Back in the 1960s when southern states weren’t allowing young black men to play football, Oklahoma was and it would pay dividends later.
So, say what you want about the state of Oklahoma, both negative and positive, but you have to give the Sooner football team credit for allowing young black men the chance to play college football when others in the area were not.
The state’s citizens are as racist as the states around it, but they did allow black kids to play ball. Power to them for that, at the very least.
Young Granville Liggins was just one of those players for the Oklahoma Sooners.
Clearly, Liggins played before my time mostly as he was a consensus All American on the 1967 All American team. He was also a bit undersized even for that era. What he lacked in size, however, he made up in quickness and speed.
Like so many other defensive linemen that I have been a fan of, like Rob Waldrop, Jim Stillwagon,
Henry Hill and Rich Glover who were all too quick and too tough to block.
Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma the young Liggins did not have an ideal childhood. One of three little boys, his father passed away when Granville was 6 years old and they were raised by a single mom.
While attending the famous Booker T. Washington High School, Liggins was an outstanding football player, and he was also a top wrestler.
The midwest, particularly states like Oklahoma and Iowa, is known for wrestling. It’s not big where I grew up, but I had friends that wrestled in college and I was told how tough it was. A guy that is resilient enough and gritty enough to participate in both in high school is worth recruiting.
Like most kids growing up in a state nicknamed the Sooner State, he dreamed of playing in Norman for the Sooners.
Liggins was recruited by Oklahoma and he did sign with them, but he signed with Gomer Jones because the legendary Sooner coach Bud Wilkinson had just retired. Gomer didn’t do so well and didn’t last but two seasons when his teams posted a record of 9-11-1. Losing records don’t cut it at schools like an Oklahoma, or an Alabama, or an Ohio State. The Sooners fired Gomer Jones and hired an Arkansas assistant coach named Jim Mackenzie who was supposed to be really impressive.
In Liggins’ junior season of 1966, Mackenzie coached the team to a 6-4 record and by all accounts, he was going to have a nice career as a head coach. But, tragically, he passed away in April of 1967 of a heart attack at the terribly young age of 37.
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Fairbanks was an instant success, going 10-1 his first season in 1967 including a dramatic win over the Tennessee Vols in the Sugar Bowl. In that game, Granville Liggins was impossible to block and he was going up against future 2nd overall pick in the 1968 NFL Draft, Bob Johnson. Liggins was in the Tennessee backfield most of the night showing why he was a consensus All American.
However, he was injured in the 3rd quarter of the game which supposedly hurt his draft standing.
But, the honest truth is, the NFL just doesn’t like undersized linemen very much.
Liggins also wrestled for the Sooners and was the Big 8 champion as a heavyweight at probably around 215 pounds.
Liggins had been a consensus All American in football at nose guard and one of the guys he beat out was Curley Culp from Arizona State who was an All American nose guard as well, but 3rd team on most lists. Culp was a great football player and is now a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he was also a wrestler and maybe the only guy around that could have beaten Culp on the mat. Culp was the NCAA wrestling champion, but Liggins was also an All American in that sport.
People having little knowledge of geography is apparently nothing new. When the Canadian Football League suddenly became his best option for playing professional football, Liggins didn’t know where Canada was.
He learned pretty quickly and fell in love with the country and still lives there to this day.
Liggins played for the Calgary Stampeders for 5 seasons and another 5 seasons with the Toronto Argonauts and was great up there. The larger field allowed Liggins to use his speed much better and it certainly worked out well for him for 10 seasons.
Opposing college coaches didn’t miss him at all and most probably described him as a menace because he was just almost impossible to block.
Granville Liggins was just one of those guys with a knack for playing football. He used all that he had for his own advantage and it was a difficult chore for any offensive lineman to block him one on one, even the very best of them.
He did that at the incredibly small size of about 6-1, 215 and playing in the middle of the line.