John Shearer: Remembering Baylor’s First Football Team To Reach State Finals 50 Years Ago

In the fall of 1972, Baylor School was only one year removed from dropping its military program, and the required gray uniforms and short haircuts had been replaced with the longer hairstyle allowed by second-year headmaster Herb Barks Jr.

But what still harkened back to the days of old and possibly helped create an even smoother and more positive transition for the then-all-boys independent school was the Baylor football team.

After going 9-1 the year before but missing the playoffs in those early days of the modern TSSAA, the 1972 Red Raider team went all the way to the Class AAA state finals before losing to one of the most dominant teams in the history of Tennessee high school football. That team was Tennessee High of Bristol.

However, with coach E.B. “Red” Etter in his third year leading Baylor after around 25 years successfully heading the Central High team, and with the Red Raider program in an upward push, this season would still be one to remember in mostly positive ways. The accomplishments also created a fun energy among the Baylor players and supporting students and fans experiencing a playoff run for the first time.

This was also the first Chattanooga or Hamilton County team to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs.

Dr. Bill Meadows, a linebacker who was the senior class president, said everything seemed to come together for Baylor to be successful that year.

“We had a good team,” he said. “We had a mix of seniors and juniors that year. And you had a core of a solid coaching staff able to develop players.”

Wide receiver and current dentist Dr. Philip Carson also remembers that season fondly. “We didn’t know if we were going to make the playoffs, but we knew we had a really good team,” he said.

The Baylor accomplishments of long ago are noteworthy in 2022 not only because exactly 50 years have passed, but because Baylor is returning to the state football finals for the first time since 2011. This Thursday night at 7 at Finley Stadium, Baylor under first-year coach Erik Kimrey will face Montgomery Bell Academy of Nashville for the Division II-AAA title.

It marks only the sixth time in the more than 50 years since a TSSAA playoff format was enacted that Baylor has reached the state finals in football. The game will also mark the first time Baylor has ever played for a football championship inside Chattanooga and Hamilton County.

In 1972, of course, both the public and private schools all still battled each other in the playoffs. Baylor was in Class AAA, the highest classification, and only three playoff rounds were held. The year before, only two took place. Nowadays, the public schools have five playoff rounds, while Division II has four, with the higher-seeded teams getting a first-round bye.

Looking back with the help of Dr. Meadows and Dr. Carson and Bob Worthington, who was a junior quarterback on the 1972 team, one gets the idea that a state championship game appearance was certainly not a given.

That is, despite Baylor successfully opening the season with a road win over Lakeview, 35-6, before the school moved to Battlefield Parkway the next year and became known as Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe. That was followed by a 27-0 victory over Huntsville High of Alabama at Baylor’s Heywood Stadium.

But the third game, against City High and coach Bobby Davis, would be a disappointment. But it would also teach a valuable lesson that would help the team down the road possibly as much as a win would have. In a game played at Kirkman, Baylor played badly and executed poorly, and City went up 7-0 in the second half.

However, late in the game, Baylor was able to drive 80 yards and score on a pass from Mr. Worthington to the future Dr. Carson to cut the score to 7-6. Coach Etter decided to go for two. He called a rollout pass/run option, but the pass was unable to be completed to Scott Probasco, and Baylor lost.

Mr. Worthington said he later realized another end, the athletic Bobby Edmondson, was wide open, and that play still bothers him, he said. However, he concluded that the loss did have a positive effect, as the team realized it could not expect victory and it needed to come out and execute every game.

“We made mistake after mistake after mistake,” he said. “But it opened our eyes and made us ready to play after that.”

That showed in the next game, a 28-6 win over Kirkman, and definitely in the next two games after that. Against Clarksville Northwest, which Mr. Worthington called the best team Baylor played that season besides Tennessee High, Baylor executed quite well in winning 26-6.

“That was probably our best game. They were really good,” Mr. Worthington remembered.

That brought on the first Saturday in October the game against archrival McCallie. The teams had just started playing again the year before after an absence of 31 years, and McCallie was also dedicating the new Spears Stadium on their revamped former athletic field.

That and the infancy of the renewed football rivalry brought plenty of interest on both sides, with Baylor bringing numerous busloads of students from its campus and McCallie filling up its side.

The 1972 contest was expected to be similarly close to the 9-7 win by Baylor the year before. Some even thought McCallie could win with quarterback Lawrence Mills among the best passing quarterbacks in Chattanooga in an era when most high school teams still ran the ball most of the time.

But Mr. Mills ended up getting injured, and Baylor was able to win by a surprisingly lopsided score of 36-0.

“We were just ecstatic after that game,” said Dr. Carson.

Mr. Worthington recalls being quite surprised at the outcome. “We went into the game believing that to win, we had to outscore them,” he said. “It never occurred that at the end of the game, they would be sitting on zero points.”

With that win, the Big Red Machine of Baylor was now in full motion, and it then beat Riverside, 48-12, and Notre Dame, 27-6. Notre Dame had a standout athlete named Reggie Mathis, whom Mr. Worthington had known from playing youth baseball. Although a running back for the Irish, Mr. Mathis went on to be a starting offensive lineman on some great Oklahoma teams.

The next week brought a game at home against Hixson, which featured another player who would distinguish himself after high school, but in the political arena. The quarterback for Hixson was Jim Coppinger, who recently served as Hamilton County mayor.

Despite having its best season since 1957, Hixson lost to Baylor, 28-0. The Baylor offense led by such juniors as quarterback Mr. Worthington, and backs Andy Rutledge, Clay Gibson and Mike Shuford was scoring plenty of points, and a very talented defense was keeping teams from scoring much or at all.

That game was the last of the year at Baylor’s Heywood Stadium, where Baylor’s halftime entertainment included Baylor physical education teacher Rick Trimble trying to do miniature Evel Knievel-like motorcycle jumps on the field.

After beating Howard, 53-12, at Howard the next week, the playoff picture was set.

In those days, teams reached the playoffs on a point system based on victories and opponent school sizes, and Baylor and Franklin County were set to play in the first round of the large Class AAA playoffs after Sparta had also been in the running.

Dr. Carson remembers that the Franklin County coach had accused Baylor of playing a lot of recruited players, but in 1972 most of the Baylor players had started in about seventh grade or were boarding students whose fathers or brothers had gone to Baylor. And Coach “Red” Etter had said such in comments leading up to the game, Dr. Carson recalled.

Later in the 1970s, as Baylor continued to do well under coach Etter, a few football players from such schools as Hixson, Red Bank and Tyner did start enrolling at Baylor. And in areas like Nashville, such actions by some private schools eventually resulted in two divisions within the TSSAA in 1997.

The Franklin County game, played in Winchester, was a very cold game. Baylor’s initial results left them feeling as though they were getting the cold treatment, too, due to two fumbles and some penalties. But Baylor managed to escape with a 12-7 win.

In a game in which the Red Raiders dominated statistically, they fell behind 7-6 in the third quarter and appeared ready to give another touchdown away before safety Lars Ely made a saving tackle on Jackie Allgood. But this Rebel team quarterbacked by Johnny O’Neal could not score.

And then late in the third quarter, Andy Rutledge sprinted 54 yards for a touchdown and the deciding score on the way to over 200 yards rushing.

“Andy had a big day, and we were the better team,” recalled Mr. Worthington.

Dr. Carson, like Mr. Worthington, has not forgotten the temperature. “That was the coldest game I remember being in,” he said. “And they were tough.”

That brought the semifinal game the day after Thanksgiving at Chamberlain Field against Memphis Hamilton after the Wildcats had eliminated Memphis White Station the week before. This was also a somewhat historic event looking back in hindsight in that it marked the third time Baylor had played against a historic black high school that season after also meeting Riverside and Howard as mentioned.

Baylor was still an all-white school at the time, but the progressive headmaster Herb Barks Jr. was already putting the wheels in motion to change that. A handful of black students would enroll in Baylor the following year, with Monty Bruell becoming the first black graduate in 1979 after enrolling in the seventh grade.

Hamilton featured several outstanding players, including running back Keith Simpson, who was featured that season in Sports Illistrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” and went on to play eight seasons with the Seattle Seahawks.

But Baylor was able to thwart him and others on the way to a 28-10 victory, with Andy Rutledge, Clay Gibson and the arm of Bob Worthington carrying the team.

After the game, headmaster Barks, who had grown up on the Baylor campus and remembered all the great teams and players from the era during and after World War II, seemed to sense a great moment in Baylor football history was taking place. He referenced to a reporter that he was aware of Baylor’s great history, and now this accomplishment could compare to it.

Dr. Carson also remembers what coach Etter told them during that stretch, while recalling the playoff games as being fun. “I remember “Red” Etter telling us we weren’t the biggest or the fastest team, but all were pretty smart, and we could just outsmart everybody.”

That set up the state championship game on Dec. 1 – exactly 50 years before Baylor will play again in another state championship this week. Mr. Worthington recalled that the TSSAA and others offered to have the game at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, but Tennessee High officials wanted it played at their castle-like stadium surrounded by a wall.

Mr. Worthington recalled that the conditions were muddy, and he remembers seeing workers unloading sawdust on the field before the game to help conditions. But it was so bad, the Baylor team did not do their usual pregame walk through of plays, etc.

Baylor was able to keep it close in the first quarter, but the maroon-clad Vikings – who wore Minnesota Vikings-style helmets and had easily beaten Nashville Overton the week before – began pulling away in the second quarter.

The final score was 39-6 in favor of Tennessee High. Mr. Worthington remembered scoring the lone touchdown for Baylor late in the game, and he recalled that some bottles flew out on the field from Bristol fans hoping for a shutout.

While Baylor had a good team, Tennessee High was quite unusual for a high school team in Tennessee. As Dr. Meadows recalled, “They were the best high school team I’ve ever seen.”

Among the Viking players, quarterback David Bibee, who was a good runner and passer, signed with Tennessee before injuries prevented a long career. He went on to coach some and ended up at Baylor as the head coach in the early and middle 2000s, a move that was likely on no one’s radar when coach Etter said he played as well as any high school quarterback he had ever seen.

Fellow Viking backs George Heath and Gil Kyle signed with Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, respectively. End Larry Silcox played for East Tennessee, and flanker Eddie Hirsch played for Vanderbilt.

The coach, John Cropp, who was only in his early 30s in 1972, went on to coach some with coach Steve Sloan and later got into college sports administration. The softball complex at Kentucky is named for him.

While Baylor was disappointed with the loss, they soon geared up for even better days ahead. With a nucleus of skill-position players returning on offense, the 1973 team that was very close emotionally would pull together physically and fill holes left by the departure of so many great defensive players and others.

They would go on to win the state with a 6-0 win over Memphis Hillcrest at the Liberty Bowl stadium. They, like Tennessee High the year before, would also be named mythical national champions by the National Sports News Service.

Mr. Worthington, who would go on to sign and play some quarterback at UTC after also getting an offer from Georgia but wanting to follow the wishes of his father, former Baylor coach Jim Worthington, in honoring his commitment, said the 1972 team started Baylor on a good path.

“The 1972 team took Baylor football and put it on a path that would be that team’s legacy,” said Mr. Worthington, who now lives in Atlanta and develops apartments and hotels. “They didn’t put the flag in the ground, but they got to the top of the mountain.”

Dr. Meadows, who became a physician and operator of the Physicians Care facilities, remembers that year of 1972 with glowing memories. “It was fun,” he said. “We had a good team.

“I had a good experience at Baylor. I had a lot of good friends on the team and off the team.”

Both he and Dr. Carson recall how close the seniors were. Dr. Carson, now a dentist on Brainerd Road, recalls that he has hosted the last several class reunions at his Lookout Mountain home, and many of the football players are among those who return.

They also often show the Baylor-McCallie game film, and he said 1972 player Charles Hannah has been able to come back after his Alabama and NFL career, and Dr. Carson was amazed how much he could remember of the 1972 McCallie game while watching it.

Mr. Hannah was somewhat unique in that he came to Baylor in the ninth grade and followed in the footsteps of his famous football playing brother, John. But with trying to keep up athletically with his growth spurt and his other interests, he did not play football his sophomore year but was instead a cheerleader.

However, as his coordination began to catch back up with his growth and with the encouragement of assistant coach Maj. Luke Worsham, he went back out his junior year, and the rest became history.

According to Dr. Carson, other key players on the heralded defense were Marvin Leventhal at defensive tackle, Gaston Raoul at linebacker, Mike Lyle at defensive tackle, Cal Jumper at defensive end, Bill Meadows at linebacker, Rob Davis at linebacker, Frank Harrison and Doug Bullard at cornerback, and Lars Ely and Scott Price at safety.

Key offensive players in 1972 were Phil Carson at wide receiver, Guerry Bowen and Jim Mathews at tackle, Ronnie Roberts and John Wooley at guard, Jim Woods at center, Bobby Edmondson and Scott Probasco at tight end, Bob Worthington and sub Bobby Minks at quarterback, Mike Shuford at wingback, and Clay Gibson and Andy Rutledge at running backs.

Other seniors who played in 1972 included David Sutherland, John Stivarius, Bill McBrayer, Jim Little, and Steve Hitt.

Other juniors who were on the team included Bogan Brooks, Harry and Larry Cash, Allen Corey, Hal Isbell, Marty Lagod, Matt Lewis, Mike McCartney, Harry McCool, Rusty McMahon, David Shrader, Andy Stockett, and Tim Tucker. Promising sophomores included David Hannah and Van Bunch, among others.

Dr. Carson said that Dr. Leventhal played some freshmen ball at Virginia before becoming an orthopedic surgeon and serving as one of the doctors who operated on Chucky Mullins, the former Ole Miss player who was unfortunately paralyzed in a game in 1989.

Mr. Woods played for Georgia Tech on the varsity, Mr. Lyle played some freshmen ball at Auburn, while Mr. Ely’s father had played at Ole Miss, he said.

Dr. Carson said Mr. Bowen became an Army Ranger. Mr. Harrison, who married 1972 Baylor homecoming queen Jan Morgan, went on to head the large Coca-Cola Consolidated Inc. based in Charlotte, N.C.

Mr. Raoul and Mr. Minks are now deceased.

Of the other key juniors on that 1972 team, Mr. Rutledge played some for Vanderbilt, Mr. Jumper also signed with the Commodores, while Mr. Shuford and Mr. Davis also played some at UTC.

Helping coach Etter on the staff that year were Sib Evans Jr., Fred Hubbs, David Longley, Maj. Luke Worsham and Gene Etter.

Another member of the Baylor 1973 class, although he did not play football, is longtime chattanoogan.com sports contributor John Hunt.

Dr. Carson, who admits to being amazed he was able to start at Baylor at wide receiver for two years, plans to follow Baylor’s game this Thursday against MBA as the Red Raiders attempt to win it. Mr. Worthington said he hopes to attend in person.

The game will have several circular connections to the 1972 squad. They include that current Baylor coach Kimrey had formerly coached at Hammond School and was hired as the coach there while former Baylor headmaster Herb Barks Jr. was heading the school.

He had come to Baylor after being hired by current Baylor headmaster Chris Angel, who had also formerly headed the Hammond School.

And the athletic director at MBA is Mark Tipps, who in the fall of 1972 was a seventh-grade Baylor student cheering on the Red Raiders from the stands. His older brother, Steve, had been the starting quarterback on the 1971 Baylor team.

While Baylor hopes to finally win its second state championship after also coming up one win short in 1977, 2010 and 2011 along with 1972, Dr. Carson, Dr. Meadows, Mr. Worthington and the others can take pride in helping get Baylor back on the football map 50 years ago.

“We just have a lot of good memories,” said Dr. Carson.

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Jcshearer2@comcast.net