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Nice article. Great back and certainly the best of the Freshmen in the '79 year. Worked hard and played hard. Hate it that we lost him to injury.

The first time I saw him play at SMU I told my wife, he is the best of the lot! Then he was injured returning that kickoff that also knocked out Dickerson for the last game of the season against Arkansas (if my memory serves me right). Meyer ran James every play (James mother had complained that her son was not getting enough playing time) and while he gained around 150 yds against Arkansas in Little Rock that night, he was badly beaten up. I don't think she complained any more after that. Any way, unfortunately we never saw Waggoner run again.

To me, Waggoner was the best of the bunch as a freshman. Largely perhaps because he had a little more ability than James and was more mature and used to tougher competition than Dickerson. I have told the story of those three backs to many people who were familiar with the Pony Express and you can see the skepticism when I say that Dickerson and James were not the best as freshmen. If all had stayed healthy, I wonder what the outcome would have been. As I remember Waggoner was quite a track star also.

SMU lost 2 potential All-Americans in a short time. The other tragic loss was the death of Freshman All-America LB Pete Collins in an automobile accident as he was returning to Fall Practice. Would have been a great one-perhaps the greatest SMU LB ever-same class as Anthony Beverley. Collins played as a freshman Beverley sat.

I was talking about Collins with someone this morning, too bad on both of these guys. Good find Stallion.

Stallion inadvertently mentions one huge benefit of Meyer's recruiting through the years. Even though Meyer didn't produce a winning record until 1980, he recruited well and had depth by 1980. As Stallion mentioned, we lost potentially two All-Americans prior to the 1980 season. Despite those loses, we had a strong offense and defense and ended in the top 20 that year and for years to come.

Imagine if SMU lost two potential All-Americans in the same year at any time post DP. The loses would be devastating.

Depth matters. And JJ understands that and is building like Meyer did.

No way Waggoner would have been better than Dickerson. That would be Jim Brown territory.

Craig James would have transferred to Texas Tech -actually we are lucky that both James didn't transfer to Alabama and Dickerson to OU.

Does anyone know what Charles is doing these days?

I don't believe James would have transferred because his girl friend, wife to be was at SMU which is why he came in the first place.

rich59 wrote:I don't believe James would have transferred because his girl friend, wife to be was at SMU which is why he came in the first place.

You are correct.

ponyboy wrote:No way Waggoner would have been better than Dickerson. That would be Jim Brown territory.

I don't know if Waggoner would have developed into the running back Dickerson proved to be, but Charles was definitely ahead of Dickerson as of the time of his career ending injury. (in fairness to Dickerson, Eric played most of his freshman year with a pretty bad thigh injury and certainly wasn't 100%). I think there is a good chance Dickerson might have transferred had Waggoner remained healthy. But I agree that James wasn't going anywhere. It would have been exceedingly interesting to see how the coaches would have utilized the three of them if they all remained healthy.

I remember one of those freshmen backs ran around campus wearing a jersey that said "quick six" on the back. Does anyone else remember him? I'm not sure who he was.

I remember playing bball with CW at Deadman and he was a real likable kid and would love to know he turned out well after school.....his potential was great and he played against bigger schools in HS and was highly recruited as well so is natural to think Charles could have better potential than ED, as he played in 2-A Sealy at the time.
Thanks for posting this.

http://www.dallassouthnews.org/blog/201 ... er-part-i/


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