The Great LaGrone

SMU All-America Lineman Was A Keystone of ’66 Champs

DALLAS – John LaGrone, at 5-11, 210 pounds, was outweighed and double-teamed most of his mid-1960s career at SMU. Small for a defensive lineman even then, LaGrone dominated the trenches most every week with a quick first step and pure determination.

A three-time first-team All-Southwest Conference pick and an All-America and Academic All-America selection, LaGrone, as a senior, anchored a defense that allowed 14.6 points per game as the Mustangs won the ’66 SWC title, their first in 18 years.

Standing, from left, Jerry Griffin, Coach Hayden Fry, Billy Bob Stewart and, kneeling, John LaGrone of SMU's 1966 SWC championship team. Photo credit: SMU Heritage Hall

“One reason I went to SMU was because I was small,” said LaGrone, a longtime Texas Panhandle district judge, during a break last week at a local conference. “I thought I might not be big enough to play and [SMU] ran a stunting defense … which means you’re on the move, which gives you a little advantage.”

“And I was short enough that I had a height advantage on a big guy trying to block me. He couldn’t get under me.”

Hayden Fry, LaGrone’s coach at SMU, said other factors made LaGrone great. “I know exactly what made him so special,” Fry said by phone from his Mesquite, Nevada, home. “He had what I call that extra heartbeat. His motor was running 100 percent whenever he played.”

“I can recall him sitting on the trainer’s table as they worked on his knee – and he was lifting weights,” Fry said. “He was just so determined to be the best at everything he undertook.”

LaGrone won SMU’s Stallion Award for most tackles in ’66 and recalls being credited with 150 stops that year. (See Notes)

“I coached football 47 years,” Fry said, “and he probably made as many tackles as any defensive lineman that I ever had. He thought that he was supposed to make every tackle and he dang near did.”

SMU All-SWC linebacker Billy Bob Stewart played three seasons with LaGrone. “He was a unique individual,” Stewart said. “I’ve never seen anybody move on all fours like he could. Nobody could block him. … Unquestionably, he’s the best defensive lineman who’s ever played at SMU.”

Eskimo Honour

After SMU, LaGrone played eight years for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League, where he was a two-time CFL All-Star and won the ’69 Schenley Award, denoting the league’s best lineman. Edmonton appeared in two Grey Cup championships during LaGrone’s tenure.

His name is on the Esks’ Wall of Honour at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium.

LaGrone never scored a touchdown at SMU but found the Canadian end zone at least three times after fumble recoveries. It was a near-score, though, that sticks with LaGrone.

During the first half of a brutally cold night game against Calgary - “It was zero [degrees] when we started and we wound up 15- or 20-below.” – LaGrone scooped up a fumble and raced 65 yards before being tackled near the goal line. Sucking down the frozen air was memorably painful. “I thought somebody was stabbing me with a knife,” he said. “I spent the next half coughing most of the time.”

“At the end of the game, I had blood pooled at the end of all my fingers. … Frostbite.”

Being smaller didn’t bother LaGrone much in the SWC, but the 20-game Canadian seasons took a toll. “You’d have a hard time closing your hands,” he said. “Your shoulders, they wouldn’t go up very high, because you’re taking the pounding on your shoulders and with your hands.”

And the schedule averaged a game every five days. “Sometimes, in order to save money, when you’d go back and play the eastern teams … you might play on a Thursday night and a Saturday night. … The second game usually wasn’t much fun.”

LaGrone attended Baylor Law School during the off-seasons and was licensed to practice law in ’72. (He chose Baylor because of its flexible, rotating schedules.) LaGrone met his wife, a Baylor undergraduate, while there.

He retired from football after the ‘74 season and returned to Borger. “I was looking for a place to practice law,” LaGrone said, “and about that time the Arab oil embargo made Hutchinson County a pretty good place to practice law.” He became a judge in 1990.

‘Tough’ ‘64

LaGrone, in his 19 th year as a judge, presides in Stinnett, the county seat of Hutchinson County, just up the road from where he played high school football for the Borger Bulldogs.

Borger won big in LaGrone’s day, making his first season with SMU a difficult adjustment. “The first year at SMU we didn’t have many players,” LaGrone said. “I think we had two or three true seniors.”

“Mac White was supposed to be the quarterback and he hurt his back. Our next best quarterback [Donnie Oefinger] got his jaw broken in the third game of the season. We wound up going 1-9 and that was real tough.”

The offense scored 55 points in 10 games and there were four straight shutout losses, including a 7-0 heartbreak at No. 6 Texas.

Opening at Florida, the Mustangs held All-America running back Larry Dupree to 53 yards, but the Gators’ quarterback gave SMU fits. “They had a sophomore quarterback that we didn’t know anything about,” LaGrone said. “His name was Steve Spurrier.” The Mustangs lost, 24-8. Another loss followed at No. 5 Ohio State.

LaGrone said when SMU traveled to face big state schools up north he and his teammates endured certain indignities – even before the games. “I think it was Ohio State or Illinois, one of those teams up there,” he said. “You’re out wandering around the campus and you meet some girls and they say, ‘What do you guys do?’ We say, ‘We’re football players.’ [And they say,] ‘No, you’re not! You’re not big enough to be football players.’”

Today, LaGrone, 64, is a district judge in Hutchinson County, Texas. He played professional football for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League, completing law school during off-seasons.

Rise in ‘65

The Mustangs improved to 4-5-1 in ‘65, but couldn’t catch a break. “If we’d had two or three breaks, we’d have probably been 7-3, pretty easy,” LaGrone said.

SMU opened with a win at Miami, before losing badly at Illinois. Next up was Purdue, who’d knocked off Notre Dame and came to Dallas ranked No. 1. “Coach Fry, he almost cried,” LaGrone said. “He said, ‘If we don’t do something, they’re going to beat us 100 to nothing.’”

“We wound up tying them, 14-14,” LaGrone said, “and could have kicked a field goal at the end and won the game, except one their big linemen grabbed one of our little guards and pulled him out of the way, which was illegal, and they blocked it.”

In that game LaGrone was playing the guard-center gap when Purdue ran an off-tackle play. The huge Boilermaker tackle was supposed to block All-SWC linebacker Jerry Griffin but instead took out LaGrone, who’d just fought off a double-team block.

“I hit the center and the guard,” LaGrone said, “and as I’m getting off, I get wiped out by this tackle. And [ Griffin] makes the tackle for no gain.”

“And it happened again.”

“I went up to [ Griffin] and said, ‘Why isn’t that son of a bitch blocking you?’ And [ Griffin] said, ‘I’m running around behind you making the tackle. Keep up the good work!’”

Said Fry, “One of the reasons those two monkeys [ Griffin and Stewart] made All-SWC … was because [opponents] had to double-team LaGrone and that left one of them open.”

Getting It Right

In ’66, things finally broke right for SMU. Close losses a year before became close wins and the Mustangs won the conference. SMU also had All-America receiver Jerry LeVias that season. “He was the extra fit in there that gave the offense enough to come back and do some stuff,” LaGrone said.

LaGrone said Fry had a special play for Texas in ’66: White handed off to a back who would blind-pitch it back to him to pass. “In practice it never worked,” LaGrone said. “They’d work on it and they’d fumble it or something would happen.”

White asked assistant coach Pug Gabriel what he should do if Fry called the play in a game. Gabriel told him, “Mac, you’ve got to call the play if Coach sends it in - but you can audible at the line of scrimmage.”

LaGrone said he was almost “the goat” that week in Austin. On a Longhorn field goal that gave them a 12-10 lead, LaGrone broke through the line and hit the ball with the side of his hand. “I turned around, thinking I had deflected it and it’s going to be wide, and … saw it go right through the goal posts. If I hadn’t hit it, it would have been wide.”

LaGrone thought he’d cost SMU the game. But Texas would fumble and the Mustangs drove down for Dennis Partee’s game-winning kick with 18 seconds left.

Arkansas handed SMU its only SWC loss that year, 22-0, in Fayetteville. The next week, Fry called in the team captains for suggestions. “We all agreed,” LaGrone said. “We needed to cut down practice. We were practicing two hours a day, doing the same thing. We cut practice down to about an hour and 15 or 20 minutes. It helped our attitude a little bit.”

SMU rallied for wins over Baylor and TCU to finish 8-2. Arkansas’ loss at Texas Tech sent the Mustangs to the Cotton Bowl. Before that, SMU appeared headed to the Tangerine Bowl in Florida, something LaGrone said the team looked forward to.

While proud of the SWC title and playing in the Cotton Bowl, he said, staying in the dorm on an empty campus with two-a-days for entertainment was a bit of a let-down.

SMU lost to a good Georgia team, 24-9, on New Year’s Eve.

Proven Winner

“Hayden’s proven himself as a coach,” LaGrone said of Fry, a 2003 College Football Hall of Fame inductee. “He was very good at picking good assistants and he was a real good recruiter. He was good in other areas too, but he was best at recruiting and picking good assistants.”

LaGrone’s toughest SWC opponent? “I think I had the most trouble with Arkansas because they did a scramble block, which is a different block,” he said. “They’d try to get down in your knees.” Plus, Arkansas’ center was familiar with LaGrone. They were teammates at Borger.

“I never did feel real satisfied after we got through playing Arkansas,” LaGrone said.

It didn’t help that Coach Frank Broyles was in his hey-day with the Razorbacks. Arkansas was 29-3 during LaGrone’s three seasons, with two Cotton Bowl appearances and a national championship.

In ’65 and ’66, SMU beat both Texas and Texas A&M in back-to-back seasons for the first time since Doak Walker and the boys did it in ’47 and ’48.

The Mustangs never did it again.

The days were indeed special. And LaGrone was one of a kind.

*Gerry York of SMU’s Heritage Hall contributed to this report.

Notes:

*From the Edmonton Eskimos Web site: “If one player can be credited with turning around the fortunes of a franchise, John LaGrone is that player.”

*SMU has had three All-America defensive linemen since 1945: LaGrone, Louie Kelcher (’74) and Harvey Armstrong (’81). Only two SMU defensive linemen were ever three-time all-conference picks: LaGrone and Jerry Ball (’84-86)

*SMU’s football media guide lists Yearly Leading Tacklers only back through 1973.

*Hayden Fry coached at SMU (‘62-‘72), North Texas (’73-’78) and Iowa (’79-’98), finishing with a record of 232-178-10. His teams won four conference titles and he was league Coach of the Year eight times.

*Billy Bob Stewart and Jerry Griffin were the first pair of linebackers from the same school to simultaneously make first-team All-SWC.