January 2, 1922: The Origin of Texas A&M's "12th Man"

Earl King Gill

January 2, 1922: The Dixie Classic is played for the 1st time, at Fair Park, on the grounds of the Texas State Fair in Dallas, before a crowd of 20,000 people. It's played on January 2, because January 1, New Year's Day fell on a Sunday.

Texas A&M University, of College Station, Texas, served as the home team. Under head coach Dana Xenophon Bible, they were 5-1-2, having lost only away to Louisiana State University (LSU), and being held to ties by Rice University and their own arch-rivals, the University of Texas.

Dana X. Bible

Their opponents were Centre College of Danville, Kentucky. They were 10-0, including a 6-0 win over Harvard in Boston. At the time, and for many years thereafter, it was regarded as one of the biggest upsets in college football history. Given how Centre finished, it probably shouldn't have been: They also beat Clemson, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Auburn, Tulane and Arizona. Their biggest star, Bo McMillin, was a rough Texan who was one of the 1st good NFL quarterbacks, and would coach Indiana to its 1st football title in the Big Ten in 1945.

Bo McMillin

The 1st half of the game produced so many injuries for A&M, Bible feared he would not have enough men to finish the game. At that moment, he called into the Aggie section of the stands for E. King Gill, a student who had left football after the regular season to play basketball.

Gill, who was spotting players for a Waco newspaper and was not in football uniform, donned the uniform of injured player Heine Weir, and stood on the sidelines to await his turn. Although he did not actually play in the game, his readiness to play symbolized the willingness of all Aggies to support their team to the point of actually entering the game.

When the game ended in a 22-14 Aggie victory, Gill was the only man left standing on the sidelines for the Aggies. He later said, "I wish I could say that I went in and ran for the winning touchdown, but I did not. I simply stood by in case my team needed me."

Centre went on to prove that their great 1921 season was no fluke. In 1922, Centre beat Clemson away, Mississippi, Virginia Tech away, Louisville, Kentucky away and South Carolina. However, they lost a rematch away to Harvard on October 21, 24-10. They also lost to Auburn at Rickwood Field, the Birmingham ballpark.

In 1923, they went 7-1-1, their conquests including Clemson, Kentucky, and Auburn at Rickwood again. They tied Georgia, and their only loss was the Penn at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia. On 4 consecutive Saturdays in 1924, the Colonels defeated Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.

Today, however, Centre are in Division III, but have won their league 15 times, including 6 times from 1980 to 1990. Their last title was in 2014. Their current enrollment: 1,430, to Texas A&M's 79,000.

Having already gone undefeated in 1919, and been retroactively awarded a National Championship, shared with Notre Dame, A&M went 8-0-1 in 1927, and were retroactively awarded another, shared with the University of Illinois. They were consensus National Champions in 1939, won 17 Championships in the now-defunct Southwest Conference, and won the Big 12 Conference title in 1998. In 2012, they moved to the Southeastern Conference, where they have yet to reach the Championship Game.

Dana Bible left A&M for the University of Nebraska in 1929, remained through 1936, and then coached the University of Texas from 1937 to 1946, which must have burned A&M fans up. He had a career record of 198-72-23, and won a total of 14 Conference Championships.

The Dixie Classic did not become an annual event. It was played again on New Year's Day 1925, with West Virginia Wesleyan beating Southern Methodist University, 9-7; and New Year's Day 1934, with Arkansas and Centenary College of Louisiana played to a 7-7 tie.

On New Year's Day, January 1, 1937, the Cotton Bowl Classic was played for the 1st time. That one stuck.

Inside Kyle Field, A&M's stadium, there is a sign saying, "HOME OF THE 12TH MAN." The expression comes from the fact that a football team has 11 men take the field at any given time, so that the fan is the "12th man."

In 1982, the A&M tradition of being ready to come out of the stands to help your team -- which had never been acted upon in the interim -- was expanded as coach Jackie Sherrill created the 12th Man squad. Composed solely of walk-on (nonscholarship) players, the squad would take the field for special teams performances. Sherrill's successor, R.C. Slocum, amended the tradition in the 1990s to allow one walk-on player, wearing the Number 12 jersey, to take the field for special teams plays.

Outside Kyle Field, there is a statue. But it's not of Dana Bible, or any other head coach. It's not of John David Crow or Johnny Manziel, their Heisman Trophy winners (1957 and 2012, respectively), or any other man who's ever played a down for the Aggies. The statue is of Earl King Gill (1902-1976), All-American in basketball in 1924, who nonetheless stood ready to play football for Texas A&M if needed, as the original 12th Man.

The expression "12th Man" became considerably more common. The Seattle Seahawks retired the Number 12 jersey on December 15, 1984, in honor of their fans. In 2003, the Seahawks installed a giant flagpole in the south end zone of what is now Lumen Field, and began a tradition of raising a giant flag with the number 12 on it in honor of the fans. Usually, a local celebrity or a season ticket holder raises the flag during pregame ceremonies. In recent years, 12th Man flags have been seen all over Seattle whenever the Seahawks make the playoffs, including atop the Space Needle.

Texas A&M objected. An agreement was struck between the University and the Seahawks in 2016, and the Seahawks have virtually ceased from referring to their fans as the "12th Man." Instead, they tend to use the term "12s" or "the 12 Fan."

*

January 2, 1922 was a Monday. There was 1 other college football game played that day: The University of California played Washington & Jefferson University to a 0-0 in the Rose Bowl, at Tournament Park in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California. This was the last Rose Bowl played at Tournament Park, as the Rose Bowl stadium opening the next year.

Those were the only scores on that historic day: Baseball was out of season, professional basketball barely existed, and no games were scheduled for the NHL.