EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article appeared in the College Football Historical Society in February, 2005 and is also available in the Archives of the Big Bend. Highlights include excerpts from editions of the Fall, 1947 Sul Ross Skyline.

Most colleges and universities suffered decreased enrollments and funding during World War II and many curtailed their athletic programs. As the conclusion of the war neared, however, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, as the G.I Bill was formally termed, revitalized America's higher education system. Extracurricular activities such as football suddenly blossomed as "G.I. Joe" entered college campuses. The reentry of service veterans into intercollegiate football was a landmark event in the evolution of the game, causing at least one observer to remark that "college football reached a dazzling peak in the forties, a decade featuring many of the greatest teams and individual performers of all time,  and that ''World War II was directly responsible.

Even before official American involvement in the war began, administrators at Sul Ross College in West Texas were deliberating the worth of a temporary suspension of the college's intercollegiate athletics program. College officials were concerned that a cut in enrollment numbers due to the federal government's selective service program would lead to economic instability at a school that budgeted approximately $11,500 for its intercollegiate athletics program. The termination of intercollegiate athletics took effect upon the approval of the president of the Board of Regents for Texas State Teachers Colleges on February 14, 1940, and was emblematic of other significant changes sweeping across Sul Ross's educational landscape. By the fall of 1943, five faculty members, including the head football coach, had left the college to enter the various military services. With only 18 academic instructors left on the college's staff, the school had only one faculty member in all but three academic departments. Enrollment numbers also diminished as male and female students entered the military or joined the nation's workforce, declining from 625 enrollees in the spring semester of.1940 to 239 in the spring of 1944.

Although the military presented a threat to Sul Ross during the war by depleting its faculty and student body, it would later constitute the most important resource· for the school's transformation into an athletic power. In addition to providing the nucleus of toughened G.I. student-athletes that would comprise the football team, Paul "Red" Pierce, the school's football coach during the post-war period, obtained his position at Sul Ross in large part due to his success as the head gridiron coach at the Bainbridge, Maryland Naval Training Station during the war. The unique character of military football allowed Pierce to learn from highly accomplished coaches and athletes who would shape his subsequent coaching methods at Sul Ross, and Pierce would later remark that his coaching methodology in the Navy consisted of "staying out of the way of the assistant coaches and players that knew more than me." Indeed, Pierce would state that he "probably never would have been given the chance at Sul Ross if [he] had not coached at Bainbridge.

By April of 1946, conditions had changed on the campus of Sul Ross State Teachers College to produce an environment that was ripe for the reinstitution of intercollegiate athletics. But although the new president, Richard Hawkins, and a newly created booster club, provided the vision and funding for a post-war football team at Sul Ross, potential participants were lacking. One student at the school complained that "Sul Ross has its shortcomings," and that "one of these is the lack of its number of scholastics. This is an outstanding disadvantage. If we had a larger student body at Sul Ross, there would be more student activities, and as a result, an altogether better school" The G.I. bill, with its resulting influx of students to Sul Ross, would soon provide the participants that the school's athletics programs required. By the winter of 1945, a trickle of war veterans had begun to enter the college and later this would open into a virtual stream of ex-G.l.'s who would collectively dominate the Sul Ross campus.

By the spring of 194 7 veterans constituted 396 of the 624 enrollees at Sul Ross College. Similar enrollment effects were felt at colleges and universities across the nation where veterans comprised the majority of male students for three years after the war ended. In all, 2,232,000 veterans took advantage of the G.I. Bill's educational opportunities and attended institutions of higher learning.

After the decision had been made to field a Sul Ross football squad in 1946, President Hawkins appointed the school's pre-war coach, B.C. Graves, to lead the team. Graves, who had spent the war in the navy, went so far as to start spring practices in April of 1946 before tendering his resignation to accept a position with the .U.S. Veterans Administration. Paul "Red" Pierce, a star player for Sul Ross before the war, was a natural selection for the open position due to the gridiron knowledge and experience that he had obtained at Bainbridge.

Pierce soon began a recruiting campaign to bring additional veteran players to campus, although he was naturally concerned that Sul Ross could not attract superior athletes such as those that comprised the service teams during the war.

As assistant coach Jack Perryman later described, "Sul Ross didn't have a very good pick of athletes….We were lucky with what we got" and "if they were worth a darn, we weren't going to get them." Some players coming directly out of high school such as Ted Scown, who would become a "little All-American" in 1948, attended Sul Ross after no other schools offered them a scholarship. Pierce also pursued athletes with whom he had forged a personal relationship before the war as a high school teacher and coach.

As the 1946 college football season neared, gridiron observers across the country were enthusiastic about the effect that returning veterans would have on the game, and that enthusiasm was very evident on the Sul Ross campus also. Sul Ross handily defeated San Angelo Junior College 18 to 7 in the school's first gridiron competition since the suspension of its intercollegiate athletics program in 1940. In Sul Ross's first home game on September 28, 1946, the Lobos were defeated by Abilene Christian College, yet the very playing of the game helped military veterans at the school regain the sense of normalcy they had lost during their military experiences. Overcome by emotion, one ex-G.I. spectator wrote that "for many veterans Saturday night… was the first real football night they had experienced for three, four, or five years. To us who were fortunate enough to find ourselves in the midst of 'Rah-rahs' and 'Fight team, fight,' such a commotion was not strictly G.l For this we were truley thankful."

Although the Sul Ross team scored 215 points in its initial season while yielding only 118, the college was able to win only five out of ten games in the 1946 season. Throughout the year, however, certain moments would forecast the dominant team that Sul Ross would become by 1948. In a 38 to O victory over the New Mexico Military Institute, for example, Sul Ross combined "a brilliant running assault behind a surging line with a deceptive overhead attack" to overwhelm its opponent Yet, as exemplified by the loss of five players due to injury against Texas A & I, some of the Sul Ross military veterans were susceptible to conditioning limitations.

In further developing his team, Pierce faced the difficult task of integrating the older and more mature veteran players with non-veteran athletes. The ex-G.l.'s, many of whom were married, at first kept to themselves and chose not to associate off the field with those team members who did not serve in the military. Team members such as Scown who had come to Sul Ross straight from high school were intimidated by the size and toughness of the veterans. Scown recalled that the former servicemen were "always talking about the war stories. They were so much more mature and all than we were right out of high school - eighteen year olds when we first came here," and "they were bigger and stronger . . . . [and] some of them were real physical."

Veteran athletes were also treated differently than non-veterans on the Sul Ross team due to the unique issues that had faced them during the war. Although Pierce personally opposed smoking and punished non-veterans for doing so, he was more lenient toward the ex-G.l.'s that had developed smoking habits in the military. Yet as time went on and the veterans readjusted to civilian life, a unique chemistry evolved among the members of Pierce's team.

During the inaugural season of Sul Ross's return to intercollegiate football in 1946, the college had competed outside the confines of an athletic conference. President Hawkins, however, desired the status and publicity that membership of an athletic conference could provide. As the school prepared for the 1947 season, an invitation to join the New Mexico Conference would fulfill this hope, and school administrators invested in new equipment and uniforms in the hopes of making the best impression possible upon the other colleges in the conference. The student newspaper at Sul Ross glowingly reported that "new uniforms have been ordered. The color scheme of the school has been carried out with scarlet ... jerseys and gray pants. To top off this colorful attire will be scarlet ... helmets."

A talented Sul Ross squad started out the 194 7 season shakily, losing its first home game by twelve points to the San Angelo Junior College Rams, before the Lobos crushed an overwhelmed Eastern New Mexico squad by a score of 46-7 in the second game of the year. Victory followed on the next weekend when Sul Ross "unleashed a powerful ground attack to blank vaunted Daniel Baker College [by a score of]'27-0.11 Although the Lobos lost a non-conference game against New Mexico A&M, they remained in contention for the conference crown after defeating Panhandle A&M on October 10, 1947. Then further victories over Adams State and Silver City Teachers College ensured that the conference crown would go to Sul Ross. A split in the final two games of the year, against Brook Army Medical Center and Texas A&I, would not dampen the spirits of Lobo fans.

With President Hawkins glowing over a predicted all-time high in enrollment at the school, the Sul Ross football team started out the 1948 season by beating the favored Sam Houston State Bearkats with a "brilliant Cinderella second half comeback" for the 2CH9 win. After a 34-7 Lobo win over Daniel Baker College, against Panhandle A&M the Lobos similarly "steamrollered by a hands-down 44-6 score .... [and] were never checked as they launched scoring plays in every quarter." Victory again occurred when "an extra large turnout of fans ... saw [the] Lobos stop a pack of Eastern New Mexico Greyhounds cold while running up the top-heavy score of 52-0."

The race for conference supremacy would heat up in the coming battle against the Aggies from New Mexico A&M, which had never been beaten by Sul Ross. The Skyline - the school newspaper - was hopeful and announced, "The Lobos ... will make their strongest bid for victory with ... their most potent team since the war. The Pierce ... charges ... are expected to answer the kickoff at ....full battle strength." Sul Ross then "downed the ... Aggies ... 47-12 .... [to] remain one of the two undefeated untied teams in Texas." After a 21-14 homecoming win over the Corpus Christi College Tarpons, it was noted that "many of the former students expressed the opinion that the 1948 homecoming was the most successful and enjoyable reunion ... in recent years." Next up was "the renewal of [the] ancient rivalry on the gridiron between the [Texas] A&I Javalinas and the Sul RoS&..Lobos.11 The resulting 33-19 victory by the Lobos allowed Sul Ross to become the only undefeated and untied team in the state of Texas, and one of only 34 in the nation at the time.

An easy 69-6 victory in November of 1948 over New Mexico State Teachers College caught the attention of bowl committees, and President Hawkins reported that "the Lobos chances of playing in a bowl game were more than good." In the final game of the season against St. Michaels College, ex-G.l.'s on the squad made a special effort to epable Ted Scown to become the nation's leading scorer. Their efforts paid off as Scown scored six touchdowns in a runaway 77-6 victory and on November 30, 1948, the New York Times carried a headline tabbing him as the nation's leading scorer.

At the conclusion of the season, Sul Ross was selected to play in the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida in its first ever bowl invitation. Pierce initially chartered an aircraft to fly the team from West Texas to Orlando. However, Jack Belcher, who had been a tail gunner aboard strategic bombers in the war, and Otis Parks, a former B-17 pilot in the Army Air Corps, requested that the team not fly. Pierce recalled a team meeting where one of them said, "Coach, I've used up all my chances in the air." Ted Scown confirmed that "some of those players on that football team ... didn't want to fly. They'd been in [the] service, in [the] Air Force, and they wouldn't fly .... Some of them told us, 'We [are not] gonna get on one of [those] airplanes.' You know, they had too many bad experiences."

Yielding to their wishes, Pierce chartered a bus to take the team the approximately 1,600 miles to Florida, and the team stopped to practice every day along the way. In the Tangerine Bowl game, the Lobos jumped out to a sizable half time 21 to 7 lead over the Murray State Thoroughbreds of the Ohio Valley Conference, but then Ted Scown and backfield mate J.M. Harrell went down with injuries in the final quarter. With the desperate Lobos barely holding on, the game ended in a 21-21 tie. A coin flip after the conclusion of the contest awarded the bowl trophy to Sul Ross, and upon the team's return the squad was treated to a celebratory assembly in which President Hawkins was presented with the bowl trophy.

Building upon the 1948 team's success, Hawkins would realize his dream of gaining admission to a more respected conference in December of 1949, after yet another New Mexico Conference championship, when Sul Ross was accepted into the Lone Star Conference where they would compete for the next 27 years. The school would, however, find it increasingly difficult to field a quality team after its veteran athletes graduated, as the relatively smaller enrollment and remoteness of the campus made it difficult for Sul Ross to compete against larger colleges, most of which were located closer to growing Texas urban centers.

Their experiences at Sul Ross, including athletic participation, did much to restore the veterans so that they could go on to happy and productive lives. One ex-G.I. at the school wrote that "this place has restored the faith I lost in mankind somewhere in a foxhole." Such rejuvenation was made possible through the campus's supportive environment where faculty members like Pierce "recognized the extended hand of a war christened generation and taking it to [their] bosom .. . pointed out the road back to faith in humanity." Recalling his relationship with Pierce, John Higdon stated, "He was very good to me in more ways than one" and that "we respected him and he respected us and that really was about the way it all balanced out"

Most of the ex-G.l.'s on the team pursued careers in education or athletics. Tommy Barrow, who was awarded two bronze stars for bravery in the Korean War, went on to become a superintendent of several school districts in New Mexico. Everett Waldrum became a teacher, coach and elementary school principal in Odessa, Texas. His brother, John C. Waldrum, signed a professional football contract before moving on to a career as a coach and school principal. After receiving his Master's degree, Dee David White spent 46 years as a vocational agriculture teacher in Fort Stockton, Texas. John Higdon used the strategies that he learned on the Sul Ross gridiron in coaching numerous successful high school and collegiate teams. Nearly all of the veterans felt that their career paths would have been impossible without the educational opportunities that the G.I. Bill and Sul Ross afforded them.

Pierce went on to experience success throughout his life as a coach, athletic trainer and educator. After leaving Sul Ross in 1952, he became the head football coach and athletic director at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas. His teams there won or tied for four Lone Star Conference championships and played in five bowl games. His 1956 Bearkat team was undefeated and the 1964 squad won the NAIA co-championship. Because of his successes, he was awarded the Knute Rockne Memorial Trophy in 1965 as the "Little All-American Coach of the Year."

During this period of athletic accomplishment, Pierce earned his Ed.D. degree from the University of Houston in 1961, and he returned to Sul Ross in 1976 as athletic director and professor and chairman of the Physical Education Department. He was also active in the NAIA at all levels and succeeded Grambling University coaching legend Eddie Robinson as president of the organization in 1973. In addition to service in the NAIA, Pierce served as a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Olympic Committee, as a member of the Executive Committee of the Amateur Athletic Union, and on the Board of Directors of the World Student Games. After his retirement in 1978, he was inducted into the Sam Houston State University Hall of Honor, the Sul Ross State University Hall of Honor, and the NAIA Hall of Fame.