The Glory Days: State championships once were commonplace

By BILL HART / Senior Staff Writer

Take it from the guys who were there 40 years ago, this is a week the Cooper High School football team won't ever forget. This is especially true if the Cougars beat Austin Westlake for the Classs 5A Division II state championship Saturday at Texas Stadium in Irving.

Several members of the Abilene High School football teams which won state championships in 1954, '55 and '56 still live here, and they're excited about Cooper playing for the title. It brings back a lot of memories from their glory years.

'This is a week where it's a combination of being scared to death and yet having a lot of anxiety," said Rufus King, who played in the line on all three teams. "You have the pride of getting that far and it's a feeling like none other game has. If you win, it'll stay with you the rest of your life.

'I'm proud for Cooper," he said. "I haven't gotten to see them play that much because I go back to Houston a lot of weekends, but I might slip over to Texas Stadium and watch them play."

King doesn't know how it feels to lose a state championship because that never happened to the Eagles in that stretch, winning 49 straight games.

"I didn't learn how to lose until I got to Rice (University)," he said and laughed. "Cooper has a good team and I'm impressed with the way they have come on strong and peaked at the right time. Coach (Jess) Neely was like that at Rice. He brought us on slow and by November we were ready for anyone."

Obviously, the "old" Eagles wouldn't compare this Cooper team to theirs.

"For one thing, we were pretty small by today's standards and Cooper has some big guys," King said. "I had to go against a tight end at Corpus Christi in the 1956 game who weighed 230 pounds. I weighed 185 and was one of our biggest players. He ate my lunch at the first of the game, and finally Hank Watkins told me to do some false blocking, put my head on his side that I was taking him."

Fred Green, who was a linebacker-end on the 1955 team, said end Jerry Avery was the largest of the Eagles that year, 190 pounds.

"I don't think there was a team in the state that could have beaten us," Green said. "I was at a reception the other day and we were talking about Cooper's upcoming game. One of my coaches, Nat Gleaton, was there, and we were talking about our state championship game with Tyler and how we held their great quarterback, Carl Milstead, to 17 yards. This week has brought back a lot of memories for me.

'I saw Cooper play Irving Nimitz a couple of weeks ago, and they were awesome. Those guys across the line are monsters. If they play like that, they'll win the state championship."

As far as the players contacted could figure, there is no one on the Cooper team that had relatives who played on the Eagles' three championship squads.

They're still Eagles, but they root for Cooper except for the week of the cross-town rivalry. Their blood is still black and gold then.

'Back then, everyone was all Abilene High, not split up like it is now," said H.P. Hawkins, who quarterbacked the Eagles to the 1954 title over Houston Austin and is now a coach at Abilene High. "But I'm excited for Cooper and this game is good for the city of Abilene. Few players ever get to the state championship and there'll never be another feeling like this for them on the high school level."

avid Bourland, who was on the 1954 and '55 teams, thinks the Cougars can win and said it would "kill me if they lose like they did before," referring to the 1967 Cooper team that lost in the finals to Austin Reagan, 20-19, an inch away from victory when a fourth-down play came up that short.

'I know coach (Randy) Allen will have them ready, but if they keep one of Coach (Chuck) Moser's philosophies, they'll win. He told us that if we took care of our business and let others take care of their business we'd win. That business was whipping the guy in front of us.

"We had a team reunion last summer and it was the first time we'd met since he died. Mrs. Moser had cleaned out a closet and sent us all of his material, his playbooks and statistical books. He also had a tape of our 1955 championshp game and Stuart Peake had made one for each player. I played mine on the way home and that was the first time I had ever heard my name on the radio. I have a video of all our games."

Jim Rose, a center-linebacker in 1955 and 1956 sees some similarities between his teams and Cooper.

'We had great parental and community support and so do they," Rose said, "The entire school was behind us and I'm sure they have that, too. I don't know if winning state means as much to the townspeople now as it did then. We had a lot of diehard fans. Also, Abilene had 60,000 population then compared to 110,000 now."

The Eagles had a pair of running backs, Glynn Gregory and Jimmy Carpenter, consided to be the best this city has produced, and Cooper's Dominic Rhodes may be the best since them.

'They're different type backs," Green said. "Rhodes just bowls over people, while Gregory and Carpenter were more like finesse runners. I only saw Gregory caught from behind once, and that was against Tyler. A linebacker caught him from behind and I never believed that could happen.

"But Rhodes is one of the best I've seen in a long time, and he has some shifty moves."

"I'm impressed with Rhodes," King said. "He's mature looking, in fact, he looks like a college player to me.

"I think it is strange, however, that both times Cooper has made it to the finals, it is playing a team from the same city (Austin)."

'It's hard to compare teams or players, but Rhodes is one of the best backs I've seen and his speed is comparable to Gregory and Carpenter. But there were no better backs than Glynn and Jimmy, Rose said."

The 1957 Abilene High, strangely enough, was eliminated from the playoffs in the semifinals after tied by Highland Park, 20-20. There was no overtime then. The first tiebreaker was the most penetrations inside the opponents' 20-yard line. Highland Park won that battle, 5-3.

"Highland Park scored last, so there wasn't much we could have changed from what we did," said Charles McCook, who was a sophomore quarterback on the team. "But had the overtime been in effect then, there is no doubt in my mind we would have won that game and a fourth stright championship. There's isn't a man who could have outcoached Coach Moser in an overtime, and it wouldn't have mattered who played offense or defense first.

'We had just come off an emotional win over Amarillo High in a game we shouldn't have won because they had much more talent, but I remember walking into the Cotton Bowl for the game (semifinals) and looking up at the stands. They seemed like they reached to heaven, the stadium was so big to me.

"Cooper may have had better teams than this one, but this one has made it to the finals and I'm happy for them. I wish them the best."

Last week, Abilene High School students made a big banner boosting the Cougars and sent it cross town. There's been signs of encouragement on the school marquee. At least for this week, there is only one high school in Abilene. Cooper and Abilene High students, past and present, are united in supporting the Cougars.