re: Offseason Thread - What is the Deal With The Junction Boys?

I've always seen it as something that most of us who went through the corps could relate to. We experienced something similar, but not to that magnitude.

Fish year was hell with an endless list of requirements that have no real purpose. They were physically grueling, deprived us of sleep, took away all the things that make life comfortable, and bored us to tears.

Why go through all of that? It doesn't end in any kind of tangible accomplishment. What it does is build fortitude the same way lifting weights builds muscle and show you that your limits are way beyond where you thought they were.

The Junction Boys story appeals to me and, I assume, ags like me because it's like watching the super bowl of what we went through. It doesn't matter that they didn't accomplish much on the field after that. The result worth celebrating is the quality of men that came through it.

Countless hours shining shoes and brass, arranging them perfectly on a uniform, folding towels and sheets after an upperclassman tornado, etc was boring as hell to me. ymmv

Well said.

I think it hits a note with every kid who went through Texas two-a-days and wonders what the point was.

Also, Mickey Herskowitz and Jim Dent were really good story tellers.

1) "Worship" is preposterous. I have never known anyone who approached worshipping the Junction Boys. I was raised by an Aggie and started going to football games with him when I was 6 and I heard a lot of the old stories and learned about practically all of the traditions before I was 9, and I never even heard of The Junction Boys until I was like 13. I knew about the World War II movie "We've Never Been Licked" and the Baylor-bound howitzer railroaded in Hearne before I knew anything about a place called Junction.

2) In those days a conference championship was what you fought for. How the drunk yankees with typewriters voted at the end of the season was as irrelevant as it was intractable. They had their pet conferences/regions in the 50s and Texas/The SWC weren't among these. Beating t.u. and winning the SWC was what an A&M coach was supposed to accomplish.

(In case you don't know [and maybe you don't] at the time in question there was no internet. There were 3 TV stations. A lot of people didn't have TV. Very few people had ever been on an airplane. The whole nation was regional and "connected" only by the railroad, this meaning that goods from Chicago got to everywhere). If you beat the other schools in your neighborhood then you were ecstatic. Then some team (or, more likely, some 3 to 5 teams) got to be called 'national champions' and someone from somewhere you'd never been won the Heisman and THEN you went to the bowl you were obligated to go to and tried to win one more before bucking down for the spring semester.

This said, John David Crow, who would have been a Junction Boy had he been a year older, did win the Heisman his senior year.

The Junction Boys did ultimately beat t.u. and win the SWC under Bryant.

3) None of the above is all that impressive.

4) Watch the movie. (You don't even have to read a book. They made a film for you.)

5) What The Junction Boys DO represent is the transformation of Texas A&M football from being hopelessly old school in a new age to being current with an old taste.

Huh?

In 1954 A&M was still all male, all military. The world's largest fraternity, it had become a small school by public ed. standards. The paucity of the promise of female companionship was steering high school standouts elsewhere. Fielding an effective team from a few thousand "normal guys" was the status quo in 1930. By 1954 a modernesque system of recruitment was in full swing everywhere else. Texas A&M wanted to maintain its heritage without compromise AND to win championships in football. The world around it had changed to the degree to which having both was a hopeless proposition.

By 1953 A&M had money. The engineers it had produced were building the modern universe and making ridonculous money doing it. And they were giving tons of this money back to A&M. Even then their loyalty was universally confounding and legendary. A&M was giving football scholarships to virtually any high school football player who wanted to be an Aggie. There was no problem affording players. The problem was that they "bought" anyone and everyone who wanted to play. This is addressed in the movie.

Bear Bryant inherited this 'rabble'. He wanted to win and to win quick. His recourse was Junction. In addition to this he bought [the future Heisman winning] John David Crow from Louisiana. With these two moves he turned the good ol' boys into a viable team AND ushered A&M into the modern (albeit dishonorable, untradtitional, amoral, but necessary) age of college football. As is said in the film he "led Texas A&M football out from the wilderness").

The afterstory is that before leaving A&M for "Mama" Bear Bryant TAUGHT Texas A&M that it was going to have to accept a lot of painful changes if it wanted to win at football. This afterstory should be the subject of another film: a documentary. Texas A&M ultimately chose to allow women and civilians in order to remain competitive in football. For NO OTHER reason but football. Today's academic, financial, world renown powerhouse that is Texas A&M University owes its modern essence to FOOTBALL. in many regards Bear Bryant is its Thomas Jefferson. And the Junction Boys are its minutemen.

A lot of universities are known as "football schools". Very very few-- if any-- universities have changed as much in 60 years as has Texas A&M. And Texas A&M initiated these changes SOLELY for the sake of winning at football. Hard to think of a place more deserving of the title "football school".

The Junction Boys are this. See the movie. Then see Texas A&M. Be sure and look at some films and photos of what Texas A&M was a few decades ago while you tour the campus. Then behold what it has become. It's crazy amazing. That the love and money of a bunch of old country boys could manifest so empyrean an institution for the love of football! Only in Texas.

There's more to a story than what's printed on the back cover, in case you haven't been told.