WSU’s Cameron Ward of West Columbia (#1) completed 22 of 32 pass attempts in the December 17th Los Angeles Bowl at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The Jerry Rice Award winner transferred from Incarnate Word.
By Tracy Gupton
Columbia Historical Museum Secretary
While immersed in college football TV bowl coverage over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, it is nice to reminisce about the many former Columbia Roughnecks who have participated in the big bowl game experience over the decades.
What a huge thrill it was to watch West Columbia’s own favorite son, Cameron Ward, quarterbacking the Washington State Cougars in the December 17, 2022, Jimmy Kimmel Los Angeles Bowl on ABC. And even though the Cougs lost to Fresno State, 29-6, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, it was cool hearing Jimmy Kimmel himself saying Cam Ward’s name on national television.
Imagining the same kid who used to quarterback for the Columbia Roughnecks at Griggs Field just a few years ago, played in a major bowl game earlier this month in the same stadium where Matthew Stafford led the Los Angeles Rams to a 23-20 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in an exciting Super Bowl LVI back in February boggles the mind … at least in small towns like West Columbia where things like that rarely happen. But if you condense the past eight decades into a quick look back over the years, it’s not that rare after all.
Cam Ward left Columbia High as the school’s all-time leader in points scored in boys basketball and was an outstanding signal caller for multiple seasons on head coach Brent Mascheck’s Roughnecks football teams. Ward first took his immense talents to San Antonio where he won the starting quarterback job in the midst of his freshman season at The University of Incarnate Word.
He quickly earned national attention his first season at Incarnate Word when the coveted STATS Perform Jerry Rice Award was bestowed upon him following the 2020 season. The Jerry Rice Award is given to the top freshman player in the nation on the FCS level.
Cam Ward followed his Incarnate Word head coach Eric Morris to Washington State University when the Cougars head coach Jake Dickert lured Morris away from the San Antonio college to become WSU’s offensive coordinator for the 2022 season. Ward, who threw for over 4,600 yards and 47 touchdowns at Incarnate Word in 2021 while leading the Cardinals to a 10-3 record, threw 23 TD passes and a little more than 3,200 yards in the air as Washington State’s starting quarterback this season.
Ward got lots of national television exposure in 2022 and played in front of huge stadium crowds that probably took some getting used to after taking snaps from center in front of a small fraction of the size crowds that gathered in local stadiums in West Columbia, Sweeny, Freeport, Bay City and small towns like these where he played when he was in high school.
Cam is just the latest in a long line of home-grown superior athletes who have also made the leap from the small town “Friday Night Lights” in West Columbia to performing on the gridirons of major universities around the country. James Ray Smith, a 1950 graduate of West Columbia High School, became an All American as an offensive tackle his junior season in Waco suiting up for the Baylor Bears.
Smith, who was named to the Pro Bowl five times as a guard for the Cleveland Browns when the former West Columbian made the successful transition from college football to the NFL, appeared in the 1954 Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida. Smith’s Baylor Bears were defeated by Auburn, 33-13, but James Ray was selected in the sixth round of the 1955 NFL draft by the Browns and played in the College All Star Game against the Browns that year. Cleveland won the NFL championship in 1954 during Smith’s final season at Baylor.
Another former Roughnecks great, 1958 WCHS graduate Dennis Gaubatz, originally began his college football career with the Texas Aggies. While Dennis was in College Station the LSU Tigers were winning a national championship in the 1958 season. Unhappy with his situation with the Aggies, Gaubatz transferred to Baton Rouge to play for Louisiana State and had a successful college career with the Tigers at LSU.
LSU went undefeated in 1958 and won 15 straight games through the 1958 and 1959 seasons under head coach Paul Dietzel. Gaubatz was a linebacker at LSU and got his share of TV time as a member of the Tigers teams that appeared in major bowl games in 1960, 1962 and 1963, all of those games having been played on New Year’s Day.
The 1959 LSU Tigers lost 21-0 to Ole Miss at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on January 1, 1960; they were the number four ranked team in the nation when they defeated Colorado 25-7 January 1, 1962, in the Orange Bowl in Miami; and LSU was ranked number seven at the time when they upset the number four ranked Texas Longhorns 13-0 in the January 1, 1963 Cotton Bowl in Dallas to bring a successful conclusion to Gaubatz’s college career while giving first-year head coach Charles McClendon a major bowl victory in the first season he took over at the helm of the Tigers from Dietzel.
Gaubatz, who still lives in the West Columbia area today, was taken in the eighth round of the 1963 NFL draft by the Detroit Lions and traded to the Baltimore Colts in 1965.
It was as the starting middle linebacker for the 1968 NFL champion Colts that Dennis Gaubatz would return to the Orange Bowl in Miami to play the AFL champion New York Jets in Super Bowl III in January 1969 where the former Roughnecks standout probably got the most TV exposure of his long football career. But Broadway Joe Namath and the Jets upset the highly favored Colts in the third Super Bowl.
One of Namath’s favorite passing targets that season on the Jets was wide receiver George Sauer Jr., who was the son of James Ray Smith’s head coach at Baylor University, George Sauer Sr.
Another former Roughnecks great who enjoyed bowl game memories as an LSU Tiger was Wayne Williams, the star running back of Coach Ed Derrich’s 1987 Columbia High team that advanced several rounds deep into the postseason playoffs, eventually losing a heartbreaker in the Astrodome to cap Williams’ outstanding football career in the Roughnecks’ uniform. Wayne Williams appeared in the January 2, 1989 Hall of Fame Bowl in Tampa, Florida, when the Syracuse Orange defeated LSU 23-10. Ironically, Joe Willie Namath, who was partially responsible for preventing the other former Roughneck/LSU Tiger Dennis Gaubatz from earning a Super Bowl ring 20 years earlier, was in the NBC broadcast booth when Wayne Williams made his lone bowl game appearance.
Williams was an LSU defensive back and kick returner from the 1988 through the 1991 seasons at Baton Rouge. Williams had three interceptions for LSU in 1990 and two more thefts in 1991.
The Houston Astrodome was the scene where a former Columbia Roughneck had by far the greatest single game performance in a college bowl game by anyone from the West Columbia area. Charlie Davis, drafted higher than any other Roughneck player in NFL history, was the star of the New Year’s Eve 1971 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl when Davis’s Colorado Buffaloes defeated the Houston Cougars, 29-17, in an entertaining ABC telecast. Robert Newhouse, who would later line up in the Dallas Cowboys’ backfield, carried the ball 35 times for the University of Houston that night, accumulating an impressive 168 yards for the Cougars who were playing in their home stadium. But Newhouse had to take a backseat to West Columbia’s superstar. Charlie Davis, who will be 71 next month, led the Buffs to a Bluebonnet Bowl victory by picking up 202 yards on 37 carries. Davis scored on a first quarter 27-yard sprint and tacked on a one-yard TD plunge in the second quarter.
Coach Eddie Crowder’s Colorado Buffs were vaulted to a third place ranking in the national AP polls following Charlie Davis’s outstanding night on December 31, 1971. Davis also was a member of the Buffs’ 1972 team under Crowder’s leadership that lost to Auburn, 24-3, in the December 30, 1972, Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida.
While Davis was taken in the second round of the 1974 NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals, his fellow 1969 state championship game teammate on the Roughnecks, Charlie Johnson, was selected in the seventh round of the 1977 pro draft by the Philadelphia Eagles. Johnson spent some time in the Army before eventually following Davis to the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Bill Mallory was Colorado’s head coach during Charlie Johnson’s tenure as a defensive lineman for the Buffs. The other half of Coach Jack Hays’ “Charlie” backfield from that memorable 1969 state championship run for Columbia High, Charlie Johnson, was a member of Mallory’s Buffs team that lost to the University of Texas 38-21 in the December 27, 1975, Bluebonnet Bowl in the Astrodome, and came up short in the January 1, 1977, Orange Bowl in Miami when Colorado lost 27-10 to Ohio State.
Former Roughnecks great Charlie Johnson in a September 1976 University of Colorado Buffaloes game in Boulder
Charlie Johnson, who passed away August 13, 2021, played nine seasons in the NFL with the Eagles (1977-1981) and Minnesota Vikings (1982-1984). He is the only former Roughneck other than Dennis Gaubatz to enjoy the thrill of playing in a Super Bowl.
But, like Gaubatz in Super Bowl III with the Colts, Charlie Johnson and the Philadelphia Eagles suffered the pain of losing the big game. The Eagles were defeated by quarterback Jim Plunkett and the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XV in 1980 in New Orleans. Johnson, who like Charlie Davis was a senior at Columbia High during the 1969-70 school year, was selected to three Pro Bowls and earned All-Pro honors as a nose tackle with the Eagles.
Other former Roughneck greats who have experienced the thrill of major college bowl game appearances include Leandrew Brown and Jared Flannel. Brown, a defensive back for Texas A&M in the 1978, 1979 and 1980 seasons, made the successful transition from Roughnecks maroon-and-white to Aggies’ maroon-and-white. He was recruited by Aggies head coach Emory Bellard, but by the time Texas A&M appeared in the December 20, 1978, Hall of Fame Classic Bowl in Birmingham, Alabama, Bellard had been replaced by Tom Wilson mid-season in College Station.
Wilson’s Aggies defeated Iowa State 28-12 in that Hall of Fame Classic when Curtis Dickey rambled for 278 yards on 34 carries to lead Texas A&M to a bowl win.
Leandrew Brown appeared in 11 games for the Aggies as a defensive back in each of his three seasons on the Texas A&M roster. He was a 1977 graduate of Columbia High School.
Jared Flannel of Brazoria posted three consecutive 1,400-yard rushing seasons while wearing the Roughnecks uniform. Jared was the District 24-3A MVP his sophomore and junior seasons and was heavily recruited by major universities despite an injury-plagued senior season at Columbia High.
Flannel appeared in 12 games in three of the four seasons he suited up for the Texas Tech Red Raiders in Lubbock, missing the 2009 season due to injury. He was a special teams standout in 2008, his first season at Texas Tech under head coach Mike Leach, who sadly passed away earlier this month at the age of 61 while he was still the head coach at Mississippi State.
Jared Flannel and the Red Raiders defeated the Northwestern Wildcats 45-38 in the New Year’s Day 2011 Ticket City Bowl in Dallas while Tommy Tuberville was Texas Tech’s head coach. Tuberville is now a U.S. Senator representing the State of Alabama.
At the conclusion of the 2008 season when Flannel appeared in a dozen games for the Red Raiders, Texas Tech lost to Ole Miss, 47-34, in the 73rd Cotton Bowl, played January 2, 2009, in Dallas. The largest Cotton Bowl crowd in history (88,175) watched the highest scoring Cotton Bowl game in history and got to see Texas Tech quarterback Graham Harrell pass for a Cotton Bowl record 364 yards while also breaking the NCAA career touchdown passes record. Harrell had four TD passes in this exciting bowl game to give him 134 in his college career at Texas Tech.
Harrell’s final touchdown pass of that 2009 Cotton Bowl game was thrown to Texas Tech wide receiver Eric Morris, who coached West Columbia’s Cam Ward at Incarnate Word University in 2020 and 2021, and was Washington State’s offensive coordinator this season when Ward made the successful transition from small college football in San Antonio to the big time with the Cougars where Cam quarterbacked Washington State earlier this month at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles.
