Cantrell, Chaucer, and the 1922 Dixie Classic

by Walter Lawrence ’72

The Praying Colonels vs. Texas A&M in the Dixie Classic, Jan. 2, 1922.
It was Centre’s only loss of the season, but the game led to an A&M
tradition of standing for games that continues to this day.

I took a course in Chaucer from Dr. Paul Cantrell the winter term of my senior year. One gray February afternoon, he puzzled us all with his notion that the pilgrims from London to Canterbury would have ended up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district had their journey been a straight and infinite line. He used a wall map and a yardstick to prove it.

“All endeavors have paths and lines, Mr. Lawrence, even football,” he said. For some reason, Dr. Cantrell always thought I played varsity gridiron. (In fact, I wrestled).

I grew up in Texas during the fifties and sixties at the edge of the Edwards Plateau in the rolling hill country of Bexar County. My dad was a veterinarian in San Antonio, and my mother taught junior high nearby. Dad was, by his own admission, not an athlete. He preferred the more contemplative pastimes. But for three summers running my dad coordinated field activities of local YMCA baseball. Team uniforms were old jeans and tee shirts that matched. The big deal every night was passing the hat between games to pay for the field lights.

One particularly hot evening, a big fight broke out in the stands. The antagonists were the fathers of some of my teammates. A few were even my dad’s clients. They chose that muggy evening to relive a controversial fourth-quarter referee’s call in the Texas Christian-Texas game played the previous September. The favored Texas got neither the call nor the win; the Longhorns lost by three points. Opinions followed team loyalties, but Horned Frog fans were greatly outnumbered that night. It was a poor footnote to good sportsmanship. Dad remarked later, “Around here, it’s more than just a game.”

I had that night in mind the first time I watched Centre play football in Farris Stadium. The Boyle County High School band was marching at halftime. Somehow, I didn’t see myself duking it out in later years with some Sewanee alum over the likes of that game.

After graduation, I began my career in Atlanta. In this town, home to countless SEC and ACC grads, one is expected to declare one’s football allegiance, so that rival tribes may know whom to torture on successive Mondays. Forget the laughable local pro teams.

I stuck to Centre, even singing the fight song on several occasions. It got me by. Then in 1990, Billy Benham joined my staff. “Wild Bill” was from Houston and an outspoken recent graduate of Texas A&M. He delighted in questioning my decision to seek higher education outside of Texas, but was comforted by the notion that I likely would not have been an Aggie. I regaled him with stories of Bo McMillin ’22, Harvard, and the Praying Colonels. He merely harrumphed. “That legend’s a little thin, hoss. At least we got the Twelfth Man.”

The 12th Man tradition began when Aggies of old were playing a tough opponent in a post-season game. They had lost most of their players and reserves to injury, and called upon a student volunteer from the stands to don a uniform in case he was needed to help finish the game. In the end, A&M prevailed, and the tradition began that the crowd would stand—each member ready to step in as the “12th man”—for every Aggie game thereafter.

It’s not a bad story, but it’s not like they had three All-Americans in the same backfield (as did the Praying Colonels).

I got Legend of the Praying Colonels by John Y. Brown for my birthday one year. It depicts the exploits of Bo McMillin and his teammates during their heyday. It also gives the schedules and scores for all those years. Centre defeated some very well-known teams, particularly in the South, for several years running.

And there it was in black and white. On Jan. 2, 1922, having beaten Harvard in that fabled game—and every other opponent that season—Centre lost 14-22 to Texas A&M in Dallas in the Dixie Classic (later renamed the Cotton Bowl). It was during that game that the Aggies’ 12th Man tradition began.

Paul Cantrell had been right all along. My path from Texas had crossed my path from Centre in the Dallas Dixie Classic the day the 12th Man was born. I’ve never said a word to anyone.

Please, don’t tell Wild Bill.

An English and history major at Centre, Walter Lawrence ’72 is now a CPA in Woodstock, Ga. He loves to ski and kayak and recently rediscovered his love of writing. His e-mail address is tw.lawrence@hotmail.com.

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