When there’s nothing between you and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence, that west Texas wind cuts through you like a knife through a Christmas turkey. Everything either sticks, stings or bites you in the western part of the state of Texas, but it makes the residents tough.
It’s not a beautiful area to behold with the lack of trees and the flat horizon. Nor are the numerous pumping oil wells exactly a spectacular sight, unless maybe you are the owner of the wells. The steadily pumping oil wells and the rolling tumbleweeds mixed with the blowing dust is an environment that only a hardcore west Texan could actually enjoy.
But, these tough, resilient folks also love their high school football. You know where most of the town will be on a Friday night in the Fall. They’ll all be at the local high school football stadiums watching their favorite sons play against some other town’s favorite sons.
The book Friday Night Lights was about Odessa Permian and Midland Lee, mostly, but football is
huge to just about every school out there. It’s almost an unwritten rule that you are either playing on the football team, or in the band, or in the stands on a Friday night in support of your high school football team.
Kermit is one of the smaller oil towns in the area. They have the same pride as anyone else in the region, but they haven’t done much on the football field lately. The Kermit Yellow Jackets were a pretty solid football team back in the 1960s when they had guys like big Leo Brooks.
If you’re good, the college coaches will generally find you and the coaches came around to sign Leo Brooks. He decided to sign with the Texas Longhorns and head coach Darrell Royal. The year was 1966 and Texas was just a couple of years removed from winning the national championship and the following season beating Alabama and Joe Namath in the Sugar Bowl.
The Longhorns had finished 6-4 in 1965, but everyone knew that was a fluke and Royal’s team would be back.
Leo Brooks was a big ole kid and even though I don’t have enough info to determine his size in high school, he was listed as 6-6, 250 college. That was pretty huge in those days at schools outside of maybe Notre Dame and USC. Most offensive linemen in the 1960s were between about 210 and 220 pounds and some were even smaller than that.
If you’ve read my blog, or are old enough to remember, you’ll know that freshmen couldn’t play on the varsity back then. Schools had freshmen teams with some of them having 4 or 5 game schedules. It so happened that the varsity probably could have used some of the freshmen that season with the varsity losing 4 games for the second season in a row which was highly unusual.
As a sophomore in 1967, big Leo Brooks was a back up offensive lineman and it was a frustrating
season for the Longhorns. The fans were getting restless and the talk was the game had passed Darrell Royal by and he should step down.
In the offseason, Darrell Royal had had enough and dumped his offense and installed the brand new Wishbone offense. Royal was like Woody Hayes and most coaches of this era and wanted to run the ball more. He wanted to pound the ball down his opponents throats and the new Wishbone was the way to accomplish this goal.
The change to the Wishbone was not the smoothest. Texas opened up the 1968 season against the Houston Cougars. The Cougars were a better team than most thought with their own new offense called the Houston Veer. Plus, they had some talent like future NFL player Elmo Wright. The game ended in a 20-20 tie.
The following week, the Longhorns traveled up to Lubbock, Texas to take on the Texas Tech Red Raiders. It didn’t go well at all, with the Raiders jumping all over the Longhorns. The Wishbone offense was totally ineffective with former blue chip quarterback Bill Bradley.
Bradley was one of the all time hottest recruits in the state of Texas of this period and Darrell Royal wanted to give him every chance to run his new offense. But, it was clearly not working out, and it was time for a change. Royal pulled Bradley and installed James Street at quarterback.
The Wishbone started working and the Horns made a valiant effort to win the game, but still they fell, 22-31.
A season of so much hope was looking bad and Texas was now unranked and 0-1-1.
Texas had recruited well with the class containing Bill Bradley and Chris Gilbert who was the first player in college football to rush for over 1,000 yards for 3 seasons. Bradley had been one of the most heavily recruited players in the history of the game and was a legend coming in. Bradley and Gilbert
He had once thrown a touchdown pass with his left arm during a high school game and Bradley was right handed, so the nickname Super Bill Bradley was born. Bradley was later an All Pro safety for the Philadelphia Eagles and played in the NFL for a long time, but he just didn’t make it as a quarterback.
The junior class in 1968 was filled with talent like Bob McKay who was another far west Texan like Leo Brooks. McKay was an All American offensive tackle and would be a 1st round draft pick by the Philadelphia Eagles and played 9 seasons in the NFL.
Other players in that junior class included the Campbell twins, sons of the defensive coordinator Mike Campbell, and running back Ted Koy. Legendary quarterback James Street, end Randy Peschel, receiver Deryl Comer, center Forest Wiegand and linebacker Glen Halsell were also juniors that
season.
Of course, there was also big tackle Leo Brooks.
The sophomores on that team were the most celebrated of them all. Fullback Steve Worster may have been the top recruit in the country in his class and this group became known as the Worster Bunch. WB fullback Worster Bunch vs Super Sophs
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The talent certainly didn’t stop with Worster. Bill Atessis was the highly recruited Golden Greek from Houston. Center Jim Achilles, linebacker Scott Henderson from Dallas, cornerback Danny Lester from Amarillo, Quarterback Eddie Phillips from Mesquite, split end Cotton Speyrer from Port Arthur, and offensive tackle Bobby Wuensch also from Houston and the same school as Atessis, made up one of the top recruiting classes in the country. The lightest recruited player of the bunch turned out to be really good in Freddie Steinmark from Wheatridge, Colorado. If you want to read more about Freddie Steinmark click on this link: Freddie Steinmark
Or, watch the excellent movie on Netflix called My All American.
Over a three year period, this recruiting class compiled an impressive 30-2-1 record including a 30 game win streak.
Just think how impressive their record would have been if they hadn’t started the 1968 season with an 0-1-1 record.
This super talented, but still winless Texas Longhorns hosted a mediocre Oklahoma State team the following week and pounded them, 31-3, to even their record up at 1-1-1.
Coming up was arch rival Oklahoma. The Sooners started the season ranked 5th, coming off a 10-1 season in 1967. But, they traveled to South Bend, Indiana and were blown out by the 3rd ranked Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, 21-45. The Sooners recovered and beat North Carolina State, 28-14, but they were unranked coming in.
The luster was really off the game, nationally, because neither team looked to be very good this season. Oklahoma was 1-1 and Texas was 1-1-1.
Big Leo Brooks had not been much of a factor up until now in his junior season on the offensive line.
Because of an injury to a player on defense, the coaches moved Leo Brooks to defense and he was a back up until another player went down in the Oklahoma game. The Sooners were dominating the
game with a 14-6 lead and looking to expand their lead. Brooks was thrown into the game and on his very first college play on defense he sacked the Sooner quarterback Bobby Warmack and changed the entire momentum of the game.
Texas came back to win 26-20 and Brooks moved into the starting lineup for the duration of the season.
Against 9th ranked Arkansas the following week, the supposedly sick Brooks totaled 17 tackles. Legend has it that he had the flu that week. It was an impressive game even if he had been completely healthy and even more so for a converted offensive lineman who just cracked the starting lineup because of injuries to other players.
Texas won the rest of their games in 1968 including a Cotton Bowl win over 8th ranked Tennessee in convincing fashion, 36-13.
In 1969, Brooks was a beast at defensive tackle and probably on his way to All American status, but his season came to a screeching halt in the 6th game of the year against SMU when he injured his knee.
Texas proceeded to make history and with the help of the Michigan Wolverines upsetting Ohio State, the Horns made it the top spot in the polls. That set up the most hyped up game of the year when the Horns traveled to Arkansas and beat the Razorbacks in the Big Shootout. It was #1 vs #2 with Texas coming back to win, 15-14.
Knee surgery has come a long way in the past decades. Brooks’ knee was injured against the Ponies, but surgery allowed him to eventually return to the game. A lot of knee injuries were career ending back then, but technology has come a long way.
Even with the history of a serious knee injury, Brooks was still drafted by the Houston Oilers in the 2nd round of the 1970 NFL Draft and he played there 3 seasons before being traded to the St Louis Cardinals where he played 4 seasons, making All Pro in 1976.
He actually walked away from the NFL at the peak of his career and returned to Austin, Texas to take over the family business. The NFL didn’t pay all that well back in those years and he probably made a lot more money in the family business.
Life after football was good to Leo and he started his own business called the Leo Brooks Company which dealt with ranching, commercial real estate appraisals and hunting leases. Life was definitely
good.
His son, Corby Brooks, also played football at Texas and started in the offensive line in 1994 and 1995. In 1995, Brooks blocked for freshman Ricky Williams and helped the Horns to a 10-2-1 record and a Sugar Bowl game.
He also blocked for NFL great Priest Holmes, shown in the photo to the right, in a very exciting Sun Bowl game.
Even the best of lives can have tragic tales and Big ole Leo Brooks from Kermit, Texas was diagnosed with cancer.
At the very young age of 53, Brooks passed away from esophageal cancer after a lengthy fight.