I was 11 years old in 1981, and around that time got an invitation to the coolest birthday party. David Groff’s birthday would be held at Kyle Field, and we were all gonna play football. What do I remember about that day? The memories are increasingly vague. The field was wet, Rob Prall scored a TD, and the old school astroturf was not kind to the knees. Turf toe? I had turf everything after my one and only football appearance at Kyle. Those good ol’ days of kids playing on iconic Texas fields are likely over.
That same year, Larry Kramer (h/t Sandra Kramer) led Austin College to an NAIA D2 national championship. Y’all know the story. What that 1981 Kangaroo season lacked in Kyle Field size, it made up for in Kyle Field drama. The crossbar, people, the crossbar. Kramer left AC for Emporia State (KS) in 1983, and then joined former Roo Bill Snyder at Kansas State in 1995.
Van Hargis was a running back on that 1981 team. He wrote the following about Kramer after one particular practice:
“I learned a great deal that day. I learned I had a man behind me 100% that believed in me. I learned that I was a bigger back than what I was playing like. I learned I could do that which I feared. I learned to do my job and play my role. The mission was more than me. The list goes on. Coach Kramer converted me that day from a talent to a champion. I joined the ranks of the other Austin College champions that day even though it was several weeks later before we proved it to everyone else. I’m thinking Coach Kramer made champions and men out of us one at a time but figured out how to get us all to play as one champion.”
How in the world was David Groff able to pull off a game at Kyle for his birthday? Well he probably got some assistance from his Pop. David’s father was Wally Groff, the Athletic Director (AD) at Texas A&M.
Texas A&M has a long list of ADs in its athletics history since the 19th century. R.C. Slocum, John David Crow, Jackie Sherrill, Emory Bellard, Gene Stallings, and Bear Bryant are a few names which need no introduction. Joe Utay? You might be less familiar with him.
Utay became the A&M AD in 1912. That year, he scheduled Kansas State football for the first time in Aggie history. He also scheduled Austin College football for the eighth time in Aggie history. That makes sense; AC has been around forever. In 1913, both teams were back. Austin College fell to Texas A&M by a 6-0 score at Kyle Field. Three weeks later, the Aggies were upset 12-0 by KSU on the same field. Utay retired after the 1913 season, and became a collegiate referee. Over the next 25 years, he officiated countless Austin College football games; his name appears time and time again in Roo football box scores.
For 83 years, Kansas State didn’t travel back to College Station. The formation of the Big XII conference, however, ended that streak. In 1996, former Roo Bill Snyder was in the middle of the “greatest turnaround in college football history” in Manhattan. He and former Roo Kramer took their Wildcats to College Station and beat the Aggies 23-20. A return trip in 1997 led to another KSU victory, 36-17. Kramer retired before the 1998 season, a year in which Snyder thought he might just have a national championship team.
The 1998 Wildcats began their season 11-0, and entered the Big XII championship game with a national ranking of #2. All Snyder needed was to dispatch Texas A&M in the conference championship, and a date in the national title game awaited. But a late 4th quarter comeback and dramatic double OT touchdown pass to Sirr Parker ended the dream. I’m betting that Wally Groff, the Texas A&M AD that year, was thrilled.
Texas A&M hired a new athletic director this week. His name is Ross Bjork. Bjorn has a long resume of experience running athletic programs, and there is optimism in Aggieland. But before all of those years in administration, Bjork was a football player. At Emporia State. Like Van Hargis, a running back. In 1994. The final year of former Austin College Coach Larry Kramer.
In a 2017 piece in the Oxford Eagle, Bjork talked about his playing days at Emporia under Coach K:
“I had a life-changing moment from football in college while I was a student-athlete at Emporia State. I played for one of the toughest coaches in college football history. The late Larry Kramer was a hard-nosed former offensive lineman at Nebraska and my head coach. He routinely yelled at us or made us practice for more than three hours while running the same plays over and over until we got it right. Practices were so hard we looked forward to playing games on Saturdays and found ourselves wondering at times if his techniques were fair. But I learned in those moments that if I could survive Larry Kramer’s program, I could survive just about anything.”
(h/t to Stuart Oliphint for sharing the Oxford Eagle article years ago).
Bjork will work with football coach Jimbo Fisher, himself a small college player from Samford in Alabama:
“When I talked to Jimbo, I thought it was really cool that here you have two small college football players, and you know what, playing small-college football, that takes a certain mentality,” Bjork said Monday. “We didn’t have the nicest things. You don’t play in front of a whole lot of people, but you played for the passion of the game.”
You may wonder how these little Roo tales sometimes get started. The hire of Bjork was emailed to me by my mother Linda Parrish, former faculty at Texas A&M. She said “just in case there is a Roo connection.” Like Shenandoah says, “Mama Knows.” There’s always a Roo connection.
I spent the 1981 season watching Aggie football with Linda Parrish. We were at Kyle Field on November 26th, 1981, when the Aggies fell to their rivals from Austin. The next Aggie game was an Independence Bowl win in Shreveport on December 12th, the same day that Kramer secured that AC national championship. Linda Parrish? She’s also the one who drove me to that 1981 David Groff birthday party at Kyle Field.
Congratulations on the hire Aggies. You picked a state of Kansas boy who played the small college game for a Roo. You picked well.
