” He said the Lions “could play Abilene every day in the week and never beat ‘em.” “They hit hard and never let up,” said Trimble, the Tyler end. “They’d knock you down, and when you got back up, knock you down again. It was tough.” In the Eagle locker room, senior co-captains Caudle and Colwell were blubbering into their coach’s shoulder. They and the other seniors were the first class to play all three years under Moser.

“Coach, I can’t play any more,” said Caudle, a starter on both offense and defense for both the 1954 and ’55 champions, and a two-way all-district selection as a senior. “Sure you can, son,” Moser said. “You’ve got college games ahead.”

But that’s not what Caudle had meant. He couldn’t be an Eagle any more, part of a team that had won 23 straight games and a second state championship. It was a feeling of achievement and of belonging that might be part of this black and gold gang for a long while, with junior players like Gregory, Jimmy Carpenter, Stuart Peake and Rufus King in the room. It was not an easy thing for an 18-year-old to leave behind.

Culmination

In the days after the Tyler game, Jack Holden of the Reporter-News tried to get a handle on the Eagles’ greatness. “The Eagles’ ultimate success can be traced to several things,” he wrote, “and whether we have them in the right order or not we don’t know:

“1. Superior coaching (and we definitely think this comes first). Moser and his staff had every detail organized to perfection. There was little lost motion. The assistants did a terrific job. Moser gives them credit for doing most of the actual coaching, but it was his organization that made it possible.

“2. An unbeatable attitude by the boys themselves. Almost all the coaches have remarked repeatedly: ‘These kids want to be coached. We’ve never seen any boys as eager to learn.’ The boys studied hard and worked hard. They kept themselves in top condition.

“3. A good foundation in football. Abilene’s junior high coaches and even those in elementary school instilled in the Eagles a love of the game, a desire to learn and taught them good fundamentals. They just needed to be polished in high school.

“4. Teamwork On this team there was no star. All 11 were stars, and they worked as nearly like a unit as possible.

“5. Fine support from the city, the Eagle Booster Club and the students. All these groups went all out for their boys.”

Holden might have added a sixth element: time. Witnesses, coaches and media have routinely used the word “perfect” in describing the Abilene Eagles’ performance in the first half of the 1955 state championship game against Tyler.

Even Chuck Moser said it. “That game was something a coach lives for,” he said the day after the game. “Our first team played a perfect game all the way.”

It was the 23rd victory in the streak, but in history the Tyler game stands out from all the others. It was a culmination of all that had happened since the Friday the 13th meeting at which the Abilene School Board voted to offer Moser the job, and Moser accepted it, and the news was published on Valentine’s Day, 1953. All the mimeographed policies, all the coordination, all the teaching, all the drills, all the decisions, all the chalk talks, all the practices, all the eligibility slips, all the plays in practice, all the plays in the 35 previous games that Moser had coached the Eagles, all of it was practicing to be perfect, and it all came to 24 minutes of fruition in the first half of the 1955 state championship game.

From his first day in his 10-by-10 office in the old Eagles’ Nest on Peach St., Moser taught perfection. All that attention to detail was motivated by Moser’s desire to give his team its best chance to be perfect. That was always the goal, though Moser realized that some percentage of perfection, 75 or 80 percent, would provide his team a great advantage against its opposition. That advantage was obvious in the Tyler game. In the films, there is a glaring difference between the two teams. The Tyler players carried out their assignments, then stopped. The Abilene players carried out their assignments and kept running to the play and then ran back to the huddle.

Watching films of the 1955 Eagles, a person can start to wonder if the Eagles didn’t have 17 or 18 players on the field; 11 at the line of scrimmage, then after the play starts, another seven or eight downfield. A team could not be perfect unless it hustled until the whistle blew. You couldn’t be perfect if you didn’t play perfectly for every second of the game. Moser taught that from the first day of spring training in 1953, and people who were watching understood it immediately.

“We know one thing for sure,” Don Oliver of the Reporter-News wrote during those first spring training days, “win, lose, or draw, they’ll be the hustlingest ball club that has represented Abilene in a long time. Those that don’t hustle won’t play for Chuck Moser very long.”

But it took time to reach even a percentage of perfection, and three years to approach the sort of potential that the Eagles realized at Fort Worth. Expert witnesses to the Tyler game knew they had seen something climactic. Said Waco High School coach Carl Price: “Abilene’s state champions of this year are 30 points better than the 1954 champions. If they improve another 30 points next year, they might as well get in the Southwest Conference.”

“Abilene’s triumph was the most complete victory scored in championship play in 21 years,” wrote Dave Campbell of the Waco News-Tribune. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram was even more definitive: “There was general agreement among the long-time observers that Moser’s 1955 champions were the most powerful in the 35-year history of the Texas Interscholastic League. What made it a great team was the coiled-spring swiftness and the lightning reactions of the linemen, the versatility of the backfield which made every ball carrier a threat, and the tremendous defensive efforts in the clutches.”

Jack Stovall, an Abilenian living in Dallas, sent a telegram to the Reporter-News: “Have started rumor that Abilene High used star players from (Abilene colleges) Hardin-Simmons, McMurry and ACC against Tyler.” He had the right idea, but a weak concept: Abilene might in fact have beaten the collegians he mentioned. Nearer the mark was Hunter Schmidt, who covered the game for the Tyler Telegraph: “I’d give anyone Notre Dame and 14 points against Abilene.”