Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame

Cadillac of a coach

Wyatt getting due for elevating ‘25 Little Pigs’ even after driving off with a shiny new reward

Arkansas Razorbacks coach Bowden Wyatt

A little more than 60 years after Bowden Wyatt drove his new Cadillac across the Mississippi River to Tennessee, the former Razorbacks football coach is being welcomed back to Arkansas.

Wyatt, who coached the Razorbacks to an unexpected Southwest Conference championship in 1954 and then a week after the Cotton Bowl left to become Tennessee’s coach, is being posthumously inducted into the Arkansas Sports of Hall as part of the 2015 class.

The induction ceremony will take place during a banquet Feb. 27 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. True

Wyatt died in 1969 from viral pneumonia. He was 51.

Grateful fans were so thrilled by the Razorbacks’ SWC title in Wyatt’s second season

— Arkansas hadn’t finished higher than fifth in the previous seven seasons — that they held a fund-raising drive as a reward and to hopefully keep him as their coach.

More than $20,000 was raised for Wyatt and his assistant coaches in a two-week period before the Cotton Bowl, and fans presented him with a 1955 Cadillac.

When Wyatt accepted the job at Tennessee — where he was an All-American end for Coach Robert Neyland — and took the Cadillac with him, many Arkansas fans expressed outrage.

According to a report in Sports Illustrated at the time, the Arkansas Senate introduced a resolution to serve as official criticism and censure of Wyatt “for his act of faithlessness, disloyalty and lack of consideration for the people of Arkansas.”

The Wyatt resolution died in committee and never made it to a vote. The senate instead passed a resolution publicly praising Wyatt and the team for winning Arkansas’ first outright SWC title since 1936.

Wyatt said leaving Arkansas for Tennessee was “the toughest decision I ever had to make,” according to The Razorbacks, a book by Orville Henry and Jim Bailey.

“I thought about it and thought about it,” Wyatt said. “Finally I had to make up my mind, and I decided if I ever was going to the job I always wanted, I’d better go now.”

The Razorbacks were picked to finish last in the SWC in 1954 after a 3-7 finish in Wyatt’s first season. But they went 8-3 — including a 14-7 loss to Georgia Tech in the Cotton Bowl — and were ranked No. 10 in The Associated Press final poll after being as high as No. 4.

“A lot of people around the state had really hard feelings when Coach Wyatt left for Tennessee, because they had just gotten the money together to buy him a Cadillac,” said George Walker, a Hogs running back and safety in 1954. “But when people brought that up to me, I told them, if Coach Wyatt had said before the season, ‘If y’all will buy me a Cadillac, I’ll promise you a Southwest Conference championship,’ fans would have bought him three or four Cadillacs.

“Bowden Wyatt did something for our state at a time when we needed something like that very, very bad.”

Walker is among the surviving members of “The 25 Little Pigs” — as the 1954 team came to be known through attrition — who are thrilled their coach is being inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

“I never totally gave up hope it could happen, but it was a wonderful revelation when I found out Coach Wyatt had enough votes to get in the Hall of Fame this year,” said Eddie Bradford, a senior lineman on the 1954 Razorbacks. “I would have carried my efforts to the grave trying to help him get in.”

Floyd Goodson, Wyatt’s grandson, is traveling from his home in Florida to represent Wyatt at the Hall of Fame banquet and meet several members of the 1954 Razorbacks who will be in attendance.

“I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” Goodson said. “There’s no way I would turn down the chance to be there with my grandfather’s players at Arkansas, the guys who meant so much to him.

“This is really more about his players than it is about me. I know they’ve been pulling for him all these years to get this last honor.”

Wyatt is already one of three men inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and coach. The other two are Amos Alonzo Stagg and Bobby Dodd.

Wyatt also is a member of the University of Wyoming Hall of Fame and Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. He had a 39-17-1 record with two Mountain States Conference titles as Wyoming’s coach in 1947-1952 before Arkansas Athletic Director John Barnhill — a Tennessee assistant when Wyatt played for the Volunteers — hired him at Arkansas to replace Otis Douglas.

When Wyatt drove his Cadillac to Tennessee, The Associated Press reported he had driven a pickup truck from Wyoming to Arkansas.

The Razorbacks were 9-21 under Douglas in 1950-1952, and Wyatt set about changing the culture at Arkansas during spring practices in 1953.

“We learned right off that bat that he was a very tough person and he had a great ability to demand the same thing of his players,” Bradford said. “Between the time he arrived here and our first game in 1953, there were about 60 guys that kind of just disappeared.

“Some of them left in the middle of the night and didn’t even take their clothes. They were so embarrassed because they couldn’t adjust to the stringent practices we had and the long hours.

“Probably every one of us at one time or another wondered if we could stand it. The guys who did stay, we recognized ourselves as survivors.”

Bradford said the coaches carried leather straps they sometimes used on players in practice.

“I guess coaches today would be put in jail if they did stuff like that,” Bradford said. “But they’d jump on your back and get you off the ground real quick.”

“We only won three games, but we played everybody tough,” Bill Fuller, a lineman for the Razorbacks in 1953-1955, said of the 1953 team. “We beat you up.

“We beat each other up in practice, so when you got to the game, it wasn’t anything new. We just put the hammer down and it finally paid off in ’54.”

The 1954 Razorbacks opened SEC play with a 20-13 victory at TCU, and it marked the first time they had won in the state of Texas since 1946. They beat Texas in Austin for the first time in 17 years. The next week, Arkansas beat Ole Miss 6-0 in Little Rock using “The Powder River Play,” a trick pass Wyatt brought from Wyoming.

Buddy Bob Benson, known as a running quarterback, caught Ole Miss by surprise with a 66-yard touchdown pass to Preston Carpenter off a fake sweep.

The Arkansas-Ole Miss game drew an overflow crowd of 38,000 to War Memorial Stadium, the Razorbacks’ first sellout crowd there.

“For the first time in that ‘54 season, we started selling out the stadiums in Fayetteville and Little Rock,” Fuller said. “Before that, Arkansas would have 10,000 or 15,000 at the most. Now the stadiums were completely filled with 35,000 plus.”

Bradford, Fuller and Walker — all Arkansas natives — credit Wyatt with making the Razorbacks a team that gained statewide support, creating the foundation for the national powerhouse Frank Broyles built when he coached Arkansas in 1958-1976.

“Coach Wyatt stirred up the whole state,” Walker said. “He really got things rolling.”

Broyles said in a 2004 interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the Razorbacks’ victory over Ole Miss in 1954 transformed the program.

“I believe that game is the most meaningful win for the Razorbacks since World War II,” Broyles said. “It showed Arkansas’ potential and gave a major boost to recruiting.”

Fuller said Wyatt knew how to inspire young men and get the best of out them

“He was like another father to most everybody,” Fuller said.

Bradford laughed when asked how the players felt about Wyatt during the grueling spring practices in 1953.

“It was pretty hard to like somebody that was kicking your butt at the time and was a threat to your existence. But every person that played any length of time for Coach Wyatt developed a love and an appreciation for him,” Bradford said. “We respected him so much, and we all wanted to earn his respect, too.”

Several players recalled Wyatt disciplined Bud Brooks, the 1954 Outland Trophy winner, after catching him smoking a cigarette. Wyatt made Brooks move from the athletic dorm to a barracks — which had only a stove for heating and a leaky roof — built on the Arkansas campus during World War II.

“Coach Wyatt’s rules applied to Bud just like they did to anybody else,” Fuller said. “The way he administered discipline was absolute, and that registers with the players and builds trust.

“If Coach Wyatt told you things were going to be a certain way, you knew you could believe him and that it was the best thing for the team.”

Walker said the 1954 Razorbacks rarely had more talent than their opponents, but won because they were so well conditioned by Wyatt.

“He promised us if we could keep the game close in the fourth quarter we could win it, and we did,” Walker said.

“Bowden did the best job of coaching with less material than anybody I ever saw,” Barnhill said in The Razorbacks.

Johnny Majors, an assistant on Arkansas’ 1964 team that went 11-0 and won a share of the national championship, played for Wyatt at Tennessee and was a senior on the Vols’ 10-1 SEC championship team in 1956.

“I remember Coach Wyatt driving the Cadillac he got from the Arkansas fans,” Majors said. “It was two-tone. I forget the exact colors, but it was a good-looking car.

“I don’t blame him for bringing it with him to Tennessee. He led Arkansas to a great season, and the fans gave him the Cadillac in appreciation.

“I’ve talked to several hundred Razorback fans through the years that knew Bowden Wyatt, and I don’t remember anyone bad-mouthing him because he left. I can tell you the majority of them were very, very appreciative of what he did at Arkansas.”

Wyatt addressed the Razorbacks after he accepted the Tennessee job.

“It was really a sad time,” Fuller said. “His message basically was that he hated to leave, but he had to go for the opportunity to coach at his home school where he played.

“We found later Tennessee had put the pressure on him, either take the job now or never.”

Majors said Wyatt was a man of action and didn’t like to do a lot talking.

“He wasn’t long-winded,” Majors said. “He always got the point he was making very fast, and got your attention whenever he spoke.

“Coach Wyatt was tall, good-looking and had a very commanding presence. When he walked into a room, everyone else paid attention.”

For one more night, Wyatt will hold the room’s attention when he’s inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Bowden Wyatt at a glance

BORN Oct. 4, 1917, in Kingston, Tenn. DIED Jan. 21, 1969 (age 51,) in Kingston, Tenn. Cause of death was viral pneumonia.

AS COLLEGE PLAYER Three-year starter at end for Tennessee in 1936-1938. Played for teams that combined for a 23-5-3 record. Consensus All-American and team captain in 1938 when Tennessee finished 11-0 with a 17-0 Orange Bowl victory over Oklahoma in the Volunteers’ first bowl game.

AS COLLEGE COACH Mississippi State assistant coach 1939-1942 and 1946 (served as Navy Lieutenant during World War II). Wyoming head coach 1947-1952 (39-17-1 record with two Mountains States Conference titles). Arkansas head coach 1953-1954 (11-10 record with one Southwest Conference title). Tennessee head coach 1955-1962 (49-29-4 with one SEC title). Oklahoma State assistant 1964-1965.

HEAD COACHING RECORD 99-56-5.