A&M and SWC Legend John Davis Crow dies.

[lwjr]

He was before my time but I read and heard a lot about him and his football greatness.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/column ... giants.ece
RIP, Mr. Crow

[peruna81]

I met him here in CS by coincidence, and found him a humble, kind man who would be happy to sign anything and talk with virtually anyone about SWC , Bear Bryant, or the Aggies. He kept up with college football at its most elemental points.

Hard to find a similar soul in the sports landscape today.

[Arkpony]

We travelled down to A&M Don Meredith's first year to see us play them I believe Bryant was the coach and Crow was there as I recall. I remember mainly Meredith trying to sneak in from the 1 yard line (twice I think) after he was knocked virtually unconscious on the previous play and we lost by a TD. Later I asked one of the players why, with Meredith clearly not thinking str8 did they let him continue to call his own number. The player shrugged and said Meredith knew more about football than any other player on the team so they let him do it.

[SoCal_Pony]

Story told me by a fellow Aggie teammate of Crow's was that he once passed out from heat exhaustion during practice.

When he awoke, Bear Bryant was standing over him saying, 'Why John David, you should have told me you needed a break'.

[No Quarter]

The notice of John David Crow's passing brought back many memories from the middle fifties and I may write about them. But I got a copy of Junction Boys by Jim Dent to read first. It is about the first A & M varsity team that Bear Bryant took a training camp away from College Station and the distractions and influences that would have been present there.

Crow was not in that group, BTW. He was a freshman and a centerpiece of Aggie recruiting that year. Bryant evidently worried about him defecting all during the workouts in Junction.

One statement in the book stopped me. The heat was a problem and at least one Aggie player almost died. The author notes that in the same year, 1954, one Texas HS player and one SMU player died of heatstroke but does not give names. I could not find anything on line about either and felt I should have remembered the SMU player. The only SMU player I remember who died of heatstroke was Mike Kelsey in 1962 and it is easy to find internet references about him.

I am hoping someone with a better memory can add something.

I would recommend Junction Boys to any one interested in the game as played sixty years ago.