John Boozman set spring precedent at Arkansas

John Boozman enrolled prior to Arkansas' spring practice in 1969.

— December high school graduates at Arkansas as January enrollees ahead of their freshman football class have a U.S. senator’s empathy.

For before he represented (and last November was reelected) to represent Arkansas in the U.S. Senate and 10 years previously represented Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boozman was a Razorback. Boozman was an early-bird Razorback, arriving in January while the rest of his 1969 freshman class was still finishing high school.

“It was kind of the first time anybody had done it,” Boozman said.

At least during his era.

An outstanding but injury-plagued football tenure at Fort Smith Northside timed Boozman to be eligible to enroll at UA in January.

“When I was in high school, I had a ruptured spleen when I was a sophomore towards the end of the year,” Boozman said. “And when I was a junior in spring training, I tore one of my hamstrings. Much later on, as they started having the imaging testing and all that stuff, it literally had torn the hamstring and pulled the bone loose. When I pulled it, you could literally hear it pop. It was a major deal and it never really did get well.”

But he played on in high school until absolutely compelled to stop. Then he played again.

“I pulled it again the first day of practice my senior year, so as a result, I just couldn’t go, “ Boozman said. “I was young for my class; I wouldn’t have turned 17 until December. So I wound up sitting out the semester and came back and played.”

Despite his numerous injuries, Boozman’s play at linebacker so caught the eye of Frank Broyles and his Arkansas coaching staff that they signed and enrolled him for that January on the heels of the Razorbacks’ 1968 Sugar Bowl triumph over Georgia.

“It’s a common thing now,” Boozman said of freshmen joining the team in January. “But back then, they didn’t know what to do with me.”

Back then, freshmen were eligible only to play on the freshman team. It potentially made Boozman a team of one until the rest of his class arrived.

There have been mixed results with January-enrolled football freshmen. Some do fine. Others struggle, whether with homesickness and adjusting socially without classmates’ peer support or adjusting to the physical grind of the offseason conditioning and spring practice.

Boozman did fine.

Physically, he was almost prepared. The intensity of the offseason and in-season regimes of legendary Fort Smith Northside coach Bill Stancil were equalled or surpassed in Arkansas high school football lore only by the even more legendary Wilson Matthews at Little Rock Central.

“I was blessed to play for Coach Stancil,” Boozman said. “He made me a much better athlete than I ever dreamed of, a much better player and a better person. We worked really hard and won a lot of football games because we were tougher physically and mentally than the other team. He was exactly like Wilson Matthews. They were good friends and really had come through it the same way. I think both had been at Arkansas Tech (under Arkansas Tech coaching legend John Tucker) and both of them had been in the service. They were tough guys.”

So the January freshman arrived unafraid of the Razorbacks’ offseason condition regime, even if it was supervised by Matthews. He was more associate athletic director and Razorback Foundation administrator by then and not coaching linebackers for Broyles like he did from 1958-67, but Matthews still coached the freshman team and oversaw the fourth quarter offseason conditioning preceding spring practice.

“I knew wherever I went, it couldn’t be any harder,” Boozman said. “I was wrong. Because at Arkansas with Coach Matthews, it was every bit as hard.”

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AP

U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., speaks in front of the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., Tuesday, May 26, 2015.

Even harder because they weren’t college kids but collegians, all of whom had been at Arkansas through a freshman team fall and already had been initiated by Matthews.

“You heard the stories of him literally welcoming the freshmen and by the time that it was over, maybe a couple of them were getting in their cars and driving home,” Boozman said. “They didn’t really know whether they wanted to be there or not.”

Especially if they screwed up, like not paying attention to the different colored practice jerseys spelling out the pecking order in those days of virtually unlimited football rosters.

“I remember someone came in with the wrong color jersey and Coach Matthews just literally ripped it off the individual,” Boozman recalled. “Tore it up, threw it aside, screamed some more and the guy ran in and got the jersey he was supposed to have and that was never a problem again.”

Boozman mostly escaped such initiation. Being the only freshman in winter got him through as one of the guys rather than the freshmen singled out when they reported as a full class in August.

A winter offseason and spring practice with the Razorbacks hardened him to impress the most heralded of his Razorbacks freshman class and perhaps of any Razorbacks class before or since.

“In my freshman class, the guy that everybody knew was Joe Ferguson,” Boozman said. “He was the star of the class.”

Ferguson’s rifle arm set Louisiana high school passing records in Shreveport and at Arkansas from 1970-72 before moving on to a 17-year NFL career.

Yet at first sight, to hear Ferguson tell it, Boozman more impressed Ferguson than Ferguson impressed Boozman.

“When we moved into the dorm our freshman year, Jim Hodge (a renowned incoming freshman receiver from Shreveport) and I drove up together and we came in the back door of the dormitory,” Ferguson recalled. “We look up the stairs. There was this huge guy standing there looking down at us. Jim and I looked at each other and said, ‘We may be in the wrong place.’ He really wasn’t one of the biggest guys once we saw the linemen, but he looked huge to us. I weighed about 165 and Jim was about 150 and our first introductory into the new dormitory was John Boozman.”

Ferguson said he learned fast he had nothing off the field to fear, but much to learn if he listened to the soft-spoken 218-pound linebacker who grew into a 240-pounder lettering as a backup offensive tackle in 1971 and ’72.

“John was always one of the quiet, smart guys,” Ferguson said. “Very intelligent guy who was a good leader by example. A good guy, easy to talk to and quiet talking. He was one of the guys you could trust to get things done and work hard and be a leader on the football team.”

Boozman was a leader for that freshman class since he was the only one to have weathered winter conditioning and spring practice. He was also the only freshman on the upperclassmen floor of the dorm.

“It really helped me because I was an anomaly living on the second floor,” Boozman said. “That group was a very, very tough group but really very, very nice. I think they almost felt sorry for me and took care of me.”

With no other freshmen around, he roomed with another Fort Smith native.

“They put me with Dick Bumpas, who had just been the outstanding lineman in the Sugar Bowl game,” Boozman said “He was a Southside grad and I roomed with him on the second floor. Dick had helped recruit me. Dick was a very smart guy and a good student, and had a great career.”

Bumpas, a three-year starter, was a 1970 All-American and longtime assistant coach with stints at Arkansas, Notre Dame, Houston, Tennessee and Navy, among others. He retired after serving from 2004-15 as defensive coordinator for Gary Patterson at TCU, where he was a three-time Broyles Award finalist.

“Rooming with Dick, I got to know a lot of the upperclassmen,” Boozman said.

Boozman played on the freshman team in 1969 and redshirted in 1970 when the hamstring injuries reoccurred, as they would throughout his career.

“I kept tearing them and wrapping them in Ace bandages,” Boozman said. “Then I needed shoulder surgery on my left arm, so I didn’t play my senior year. I was married and I got accepted to optometry school (he practiced optometry for 24 years before being elected to Congress). I was a journeyman guy and had paid my dues, and I certainly wasn’t going to play professional football. There wasn’t any hope of that all.

“Besides, if I had stayed in 1973, they brought in all those quality linemen — R.C. Thielemann, Greg Koch and Gerald Skinner.”

Each of those three started as true freshmen in 1973. They were NFL-bound after forming the line for Broyles’ last Southwest Conference championship team in 1975.

Though a self-described “journeyman,” Boozman wouldn’t trade anything for his pride in being a Razorback and the relationships he formed, like with the late Jon Richardson, Arkansas’ first scholarship black football player. Richardson signed out of Horace Mann in Little Rock with Boozman’s 1969 freshman class.

“I knew him very well,” Boozman said. “He was a good friend. Jon was pre-dental and I was pre-dental. We had a lot of classes together. We actually played Horace Mann the last year I was at Northside. Jon was a great athlete. I believe he was No. 1 in his class grade-wise at Horace Mann, a very intelligent guy, a very, very nice person and very well-liked. Later as integration progressed, the Northside guys played a big role. Almer Lee (1969-70 and ’71-72) came in basketball. And (1972-75 defensive end) Ivan Jordan. Ivan was a great athlete and good person. He was a Coach Stancil protege.”

As for coaches, Boozman played for and practiced under some of the greats of the game. Under Broyles were Joe Gibbs, Arkansas’ offensive line coach before becoming a Pro Football Hall of Fame and Super Bowl champion head coach with the Washington Redskins; Richard Williamson, who also went on to become an NFL head coach; Don Breaux, Gibbs’ top assistant at Washington; Harold Horton, a two-time national champion head coach at the University of Central Arkansas; and Raymond Berry, the Baltimore Colts’ Hall of Fame receiver and later head coach of the New England Patriots.

“It was great playing for him,” Boozman said of Broyles. “He always amazed me how he knew all of us. He struck me as someone who was chairman of the board, delegated responsibility and was not afraid of having very strong personalities around him, people who were every bit as smart and every bit as gifted as he was.”

Boozman said that’s a trait he sees in true leadership.

“I tell our people all the time that we are a lot smarter as a group than we are individually,” Boozman said. “And if you did your job, he left you alone. If you weren’t successful, then there was a problem. And he was very willing to try new things. He went to a totally different offense with Joe Ferguson.”

Gibbs and Berry are among the most unassuming individuals ever inducted to any Hall of Fame, Boozman believes.

“Joe Gibbs was the offensive line coach my last two years and Don Breaux was also there, and Raymond Berry was the wide receiver coach and just as nice as he could be,” Boozman said. “Gibbs was a very thoughtful guy, very soft-spoken and very smart.”

And at least once, he was very angry. Like all at Arkansas, Gibbs raged during and after the infamous 1971 Liberty Bowl loss in Memphis to Tennessee with officiating still caustically recalled by all Razorbacks involved.

“I can remember Coach Gibbs chasing the officials and they ran through the chain link fence gate,” Boozman said. “He was that upset and he was a pretty mild-mannered guy. We just got a couple of terrible calls to the point that after that game, I believe they changed how they selected officials for bowl games, bringing in neutral officials from other associations.”

Stories abound of Arkansas offensive lineman Tom Reed recovering an Arkansas fumble and handing the ball to an official who handed it to Tennessee. Even that, Boozman said, was egregiously surpassed by an Arkansas field goal voided by a holding penalty.

“That’s the first time I had ever seen (a holding penalty on a place-kick) called,” Boozman said. “And I don’t think I have seen that called anytime since. Because all you do on the blocking is step to the inside.”

This story was originally published in Hawgs Illustrated