![]() ![]() They came from a time in America where the country had been ravaged by the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and war. Royal was three years older than Red, but the two shared the same kind of upbringing. Royal had been raised in the southwestern Oklahoma town of Hollis, just a couple of hours away from Spur, Texas. The bond between the two men grew quickly. ![]() It was then that he would meet a new young friend named Darrell Royal, who had just become the head football coach at The University of Texas, and the lives of both men were about to change forever. He and Charline married in 1950, and were getting ready to relocate to San Antonio in 1956. It was the first of a fistful of franchises he would own, including the Denver Nuggets and the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA (twice), and the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL. He bought a Class D professional baseball team called the Corpus Christi Clippers. But he always maintained his passion for sports. By the time he was 25, he had his own used car dealership. The next chapter of his life came when a friend in Corpus encouraged him to get into selling automobiles. Instead, he left school to go back to Corpus Christi. When he came back to Texas, he enrolled at The University of Texas in search of business and law degrees. And following two years at Southwestern, he served two years in the U. He spans the journey of the country from the days of the Great Depression through World War II and beyond. "I wake up each day and work on my offense," he told me as he was writing the preface to the book Mack Brown and I did called "One Heartbeat," adding "keeping an eye open for opportunities and acting on them."Īs to defense, he said, "I don't like playing defense-just concentrating on problems that try to drag you down." He would carry those values throughout his life. He played football in high school, and then attended Southwestern University in Georgetown. The journey began in 1943, when Red's family moved from Spur to the heart of the Texas coast, and put down new roots in Corpus Christi. His odyssey from those blessed-with-a-tinge of fall chill nights to becoming one of the most successful entrepreneur billionaires in the country carves its way among the legends of America. It was a time of family, friends, faith-and on autumn Friday nights in particular-football.įriday night, October 20, The University of Texas is taking time to celebrate one of its major benefactors, honoring Red, who turns 90 on the day before. Such were the early years of Red McCombs. So much so, that in those depression days of the 1930s-when there were no lights above the stands-the home folks would drive their cars up to the edge of the field and turn on their lights when dusk came early as the sun crept over the Caprock to the west. If the Bulldogs were on the road, closing time was 1:30. On home-game Fridays, the stores closed at 3:30. ![]() Cotton, cattle and eventually, oil wells, may have paid the bills, but the passion belonged to Fridays in the fall. In the 1920s, it was about the same.Īnd one of them was Billy Joe "Red" McCombs.įootball has long been part of the fiber of the land. Today, it is home to just over 1,000 folks. It has been darned near ninety years since Billy Joe "Red" McCombs was born in the west Texas town of Spur, which sits on the cusp of the Llano Estacado as it begins to rise toward Lubbock, seventy miles to the west. And you can drive ninety miles an hour on the highway straight through Cisco. "Lights still shine bright every Friday night. Either way, whether it was Reeves himself or someone else, somebody did what even Doomsday could not: killed Superman and kept him dead."They still listen to high school football on the radio in west Texas," sings our friend Jack Ingram. They also tampered with the evidence (and Reeves' body) so much it's likely impossible to ever learn the truth. They decided it was a suicide without even dusting around for fingerprints. Unfortunately, detectives didn't do much detective work. It could have been something else entirely. Or perhaps he accidentally shot himself while high on painkillers (he had been in a bad car accident months before). Either he shot himself intentionally, or his girlfriend (or one of his ex-lovers) did. He died with a bullet in his head, although no one is sure how it got there. He gained weight and became severely depressed. He had been typecast due to his Superman role, as studios didn't want to give him serious film work anymore, seeing him as nothing but a children's TV guy. By the time he died on June 16, 1959, Reeves was in the toilet, professionally and personally. ![]()
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