Pursuit Of A Big Blue Chipper

By now the Mildrens were not only in the dazzling social world of being entertained constantly by coaches and alumni, but Jack was regularly receiving calls and letters from great players he had heard about forever, all of them urging him to attend a different university. He got them at the rate of 10 or 15 per day from the likes of Bob Lilly, Adrian Burk, Doak Walker, Tommy Nobis, Kyle Rote, a sort of Texas Hall of Fame on long distance.

One evening the phone rang and Jack answered, fully expecting it to be another assistant coach. It wasn't at all.

"Jack," a husky voice said. "This is Johnny Unitas."

"Huh," said Jack, followed by a couple of gulps.

"I just wanted to call and put in a good word for my old friend John Bridgers at Baylor," Unitas said. "If you're as good as John says you are, then you're probably thinking about playing pro football someday."

Jack said y-yeah, h-he guessed he was, maybe.

"Well, you can't play college ball for a better coach if you want to be a pro quarterback," said Unitas. "You give Baylor some thought now, O.K.?"

Mildren said he would, and thanks very much for calling John, er, Mr. Unitas, er, well, thankee. Thankee very much. Yes, sir, Mister, uh. Thankee.

It is not easy to sell Baylor, because the Bears have not won the Southwest Conference in 43 years, and it is a very Baptist school, and Waco, Texas is not Beverly Hills. In fact, Waco almost has to get two-up a side from Salado, which at least has a dandy restaurant called the Stagecoach Inn. For a while, however, John Unitas had Jack Mildren thinking about Baylor.

One by one, all of the head coaches got to Abilene. Jack heard Texas Tech's J. T. King emphasize the big money ex-Red Raider Donny Anderson had got from the Green Bay Packers, and Larry, the father, heard King explain how Anderson's dad was also on the Packer payroll at $12,000 a year, if that was any kind of inducement. J.T. said that one of the nice things about Tech is that a boy can walk right in and see the president. Which you sure can't do somewhere like the University of Texas, he said. The Mildrens listened to Houston's Bill Yeoman talk about his unique option play and why it's better to play in the Astrodome. They heard Rice's Bo Hagan stress education ahead of football, primarily, they suspected, because Rice has not won a conference title since 1957.