For you “older” UT Fans!

[msucolt45 4062]

Before there ever was a “Rooster Andrews” sporting goods store in Austin, he “Rooster” was actually a member of the training staff at UT. According to my Dad, they’d closed the doors under the West side, turn up the heat, and work their ASS off! Dad played in the early 60s for the Horns and every trip as a child, going to UT games, a trip to Rooster’s was mandatory.

 

Growing up in the 70’s during the Earl Campbell era, we would visit there and buy UT stuff prior to a game. I wanted a #34 Longhorn jersey, because that was Earl’s number with the Oilers, but my Dad and Rooster said you needed #20 for UT Jersey! As a “kid” I insisted, so I probably had the only burnt Orange jersey wearing 34, with Campbell on the back.

[RomaVicta 29909]

I would have loved to buy one of the giant Texas football photos they had on the walls. The place somehow lost its charm when they built a new building. 

RIP Rooster

[futureman 22468]

you mean ruffian? 

[msucolt45 4062]

Prior to other sporting goods stores, if you wanted “authentic” UT appeal, one needed to go to Rooster’s. I still have a burnt Orange “block T” cap from the early Freddy Ackers era.

[msucolt45 4062]

Fred Akers

[LTtxfan 49196]

 

If your gonna talk about "Rooster Andrews"

 

The Legend Of Rooster Andrews

Saturday, January 26, 2008 - by Roy Exum

Quote

If it seemed as though the entire state of Texas sagged a little on the wall map this week, it was because one of the most beloved characters in the Lone Star’s colorful and colossal history passed away in Austin.

If you love college football, I mean if you really get to know about it, then you have heard of Rooster Andrews. He is in the University of Texas Hall of Fame and has literally been a giant in the Longhorn program since he arrived in Austin in the early ‘40s.

I say “literally” because Rooster, God bless him, never grew taller than five feet high. He started out as a water boy, running onto the field with his five-gallon bucket, and his dipper, on his spindly little legs, but when he died on Monday the 84-year-old giant had been inducted into every hall of fame in the state.

Rooster was even inducted in the Texas high school football hall of fame which was markedly unusual because he’s the only guy who is in it who never played a down. He got in because he helped so many people.

That in itself shows how mighty his legend has grown over the years and that is why things weren’t quite the same this week when word spread that the diminutive Rooster would no longer prance up and down on the Texas sidelines.

I met him only once. I was in Dallas at an NCAA deal and met a bunch of the football coaches for dinner. We stopped at some reception because the whiskey was free and Rooster was there. I only got to shake his hand because he was evermore the center of attention and was being swarmed at the time. I mean, people adored him.
Darrell Royal, who guided Texas to three national championships while becoming one of the greatest coaches this country has ever known, was one of Rooster’s closest friends and once described the former water boy to a “T.”

"You know the old song, 'You're nobody 'til somebody loves you'?" he said, "Well, the next line says, 'So find somebody to love.' Folks don't love you unless you love them. Rooster loves people. He's a people person. He's real good at it, and it's a sincere thing with him."

Maybe because Rooster was always small he tried harder because, by the time he graduated from high school, he was well on his way. He was the most popular boy at Woodrow Wilson High in Dallas, was the top cadet in the ROTC program, and had been the manager of the football team because he was obviously too small to play.

Well, Dana X. Bible, another great Texas coach, arranged for Billy Andrews, as he was called at the time, to be an assistant manager at Texas and even gave him a room in the football dorm so he could keep some of the better players from getting in trouble.

One of the best at mischief was an All-American end named Malcolm Kutner, who had known Billy when he went to high school at Woodrow, and the plan worked swell. In 1941 the Longhorns were No. 1, on the cover of Life magazine, and Billy fit in fine.
That spring, however, the defining moment of his life came when three players – Kutner, Pete Layden and Jack Crain – rousted the manager out of bed late one night with an urgent plea. They wanted to go to a cockfight over in Elgin but didn’t have a rooster.

So they got the little freshman in his pajamas, and a flashlight, and went to a huge tree near old Clark Field where five or six roosters were …. er, roosting for the night in the high branches. Up went little Billy with Layden barking orders from below. “Get the one of the right. That’s Elmer. He’s the one.”

Andrews later recalled the tree was higher than the Empire State Building and, when he grabbed the rooster called Elmer, the chicken didn’t want to go to the cockfight. "When I grabbed him, he clawed my face. Oh, man, he tore me up. I fell, bounced through some limbs, but I still had the rooster," Andrews told the Dallas Morning News in a 2001 interview.

That was when Crain looked at Billy on the ground and said, "Hate to leave you here in this condition, but we're late. See you tomorrow."

"I walked back to the dorm," Andrews says. "Woke up the next morning, my left arm was all puffed up. Busted," he said with a laugh, but, by the next day, no one ever called him Billy again. A name had been born.

The football legend came two years later. By 1943 some schools had suspended their football teams because of the war, but, at Texas, the naval station trainee program swelled the university’s enrollment to over 10,000.

By then Kutner had graduated and Rooster was now charged with keeping another All-American player out of trouble named Bobby Layne. Well, the two roommates became such great friends they often got into trouble together and, by then, it was a toss-up as to who was most popular on the Austin campus – Rooster or Bobby.

Towards the end of the season, Coach Bible was desperate for a point-after kicker and Bobby urged Rooster to enter the weekly competition. Because of his size, Rooster had to use an unconventional drop-kick method, but the water boy beat out two others and, in the second half of the TCU game, Rooster kicked a pair of point-after winners in the 46-7 win.

Of course, Dutch Meyer, the TCU coach, was furious that Bible would “rub it in” by having even the Texas water boy score and challenged the Longhorns’ coach to try such a trick the next week against highly-touted A&M. Coach Bible did exactly that and Rooster kicked three PATs and had a field goal blocked in the 27-13 victory. And the Longhorn fans went wild.

Well, the season was saved and after that Rooster kicked only occasionally since he was too valuable on the sidelines, but late one night Layne woke him up with a zany idea. "When you're back there drop-kicking on extra points, I wonder if we could fake the thing and you could throw it to me on the left flat."

Rooster laughed hysterically at the idea, but the next week, against Oklahoma, Bobby looked at the five-foot-tall Andrews in the huddle and called "our play." Not only did it work, but Texas won it going away, 20-0.

Well, by now Rooster’s legend was galloping. Layne called the play again in the SMU game because he wanted to see the look on Doak Walker’s face, but his old Highland Park High teammate switched from right cornerback to the left side and, when Rooster saw Doak smile and wave before the snap, he knew Doak smelled a rat and threw the ball out of bounds.

I know, this story is now too long but don’t you love that stuff? Better yet, Rooster deserves it and a whole lot more.

He also earned a baseball letter at Texas and then, after a couple of successful business ventures, built the biggest sporting goods empire in the southwest. He helped assistant high school coaches find jobs. He paid medical bills. He sent children to school. To hear a parade of Texas coaches tell it, Rooster Andrews did more for others than anybody in the state’s history including the U.S. Presidents who came from there.

In that 2001 interview, he sloughed it off, saying simply, "You try to be everything to everybody," he said at the time. "And I ain't ever gonna quit doin' that. Makes me feel as good as it does them."

Unbeknowst to Rooster, he became something of a hero during those years at Texas, something of a role model for anyone small in stature but big in heart, and the special thing was he never complained about taking after his mother, who was only 4-foot-10.

"I'd be fibbin' to you if I told you I didn't think about that," Rooster once said about his height. "But when you thought about it, you got to thinking, 'Hell, I can do anything that anyone else can do. What difference does it make?'"

That is the man they’ll honor this afternoon in the Centennial Room on the west side of Memorial Stadium in Austin. It will be a huge reception in a state where everything seems larger than life, but where a man, hardly five feet tall, could probably have been elected to any position he cared to hold.

One last Rooster story: When he and his wife B.J. had their 50th wedding reception at their church, B.J. swears she heard one woman gasp, “I don’t know how she’s put up with that man this long!”

But maybe she put it better than anybody when she said, "The Lord made him to be that kind of person. To bring out the best in people, have fun and enjoy. It is a gift beyond belief."

royexum@aol.com

 

[Domedriver 655]

Rooster told me to go to the team sales door to buy chalk and tape for our rockclimbing.  He supported us as Texas first Rock Climbing, Mountaineering team and we always sought to make him proud!  
they knew us and sold us stuff at cost or below.  Thanks Rooster!🤘❤️

[LTtxfan 49196]

[msucolt45 4062]

Thanks for sharing. I always knew Rooster was a legend. When my Dad and I walked inside his store, we always had to “buy” something as a child. It was almost like paying it back to the days of old.

[SaucyJack 3488]

Dammit!

Thought there was gonna be some KBH college porn. Shit!

[Droopy 2626]

Just checking in to say Rooster and his store were badass back in the day. RIP

[LTtxfan 49196]

5 hours ago, msucolt45 said:

Thanks for sharing. I always knew Rooster was a legend. When my Dad and I walked inside his store, we always had to “buy” something as a child. It was almost like paying it back to the days of old.

Yeah I met "Rooster" as well.  Very kind & happy man -- couldn't believe a guy that size ever played football for UT.  

RIP "ROOSTER" 🤘 

[Randolph Duke 4034]

It was Rooster who drew what today is  known as the “Royal logo,” the current longhorn silhouette seen on the helmets. 

[LTtxfan 49196]

18 minutes ago, Randolph Duke said:

It was Rooster who drew what today is  known as the “Royal logo,” the current longhorn silhouette seen on the helmets. 

 

Rooster also helped Royal create TEXAS colors "Burnt Orange"

 

Longhorn helmet logo made its debut 50 years ago

Darrell Royal, left, and Rooster Andrews helped create the look of today’s Longhorns, from the logo to the burnt orange.

By John Maher  (Posted Sep 23, 2011 --  Updated Dec 12, 2018)

Quote

Rooster Andrews, who passed away three years ago, is remembered for many things. The 4-foot-11-inch Andrews was dubbed the All-American Waterboy for his drop-kicking skills at Texas, and on fake kicks, he even threw a pair of touchdown passes to his college roommate and buddy, Bobby Layne.

Yet it was in his professional career, as a sporting goods store owner, that Andrews made his most lasting contribution to UT tradition: developing the logo on the football helmet that has become synonymous with the team and the school.

The Longhorn helmet logo made its debut 50 years ago, in a 1961 season that almost climaxed with the school’s first national championship in football.

Back in ’61, Texas coach Darrell Royal was heading into his fifth season in Austin . The Longhorns were coming off a 7-3-1 campaign that had been salvaged by a string of four straight wins followed by a 3-3 tie against a Bear Bryant-led Alabama team anchored by linebacker Lee Roy Jordan.

In an effort to pump up the Longhorns’ scoring output and to make better use of scatback James Saxton, Royal was working on a new offense, which would be dubbed the Flip-Flop. But Royal apparently was concerned about other team matters as well.

One night he stopped by a neighbor’s house. At the time, Royal’s family lived on Belmont Parkway, and Andrews was nearby on Oakhurst Avenue.

“Darrell was getting some complaints about the uniforms being too plain. He said, ‘Gosh, what can I do to doll it up,‘” said Lisa Ard, Andrews’ daughter, who was not yet born at the time but has discussed the story with family members.

Back then, the Longhorns’ helmets were white with orange numerals on the side and a thin orange stripe down the center.

Andrews told Royal he had an idea and would work on it that night. Andrews found a Longhorn head in a book, traced it and colored it in with crayon.

The next morning Royal swung by, took a look and decided the logo would look just dandy on Texas’ helmets. It took Andrews a while, but he was able to find a manufacturer to produce the decals.

“They had to order a gazillion of them because they were a special order,” Ard said.

The Longhorn logos were placed under the players’ numerals on the side of the game helmets.

“We really liked it. We thought it was neat,” recalled David McWilliams, who was a sophomore on the ’61 Texas team. McWilliams, an associate athletic director at UT, said, “They were decals. If you hit anybody, they’d get torn off.”

Between games, damaged Longhorn logos were dutifully peeled off and replaced with new ones by team managers. The logos appeared to work like lucky charms.

Texas opened the season by thumping California 28-3 and proceeded to reel off a 10-1 season, marred only by a stunning loss to Texas Christian. The Longhorns finished third in the final Associated Press poll, which was topped by Alabama.

The Texas players sported the Longhorn decals when they claimed the national championship in 1963, and UT continues to have Longhorn silhouettes on helmets to day.

Andrews, however, wasn’t done making fashion statements for Texas.

A year later, Royal and Andrews collaborated on another important piece of Texas history, changing the color of Texas’ uniforms to burnt orange. At that time, Texas was wearing a bright — or University of Tennessee — orange.

Royal preferred something darker, closer to the color of the football, the way the practice uniforms looked when they were stained with sweat after a hot, hard practice.

Andrews, however, had trouble explaining that color to manufacturers.

Then Andrews came up with the idea of soaking a jersey in water overnight in a bucket, and showing that to a manufacturer, who then understood what Andrews had been talking about.

Now the University of Texas makes as much in royalties from the sale of merchandise as any university in the country — about $10 million a year.

And the Longhorn has become one of the most recognizable logos not only in college athletics, but in the world of sports

 

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by LTtxfan

[Lat22 4014]

Rooster put us through football drills at Camp Stewart in 1979. I spent a shit ton of money in his store when I was in Austin. 

 

Revised the year.  My Hare's Nest brother had to correct me.  We were there when John Wayne died.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Lat22

[South Austin 52515]

I moved to Austin in 1994 and recall that Rooster Andrews was still doing commercials for his store.

His wife goes to my church and I’ve gotten to know her a little bit. Very sweet woman, and very short like him.

[MirrOlure 14787]

My grandparents lived on 40th and Ave. G. Walking to Rooster’s every time we visited in the fall for some Burnt Orange gear was routine.

One of the last times I recall dropping in was after the 2000 Missouri game soaked to the bone and we all bought new sweats for the ride home. Put them on in the dressing room, wore them to the cash register and pulled the tags off on the way to the car.

Thanks for the memories….

[TrashMaster G 17558]

9 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

If your gonna talk about "Rooster Andrews"

 

The Legend Of Rooster Andrews

Saturday, January 26, 2008 - by Roy Exum

 

*you're

[Steamboat1874 4067]

9 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

I would have loved to buy one of the giant Texas football photos they had on the walls. The place somehow lost its charm when they built a new building. 

RIP Rooster

This was the best one and is one of the most iconic photos in Texas Football history.

I watched this game from the temporary green wooden bleachers in the SEZ that were brought over from Gregory Gym.

[RomaVicta 29909]

1 minute ago, Steamboat1874 said:

This was the best one and is one of the most iconic photos in Texas Football history.

I watched this game from the temporary green wooden bleachers in the SEZ that were brought over from Gregory Gym.

I was a kid and I think I heard this on the radio while in the car with Dad. Seemed like Texas would never lose again. A long pass for a wishbone team to snatch the game at the end.

Great choice. I'd never really studied the faces on the sideline. It's the second that what is happening is processed. You see the beginning of hands coming up to either form a surrender cobra or just ask the sky, why?

Quote

Facing 3rd and 19, Royal called "86 pass, Ted crossing, Sam post."

Jim Bertlesen broke the 'bone and ran a short hook to help clear the middle. Tight End Tommy Woodard (Ted) ran a deep middle route, while Cotton Speyrer (Sam) ran the post. The ball barely went over Woodard's head (he was double covered) and as it reached Speyrer the UCLA defender in the prevent tried for the interception while another UCLA defender nearbye was caught leaning the wrong way.

Steve Ross describes the day and situation quite well in this fine read.

Speyrer was a stone killer at receiver.

[VirginiaLonghorn 4772]

When I grew up in Austin, the only place to buy quality sports gear was C&S Sporting Goods (on the Drag as I recall).  That’s where my Dad took me for my baseball equipment from little league thru high school.

The person we always went to for help?  Mr Andrews .. who worked there for a number of years before he opened his own store.

Great guy!

[Chicken fried bacon 46]

I worked for Rooster in 1990 as a student.  Great man.   Always helping the community and students. 

[TexMex Horn 68]

3 hours ago, Lat22 said:

Rooster put us through football drills at Camp Stewart in 1977. I spent a shit ton of money in his store when I was in Austin. 

Lions Den 76 & 77

[Handcruser 2805]

Long time Rooster employee. He was a great guy and I know lots of great stories.

I remember clocking in one day and the starting QB walked in and clocked in right next to me.

I didn’t see him the rest of the day lol.

Godspeed Rooster!

[Jiggy-Z 3432]

Back when he still had his store on the drag in the mid 70's, when DKR was still coach, my mom would take my brother and I there to get some UT stuff in preparation for going to a game.  My folks were never too interested in football, but my dad's younger sister was dating some big whig at KIKK radio down in Houston who was an Arkansas grad.  Super nice guy who somehow always had great west side tickets right in the middle of the blue hairs.  Mom would always take us there the week of the Arkansas games to get us set up.  That set up petered out in the late 70's even though my aunt still dated they guy, but man that was fun, especially after my brother and I started playing in the middle school band. We were so in awe of LHB.

The year after Earl's Heisman, mom got us set with two team autographed footballs from Roosters, that was the '78 team.  I remember that I secretly,not so secretly added my autograph somewhere in the middle of the signatures and I would pretend I was on the team.  Still have the football.

Somewhere back in my memory, I think I met Rooster on one of those first trips back in the mid 70's.  I don't think my mom had any idea who he was.

Later, when I was in school, and after Rooster had moved his campus store north,  I went into the store to get some running shorts and was helped by a good looking gal that I was trying to chat up.  I had planned on some suave moves at the register, but Rooster butted in and took over the payment.  Rooster was so nice and friendly, but I still gave him the Tommy Lee Jones look as much a guy who was 6' tall could, to an old man who was 4'-11".  I really had to stoop and get those eyeballs up.  He had a shit eating grin on his face like he knew what I was doing the whole time.

I made it back to his store only one other time and that was to get me a pair of the first generation Nike AIR MAX running shoes.  No Rooster on that final time.

I'm not sure when he moved his campus store, but by the looks of it is was in the early 80's.  Funny how that move coincided with what would be the end of a dominant era in Texas football.  By 1985 the football program was sagging, the Texas economy was in the tank and would be for another decade, much of the University could have used some upgrades, and it was very obvious to me, at the time, that UT was laving on its past glories.

 

Epilogue: Ended up making the LHB, played '85-'88 , and watched a lot of shitty football. 

[Zone Read 299]

In early 1999, my wife and I found out she was pregnant with twins.  We were shopping at Rooster's store and saw a t-shirt that said "Longhorn Under Construction."  We took it to the counter to buy it and mentioned that we loved the shirt but it wasn't quite accurate since we had 2 babies in there.  Sales clerk said to hang on a second while they went to the back.  Apparently Rooster told them to iron-on an "S" after "Longhorn" free of charge.  Must have worked, both kids graduate in May. Thanks Rooster, RIP in the great alumni center in the sky.

[DalTxHornFan 3102]

Rooster was the real deal.  My wife and I lived in a rented duplex in the Pemberton area in the 1980s.  We would see Rooster and his bride out walking most every evening.  We only had some "friends of friends" types of connections, but they would invariably stop and chat with us.  Good folks.

[hornbri 1399]

46 minutes ago, Zone Read said:

In early 1999, my wife and I found out she was pregnant with twins.  We were shopping at Rooster's store and saw a t-shirt that said "Longhorn Under Construction."  We took it to the counter to buy it and mentioned that we loved the shirt but it wasn't quite accurate since we had 2 babies in there.  Sales clerk said to hang on a second while they went to the back.  Apparently Rooster told them to iron-on an "S" after "Longhorn" free of charge.  Must have worked, both kids graduate in May. Thanks Rooster, RIP in the great alumni center in the sky.

That is awesome, I remember being able to buy custom shirts there with the iron on letters. We had some creativity with that one. 

[4th&Five 41558]

7 hours ago, Lat22 said:

Rooster put us through football drills at Camp Stewart in 1977. I spent a shit ton of money in his store when I was in Austin. 

He was still coming and doing them in the late 80s and early 90s when I was going.

[TexasEd 8067]

love this part

Quote

Well, Dana X. Bible, another great Texas coach, arranged for Billy Andrews, as he was called at the time, to be an assistant manager at Texas and even gave him a room in the football dorm so he could keep some of the better players from getting in trouble.

One of the best at mischief was an All-American end named Malcolm Kutner, who had known Billy when he went to high school at Woodrow, and the plan worked swell. In 1941 the Longhorns were No. 1, on the cover of Life magazine, and Billy fit in fine.
That spring, however, the defining moment of his life came when three players – Kutner, Pete Layden and Jack Crain – rousted the manager out of bed late one night with an urgent plea. They wanted to go to a cockfight over in Elgin but didn’t have a rooster.

So they got the little freshman in his pajamas, and a flashlight, and went to a huge tree near old Clark Field where five or six roosters were …. er, roosting for the night in the high branches. Up went little Billy with Layden barking orders from below. “Get the one of the right. That’s Elmer. He’s the one.”

Andrews later recalled the tree was higher than the Empire State Building and, when he grabbed the rooster called Elmer, the chicken didn’t want to go to the cockfight. "When I grabbed him, he clawed my face. Oh, man, he tore me up. I fell, bounced through some limbs, but I still had the rooster," Andrews told the Dallas Morning News in a 2001 interview.

That was when Crain looked at Billy on the ground and said, "Hate to leave you here in this condition, but we're late. See you tomorrow."

"I walked back to the dorm," Andrews says. "Woke up the next morning, my left arm was all puffed up. Busted," he said with a laugh, but, by the next day, no one ever called him Billy again. A name had been born.

 

[pch 1259]

22 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

If your gonna talk about "Rooster Andrews"

 

The Legend Of Rooster Andrews

Saturday, January 26, 2008 - by Roy Exum

 

Thank you for posting this article.  Jack Crain part of the story cracked me up and didn't surprise me one bit.  CSB-my parents retired to Nocona, Crain's home, in 1975 and they became friends.  He preached my mother's funeral in '85 and was a great comfort to my family that day.

[oldhorn2 431]

and from back then....Tommy Nobis...averaged just under 20 tackles a game.....for his career at UT....thats a shit load of tackles. Cotton  was nails....and James Street never lost a game and never did not make a play when it absolutely had to be made.

[Nueces River Rat 5539]

Thanks for the memory refresh!

[Dbeasy 15052]

In 1977, while in junior high, two of us rode our bikes to the Rooster Andrews on the drag. They had these bastardized mesh LA Rams jerseys on sale for something like 99 cents. Two of us bought jerseys. For some reason, the other 6-7 guys in our group decided to also go buy a jersey. All 8 or 9 of us wore those jerseys everywhere, including to the Boston concert at the Erwin Center, my first concert ever. Why do I remember this?

[Longboard Horn 40326]

On 9/8/2021 at 10:56 PM, LTtxfan said:

Dad used to take me there as a kid to get jerseys. Thanks for the nostalgia!

[Brandywine 1316]

https://alcalde.texasexes.org/2011/08/longhorn-logo-turns-50/

https://alcalde.texasexes.org/2011/08/longhorn-logo-turns-50/1961b/

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Brandywine

[Goodman 3273]

 

[Tex Pete 20357]

Loved me some Rooster Andrews. It was always cool seeing a living legend in person when I shopped there as a 20-something.

Anyone know where I can purchase the actual helmet decals like Rooster sold? The thick plastic (whatever) actual burnt orange decals? I have never seen them sold anywhere since his store closed.

 

[Classic Rock 276]

5 minutes ago, Tex Pete said:

Loved me some Rooster Andrews. It was always cool seeing a living legend in person when I shopped there as a 20-something.

Anyone know where I can purchase the actual helmet decals like Rooster sold? The thick plastic (whatever) actual burnt orange decals? I have never seen them sold anywhere since his store closed.

 

The Co-op used to have them. I bought some there for an old white helmet that I have.

[LonghornJones 837]

Oshmans was the sporting goods store we went to when we visited the big city of Austin.

[MAUFRAIS 6629]

Yeah because you couldn’t test snow skis on a carpet mountain at Roosters.

[HOOKEM4 5037]

11 minutes ago, MAUFRAIS said:

Yeah because you couldn’t test snow skis on a carpet mountain at Roosters.

I remember I would just go there and roller blade around, then ski, a quick basketball game and dip. I am not sure if we ever bought a thing there. My parents would leave me there while they shopped. Sometimes I would sneak over to tilt and play some games. Man, what a walk down memory lane.

[Ignatius 4017]

On 9/9/2021 at 1:13 PM, Jiggy-Z said:

Back when he still had his store on the drag in the mid 70's, when DKR was still coach, my mom would take my brother and I there to get some UT stuff in preparation for going to a game.  My folks were never too interested in football, but my dad's younger sister was dating some big whig at KIKK radio down in Houston who was an Arkansas grad.  Super nice guy who somehow always had great west side tickets right in the middle of the blue hairs.  Mom would always take us there the week of the Arkansas games to get us set up.  That set up petered out in the late 70's even though my aunt still dated they guy, but man that was fun, especially after my brother and I started playing in the middle school band. We were so in awe of LHB.

The year after Earl's Heisman, mom got us set with two team autographed footballs from Roosters, that was the '78 team.  I remember that I secretly,not so secretly added my autograph somewhere in the middle of the signatures and I would pretend I was on the team.  Still have the football.

Somewhere back in my memory, I think I met Rooster on one of those first trips back in the mid 70's.  I don't think my mom had any idea who he was.

Later, when I was in school, and after Rooster had moved his campus store north,  I went into the store to get some running shorts and was helped by a good looking gal that I was trying to chat up.  I had planned on some suave moves at the register, but Rooster butted in and took over the payment.  Rooster was so nice and friendly, but I still gave him the Tommy Lee Jones look as much a guy who was 6' tall could, to an old man who was 4'-11".  I really had to stoop and get those eyeballs up.  He had a shit eating grin on his face like he knew what I was doing the whole time.

I made it back to his store only one other time and that was to get me a pair of the first generation Nike AIR MAX running shoes.  No Rooster on that final time.

I'm not sure when he moved his campus store, but by the looks of it is was in the early 80's.  Funny how that move coincided with what would be the end of a dominant era in Texas football.  By 1985 the football program was sagging, the Texas economy was in the tank and would be for another decade, much of the University could have used some upgrades, and it was very obvious to me, at the time, that UT was laving on its past glories.

 

Epilogue: Ended up making the LHB, played '85-'88 , and watched a lot of shitty football. 

Same as my undergrad years; UT administration was definitely not in ‘build and repair’ mode during that time. Most of those racquetball/handball courts in Gregory could have housed a meth lab and not looked out of place…

[Hermanator 7061]

6 hours ago, Goodman said:

 

Good God, those college players in the early 40s looked like middle aged dudes with an alcohol problem. They must have started smoking in the crib

[DoobieWah 1445]

 Thanks for posting that. 

[Leanderman 2275]

Cannot forget his famous truck

[Biff Tannen 45691]

I worked my senior year of high school at the Rooster's on 183.  One of my favorite jobs ever.  Rooster was still alive and him and his wife (blanking on her name dammit) would come in every once in a while.  Nicest people ever.  We would play whiffle ball home run derby in the store when there were no customers.  Fucking fantastic job.

[Tailgate 3022]

I remember being at the Texas v Notre Dame game in 1995. We saw the Cubs a day before when the outfield during the game was yelling “Texas” “Fight” and Harry Caray said “Texas is here.”

During the football game on Saturday I was fired up to start the game as was everyone. Kickoff happened and a few plays in on a big drive I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around and it’s Rooster…who is holding onto my shoulder and my buddies shoulder to prop himself up so he can see the game.

Great guy. Longhorn legend.

Edited October 10 by Tailgate

[Dbeasy 15052]

8 hours ago, Goodman said:

 

Oh shit. The iconic Longhorn logo is very likely a copyright infringement. 

[LTtxfan 49196]

Favorite Red River Memories | What Has Each Coach Been Saving?