Spin off of Fossils NFL thread.

I will start with one...

Casey Baize, Wall Texas.(currently lives in Big Lake) Left after football season his senior year to become a Professional Bull Rider. Still riding as far as I know.

MID ... This has the prospects of becoming a popular topic. Just for starters, I will contribute some famous old-time players from Nolan County (Sweetwater) that have been mentioned in previous threads in the WT Forum

Lew Jenkins -(1916-1981) Sweetwater. Professional boxer. Lightweight Champion of the World in 1943. (Also decorated WWII veteran.)

Doyle Brunson - Longworth and Sweetwater. Professional Gambler (Texas Dolly.) Has won the World Series of Poker at Las Vegas 10 times. (
Edit: To qualify Doyle per OP for non-NFL sports related, he was All-State in basketball for Sweetwater High, played college ball at Hardin-Simmons and was drafted by the then Minneapolis Lakers. He also won State Championship mile run at S'water High.)

Louis Brooks - Sweetwater. Professional Rodeo Cowboy. PRCA All-Around World Champion Cowboy 1943 and 1944. Inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

On the subject of Louis Brooks, one would be remiss to not describe another interesting West Texas (and Nolan County) connection. When Louis Brooks was a rodeo champion in the 1940s, he married a Nolan County (Divide) girl, Nita Boyd, who was an outstanding rodeo performer in her own right. Nita has recently been inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Ft Worth.

It seems that Louis Brooks and Nita Boyd Brooks early on had a parting of the ways and Nita chose as a replacement for Louis another Nolan County cowboy by the name of G.K. Lewallen.

G.K. Lewallen was a PRCA champion bareback and saddle bronc rider and bull rider from 1943 to 1956. G.K. has also been inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

And we have not covered all the notables from Nolan County yet. (Give me a few minutes to think of more.)

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 9/13/2008 1:09p).]

Mike Stanton, Mike Timlin, Randy Velarde, the Nix brothers.

John Lackey (MLB), Bob Estes(PGA), Andre Patterson (NBA)

Andrews Chad Campbell-PGA

Charles Coody, Abilene-PGA

If we are going to count rodeo, the list is gonna be pretty long.

John Paul Cain and Terry Dill. Both from Sweetwater. PGA Golfers.

Unnamed individual. Professional Pilot. Famous for flying his cropduster under the red light at the intersection of SH70 and US180 in Roby, Texas ca 1965.

I know who that was, fossil, are you withholding the name to protect the guilty??

The name of the individual is a "secret password" that native Robyites use to determine if a stanger in town has Roby connections or is an "outsider."

(The cropduster event was the talk of the town until November 1997 when 43 Roby folk hit the lottery jackpot for $47 million.)

To make this professional sports related in line with the OP, I suppose one could say that citizens of Roby are professional newsmakers ... every thirty years or so they pull off something that makes national headlines.

Don't guess it is really a sport, but the individual in question has participated in old west re-enactments.

Tennis - Cliff and Nancy Richey, San Angelo

Nancy won two Grand Slam events and Cliff won over 40 events worldwide. Cliff's pretty salty on the links as well.

Casey Baize comes from a well-known Stamford family. He moved down to the Concho Valley with his mother when she divorced his father.

Charles Coody lives in Abilene now, but he and his wife are Stamfordites through and through. Charles won the UIL state golf championship in high school and was on some of the legendary Stamford football teams of the 1950s. He's also a really, really nice guy.

FossilAg, the parting of the ways Neta and Louis Brooks had was around 1982, when Louis died of cancer. He was a tough old bird. Cancer was discovered when he was being treated for broken ribs he received during a fight with an oil-field worker. Louis was 76 years old when that happend.

Several golfers

Blaine McCalister from Ft. Stockton. Judy Rankin from Midland, and of course Lee Trevino from El Paso.

SW AG80

Thanks for the adding to the Louis Brooks history. I was not aware of his circumstance in later years. My memories of West Texas personalities are locked into the 1950s era when I was able to generally keep aware of events in their lives. Not knowing of Louis's untimely death, I was intrigued by word of Nita's recent selection to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame to close the circle of three closely connected Nolan County folk who all achieved Hall of Fame honors.

Rogers Hornsby was born in Winters.