Baylor Sports Hall Of Fame Inductee Scott Price Fondly Recalls ‘70s Glory Days

  • Wednesday, October 17, 2018
  • John Shearer

Not long after Scott Price arrived at Baylor School as a wide-eyed ninth-grader in the fall of 1970, he started taking note of all the pictures of past Baylor athletic standouts then lining the hall from the gym leading to the lockers and weight room.

Becoming impressed with all the athletes who went on to play in college or starred at Baylor individually or as part of a team, he was inspired to strive for similar success.

As it turned out, Baylor students, coaches and fans took note of his accomplishments, too.

And now – nearly a half century later – his picture also hangs in a place of honor in the school’s athletic facilities.

This past Sunday, Mr. Price, from the Class of 1974, was inducted into the Baylor Sports Hall of Fame along with recent accomplished golfers Brooke Pancake Rende and Stephen Jaeger from the Class of 2008.         

As the Charlotte area resident talked during a recent phone interview from his lake home near Loudon, Tn., before driving to Baylor for the ceremony, he was admittedly humbled by the honor.

“It’s a big surprise,” he said. “I’m proud to be recognized for this.”

Many of his classmates were not surprised, and one or two had wondered why it took so long for him to be inducted, according to comments heard leading up to and following Sunday’s event.

A standout defensive back and punt returner, Mr. Price was a member of the 1973 team that to date has been Baylor’s only football state championship winner. He is actually the third member of that team to be inducted along with lineman and future Alabama player David Hannah ’75 and classmate and running back Andy Rutledge. Mr. Rutledge, who went on to play at Vanderbilt, was the only person on that team who might have been a little faster than Mr. Price, he honestly admitted.

Mr. Price was also a multi-sport standout, starting on the baseball team as an outfielder for an unusual four years and starting for multiple years as well on the basketball team as a guard.

For him, sports came naturally. His father, John, had played college football at what is now Rhodes College in Memphis, while his two older brothers, John III and Les, played baseball at Middle Tennessee State University. Even his mother, Harold, played sports, as the family has an old family photo of her playing on a girls’ football team when she was younger.

“Sports and athletics were important in our lives, and they placed an emphasis on all sports,” he said.

He ended up at Baylor due to his uncle, Dr. Houston Price, an orthopedic surgeon in Chattanooga. While not a Baylor graduate himself, Dr. Price had a lot of friends and colleagues who were connected to Baylor, and he knew plenty of excitement was occurring over the football program there due to the arrival of successful high school coach E.B. “Red” Etter from Central High.

“I remember (Dr. Price) came over on a Sunday, met with my parents and grandmother and mentioned that Baylor had just hired Red Etter and they were looking for athletes,” he said. “They were going to make a commitment to returning to glory there at Baylor and there was an opportunity there.”

He went the next day to visit, and everything soon fell into place for him to attend school there as a freshman after formerly attending Marion County Junior High.

Coming as a youngster from the small-town community of Jasper to a prep school that was in its last year offering a military curriculum was different, but he admittedly soon found his way.

“I was a shy, small-town country boy,” he recalled. “It was very different being away from home, but I loved it. I couldn’t go home for the first six weeks. But after that I had no reason to go home.”

On the athletic fields and courts, he soon found his way, too. And often it was by being -- or, in the case of baseball, placing the ball -- where others weren’t.

He played tailback on the ninth-grade football team that went undefeated under coach Gene Etter, with Mr. Rutledge playing fullback and Bobby Worthington quarterback.

When he became a sophomore, coach Red Etter started going to a two-platoon system to try and improve upon the 5-5 season of the year before. Since standout senior athlete David Dick was a good tailback, Mr. Price was moved to defensive back.

But he did not mind. “They thought I’d be better on defense, and I’d much rather have played defense. It’s a lot better to hit people than get hit,” he said with a laugh.

He continued to be one of the standouts as Baylor finished 9-1 in 1971 and then reached the state championship game against the outstanding Tennessee High of Bristol in 1972 before losing 39-6.

Although graduation led to the departure of a few standouts from the 1972 team – Charley Hannah, Jim Woods and Lars Ely among them -- a strong nucleus was back, creating plenty of optimism for the 1973 season.

And the team looked strong from the start, reversing a disappointing loss to City High the year before with a 33-14 victory, and a 33-15 win over McCallie. Mr. Price said that marked the fifth straight victory over the Big Blue for his class, as it had also beaten them twice in ninth grade.

But this 1973 team – also led by Worthington, running backs Rutledge and Clay Gibson, wingback Mike Shuford, linebacker Andy Stockett, junior defensive back Van Bunch, defenders Rob Davis and Cal Jumper and others – did face a little adversity.

In the ninth game of the season at Clarksville Northwest, star Rutledge hurt his leg somewhat late in the game, and he was unable to play for several weeks.

So after a less-than-full-speed Baylor team survived a 17-0 win against Red Bank to end the regular season and beat Warren County and its standout quarterback, 34-14, in the first round of the playoffs at Central High, some changes were made.

And the key focus was on none other than Mr. Price. With Mr. Rutledge still out and being replaced by sophomore and future star Jeff Aiken, and tailback Clay Gibson also banged up with a semifinal game at tough Oak Ridge looming, they turned to the all-around athlete Mr. Price for help.

“It was probably Gene or Red (who came up with the idea), and they told me they wanted me to play a little offense and pick up the slack,” he recalled.

Although coach Etter’s plays were somewhat complicated for the high school level, Mr. Price still remembered them from ninth grade and was able to quickly learn them. However, there were one or two times when the fans in the stands noticed he had to double check with one of the other backs as the ball was getting ready to be snapped.

But amid this improvisation by him and the team as he also played offense, the finely tuned Big Red Machine continued its polished routine of execution and success and beat Oak Ridge, 28-14. And the big star – uniquely on both sides of the ball for Baylor during that time period – was Mr. Price, whose jersey No. 40 was ubiquitous that night.

He scored two touchdowns – one on offense following a one-yard run, and one on defense after a 42-yard pass interception.

“It was just something you do,” he said of how natural it felt playing on both sides of the ball, a scene that has become much more common on high school teams in recent decades. “It was a lot of fun.”

His place in Baylor football lore was cemented, even after he moved back to defense the following week and helped Baylor hold off the scrappy Memphis Hillcrest team and its wishbone offense for a 6-0 win at the Liberty Bowl stadium for the state championship.

The team was even voted national champion by one poll at the time.

Mr. Price, who had an easy-going manner when reminiscing recently, admitted it was a relief as much as total joy when the Red Raiders won the state, as they did not want to be two-time losers in the state championship game.

And for him, the memories of the team are as memorable as any individual accomplishments.

“It was a great team with great guys, high character guys,” he said. “It was a group of very unified teammates. Whatever role everybody had, they accepted it and did their jobs.

“And we had tremendous coaching. We had six fulltime coaches. It would have rivaled some colleges.”

Not only were Baylor students and fans noticing Mr. Price’s skills on the gridiron, so also were some college coaches, particularly those at Alabama. He was recruited by such Crimson Tide assistants as Ken Donahue, Pat Dye (later the Auburn head coach), and Bill “Brother” Oliver (later the UTC head coach).

He also met legendary head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama during his recruiting visit to Tuscaloosa and ended up signing with the Crimson Tide.

After enjoying a nice senior year at Baylor as a basketball guard under Jimmy Duke playing with and against a number of players who played basketball only, and a nice senior baseball season making all-city under David Longley, he enrolled at Alabama.

Unfortunately, instead of leading the Crimson Tide defensive team like he did at Baylor, he unfortunately probably led the team only in injuries.

“I got hurt quite a big, and that slowed down my career a lot,” he said with much more ease than he likely did in the 1970s. “The first 2½ years, I broke my collar bone, dislocated my knee cap and had three separate knee operations.”

He had hurt his knee returning a punt during spring practice in 1975, he said, and that caused him to miss the whole 1975 season following some knee operations.

His years to stay mostly healthy were in 1976 and 1977, and he finally was able to earn an elusive letter in 1977 as a defensive back wearing No. 27 when the Crimson Tide won the SEC. 

“From a playing aspect, it didn’t turn out like I hoped, but the overall experience was top of the line. I would do it again in heartbeat,” he said, adding that he met up with some of his old teammates during a 40-year reunion of the 1977 Crimson Tide squad in 2017.

Mr. Price said several similarities existed between the successful Alabama teams of that era and those at Baylor. Both had great football traditions at the time, and coach Bryant and coach Etter were considered at the top of their professions in their realms, he said.

Both places also had high expectations, he added.

“There was clearly a standard set long before you get there that has to be maintained,” he said. “You don’t want to let down any who came before you.”

Although he was eligible to play for Alabama in the fall of 1978, he went ahead and graduated and retired from football. 

A few months after finishing at Alabama, he found a job working in sales for Hormel Foods. This coming February, he will have another No. 40 to hold on to like his No. 40 Baylor jersey when he celebrates four decades with the company.

“Loyalty is one of the key values I really value,” he said of how he ended up with the same firm over his long career.

His work has taken him to Tampa, Denver, Chicago and Charlotte. While in Denver, he met a woman, Mary Dorn, through an event for attorneys that his Baylor classmate, Ira Long, attended while living out there.

They were married and have two children, Liza and Emma H., who displayed the Price athletic genes by playing volleyball some at the College of Charleston and Belmont, respectively.

Mr. Price said that the Hormel protein products he sells are now found all over the grocery store, and not just in the meat section as was the case historically.

Mr. Price, too, was found all over the various athletic fields, particularly the football field, where he helped the Baylor gridders become, like a choice cut of meat, a premium brand during the early 1970s.

“It’s a humbling thing to be chosen when you look at all the names and all the great athletes in the Hall of Fame,” he said.  

Click here to hear Scott Price briefly discuss his Baylor sports career. 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net

 

 

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