Aggie Flashback with former A&M fullback Bucky Sams

Key quotes from Bucky Sams interview

"I'm glad to be here and I love this place. I've been back to College Station quite a few times in the last 30 years so it's kind of one of those places you never forget and always wonder how you can get back there. I got a job at Davila Middle School to coach football and I'm glad to be back. It's a feeder to Rudder High School and I'm excited about that. I've met a lot of the coaches and administrators there and they're good folks."

"I grew up in Amarillo and we would open with 20,000 people against Permian. I was always a little envious of the other Amarillo schools that got to open against Odessa High and Odessa Ector, but we were the lucky ones that got Permian. I'll never forget my senior year, I was one of the bigger guys on the team and I was a tailback at 195 pounds. Our line was a very young line. They had an article in the Amarillo Globe News that said 'Permian outweighs Tascosa 60 pounds per man' and our poor little lineman were going 'eeeek!' and so was I. We showed up to Odessa and sure enough the score was 'eeeek!' Fortunately for me, a couple of those guys ended up coming to A&M and I was glad they were on my team. They were great athletes with great stories."

"I had just finished eating breakfast with Coach Bellard (while OC at Texas) and Darell Royal in Amarillo and I was nervous, it was a little bit intimidating. Darrell had cut himself shaving and that's all he could talk about. Emory picked up on that and started doing the sales pitch and started recruiting. I had met Coach Bellard before when I was a sophmore and a junior when he was there in town on business and he'd stop by.

About two weeks later, I get a call from Coach Bellard saying, 'How do you feel about A&M?' I said, 'Well I have a visit scheduled, but I'm really not interested. I want to go to Texas.' I didn't know Coach Bellard had moved over to A&M and I hear this pause on the phone and he goes, 'You know I'm the head coach at Texas A&M now?' I said, 'No sir, I did not know that.' He said, 'We need to get you reconditioned mentally and get your mind redirected for your visit here.' When I got here, my visit was terrible. The guy who hosted me didn't do a very good job. All I know is, is that I ate Whataburger about five times. On Sunday, when I met with Coach Bellard he asked me how my visit was and I said, 'I don't know, all I got to experience is Whataburger.' He said, 'What? You didn't get to see the campus or anything?' My player host was interested in other activities, let's just keep it at that.

I wasn't interested in all that at all and Coach Bellard said, 'Well, we got to get you another visit' and I said 'Well, my schedule is kind of booked.' I was going to other Southwest Conference schools and he asked where I was going. I listed schools and he just said 'Aw, you don't want to go there' to everyone of them. We rescheduled another visit and I had a different host, Max Byrd, who was a defensive end from Amarillo who I knew. When he picked me up from the plane I asked him what we were doing and he said, 'I'll tell you what we're not doing, we're not going to Whataburger.' So my visit was much better and I got a date from Bryan High School since there weren't many ladies at A&M at the time. They were having a hard time finding recruits dates so they went to the farm system. I remember looking at the campus my senior year and  saying I was here about five years too early because the freshman class coming in was about six-to-one ratio of girls to guys."

"I committed to A&M pretty quick after that. I had another influence on me, Billy Hobbs, who was an intimidating guy. I was sitting in the backyard at home with a former student, Joe Richardson Jr., who was a big alumni from Amarillo and Billy Hobbs pulls up on his chopper. He sits down by the pool with us and he asks, 'We signed him yet, Joe?' Mr. Richardson said, 'Well, I'm working on it Billy.' Billy looked at me and goes, 'Well, what's the problem?' Of course I told him I had a couple more visits and he started going through the same deal as Coach Bellard did and asks where I'm going. I said, 'Well, I got to visit TCU' and he said, 'You don't want to TCU!' and then he said another couple of choice words. I finally told him that A&M was in the top two and he asked what we needed to do to get it to one. I said that it was just a matter of me sitting down with my parents and talking about it. He said, 'Well, I'll come find you if you don't come to Texas A&M.' He was kidding thank goodness, but I admired him and respected him and what he did."

"It was step up your game time when I got to Texas A&M. Our line in high school averaged about 180, but when I got to Texas A&M it was like 240, 250 which was rather large back then. They were timing us in 40s and I was pretty fast in Amarillo. I was a 4.6, 4.7 guy on grass so I was pretty fast I thought. I clicked off a 4.5-40 on turf once here and Skip asked me what I ran. I said, 'I ran a 4.5, what did you run?' He said, 'You don't want to know.' I said, 'C'mon what is it?' He told me it was a 4.38. The same thing happened with Bubba (Bean). They were both running 4.4 flats. My theory was Coach Bellard took the 10 running backs we had and took the slowest two and made them fullbacks, so guess what? I became a fullback. But watching those guys run was awesome, I got to see true speed and be a part of it."

"When I look back at my college career, the first game that sticks out is one when I was on the freshman team. I have a freshman rushing record for the freshman team because after that season they got rid of the team. They had a fish schedule throughout the conference. You played five games and guys like Skip and Bubba, they went up to the Varsity team right away. They were great, talented athletes that deserved to go up. We played Texas at Kyle Field and we beat them 10-8 where I had 248 yards rushing, I scored one touchdown. The second game was the LSU game where we all rushed for 100 yards and the teamwork was just getting better and better every year. I'll never forget the time that Robert Jackson came on the scene. We were in the spring game and the first time he tackled me he lit me up like a christmas tree. I was on my back and our facemasks were together and he asked me, 'I didn't hurt you, did I?' He was a genuine guy. People ask me who hit me the hardest? I would always say our own defense because if you could withstand that then you could withstand any defense in the conference. Our guys were animals as far as I was concerned.

"Going to practice and facing that defense was grueling. I'll tell you, there were some fights that broke out on the field, but after practice it was all friendship. You turned it on when you got on the field and you kind of turned it off when you got off the field. It was nice to be surrounded by a team of talent like that."

"I read a newspaper article about the 1975 team. They interviewed Arkansas coach Frank Broyles and he commented in the interview that when Emory agreed to switch dates of the game, he knew he had us. His thought was we were going to blow it all out aginst Texas, which we did. We knew what we needed to do to get better and we knew that year was going to be good for us. I believe if we hadn't have switched, things would have been different."