A Pride Of Lions In Cattle Country

"I had one coach from Canada tell me about a game his kids won and then he went on to describe how proud he was that they also won the beer-drinking contest afterward. He would get fired on the spot if he tried something like that in Texas. I know a coach in Ohio who owns three beer joints. That would never do in our system. We're a little more straitlaced."

During 30 years of working with youngsters he has learned to attack virtually any problem from its most vulnerable angle. If the situation calls for it, he is taut, controlled and driving. On the other hand, he can be loose, freeswinging and unpredictable.

"I called Gordon before our playoff game with him," recalls Lubbock Estacado Coach Pete Murray, "and told him we wanted to use a Wilson ball when we were on offense. I knew they used another brand, and just wanted to be sure they had one of our kind when we got there. So he comes out just a minute or two before kickoff and says, 'Hey, Pete, this is the only Wilson we had," and pitches me this beat-up old thing with the cover peeling and the seams busting out. He got a big kick out of it. Then he told me he had already given a new Wilson to the referee. Imagine. Here I am in the playoffs for the first time, nervous as all get-out, and he's playing jokes and laughing up a storm because he's been there so many times before he knows he's gonna swamp you before the afternoon's over."

At age 56, chances are that Gordon Wood isn't likely to see the day when he occupies the head-coaching chair at some major college. World War II, he feels, may have cheated him out of that. Two years into his first head-coaching job at Rule, the Japanese, apparently not engrossed in the outcome of the District 8-B football race, bombed Pearl Harbor and Wood left the Rule Bobcats for the U.S. Navy.

"I'll always believe the real years for my advancement would have been the time I spent in the service," he says in a matter-of-fact tone which now hints of neither regret nor bitterness. "Tugboat Jones [a revered if not poetic name in Texas schoolboy coaching circles] took over my job there at Rule, and when I got back he was coaching at Wichita Falls High, one of the biggest schools in the state." So Chief Petty Officer Gordon Wood, faced with the realization that if he hoped to continue coaching it meant starting all over again in some other dusty little West Texas town, loaded his duffel bag aboard a bus and headed for Roscoe, Texas.

At the end of last season Brownwood Lawyer Henry Evans sat in one of the back booths at the Palace Drug, rehashing the holiday bowl outcomes and remarking on the respective coaching genius of men like Bear Bryant and Woody Hayes and Darrell Royal.

Rodger Sweeney, owner of the drugstore and public-address announcer for the Lions' games, listened intently. Then he pointed out that he personally would like to see the whole lot of them bring some of their $30,000 genius down here to the high school football ranks, where you have to make do with a 147-pound fullback with something less than blazing speed, and see how many championships they could stack up.

"Darrell was here to speak at our football banquet a few years ago," Sweeney observed, "and he said that in his estimation the best coaching being done in the country was by high school coaches. Particularly those in Texas."

The people of Brownwood couldn't have agreed more, which is why they finished their own season with a "Gordon Wood Day" complete with gifts, proclamations, much backslapping and a dinner at the downtown coliseum. Players, ex-players, civic leaders and local politicians gushed praise.

Groner Pitts, the man who had engineered the celebration, observed, "Shoot. Every day since he came here has been Gordon Wood Day. This one just happens to be official." It seemed clear that Gordon Wood could, if he so chose, run for mayor. And win by two touchdowns.