Osler's Razor

One Baylor football memory, of course, trumps all the others: That Saturday in 1928 when Baylor last beat the University of Texas at their stadium in Austin. As some of you may remember, football was different in those days, and innovation was highly prized. Baylor’s coach at the time was Samuel (“Smithers”) Smitherson, a former assistant of the legendary Walter Camp of Yale. Camp, of course, was the inventor of the forward pass, and he was also the Hayden Fry of his day as several of his assistants went on to prominent positions of their own. For example, Tommie (“Scamp”) Randall of Wisconsin developed the backward pass (I believe the Badgers still play in Scamp Randall Stadium); Gabriel (“Lou”) Davis of Cornell was the first to employ male cheerleaders to distract certain of the Ivy League players; Sandy (“Wallace”) Pztzyski of Virginia Tech came up with the “quarterback vortex” offense using five quarterbacks simultaneously, while Camp’s defensive coordinator Francisco (“Bob”) Franco took a different path and led the nation of Spain for several years.

Smitherson, a former offensive coordinator for Camp, struggled to come up with his own defining play. For several years, he worked on the fake-injury play, in which a Baylor player feigned injury to draw attention away from the ball carrier, often by employing blood packets and removable prosthetic devices. It was in 1928, however, that he came up with his defining innovation, and a 68-12 victory over Texas. Law Professor Llewellyn Lloyd Rogers (grandfather of current Baylor Big 12 Faculty Rep Michael (“Hap”) Rogers) had the unusual hobby of closely following any NCAA rule changes. In September, 1928, he noticed a curious mistake: A provision which clearly was meant to have been inserted into the rules governing crew races had been accidentally placed into the provisions governing football. Specifically, in a slot between rules regulating onside kicks, new football rule 72.901 provided that “A coxswain, who may be of either gender and must weigh less than 105 pounds, shall not be counted against the number of team members allowed to compete in a given competition. For example, a heavyweight men’s crew of eight may include eight rowers AND a coxswain.”

Rogers immediately reported this to Smitherson, who began scouring the campus for a potential coxswain. He found his target in Sophomore Phyllis Gandalot, a 103-pound champion gymnast from Abilene. She was issued a suitable uniform clearly marking her as the “Coxswain” and placed in the Eighthback position directly in front of the quarterback, sitting on the haunches of the Center. Gandalot’s job was simple—to wrap herself around the ball before it was thrown, which resulted in her flying through the air with the ball. She could then either redirect the ball to a receiver or land and run with the ball herself.

The UT players were shocked and flumoxed by this development, and their reaction was enhanced by the fact that several of them had been smoking marijuana that morning. The Texas coaches, of course, lodged a hearty and off-color protest ("Dude... that's crunk, man!"), but could not refute that the amended rulebook allowed for the tactic, particularly given their incoherence under the influence of the marijuana. The Texas defense was helpless against the quite agile and fast Eighthback and unable to adjust to the extra player on the Baylor squad, falling behind 45-0 at halftime. In the fourth quarter UT responded by recruiting a third-grade boy from the stands to be their own Eighthback, but after scoring one touchdown he was removed from the game having lost a tooth. It later turned out that he was expecting to lose the tooth that day anyways, had been playing with it incessently instead of paying attention to the game as his father wanted, and was quite delighted with the loss of the tooth.

Labels: Baylor History