Volume 6, No. 9

MAKING A WISH If I could step back in time, Jarrin' John would be the player I'd want to see first By Homer Jacobs

I’m in a good place right now, a happy place – somewhere before age 40 and past 25. I write about Aggie athletics for a living, I have my health and my SUV is paid off.

But if I could change things, maybe take a step back in time, there are a few places I’d like to go, a few people I’d like to meet. There are some Texas A&M games I wish I’d attended and some stories I wish I had the privilege to write.

I wish I had seen John Kimbrough run.

John Kimbrough's legendary career took place on and off the field.

Since Rusty’s Burson’s amazing tale of Jarrin’ John that published in 12^th Man Magazine five years ago, this guy has had me mesmerized.

Everything from his bigger-than-life game to his bigger-than-life, Hollywood appearance has me star-struck.

John David Crow – A&M’s only Heisman Trophy winner – will tell you in a heartbeat that Mr. Aggie Football is not himself, but was and still is John Kimbrough.

Not only did Kimbrough lead the Aggies to the national title in 1939, finish second in the Heisman voting, but the guy was a movie and advertisement star.

If Kimbrough was playing today, with all the national media and television exposure, Chris Simms would have made a total of zero magazine covers in the summer of 2001.

And, there would be two Heisman Trophies greeting you in the new A&M sports museum.

I wish I had attended the 1975 football game vs. Texas and the 1989 game vs. Houston at Kyle Field.

The 1975 game had to be one of those chilling, you-should-have-been-there kind of games. No, there wasn’t a ton of scoring, but the magnitude and stakes of the game were as high as any Texas game in the 108-year history of the rivalry.

No. 2 A&M was undefeated and playing a once-beaten and fifth-ranked Texas. The Aggies turned back the Horns for the first time since 1967 and jumped on the path to a possible national title had Arkansas not stood in the way.

One regret is never having run for a yell leader spot.

Yes, the Hogs ruined the dream season in a made-for-TV matchup a week later, but for that one glorious day, the Aggies – as Sports Illustrated so aptly proclaimed on its cover – staked their claim.

And the 1989 Houston game was perhaps the Wrecking Crew’s shining moment, as a blitzing, havoc-wreaking band of man-to-man maniacs took out the Cougars, 17-13.

Houston came to Kyle Field with its glitzy run-and-shoot, a prelude to today’s spread offenses. R.C. Slocum asked for deafening noise from the fans, and he got it.

This time, Sports Illustrated called it the "Lid-lifter in Texas," as the Aggies took Houston and Andre Ware’s helmet hostage.

I wish I had been Mickey Herskowitz.

The cub reporter for the Houston Post drew the assignment of a lifetime – covering Bear Bryant and the trip to Junction in 1954.

OK, so I might have been stuck rooming with Billy Pickard in a dusty and musty bunkhouse, but man, the stories you could tell today.

And maybe, just maybe, I could have lived the lives those Aggies have since that fateful trip. There are more self-made, successful, rich and famous Aggies that took the beating from the Bear than any group of college athletes that ever put on the pads together.

And on my tombstone, it could read:

"Went out on two buses and came back in one."

I wish I had been a yell leader.

Trust me… after years of practicing in front of the mirror, the mechanics were there. I just didn’t think a non-reg could win the popular vote.

But can you imagine the rush those guys feel when an entire stadium responds to a few hand gestures?

Walking into midnight yell practice with a torch in one hand and a girl in the other… the men in white have it made.

I wish I could have been in the locker room after the Aggies stunned Kansas State in 1998 for the Big 12 title.

The sequence of events that had to happen for A&M to win that game is still mind-boggling. And so many different players, some with hard-luck careers, came to together for a perfect moment.

A&M could play football another 100 years and may never see a fourth quarter and overtime like what unfolded in St. Louis.

That 1998 was a team with incredible chemistry and heart, and the final minutes were R.C. Slocum’s finest moments as a coach.

It was a total team effort, and the team’s emotions were evident in the postgame chaos… if only the locker room had been open that special night.

I wish Ben McDonald had not played for the LSU baseball team in 1989, and I wish Darrell Griffith had not played for Louisville’s basketball team in 1980.

I wish the Texas was game on Thanksgiving night, and I wish Texas Tech was anywhere but Lubbock.

And, finally, I wish that I am still standing in 2055, having seen Kyle Field grow from an 80,000-seat stadium to a five-deck, totally-enclosed monstrosity that seats 150,000.

If so, then I would have led a similar life to that of Ernest Williams. This classy, Class of ’33 Aggie saw his first A&M football game at Kyle Field in 1929.

The stadium had just been completed, and Williams witnessed his first live football game of his young life. He’s hasn’t strayed far from Aggie football since.

Although there was the time in 1939, when Williams’ job as a county agent took him to the Sanderson area of West Texas. He couldn’t see Jarrin’ John Kimbrough bowl over would-be tacklers, but he and a few friends would climb to the highest point they could find on a desolate mountaintop so they could hear their Aggies on the radio.

Since his first trip to Kyle Field in ’29, Williams has seen the stadium transform itself from a one-deck horseshoe to a double-decked dandy in the 1960s to a three-decked monster in the 1980s.

And he was a weekly visitor to the construction site to marvel as the Bernard C. Richardson Zone at Kyle Field shot to the sky.

Williams recently asked me if he could come by and check out the inside of The Zone, where I’m fortunate enough to office.

After the visit, all I could think about is what it would be like to be Mr. Williams.

I wish, too, that I could have seen it all.

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