Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football

Chapter OneFAITH IN GOD AND FOOTBALLGod created college football as a grand gift to an imperfect world. I learned this as a very small boy living in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. There the horizon runs unbroken, separating the sky from the vast plains that sit at the top of the Caprock Escarpment, 3,500 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. There is nothing but barbed wire to resist the chill winter winds sweeping south from the Rocky Mountains. My grandfather often said the reason so many kids from the area served in the navy was because the Panhandle, which is sheet-metal flat with barely a tree to interrupt the sunsets, has the same horizon as the open sea.Into this landscape, the good people of the Panhandle carved out a stadium to accommodate the West Texas State University Buffalo foot-ball team. West Texas State, WT for short, consecrated the Buffalo Bowl on September 26, 1959, just outside the small college town of Canyon. The bowl was built into one of the only natural valleys in the Panhandle, which obviated the need to build grandstand supports since the concrete could be poured downhill into the perfect concave mold. The stadium was equipped with electrical outlets under every other seat in the east-side chairback section, enabling any fan with an extension cord to make coffee and toast, listen to the call on the Buffalo radio network, huddle under an electric blanket, and watch television and the game at the same time. Such futuristic thinking made our stadium state of the art long before the luxury suite was invented. Senator Lyndon B.Johnson himself came to the grand opening. The stadium cozily accommodated 20,000 and on a fall Saturday night, despite the amenities, was usually half full, at best. The Buffalo Bowl's official name was later changed to Kimbrough Memorial Stadium, but nobody ever called it that, which was a shame, seeing as Frank Kimbrough was a fine football coach and athletic director, with the good sense to pass on at a point when his reputation was fresh and the administration needed someone to name a stadium after.In 1973, when I was six, I saw my first football game there. The Buffs defeated Drake, 1310, in the season opener. The victory was one of only two for the Buffaloes in the entire seasonthe Buffs had a lot of seasons like thatbut it nevertheless marked the beginning of a lifelong devotion to an ever-changing roster of college kids achieving sometimes remarkable, breathtaking victory and other times hugely disappointing and depressing loss on the gridiron.In time I would come to believe that college football contained all of the joy, faith, pageantry, feeling, failure, and renewal that any person could hope for out of life. Even my faith in God would become inter-twined with my faith in football. Though God was not likely amused by this, I believed that there was no greater test of faith than to tie oneself to the fortunes of a college football team. It's no accident that the fans of any particular squad are called "the faithful." I was faithful to the West Texas Buffaloes as a child and, later, after I put away childish things, to the great Texas Longhorns. My faith in college football carried me through life, death, and divorce. And to redemption. College football showed me that the divine will could be realized on 120 yards of freshly manicured turf. I find that most of my important memories project through the Technicolor prism of stadium Saturdays. Passions evoked by college football flowed through generations of my family, tying us all together. It bound me to my grandparents, parents, wife, sons, and a group of remarkable friends collectively known as the Lone Star Drinking Club. I believed in college football. My belief that a game could be a tonic to overcome all of life's troubles originated with my grandfather, who the old Buffaloes referred to as "Bulldog," and with my mom,Jones, Adam is the author of 'Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football' with ISBN 9780312373696 and ISBN 0312373694.