It must have been a darned good game ...

     Some quick thoughts on college football ...
     • First, Louisiana Tech at LSU ...
     Confession: I did not watch the game. Too many mixed emotions. As I have said often (and written twice in recent weeks), love both schools, never want either one to lose.
     So I just let them play, and saved myself the agony of watching and not having my heart racing.

LSU could not pile up the score on Louisiana Tech
(Getty Images photo)

     Checked on the score twice -- once right before halftime (LSU, 24-7) and once when I knew the game was done (LSU, 38-21 ... and, obviously, it was much closer than that).     Do not think LSU is the fifth- or sixth-best team in the country right now, not based on its inconsistent play in each of its four games (victories) this season -- play well for one or two quarters, mediocre in one or two quarters.
     The Tigers got some great breaks -- bounces of the ball, missed officiating calls -- against Tech. This I know from reading about the game, talking to a good source about it, and watching highlights on YouTube and the LSU web site.
     Figured the Bulldogs would give them a fight. Tech's program is solid, its teams are fun to watch, and LSU -- more often than not -- plays to the level of its opponent. 
     Yes, the Tigers more than did that in two impressive victories against Miami and Auburn, and although the final score against Southeastern Louisiana was 31-0, it was an extremely tepid second-half showing by LSU.
     Still can't see better than an 8-4 or 9-3 record for LSU -- not on same level with Alabama and Georgia certainly, and a tough SEC West road ahead. 
     Tigers have too many offensive-line issues, and secondary is shaky, especially if the defensive front seven can't get more pressure on the passer than it did against Tech.
     Tech should compete well in Conference USA, but next Saturday's test at North Texas will tell a lot. UNT might be the conference's best team this season.
      Finally, glad Tech made a good showing at LSU. Did not want (or expect) a blowout loss, and that $1.3 million payday softens the effects of a loss. 
      (Oh, and it will be Tech at LSU in men's basketball in a couple of months. That will not be as heart-rendering for me.)
      • Texas much deserved the victory against TCU. But to declare the Longhorns' program "back" among the elite is premature. Let's see (1) how UT does against Oklahoma a few weeks from now and (2) how it fares when it comes to Fort Worth to face TCU next year.
     • I rarely pay attention to the poll rankings, don't even look at preseason predictions and do not think they are important until the sixth or seventh week of the season. And, remember, it is just a bunch of sports media and/or coaches doing the rankings. Everyone has an opinion, and you know what the saying is about opinions.
     That said, this Alabama team is so much better than anyone else in the country, it deserves a battlefield promotion ... to the NFL. 
     • What makes college football so great is the big underdog -- especially, the mid-majors --  beating the "majors." So, giant-killer Troy beating LSU last year and Nebraska this season, Old Dominion knocking off Virginia Tech yesterday, North Texas routing Arkansas, Fresno State routing UCLA,  and this "almost" shocker yesterday -- Army taking Oklahoma to overtime. 
     Maybe in the 1940s, Army beating OU would have been routine. In the 1950s, it would have been a great matchup. Since then, those programs have not been in the same hemisphere. 
     So, again, great for college football. Not so great if you are on the losing end (hello LSU, Arkansas, Nebraska, UCLA).     
     • We have railed often about how overbearing college football head coaches can be, how they are given god-like treatment. Two items -- and two of my favorite targets in this regard, Nick Saban and Gary Patterson -- caught my attention today.
      Saban, closing his media session yesterday after his team's romp past Texas A&M, said "... I would appreciate it if you would sort of look at some of the things we didn't do so well ..."
      That is part of his "rat poison" theme, which he loves to use to keep his players grounded and motivated. Yes, the rest of the country feels so badly for those less-than-perfect Alabama players. 
      Let's see ...  53 points per game, average winning margin 41 points per game. So many things wrong.
      Ridiculous, preacher Saban.
      TCU down 15 points, 2:44 remaining, 4th-and-4 at its 38 ... Patterson had his team punt the football away to Texas.
       Punt? Needing two scores? What were the Frogs' chances after they punted?
     Asked about his "strategy" afterward, Patterson said he had two timeouts remaining and he was hoping for his defense to stop Texas, get the ball back and score quickly, then recover an onside kick.
      "... I don't play to lose," he said. "I don't play to get through it, but I had two [timeouts]. ... I know how to manage games. It wasn't that play that got us beat. I can promise you that. And you had a backup quarterback in the game."
     Excuse me, but that is BS. He waved a white flag, that's all. 
      Yes, he can manage games (162-59 record in 18-plus seasons) and I often have said that Patterson and his staff do as good a job as any school in the country. 
      But, sorry, this was a mistake. Heaven forbid a coach making $4.75 million -- base salary -- a year admit a mistake. Coach P (for paranoia) will not do that.
       • The other side: Louisiana Tech head coach Skip Holtz, about a 4th-and-1 play -- a quarterback sneak -- that did not work late in the game at LSU (the Tigers piled it up and stopped it short).
     "I'm upset with myself on the fourth-down call I made," Holtz said. "Not the decision to go for it, but the call. I should have called a timeout. It was a dumb call. I want to put our players in a position to succeed, and I don't think I gave our guys the best to do that [on that play."
    A dumb call. Got that, Gary Patterson?

The book on LSU's No. 20: Billy Cannon

     Finally, after a delay of three years or 10 months (take your pick), I read the book on Billy Cannon ... and I enjoyed it; I would recommend it to longtime LSU fans.
     As Jerry Byrd Sr. would have said: What took you so long?
     OK, I had two other lengthy reads I wanted to finish -- The Right Stuff (by Thomas Wolfe) and The Best and The Brightest (by David Halberstam), plus my other writing/research projects, a major move in our lives, and just everyday things to do.
     How is that for an explanation/escuses?
     Knew I would like reading about Billy Cannon because -- like most anyone who jumped on the LSU football bandwagon in 1958 -- he was a hero beyond compare.
     A Facebook friend from Shreveport -- Richard Thompson (Fair Park High 1967 graduate) -- sent me the book, and I thank him. I am grateful.
     Not long after the book was published, in 2015, I looked for it here (in Fort Worth bookstores). No luck. Billy Cannon is not a hero in Texas. 
     Never had a chance to look for it, or neglected to do so,  on visits to Shreveport. My bad.
      Anyway, Richard Thompson to the rescue. The book came in the mail ... and sat here for 10 months. Meanwhile, Billy Cannon left us (died May 20 at age 80).

The LSU sports information web site cover page in late May 2018.

      Many know the gist of Cannon's life: high school superstar at Istrouma (Baton Rouge), state champion running back in football, and in the 100-yard dash and shot put, and -- yes -- reputation as "a thug," LSU All-American and Heisman Trophy winner, the legendary 89-yard punt return on Halloween Night 1959 against Ole Miss, 10-year pro football career, then a career in dentistry (first as an  orthodonist, especially for children), the ill-fated counterfeiting involvement, conviction and prison term, and then the long rehabilitation, the two decades as dentist at the Angola State Prison, and the reunion with the LSU community and re-establishment as the state's biggest football star of all time.
      What a life. What a story. 
      And before I read the book came Cannon's death and the many, many tributes to him. 
      So last week was my time to read the book, and it took only 3-4 days (some 225 pages). I was that interested.
      Appropriate that Richard be the one to send it. He is more responsible than anyone for the book being written, except for Cannon himself and the author (Charles N. deGravelles).
      Here is why (excerpts from the book's prologue):
      In spite of Cannon's well-known reticence, one man refused to give up on the idea of a Billy Cannon biography. Richard Thompson remembers how, after LSU's 1958 national championship season, Cannon visited his middle school in Shreveport. For Thompson and his fellow students, Cannon was a celebrity of the caliber of Elvis. Thompson got to shake the hand of his hero. He never forgot the moment.
     Thompson spent much of his career in Louisiana government, including as an undersecretary in the Department of Corrections and Public Safety. He worked closely with Burl Cain. For years, he and Cain approached Cannon about a book -- and met rejection -- again and again. Last year, in 2014, Thompson's persistence was finally rewarded when Cannon agreed to a book -- with one stipulation. The biography had to include the innovative improvements Warden Cain had instituted at the Angola Prison -- changes that Billy Cannon had personally witnessed and of which he was a part. ...
     Thompson mentioned a little-known writer who was differerent from others; in addition to experience as a journalist and writer, he had been a volunteer chaplain at Louisiana State Penitentiary, generally known as Angola, for 25 years, three of those as a spiritual advisor for a death-row inmate.
---               
     So that is how deGravelles was picked as the writer, and the book's acknowledgments begin with, "Thanks to Richard Thompson for initiating and putting the pieces of this project together and for support along the way." 
     My opinion: deGravelles did a fine job of research, and of putting the words, the story, together.
     The book does not hide from the flawed character that Cannon was, from his early days and his family's poor, hardscrabble existence in rural Mississippi, to his emergence in athletics and a sometimes prima donna, hard-to-handle attitude, his off-the-field gang-like status, his college recruiting tales, pro football adventures and, well, his money-making schemes.
     Billy often was not one to play by the rules.
     Easy to perceive that the several references to Cannon's selling of LSU football game tickets he collected came from Billy himself. Let's say, it was a quite lucrative venture for him, from his high school days through his LSU career.
     And obviously, he also did quite well financially in the summer jobs provided for him by LSU boosters. 
     If I have a quibble, it is that there is a read-between-the-lines element of the "incentives" for a superstar player of his caliber. No doubt, he and the Cannon family were provided "anything you need,"  as promised by the car dealer who sealed Billy's commitment to attend LSU.
      Based on what I have read or heard about the college  recruiting inducements for gifted, prominent North Louisiana athletes in the same era -- John David Crow (Springhill) and Kenneth Beck (Minden) in football, Jackie Moreland (Minden) in basketball -- you can assume Cannon was in that same realm.
---
      There are multiple North Louisiana ties to Cannon mentioned in the book, most prominently eight reference to Tommy Davis.
      Crow, the Heisman Trophy winner (at Texas A&M) two years before Cannon, is on pages 3 and 10. 
      Two Northwestern State athletes, Charley Hennigan (wide receiver from Minden) and Charlie Tolar (running back from Natchitoches), were Cannon's teammates with the Houston Oilers in the brand-new American Football League (1960-63), league champs the first two years and overtime losers in the third year.
      Cannon's final high school game, the 1955 state championship against Fair Park in Shreveport, is covered in a lengthy paragraph on page 76. 
     When he died in May, I posted two clippings from that game. Had about two dozen people tell me they were at State Fair Stadium that night.
      It was a 40-6 Istrouma romp in which Fair Park, like many other teams, hardly could tackle Cannon. He ran 16 times for 169 yards and his third touchdown was an 83-yard pass play (referenced in the book) with which he ran the last 60 yards. And he finished the season with a state-record 229 points.
     Speaking of Fair Park ... back to Tommy Davis.
     He was Cannon's teammate at LSU in 1958, a fullback and, more importantly, the Tigers' superb punter and placekicker, a huge factor in the perfect season.
       Davis was the star player on Fair Park's 1952 team, the only one in school history to win the state championship. My opinion (and that of many others), he was Shreveport's most accomplished football player of the 1950s and early 1960s.
       After two years at LSU and a U.S. Army (and service football) stint, he was back at LSU for a crucial role in the 1958 national championship. He was part of the all-offense Go (short for Gold) team, which alternated with the all-defense Chinese Bandits in that era of platoon substitution.
     But it was his kicking that is remembered by those who know -- two late-game winning kicks (a field goal in a 10-7 victory against Florida, the winning PAT to edge Mississippi State 7-6), and his punting. As book notes, "many considered [him] the best collegiate kicker in the country ..."
     In the mid-1960s, Cannon -- by then a tight end with the Oakland Raiders -- and Davis, a rare pro punter and placekicking specialist for the San Francisco 49ers who twice made the Pro Bowl -- renewed their friendship in the Bay Area. After his decade in the NFL, Davis' career punting average was the second-best ever behind Sammy Baugh.
      One more North Louisiana tie: Murrell "Boots" Garland, who struck up a friendship with Cannon on a track/field trip in 1957 and as the dorm proctor at Broussard Hall, LSU's athletic dorm, where he and Billy spent hours being pals. As  the book notes, he was "garrulous and funny" like Billy, and just as much of a storyteller, upbeat and full of mischief. A character who, for example, played Pistol Pete Maravich's high school coach in a movie. 
      Boots was from Shreveport, a Byrd High and LSU graduate, and early in his long, winding coaching career was George Nattin Jr.'s assistant in basketball at Bossier High (1962-64).
      He would become almost legendary -- Boots would laugh and agree -- as a track and field coach. His 1969 Baton Rouge High team won a state championship; he was head coach at LSU one year, and a longtime assistant there, known primarily as a "speed coach." His speciality was working with athletes in any sport, any level -- high school, college, pros -- to improve their running techniques and maximize their "speed" abilities. 
     Billy Cannon would not have needed help in that department. But of all his buddies, Boots Garland -- as the book makes clear -- was the most involved in his rehab after prison, a frequent visitor to Cannon's dentist office at Angola and eventually the go-between contact for Billy's return to involvement with LSU football. 
     Boots, who died in January 2016, played an important role in Cannon's later life. Good for him. 
---       
     On the book's next-to-last page, there is a paragraph about the (LSU-themed periodical) Tiger Rag's 2010 list of "The Top 150 Most Influential People in LSU Athletics History." No. 1 on that list? Is there any doubt?

Richard Thompson and wife Blanca at the
recent LSU-Southeastern Louisiana game at
Tiger Stadium (he is an SLU graduate).

      Richard Thompson now lives in Baton Rouge and in Puerto Rico (home of his wife Blanca). "I go back and forth; I have business in both places," he said. And, yes, they were in Puerto Rico a year when it was devastated by Hurricane Maria.
     We'll leave the last word on the book to him because he said he sat in on 40 hours of interviews with Cannon and Charles deGravelles.
     "Billy was a hood, even at our Fair Park standards," Richard wrote me. "It would have been a bad influence on anyone back then.
     "After he served his time [in prison], his fake self-esteem went from 110 to zero. All the bad things he did as a young man, he made up with goodness in his later life. Working on inmates at Angola was not for his paycheck, but it was his redemption."
     If you read the book, you will appreciate that.
     In the end, he was -- as LSU radio announcer J.C. Politz said at the end of the 89-yard punt return on Halloween Night 1959, a legendary and best-ever LSU football memory -- "Billy Cannon. Great All-American." 

Opening Night at Joe Aillet Stadium -- 50 years ago

The first touchdown in the first game at Joe Aillet Stadium, 1968 season, by
Louisiana Tech fullback Buster Herren (31). No. 50 is center John Harper.
 (photo by Ralph Findley)

(Note: The last in the series commemorating the first 50 years of football at Louisiana Tech's Joe Aillet Stadium. This story is about the first game there and the view from the new press box.)

---

By Nico Van Thyn

(Louisiana Tech student sports information assistant, 1965-69)

      The first football game at Louisiana Tech's new stadium -- then just Tech Stadium, renamed Joe Aillet Stadium four years later -- was Sept. 28, 1968, a night game against East Carolina University.

      The most notable player in the game, of course, was Terry Bradshaw -- future Pro Football Hall of Famer, four-time Super Bowl winning quarterback.

      Fortunately, he was on our team. Louisiana Tech won easily, 35-7, in what was to be a season of revival for Tech football (9-2 record, after dips to 4-4, 1-9 and 3-7 in previous seasons).

      The stadium opening was, as you can imagine, a long-anticipated event after decades in the old Tech Stadium on the main campus.

      The new place was less than a mile away, in an area which had been woods just a few years earlier but was picked out -- and envisioned for development -- by Joe Aillet, the longtime and by then legendary Tech athletic director-head football coach.

      The press box at the old stadium had a certain charm because it was a tight fit -- two levels of seating, maybe 10 to 12 people on each row. So the occupants were in close proximity; it was not cozy.

      The two radio crews, home and away, were near the ends on the top level; it wasn't much of a secret what the announcers were saying.

      Obviously, the new stadium and new press box brought much excitement. We watched it being built over a two- or- three-year period.

      It wasn't a long walk up to the old Tech Stadium press box, not as long as the walk to the new stadium press box. And the first couple of years, it was a walk; the elevator -- maybe for lack of funds -- was no installed then until much later. We got shafted on that.

      So for the press box crew -- Tech's sports information department and the radio and film people -- it meant carrying up equipment up through the stands and back down afterward. A hassle, but Paul Manasseh -- Tech's SID that year before moving to a long tenure as SID at LSU -- never let much rattle him.

      Seating was plentiful in this press box, there was elbow room for everyone, and there was a deck above for film and (when needed) TV crews (this was before the upstairs area was expanded years later).

      But seating downstairs wasn't exactly comfortable, especially at first. Structurally, seats were built too close to the working tables, so people whose bellies were somewhat expanded -- we did have a couple of sportswriters who fit that description -- were unable to get into those seats. Adjustments had to be made quickly.

      Second problem structurally: The area behind the seats on the lower level was too tight -- a tight squeeze just trying to move down the aisle. That never did get much better.

      Third problem the first night: Although the air conditioning system surely had been tested, this was a humid Saturday night. When the air conditioning got cranked up, the windows in the press box looking out on the field fogged up.

      Those of us trying to watch the game and keep statistics had to move around to find non-fogged areas. We even had to go outside the press box for a while to do our work.

      That did get cleared up in a short while.

      As for the football game, the Tech team came in feeling very good, having beaten an SEC opponent in the opening game the week before. Winning at Mississippi State 20-13 was a boost to the program after three mediocre seasons. (True, Mississippi State did not win a game that season, 0-8-2 record, but it was a "major" opponent for Tech).

      Bradshaw, taking over as the permanent QB starter when Phil Robertson -- future "Duck Commander" -- decided not to play after being the starter in the 1966 and 1967 seasons (with Terry as his backup), showed his great promise in the first two games of 1968.

      East Carolina was a new and very interesting opponent for Tech, and a challenging one. For one, it was one of the few college football teams still running the old single-wing offense -- a tricky scheme for the opposing defense. Two, under coach Clarence Stasavich, the Pirates were coming off consecutive season records of 9-1, 9-1, 9-1 and 8-2.

      But Tech's team was up to the physical and mental challenge. And East Carolina could not stop Bradshaw's passing to talented receivers such as Tommy Spinks, Ken Liberto, Robbie Albright and tight end Larry Brewer. 

      Tech's running game balanced the attack, and it was fullback Buster Herren who scored the first touchdown in new Tech Stadium history.

      The new stadium, strangely, did not mean a big boost in home attendance. This was years before official turnstile counts; crowds listed were guestimates by the wise media people in the press box.

      Attendance for the East Carolina game was listed at 10,000 -- the original stadium capacity was 24,000 -- and that was what was listed for a couple of the conference games at the old Tech Stadium the previous season.

      For the remaining three home games in 1968, the listed attendance was 14,000, 10,000 and 5,000 (a cold night game vs. New Mexico State on Thanksgiving). The press-box windows did not fog up that night.  

So how important is football to you?

     Posed the question to my Facebook/e-mail friends Wednesday: Is football still as important to you as it ever was? Do you still live/die with your teams?
     Received several good answers, and will post them at the bottom of this blog piece.
     Timing this with this week's explosion of college football games, the full schedule, although we had a smattering of games last week (because it begins earlier each year).
     Here was my comment Wednesday: For some of us, interest has declined greatly, almost totally in the NFL (and for me, personally, it has nothing to do with the national anthem). Just don't like how much of our attention the NFL receives now.
     With my question, I attached an article by Tim Layden (Sports Illustrated writer) from a week ago, his perspective on what football means -- or should mean -- to our society today. (Link -- a long link -- posted below.)
     Not here to tell anyone what to think -- same as politics -- but what follows is my view on football today. 
     I still love it; I still care. The nervous feeling which hits a few weeks before every LSU season is there again. And I want Louisiana Tech to do well, always have. 
      (And what if LSU plays Louisiana Tech? That is going to happen again Sept. 22. That's a tough one.)
     Want "my teams" in several sports -- Yankees, Cowboys, Netherlands soccer, LSU, La. Tech -- to win big. The competitive streak in me has not faded. When it does ... uh-oh.
      I am sure that is it for you, too. We all feel better when our team wins. 
      We make it personal. Can't help it. Know damn well that what I think or say -- or yell -- is not going to make a bit of difference. But we get into it. Vow to be calmer, but then they start playing and ...
      It is the off-the-field crap that is so bothersome to me. And all the money coaches and NFL players make (and as an aside, I do not think college players should be paid more -- too many loopholes. Isn't a free college education enough?).
      Money makes the football world go 'round. 
      The seemingly increasing brutal nature of the game, the fatal injuries, the brain drain, the sexual assaults, "bullying" coaches, recruiting "verbal commitments" and National Signing Day and everyday analysis, speculation, Internet "talk" sites ... January through December.
      One big gripe: The over-emphasis on anything college football and NFL head coaches say or do. We treat them like gods. They're not. 
      Same for NFL owners. Please don't pay attention to what Jerry "Blabs" Jones says (that was a blog piece several ago).
      Personally I watch or read very little of what any head coach has to say. And when they lecture the media, as some are prone to do (Saban, Patterson) or act sanctimoniously (Urban Meyer, Hugh Freeze, the late Joe Paterno), it is beyond irritating.
      OK, enough of that. Here's the good part: Watching the games.
      Love it still -- at least college football. I, for one, don't like the high-scoring, wild offensive slugfests. Give me some defense and kicking game, please. But the game itself is still entertainment -- and competition -- for me.
      Probably watched fewer games last year -- not even LSU, live -- than ever before. Watched about 10 minutes of one NFL game (Cowboys). That was more than enough.
      Just don't want to spend hours and hours tied to the TV these days. Watched one game live (Louisiana Tech's bowl game, vs. SMU, in Frisco).
      The wife wants nothing to do with football, period. Does not want to hear my commentary, that's for sure. So recording games and watching them -- silently -- hours later when she's asleep is the better option.
      There are other TVs in the facility where we live. So I will be headed there Saturday -- and Sunday night.
      Looked at the TV game schedule for this week, noted the times and set up the recorder. There are teams I want to see, mostly in the SEC (the main interest for many of my friends, too).
      For instance, I will check on the Tennessee Vols because I know son-in-law cares ... a lot. And that matchup with West Virginia should be a good one.   
     (As for Alabama, no thank you. But I have to admit -- if LSU's program was as successful as Alabama has been, especially the last decade, would I care more for college football than I do now? Honest answer: yes.)
      So, the game I care most about -- LSU vs. Miami -- will be played in our neighborhood Sunday night. Our son and our nephew will be there at JerryWorld; I will watch on TV ... anxiously. I do care.
       As for LSU vs. Louisiana Tech in a few weeks, I will be rooting for the winner. That should satisfy all my friends who say I am a frontrunner.
       Have a nice season. It is important enough to me that I  will try to watch ... for a while, anyway.
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https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/08/23/football-player-safety-jordan-mcnair-death-maryland-urban-meyer-zach-smith-ohio-state-punishment?utm_campaign=si-extra&utm_source=si.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2018082413PM&eminfo=%7b%22EMAIL%22%3a%22g%2fuGJg%2f6MqPr9L%2fN%2beR2ew%3d%3d%22%2c%22BRAND%22%3a%22SI%22%2c%22CONTENT%22%3a%22Newsletter%22%2c%22UID%22%3a%22SI_EXT_D84683FA-9C1F-4D44-99C4-043367C843CF%22%2c%22SUBID%22%3a%2299057493%22%2c%22JOBID%22%3a%22861658%22%2c%22NEWSLETTER%22%3a%22SI_EXTRA%22%2c%22ZIP%22%3a%22%22%2c%22COUNTRY%22%3a%22CAN%22%7d

From Sunset Acres to a legend in New Mexico

     He lived for a while in our old neighborhood, Sunset Acres; a small kid, two years younger than us, but such a good athlete that we took notice.
     Whatever happened to Billy Henson?

Billy Henson: Retired as teacher, coach and administrator, now
living the good life as an outdoorsman in New Mexico and Louisiana.

     He was good in three sports -- football, basketball and baseball -- and he was on the Oak Terrace Junior High teams. But he never made it to our high school, Woodlawn. After eighth grade, he moved away ... to New Mexico.
     Let's catch up with Billy Don Henson because, well, some people consider him a legend.
     He became a two-way All-State football player in New Mexico (offense and defense), a scholarship player at University of New Mexico.
     But more significantly, the head football coach -- especially in a small town, Animas, N.M., in the southwest corner of the state, near the Mexico border -- with this kind of success:
     • a state-record seven consecutive state championships (1984-90) in Class AA (third-highest class in that state);
     • 69 consecutive victories (1985-90), at the time one of the nation's longest streaks;
     • a 145-32-2 record (.814) in 16 years (four schools) as a head coach;
     • subject of a 1989 Life magazine centerpiece story on his team, program and winning streak written by Gary Smith, later regarded as one of America's most talented sportswriters when he was a star at Sports Illustrated.
     • father/mentor of the most productive passing quarterbacks in state high school football history.
     • A football stadium named for him: in Animas ... Billy Henson Stadium.
     He's 69, retired since 2011 after 40 years of coaching, teaching and administration -- the last eight years as the school superintendent in Hatch Valley, N.M.
      Now an avid quail hunter and fisherman, he has two "new" knees (a double replacement a year ago), and for about six months each year, again a Louisiana resident, at  Toledo Bend.
      And to think, he once played quarterback on the same team with Terry Bradshaw (who was injured), and it is plausible that he might have delayed Joe Ferguson's emergence as the starting QB at Woodlawn. He had that kind of ability. 
     He was a could-have-been, would-have-been Woodlawn Knight, a potential star. Read on.
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     His name came up last week at lunch with an old friend from Sunset Acres. And I at least had a clue.
     Because in the early 1990s, while working at the Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), I saw a magazine article about the nation's longest high school football winning streaks, and a team near the top (69 wins in a row), I noticed, was coached by ... Billy Henson.
     Could it be?
     A phone call to Animas, N.M., confirmed it was our old Sunset Acres connection. We talked then, and now some 28 years later, made contact again on Facebook. And, yes, he remembered that phone call. 
     Thus the idea for this blog, and the research, and many exchanges for information, photos and clippings.
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     The Sunset Acres Athletic Club got its start, as I recall, in about 1958. Its early teams were not all that successful -- not many "athletes" there in those distinctive bright gold uniforms with black trim.
     But Billy Henson stood out as the QB on 75- and 85-pound football teams, even more so as the point guard and top scorer in basketball, and a potentially good baseball player (third baseman).
     He lived, for a while, on the same street (Amherst) we did, but -- Sunset Acres kids know this division -- on the other (east) side of the canal, the 2700 block.
     We knew him and we were watching for him when he came to the junior high. 
     He was small, and when the coaches at Oak Terrace  passed out 33 football uniforms in the fall of 1961, he did not get one. But watching him in P.E., Coach Leonard Ponder saw ability and -- when someone dropped off the team, opening a spot -- Billy got his uniform.
      Instead of playing for Sunset Acres' 105-pound team, he was with the Oak Terrace Trojans for two years, coached by Ellace Bruce, Ponder and Tommy Powell.
     He was the starting QB on the 1962 eighth-grade team that dominated its only four opponents. He also got playing time (halfback or QB) on the ninth-grade team because Bradshaw -- for the second year in a row -- was sidelined with a broken collarbone, leaving the quarterbacking to either Tommy Spinks, Jimmy Buckner or Henson. 
     While the others went on to be leaders -- in football and other sports -- at Woodlawn, Henson went to New Mexico.
     His parents' divorce was the reason for that. His father, as Billy recalled never having made much money in various jobs in Shreveport, went west at the behest of his sister and brother-in-law and a more lucrative job in the NM mines.
     And in summer 1963, Billy's mother put her son on a trailways bus to join his father. The Oak Terrace Trojans (and Woodlawn Knights)' loss was the Carlsbad Cavemen's gain.
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     Billy Henson as a QB at Woodlawn? Let's speculate.
     In what would have been his sophomore fall (1964), Trey Prather was the Knights' Class AAA All-State QB, with Bradshaw and Spinks as his backups.
     In 1965, Bradshaw with his tremendous right arm and potential, was the starter, but -- honestly -- the Woodlawn coaches were not sure of his steadiness. Henson, as a junior, could have been an option.
     In 1966, after Billy's growing spurt (listed in New Mexico newspaper stories as 6 feet, 188 pounds), he might have challenged Joe Ferguson for the Woodlawn starting QB spot.
     Ferguson was a thin, 160-pound sophomore, with football sense, a strong right arm and potential, but totally unproven in high school ball. On the most talented, physically largest of the seven Woodlawn teams to that point, QB was by far the biggest question mark.
     Henson could have been the answer, at least to open the season. And for a few weeks in the spring of 1966, he was actually attended Woodlawn.
     His grandmother, his father's mother, was still in Shreveport, but sickly and having a tough time after Billy's grandfather died. So Billy's father and Billy returned to town, helped sell her place and move her to New Mexico. 
     Meanwhile, Billy attended Woodlawn.
     "Coach [Lee] Hedges was kind enough to let me suit out for spring drills," he recalled. "It was before he left for Louisiana Tech and Coach [A.L.] Williams became head coach. I told them that I probably wouldn't be in school until the end of the school year, but they let me train with them anyway. 
     "It really helped me get to another level as an athlete in New Mexico as they didn't allow spring ball out here."
      And he remembers meeting Ferguson that spring: "He was so impressive even as a [freshman] player."
     So Ferguson stepped in with a veteran team, the foundation of which was the talented Oak Terrace players from that unbeaten 1962 team that Henson quarterbacked. 
     Joe fit in nicely; a powerful running game and superb defense keyed the first undefeated regular season in Woodlawn history, and only an injury-bad-luck week led to a playoff loss and spoiled state championship hopes.
      Even if Henson had not played QB, it is likely he would have fit somewhere in the loaded Woodlawn lineup; the likely spot -- my opinion -- cornerback.

All-State player, offense and defense,
at Carlsbad High in 1966

      At Carlsbad High, he joined one of New Mexico's top high school programs and "it was a different approach to football. They didn't throw the ball and if you punted, you were a coward."
      Because "I was more athletic and bigger than the kids out here," he was moved to running back and middle linebacker.
      And he was the team's best player. The result: All-State at running back, All-State as a middle linebacker (facts confirmed by newspaper clippings).
      On the first play of that season, he ran an end sweep 81 yards for a touchdown. He did the Cavemen's placekicking, too, and was chosen for the New Mexico high school all-star game.
      And he was recruited by, and signed a scholarship with, the New Mexico Lobos. He said Hedges, then at Tech, offered him "a full ride ... because he knew of me, but I thought it best to stay close to my family."
      An ankle injury, first reported as sprained but actually broken, kept him out of the all-star game and out of the UNM freshman team's four-game schedule (Division I freshmen were not eligible for varsity then). 
      A coaching change after that season, and what he recalls as a brutally tough spring practice under the new head coach, and two hurting knees helped him decide to end his playing career. 
      But graduation and a coaching career awaited.
      "I watched coaches, and I studied what they were doing, how they were teaching," he said. "What I learned most was what not to do."
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     His coaching days began as a graduate assistant (1972-73) at Eastern New Mexico University. He had taken an interest in the growing emphasis then on strength programs and helped develop one at ENMU.
      His first regular teaching/coaching job was at Clayton, N.M., in the fall of 1974; he would return there two decades later. Then through a New Mexico high school coaching legend, he moved to Alice High deep in south Texas. As defensive ends coach there, he again helped build a strength program.
     The Alice team made the Texas top-class state semifinals his first year and, after another good season, his road back to New Mexico was one year as defensive coordinator at Roswell. 
     Then came his first head coaching job in Capitan, N.M., and by the second year his team played in a state- championship game and lost 6-0.
     The school superintendent who hired him in Capitan had moved to Animas. Thus, he hired him again for a job that looked like a huge challenge.
     Billy was familiar with Animas because it had been an opponent for Capitan.
     "Although we beat Animas solidly," he recalled, "I recognized that they had plenty of kids that underachieved."
     It turned out to be a magical place.
     It was a very rural setting -- a truly middle-of-nowhere place. For years, the school had drawn kids with farming and ranching backgrounds, many from even more rural closeby areas. Enrollment was only 50-to-60 students.
      Then, a new nearby copper-smelter plan led to a population growth, and a football program was started in 1976.
      The new coach in 1981 took the challenge and put together the right mix.
       "We never had a football tradition," Henson said near the end of his Animas reign in a story that labeled him "the architect, "but we had an environment because the kids were hungry to do something."
      Enrollment was up to 170 students, and Henson had a "no-cut" policy for his team, which usually numbered about 40. Still, the Panthers usually faced great odds.
       After a 1-6-1 record his first season, there was huge  improvement the next year -- an 11-1 record and the state semifinals. By 1984 came the first of the seven state titles.

As the head coach at Animas, N.M., he was the master builder -- and
sevens years in a row state championship coach.

       From an almost two-page Albuquerque Journal spread on the Animas program in August 1988: "Almost immediately after taking the job in 1981, Henson built a homemade fieldhouse out of a concession stand that adjoins the football field. First came a weight room, then an office, then a locker room (complete with artificial turf floor) and finally, showers."
       More from that story: "The new coach absolutely refused to pit new against old, native against newcomer. And eight years later, Animas' kids play as if they'd been together since birth."
       "We've got a mix," says wingback Derek Hill. "We've got cowboys and Hispanics, and a lot of people in between. But most of the kids on this football team, I don't think there are two guys who don't get along. We're so small we have to. We're all together, and that's the key."
     With enough of a passing game and a physical, disciplined style, the emerald green-uniformed Panthers began pounding opponents. 
     For example, in three-plus seasons (1985-early 1988), Animas outscored opponents 1,400-173. 
     Scheduling games, even against bigger New Mexico schools, became a challenge. Thus, one game in -- yes -- Honolulu; another against a team in Mexico. 
      Also a challenge: The routine long road trips.
      Henson, also the team bus driver, tells of away-game trips that ended with him pulling the bus into the school parking lot at 4 a.m. One playoff season, the final three games -- quarterfinals, semifinals and title game -- were bus trips of 800, 800 and 1,200 miles.
        "To this day I believe our kids overcame so much more," he said. "... The problem was that some of the kids still had an hour to get in their cars and drive to get home. I just prayed them made it home, but they were raised that way and they were so mentally tough compared to other kids then, and so much more than kids today.
     "... Gary Smith (in Life) wrote such flattering things, [but] he did not even begin to scratch the surface of what my players had to overcome.
    "But we did all of it together. I feel so satisfied to have been part of it. But I can vouch that those kids were raised hard and I was fortunate to show up at the right time."
     With all the success came such recognition: a tribute on CNN, a front page (1A) story in The Dallas Morning News, a feature in USA Today.
     And a contract for a movie in 1989, a visit by possible producers to Animas. That did not develop. Instead the feature subject became the powerful Odessa (Texas) Permian program and the book and movie Friday Night Lights.
     For all that, Henson says his starting coaching salary in Animas was $1,500 a year. His final coaching salary was $1,500 a year. Meanwhile, all four of the Henson children were born in that time.
      "I am not blaming the community," he said, "but they really had no tax base to do better."
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      The tributes, and growing legend, kept coming. Notably in 1987 Animas renamed its football stadium for him.
      From the 1988 Albuquerque Journal feature: "Henson, a driven but sensitive man who resides in a yellow home 25 yards from the stadium, remains the magnet around which kids gather."
     From a 1992 Journal column: "Notable for his humble reserve, Henson's special gift as a coach, one trumpeted by his former players and ex-bosses alike, was his singular ability to make things work."
     From a 1990 Dallas Morning News story: "Henson is admired here for his even temper, his ability to coax the best out of the teenagers. He treats the boys with respect, people say, calling them 'men' and never criticizing them publicly."
      Said one of his players, an offensive guard, in a 2010 story: "Wow. It was amazing to be part of something like that."
      Gary Lunsford, who lives in Vanderwegen, N.M., is a longtime friend who coached with Billy (at Roswell) and against him, and as a college student and wide receiver, benefitted from Henson's practice passes one summer.
     "I don't believe I have ever seen a football team that bought into their game as good as Billy Henson's did," Lunsford said, recalling a one-sided coaching loss against Animas.
---
     The winning streak, from a loss in the last regular-season game in 1984, ended in the eighth game of the 1990 season -- so five "perfect" seasons in a row -- with a 9-8 loss at Animas' biggest district rival, Lordsburg. To that point, the Panthers had outscored opponents 286-28.
      Animas fell three games short of tying the then-national record for consecutive victories.
      But soon came the seventh consecutive state title ... and sweet revenge. The final opponent was -- karma -- Lordsburg. Animas won a rout, 36-0; Lordsburg had three first downs in the game.
      And then Henson's time in Animas was done. His final record there: 127-28-2 (.815). Without the first year: 126-22-1 (.849).
      Having once accepted another coaching job but changing his mind, he made it official after a change in administrators and limits put on his strength-training program. 
      He took over a program at Silver City that had lost 26 consecutive games, but in one year went from winless to a 6-4 record. Still, he felt the politics in town led to resentment -- and he moved on, and out of coaching. 
       Bill Coker was the Animas principal during Henson's glory years there and then, as a school superintendent, hired him as an elementary school principal at Tucumcari.
       The Albuquerque Journal story on his hiring for that job quoted Coker: "To relate to kids, you've got to be honest, and you've got to build their self-esteem. Billy commands that type of self-respect and esteem. Kids pick up on that and respond very positively.
     "He is just one of the best educators I've ever seen at creating a positive self-image."

Billy Henson: From coach to
 administrator to retirement

       Two years later (1994), it was back to coaching -- head coach at Clayton. In two seasons, his teams made the state quarterfinals and semifinals, and then he left coaching for good. 
     He became a school superintendent, the final eight years at Hatch, N.M.
      And it was there that another Henson became a big football name -- son Brett.
     "I took all those proven drills that my Oak Terrace coaches used to train me with," Billy said, "and passed them on to all my quarterbacks and my son."
     Brett, playing for Hatch Valley, led two state championship teams while setting all the individual passing records in New Mexico. His statistics -- 4,914 yards and 70 TDs in 2003; 4,604 yards and 64 TDs in 2004; 12,124 yards and 166 TDs in his three-year career -- make even Ferguson's 1966-68 numbers look small. Another eye-popper: nine TD passes in one game.
    Brett is listed among the all-time leading passers in the national high school record book.
    "So even though I never got the chance to play quarterback again," Billy said, "I guess I passed it all on to my players in Animas and to my son. And I am so thankful that I experienced it all and how it turned out."

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      "I know it sounds like I moved around a lot in my career," he says, "but at least I can say the school people I knew hired me back for a second time and even offered me jobs for the third. I moved in my career for professional advancement ... 
     "Besides, my 'growing up life' prepared me for such a transit lifestyle," he said, laughing.
     That lifestyle changed with his retirement -- a family split and a move away from society.
    After 24 years of marriage and four children (three daughters and Brett), when their youngest child graduated, "my wife and I went our separate ways. But in a civil way; we all get together on holidays.
      "After living such a public life," he said, "I retreated to the Sacramento Mountains in southern New Mexico. I built my own cabin by myself, then went back to Louisiana and built a fishing camp at Toledo Bend. 

The Henson transport: New Mexico to
Louisiana, and back every six months.

     "I spend January to June in Louisiana, June until January in New Mexico. My kids come and share my camps with me."
      On the trips, he loads up his Dodge Ram truck with a camper, and pulls a trailer with a four-wheel drive vehicle, and his faithful dog companion.
      He loves quail hunting with friends and ex-players, and he is able to move much better now after the knee replacements.
      At Toledo Bend -- where his camp is near the popular Solan's Camp (at the end of state highway 482, mailing address Noble, but also close to Zwolle) -- he's been known to catch monster catfish (he has the pictures and a video to prove it).
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     "I lose sleep thinking it would have been me to inherit the job instead of Joe Ferguson to lead the Knights to a championship," Billy said. "I knew I had the ability, but then life happened.
     "I guess I was maybe the missing Knight, but they did great without me, for sure."
     The Knights did. So did Bradshaw and Ferguson -- both legendary players and individuals.
      That also applies to Billy Don Henson, the transplanted Sunset Acres kid in New Mexico.