This is an interesting read from 1982 about TX high school RB legend Ken Hall. It discusses how Bryant considered the way he used Hall to be his biggest coaching mistake. He speculated the Aggies would have been National Champs had he not run Hall off the team by misusing him. (We can wonder if John David Crow might have been the FB blocking for Heisman Trophy winning HB Ken Hall on their way to a Natty, had Bryant made a different decision.)

https://www.si.com/vault/1982/09/27/625010/whatever-happened-to-the-sugar-land-express

I have a few observations.

1. That's a well written story. Much better than the swill people try to pass off as journalism today.

2. It's long. Really long. Forgotten are the days when a man could sit down with a good magazine and spend 30 minutes or an hour enjoying a well written story.

3. The writing was, well, tough. The writer clearly wasn't worried about what some SJW would think about how things were in Sugar Land, TX in the late 1950's.

4. Not only did Bear admit he failed with Hall, he actually apologized to him.

That was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Thank you for posting. This may sound silly, but it made my day.

Hey anyone got an article about how we didn't recruit Drew Brees because of his height?

I have to admit I actually learned about Hall indirectly by reading about how Derrick Henry broke his HS records, and I wondered why he never quite made a name for himself past high school. We can blame it on the Bear!

JDC likely doesn't win the Heisman if Bryant had used Hall as the primary RB.

It definitely would have been interesting if Bryant had used Hall differently. Back in those days, coaches generally left their best players play on both sides of the ball & Hall supposedly wasn't too excited in playing defense so Bryant benched him instead of using his best skills on offense only but NCAA rules at that time only allowed a player to re-enter the game once/quarter during those times, so Bryant was hamstrung, so to speak.

**** bryant, those natty's shoulda been ours

No because one was never written because the did not happen

Ken Hall passed away this week

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Hall_(American_football)

Wow I thought he died long ago.

He had a BBQ place in Fredericksburg Tx for years that had a really good brisket.

Here!

TexanJeff said:

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Hey anyone got an article about how we didn't recruit Drew Brees because of his height?

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Brees had a terrible injury in high school that scared off Texas, OU and A&M.

war hymn aggie said:

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JDC likely doesn't win the Heisman if Bryant had used Hall as the primary RB.

It definitely would have been interesting if Bryant had used Hall differently. Back in those days, coaches generally left their best players play on both sides of the ball & Hall supposedly wasn't too excited in playing defense so Bryant benched him instead of using his best skills on offense only but NCAA rules at that time only allowed a player to re-enter the game once/quarter during those times, so Bryant was hamstrung, so to speak.

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So it sounds like Hall didn't want to be a team player and do what was asked of him at the time.

AWP 97 said:

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war hymn aggie said:

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JDC likely doesn't win the Heisman if Bryant had used Hall as the primary RB.

It definitely would have been interesting if Bryant had used Hall differently. Back in those days, coaches generally left their best players play on both sides of the ball & Hall supposedly wasn't too excited in playing defense so Bryant benched him instead of using his best skills on offense only but NCAA rules at that time only allowed a player to re-enter the game once/quarter during those times, so Bryant was hamstrung, so to speak.

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So it sounds like Hall didn't want to be a team player and do what was asked of him at the time.

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Because his coach was dead-assed wrong

Would someone please refresh my memory. Wasn't Hall a class ahead of JDC?

Hall played NFL ball but wound up with only about 330 yards of total offense. If he was ALL THAT, I believe he'd have had a better NFL career.