Furthermore, what is it like to have that moniker for more than 60 years?
Two former Temple Wildcats who went on to be significant parts of Longhorn football lore had the opportunity to express those sentiments in a recently published book entitled “What it Means to be a Longhorn” compiled by longtime Texas sports information director Bill Little.
Noble Doss and Keifer Marshall join coaches Darrell Royal and Mack Brown and many other former Longhorns of various eras to relive their memories reveal the impact it has made on their lives.
Players such as Tommy Nobis, Ted Koy, James Street, Happy Feller, Chris Gilbert, Earl Campbell, Roosevelt Leaks and Doug English plus dozens more are included in the collection. From 1934 through 2005, every season of Longhorn football history has a mouthpiece.
Doss and Marshall are two of only a handful who bring the perspective of players from the late 1930s and early ‘40s when Dana X. Bible brought the Longhorns back from the depths and while World War II was at its apex.
In his days at Temple, Doss was known as the “Flying Dutchman” and starred on the great Wildcat teams of the mid-’30s coached by Red Forehand and on the first of nine Wildcat squads led by Les Cranfill in 1937.
That team, which featured Doss, Euel Wesson and Tom “Meal Ticket” Pickett, was called the Temple Typhoon. The Wildcats tied for the district championship with Waco and Cleburne. A district committee debated for five hours before voting the Wildcats into the playoffs, and they eventually reached the state quarterfinals.
Doss, now 88 and living in Austin, is a historic Orangebloods figure best remembered for making “the impossible catch” in the 1940 game against Texas A&M.
A junior wingback, he made an over-the-shoulder catch at the 1-yard line early on to set up the game’s only touchdown. Doss also intercepted three passes, enabling the Longhorns to win 7-0 and denying the defending national champion Aggies a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Unfortunately, Doss long has lamented a dropped pass he believes cost the Longhorns a Rose Bowl bid and a national title in 1941. A wide-open Doss muffed a certain game-sealing touchdown pass against Baylor. The Bears came back for a 7-7 tie. The deflated Longhorns lost the next week to Texas Christian. He told Little a few years ago, “I think about it every day of my life. It cost us the national championship and the trip to the Rose Bowl. What is there to say about it? I dropped the ball.”
Doss owns the two oldest records in the Longhorn books. He recorded 17 career interceptions; Nathan Vasher tied him a few years ago. In fact, for decades the top two aerial thieves in UT history were former Wildcats. Bobby Dillon came along from 1949-51 and intercepted 13 passes. It was 28 years before Johnnie Johnson equaled Dillon’s mark and 62 before Vasher tied Doss.
Think about that a minute. There aren’t a lot of individual football records from 1941 still standing. It’s a significant record, to boot. This isn’t something fluky like a 109-yard field-goal return. This is career interceptions. It has survived a myriad of changes in offensive and defensive schemes and some all-time great defenders at Texas such as Vasher, Johnson, Quentin Jammer, Mossy Cade, Jerry Gray and Derrick Hatchett.
An even older record is the seven that Doss and teammate Jack Crain picked off in 1940, which are part of a five-way tie for the most in any season.
Doss played a couple of seasons for the Philadelphia Eagles before settling into life as a prominent Austin businessman.
Marshall arrived in Austin a few years later. He was a member of both of the first two Wildcat state finalist teams in 1940 and ’41 coached by Cranfill. In 1943, he was the beneficiary of a new Southwest Conference rule allowing freshmen to play, prompted by many players going into active military duty.
The Longhorns won the SWC crown in 1943 with Marshall playing center and linebacker. Texas tied Randolph Field 7-7 in the Cotton Bowl on a cold, rainy New Year’s Day of 1944.
Marshall played every single down of that game. The days of the two-way player at the Division I college level are extremely rare. The days of a freshman playing both ways are rarer still. The days of a freshman not leaving the field during the course of a 60-minute game, especially a bowl game, probably ended on that miserable day in Dallas.
Marshall soon enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He fought in Guam and survived the famed Battle of Iwo Jima.
Marshall, who roomed with the ever-popular drop-kick specialist and another contributor the book, the late Rooster Andrews, returned to Texas to finish out his football and academic career in 1946 and ’47. He played for Bible’s last team at Texas and for Blair Cherry’s first team, which went 10-1 and defeated Alabama 27-7 in the Sugar Bowl. The Longhorns’ only loss was a 14-13 decision to Doak Walker and Southern Methodist.
He teamed with legends such as Bobby Layne and Tom Landry and several players with Temple ties. One of those was Ed Heap, an all-stater on the Wildcats’ 1941 team that won 12 straight before falling to Wichita Falls in the state championship game.
Most locals know Marshall as a distinguished business and civic leader in Temple, including a stint as mayor. Marshall’s son, Keifer, played for the Longhorns in the early 1970s.
Doss was inducted into the Texas Hall of Honor in 1980 and Marshall was enshrined in 1996.
They are forever Longhorns.
twaits@temple-telegram.com
