Salt Lake Telegram | 1937-12-14 | Page 23 | Why All This Fuss? Texans Declare It's All Old Stuff for Sammy Baugh

Why All This Fuss? Texans Declare It's All Old Stuff for Sammy Baugh By FF.UX R. McK NIGHT DALLAS, Dec. 14 lP) Texas folk who followed Sammy Baugh from ths time he chunked a "drugstore" "drug-store" football through his first window win-dow pane wonder "what's all this fuss about?" Slingin' Sam, the paasln' man the lanky west Texan they're calling "tha greatest football player in the world" since his show on ice-coated Wrlgley field in Chicago Sunday- pulled those one-man stunts nearly every fall Saturday for three yean down here. Texas fathers don't tell ordinary bedtime stories; they tell ths kids how Sammy pitched 374 passes in three seasons that netted 3479 yards and 39 touchdowns for Texas Christian Chris-tian university. Quite a stunt, fans admit, was Baugh's feat in heaving three touchdown touch-down passes and aettlng up another score with a pass for the four tallies Washington used to whip Chicago's Bears and win the professional title, but In 1935, Sammy did that three times in four weeks. First he whipped three passes that were bagged on the run for touchdowns to beat Baylor, 28-0. Next, three more aerial touchdowns helped bury Texas by the same acore. Just to top it off. Sammy pitched three more touchdown passes to tame Rice. 27-7. Just as Sammy Baugh "made" professional football, so was Sammy Baugh football itself In the Southwest South-west conference. Professional football may never know how close it came to never having Baugh to help lift the sport ' into big money. Slingin' Sam had his mind set on ' a coaching job. In fact, he went ; so far as to sign a contract as fresh-: fresh-: man coach at T. C. U. But he was ' human, money is decidedly loqua-1 loqua-1 cious, and so Sammy turned pro. Squat, mellow Leo (Dutch) Meyer, ' T. C. U. coach who discovered Baugh, then almost lost him, ad-' ad-' vised Sammy to have a fling at pro football. Meyer saw Sam. then a gangling youngster, playing third base on a west Texas town baseball : team in '33 and told then Head 1 Coach Francis Schmidt he had found "a real baseball player." Sam went instead to Texas university, uni-versity, but stayed only a few daya. , Texas didn't need his third basing, but "Uncle Billy" Disch. beloved Longhorn baseball coach, personally loaned Sammy the money to go to Texaa Christian. j Sammy started throwing way back in the third grade with "a sort of a drugstore football," one of those ' imitation leather onea. The first forward pass he ever attempted was good for a touchdown.