Nooooo - this is more bad news... far too many Longhorn Legends have passed away recently. Died at 74 due to dementia unfortunately tells me it was blows to the head playing football. He had one hell of a head blow vs. TCU in 1961
At the '61 TCU game, in card section that fateful afternoon. That was a great team and one of my favorite backfields. Ray Poage, fullback Jack Collins, halfback (Dallas Highland Park) Jim Saxton, halfback Mike Cotton, quarterback (Austin High) Others on the team... Johnny Treadwell, Pat Culpepper, David McWilliams, Tommy Ford, Tony Crosby, Bobby Nunis, Bob Moses, the Talbert brothers.... I stopped and looked up the roster... almost every name rings a bell. And remember... this was the era of Shorthorn Football.... you only played 3 seasons of varsity.
The Link What could have been if "Jackrabbit" could have stayed healthy in that 1961 TCU game. Of course some of those hits weren't exactly legal and one was even admitted to be late.
Good article and why, in my opnion, a solid conference schedule that plays all conference opponents trumps the 12 and 14 team conferences with divisions and rotating cross-division games. Playing all teams in a conference forces rival relationships (over time) that kill you year in and year out -- no place to run, no place to hide. I never liked division conferences for that reason. You can have "off years", and in the SEC you can off off careers at a school that may not play some teams in the cross-division your entire collegiate career.
Very few of the games were on tv then, but they were all on the radio. I was a kid, and listened to them. Kern Tips was the main play by play man for the Humble network, sponsoring all the SWC games. He had the most florid adjectives of anyone, and loved describing Saxton run. "Waterbug" was commonly used because Saxton was so smooth and quick, seeming to slide horizonally as fast as he ran forward. He was so small, and rarely was hit full on, due to his elusiveness. When the TCU player knocked Saxton out of the only game Texas lost that year, the hit occurred after the play was dead. A total cheap shot, which would have resulted in ejection for the TCU guy today. Saxton was very woozy, and certainly suffered a concussion. He was my favorite player until Earl Campbell came along. God bless him.
Some would argue that James Saxton was the most exciting player to ever wear a longhorn jersey. As a kid who grew up in the 60s, I would be one of those "some." I still have the SI cover that called him "Football's Fanciest Runner." The longhorn family has lost another legend.
I may have shared this before. My mom taught Jim Pittman in high school in Boyle, MS. When Pittman was coaching at Texas she contacted him and requested a souvenir for my younger brother, who was planning to attend UT as our father, I, and another brother had done. Pittman obliged by sending Saxton's jersey from the Texas/Ole Miss Cotton Bowl game. Years later, as my brother was preparing for a move, he uncovered the jersey. He located James Saxton in Austin, reached out to him, and presented the jersey to Saxton to hand down to his son, who was at an age when his father's football abilities were on the son's horizon.
Still cannot believe that Plummer(?) was not flagged for a late hit. I was at the game and was so close to the field I could hear that late hit. Plummer should have been ejected..
notanative - I think I remember you sharing that story before about your brother & the Saxton jersey. That jersey means more to his son then and now than it would have meant to your brother or you.... cool thing to do.
Like you Caryhorn, I too listened to the radio broadcast of those games. That was my beginnings as a longhorn diehard. Some of the best years ever!!!!
Ahh...Kern Tips. Best radio voice since Westbrook Van Voorhees. He and his announcing partner Connie Alexander were the best! TDs were announced as "getting into Royal soil".
I will always and forever be grateful that I got to see him play. I was a little girl, but I understood enough about football to know that he was very special, indeed. RIP