Aug. 23, 2010
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12 DAYS UNTIL KICKOFF - Bum Phillips can relate to Lamar University restarting its football program after several years of being dormant.
Phillips, you see, played for Lamar Junior College when the school resumed football in 1946 after a three-year shutdown for World War II.
Phillips' ties to Lamar actually date back to 1941 when he arrived on campus as a freshman out of Beaumont's French High School. He wasn't good enough to make R.M. Hodgkiss' team that fall; then he took a four-year hiatus to fight for his country.
By the fall of 1945, Phillips had returned from the war and was working at Magnolia Refinery, when fate sent him back to Lamar.
Fired over a dispute involving a payroll deduction, he normally would have turned right coming out of the refinery and headed home to Orange. For a reason he still can't explain, Phillips turned left and drove past a practice field where Lamar JC football coach Ted Jefferies was holding practice.
"I just happened to be looking that way, saw guys practicing and stopped to watch," he said. "Coach Jefferies walked up and asked me if I was a football player and would I like to try out. I didn't have anything else to do, so I tried out."
The rest, as they say, is history. Bum became one of many WWII veterans on the team when Jefferies' Cardinals started playing games in 1946 and helped them to an 8-2 record. The next year, with Jefferies gone and A.C. Forward the head coach, Lamar went 4-6.
Phillips, a guard and defensive tackle, was a team captain both years. What a lot of folks don't know is that Bum was also the captain of the 1947-1948 Cardinal basketball team that won the Texas state championship.
"I wasn't much of a shooter, but I could guard," Phillips said with a chuckle. "I could bump people around. I was just real aggressive. I could take pivot men out of their game."
And what does Phillips remember most about his football days at Lamar?
"Most of all, what I remember is Lamar got a lot more responsible human being when I returned from the war," said Phillips. "I wasn't worth much before the war, but I came back a lot more mature and dependable. I did think I should have been a running back, but Ted played me in the line."
Phillips said football as it was played then is much different from the game Ray Woodard's Cardinals will be playing this fall.
"It wasn't nearly as tough to play then," he said. "You did a lot of standing and looking if you played defense. Somebody invented pursuit after the war. Back then, all you did was just protect your side if they came that way."
Phillips, inducted into the Cardinal Hall of Honor in 1977, went on to become one of Texas' legendary football coaches. He started at Nederland High School, spent a year with Bear Bryant at Alabama and ultimately became the head coach of the Houston Oilers during the "Luv Ya Blue" days of the late 1970s.
Phillips' Oilers were twice stopped one victory short of the Super Bowl by the NFL's reigning power at the time -- the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Soon to turn 87, Phillips spends most of his time these days as a rancher in Goliad and the No. 1 fan of son Wade Phillips' Dallas Cowboys. The next big event in his life will be the mid August release of his autobiography -- Bum Phillps: Cowboy, Coach, Christian (BumPhillipsBook).
The Texas State University System Board of Regents approved an athletics fee to restore the program in February of 2008 and named former NFL player Ray Woodard its eighth head coach on June 19, 2008.
Lamar will play an 11-game schedule this season, with six games being played in the newly renovated Provost Umphrey Stadium. The first home game will be against Webber International on Sept. 11.
Tickets for this historic season are currently on sale and can be purchased by calling the Lamar Ticket Office at (409) 880-1715 or by visiting the athletics Web site at www.lamarcardinals.com/tickets/footbl-s-tickets.html.
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