RIP Jack Mildren

[BillyW]

I didn't realize he was fighting cancer. Best wishes to the family and friends. I am the furtherest thing from an expert but those of us who were around then can remember him running the bone and he was plenty good

 

[Mesohorny]

skyranger, Jack and Jon started playing ball together in either the 6th or 7th grade and had years to develop their passing/receiving skills. I went to Lincoln Jr High and Jack's Madison Jr High Bisons beat us for the city's jr high 9th grade championship when - at the end of the game and trailing - Jack rolled out and under a heavy pass rush he transfered the ball from his right to his left hand and flipped it downfield to Jon for the winning td.

Every summer afternoon would find the two of them practicing down-and-outs on the playground, so that when in hs Mildren would take the snap, Harrison (small and fast) would haul *** downfield, and Jack would throw a perfect spiral before Jon turned for the ball - which would always be there - and before the db had any idea it was coming. Did the same at OU. A fine passing combo.

 

[janeann]

Of all the articles written about Jack in the last few days, this is one of a couple I thought Texas fans might want to read:Abilene Reporter-News • Friends Remember Mildren

Jack Mildren as a Cooper High School student in the 1960s.

By Carlton Stowers
Special to the Reporter-News
Saturday, May 24, 2008

Late next month, the 1968 graduates of Cooper High School will gather in Abilene for their 40th class reunion.

They'll renew acquaintances and polish faded memories, no doubt reminding each other of that special fall long ago when the Cougars football team spent most of the season ranked as the No. 1 high school team not only in Texas but the United States and had no less than six players who would receive All-State recognition. On 13 consecutive weekends, they rolled past the opposition before suffering a heartbreaking 20-19 defeat at the hands of Austin Reagan High in the state championship game.

They'll remember old flames, old songs, after-school hangouts and fellow students who displayed great promise and special gifts, even as teenagers.

In doing so, they'll no doubt share warm recollections of a celebrated classmate who will be absent.

Jack Mildren -- high school All-American quarterback, standout forward in basketball, a member of a record-setting state championship mile relay, senior class vice president, student council officer, the youngster voted "Mr. CHS" in his senior year and friend to all -- died of cancer earlier this week at age 58.

He leaves behind an amazing resume.

At the University of Oklahoma, he became the first Wishbone quarterback ever named All-American, played in the National Football League with the Baltimore Colts and New England Patriots, and succeeded in the oil business and politics. His achievements ranged from being elected Oklahoma's lieutenant governor to being one of the early inductees into the Big Country Sports Hall of Fame.

For Jack Mildren, the triumphs never seemed to stop. And they began at an early age.

Little League to high school standout

Successful Highland Park High School football coach Randy Allen recalls that he and Mildren grew up just three blocks from each other, launching their athletic careers together in Little League baseball. Randy pitched, Jack caught.

At Madison Junior High, they played together on a football team that was undefeated and unscored-on.

"Even then," Allen recalls, "Jack could do amazing things. In a game against Lincoln, the score was 0-0 late in the fourth quarter, and Jack called a pass play. The defense rushed and was all over him, making it impossible for him to get the throw off right-handed. So, he just switched it to his left and threw for the touchdown that won the game."

In summer track and baseball, he excelled, winning gold medals and All-Star recognition.

And once he arrived at the newly opened Cooper High, Mildren was the point man of a group of gifted athletes who quickly marked their place in a sports environment wherein rival Abilene High had long ruled.

"He was," says former teammate Larry Stowers, now a teacher-coach at Cooper High in East Texas, "such an incredible competitor. People still talk of his days as a football player -- and rightfully so -- but, looking back, it was something he did in track in his senior year that amazed me. He was an outstanding quartermiler, but one day in the middle of the season, told the coach that he'd like to try running the 330-yard intermediate hurdles. He ran them once in practice, then the following weekend won the event in a meet. A month later, he had the best time in the state in the event and placed second at the state meet."

Mildren, Stowers says, was the finest all-around athlete he's ever seen.

"And he was my hero, even in junior high. I lived on the only block in (mid-)Abilene where you could choose to attend either Abilene High or Cooper. I knew Jack would be playing for Cooper, so that's why I decided to go there."
"For all his success and ability," says Dallas lawyer Kenny Stephens, a former All-State running back for the Cougars, "Jack was as modest and down-to-earth as anyone I've ever known. Great sense of humor. And a great leader. He had that kind of confidence that spilled over to all of us."

Even players on the opposite side of town admired him. Local oil and gas lobbyist Bill Stevens enjoyed a friendly rivalry with Mildren through junior high and high school. A middle linebacker for Abilene High, Stevens recalls a constant stream of good-natured chatter with Mildren during the course of their crosstown rivalry battles.

Says Stevens, "Jack had this incredible vision; he seemed able to see everything going on around him. In our junior year (1966), Cooper beat us 14-9 on a play that was all but impossible. He rolled out to his right to throw a pass, and I was in a perfect position to knock the ball down if he threw. But, just as he'd done to us back in junior high, he simply switched the ball to his left hand, completed the pass for the touchdown that won the game."

Ex-Cooper coach and current teacher Jon Harrison, who earned All-State honors as Mildren's leading receiver in high school and later at the University of Oklahoma, agrees.

"When you're a kid, you don't give much thought to one of your peers being a 'good example,' someone you look up to. They're just your buddy, your classmate, your teammate. But, looking back, there's no question that Jack Mildren served as a great example to all of us. He was someone you knew you could count on."

The quarterback sneak

While his former teammate had a remarkable gift to make things look easy on the playing field, Harrison points to his days as Mildren's roommate at OU as an example of the price his friend paid for the lofty plaudits that came his way.

"People had no idea what a physical pounding Jack took every Saturday. A Wishbone quarterback gets hit on every play. On Sunday mornings, I would literally have to help him out of bed and to the shower."

Yet he doesn't remember Mildren ever complaining.

Nor, for that matter, does he recall his old teammate ever questioning a goal line call that Cooper fans still insist cost the team a state title in their senior season. On fourth down, and the ball less than a foot from the goal, the Cougars trailed 20-19 with time left for one final play. The 190-pound Mildren, who had directed the offense on an 80-yard drive, called a quarterback sneak -- and failed to score.

"I was lined up at split receiver," Harrison says, "and looking right down the line of scrimmage. It looked to me as if his entire upper body got into the end zone."

The story told today, in fact, insists that there was lime dust across Mildren's torso, proof that he made it across the goal and actually scored the touchdown.

"Actually," remembers former running back Stephens, "I thought I had scored on the previous play, but the officials put the ball down at the six-inch line. And I certainly thought we scored on Jack's quarterback sneak.

"But, you know, over the years, I never once heard him criticize the referee's call. That's the kind of class Jack Mildren had."


Former Reporter-News sports editor Carlton Stowers was an admittedly biased member of the press corps covering the above mentioned Abilene Cooper-Austin Reagan state title game. His brother, Larry Stowers, and former brother-in-law, Bill Stevens, are quoted in the above article.

 

[janeann]

Oklahoman • Mildren Still Talk of Town

Sooner is forever a hero in Abilene, where he excelled on field, in classroom

By Jake Trotter
Staff Writer

Forty years later in Abilene, Texas, they still talk about the touchdown that wasn't.

Cooper High School, led by blue-chip senior quarterback Jack Mildren, rolled into the state championship game unscathed against Austin Reagan.

"We built our team around Jack,” said Merrill Green, his high school coach. "I would describe him as a thoroughbred. He was everything you could ever expect athletically and academically.”

College recruiters from across the country descended on Fort Worth for the title game, since recruiting season those days began immediately after the final high school game.

They were all there to watch Mildren. He had become such a huge prospect by then that Sports Illustrated's Dan Jenkins profiled him in a 10-plus page article, which ran long before Mildren perfected the wishbone at Oklahoma.

Thursday, Jack Mildren passed away at age 58 in Oklahoma City after a two-year fight with stomach cancer.

In Oklahoma, he will be remembered as a quarterback, a successful businessman and politician and an affable sports talk show host.

But in Abilene, Mildren will forever be known as the small-town hero who could throw with either hand and led the Cougars as close to a state championship as they've ever been.

"When we were freshmen, he was rolling to his left but got his right arm caught by a defender,” said Randy Allen, a halfback at Cooper the same year as Mildren. "So he switched the ball to his left hand and threw a game-winning 30-yard touchdown pass.”

For that reason, Mildren would later become the perfect instrument to orchestrate the Sooner wishbone option offense, which required its quarterback to pitch the ball with both the right and left hands.

"Can you imagine a better deal running the option than to have a guy who was ambidextrous?” Green said. "That's why he was so great running down the line with the option. He could go either way.”

Besides being able to use either hand, Mildren was an incredible all-around athlete. He could've been the starting catcher for the baseball team, but he was too busy setting a state record in the 300-meter hurdles.

But Mildren excelled in the classroom as much as he did in athletics.

"He was a straight-A student, a ‘Yes sir, no sir' kid,” said Henry Colwell, a former Cooper assistant football coach and history teacher. "Jack was a super football player, but he was also an outstanding person and a great student.”

Allen recalls how Mildren grew up always studying in his room with music blaring in the background.

"I couldn't understand how he could focus,” Allen said. "But he was always reading and that helped him have a great vocabulary.”

That not only helped Mildren as a speaker when he later ran for public office, but it also helped him on the football field, too.

"He knew every one's assignments,” said Allen, who coached at Cooper and is now the coach at Highland Park in Dallas. "If a guy forgot his assignment, Jack would tell them in the huddle, whether it was an offensive lineman or a receiver.

"He was very intelligent.”

The blend of athleticism and acumen made him a perfect quarterback in the eyes of the more than 100 colleges that recruited him.

The summer before Mildren's senior year, Green knew the recruiters would be coming in droves. He suggested to Larry Mildren, Jack's father and a coach before becoming a salesman for a cable TV company, that he take his son to see some college campuses without the frills that come with official visits.

With his father, Jack Mildren visited several schools that summer, including Arkansas, Texas A&M and TCU. But everyone, including Mustangs coach Hayden Fry, figured that he would sign with SMU, Mildren's favorite team growing up thanks to stars like Doak Walker and Don Meredith.

That's where five of his closest friends, including Allen, would later sign. But Mildren, a free thinker, ran into another free thinker.

On the way back from visiting Arkansas, the Mildrens made a stop in Norman.

"Jack was just destined to go to SMU,” said Green, who played for the Sooners. "I wish I could take credit for him going to Oklahoma, but I can't.

"Jack and his dad stopped off at the Oklahoma athletic office and some of the coaches were there. Barry Switzer was an assistant there then under Chuck Fairbanks. Jack became very enamored with coach Switzer, who was a free spirit like him. That was the thing that got his attention and attracted him to Oklahoma from the beginning.”

Back then, the Southwest Conference had rules about recruiting Texas athletes that didn't apply to Oklahoma of the Big Eight. Not only could the Southwest not recruit athletes until after their season was over, but they were allowed only two in-house visits. Switzer, meanwhile, was making almost that many visits a week leading up to signing day, according to Green.

In fact, Texas coach Darrell Royal became outraged after Green permitted the Oklahoma coaches into the team's dressing room, a place Southwest coaches couldn't go.

Eager to catch up with the Sooners, Southwest coaches were lined up at Mildren's final game to begin making their respective recruiting pitches, pitches that would include flights on private jets and even an introduction to that year's Miss Texas, who was a TCU supporter.

But the most memorable pitch came from Johnny Unitas, who personally phoned Mildren on behalf of Baylor coach John Bridgers.

To everyone, the effort was worth it.

After all, Mildren was about to finish up a year in which he accounted for 44 touchdowns and almost 3,000 total yards against some of the toughest high school competition in the state. Cooper's schedule included powerhouses Odessa, Midland and Big Spring.

That's why so many recruiters came to the state title game, expecting Mildren to dominate like he had the week before in the state semis when his team led Richardson 42-0 by halftime.

But in the end, Mildren would sign with the Sooners, opening up the floodgates for star Texas players to migrate north to Oklahoma.

Stars like Billy Sims and Adrian Peterson. Rickey Dixon and Tommie Harris.

"Jack made it acceptable for all the other great Texas high school players to come to Oklahoma,” Fairbanks said. "They figured if it was good enough for Jack Mildren it was good enough for them.”

Ironically, Mildren, who almost always won in junior high, high school or college, lost in the two biggest games of his career.

In 1971, he led the No. 2-ranked Sooners into a showdown with No. 1 Nebraska, billed as "The Game of the Century.” Even though Mildren filled the game with his own highlights, the Cornhuskers won, 35-31.

Mildren lost the championship game in high school, too.

On the day of the finals, snow and sleet pounded the field, equalizing Cooper and Reagan.

Mildren ran for a touchdown and threw for two more. But Cooper's sophomore barefooted kicker had missed two extra points, leaving the Cougars trailing 20-19 with just a couple of minutes remaining.

"I learned the hard way,” Green said. "But I never allowed a barefooted kicker on my team again.”

Cooper had one last chance and Mildren had the offense humming down the field.

The Cougars converted on a couple of fourth downs, making it all the way to the 1-foot line. There, they faced fourth down with just a few seconds to go.

The coaches tried to send in the kicker, but Mildren wanted the game in his hands.

"Jack waved him off,” Allen said. "We were going for it.”

Said Green, "We decided to put it in the hands of our great quarterback instead of this sophomore barefooted kicker.”

Green called a quarterback sneak and Mildren seemed to have crossed the goal line. Even the Reagan players thought so.

But the officials controversially ruled that he hadn't.

"Jack told me he crossed the goal line,” Green said. "Then he never spoke about it. For him it was over. He was moving on to the next thing.

"But if you go to Abilene, people are still talking about that play today.”

They're talking about Jack Mildren, too.

 

[burlyhorn]

Street was my favorite from that era but I respected Mildren's leadership, running and passing ability. Even though they lost to Nebraska in that big game, I believe that they outgained NU by a number of yards. He threw some beautiful passes to Harrison in that one.