Gil Speer played football for my dad at Brownstown Central High School from 1974-1977. Each time I think about Gil, two things are thrown from my memory, before I can refocus and manage whatever real thought at hand may be in play. I think about the picture above of Gil with a Snoopy towel hanging out the back of his pants to give Clark Kidwell, the quarterback, an opportunity to wipe off his hands before the next play. I think this was the Corydon game. The other thing I always think about is how I wore the number 56 when I played in high school. Gil played center on offense. I played center on offense. This is probably a wonderful coincidence. In real life, we wore the number of the jersey we were thrown and told to wear. Most of us keep our number for however many years we play. Gil wore 50 as a freshman. Then 56 was his for the next three years.
Below is a photo of the seniors on the 1977 Brownstown Central Football team. Gil Speer is wearing #56 on the second row.
My Dad coached football for more than twenty years. He ran into his share of teams. He ran into his share of characters. I can tell you that my dad enjoyed this team more than any other team he ever coached. And when I think about it, my apologies to the guys I played with, this is my favorite team too. Whenever I run into one of these guys, the time just melts away. They are still my heroes. I keep up with #71 Barry Hall about as closely as I keep up with anyone these days.
My appreciation for Gil Speer has multiple layers. He played football for my dad. We went to church together as long as my family was in Brownstown. That is a great many dinners in the church basement. Gil was a youngster of many talents. In March of 1977, Gil was in the school production of Fiddler on the Roof as a suitor of one of Tevye’s daughters. At least 8 of his football teammates were a part of the production. That would be a tough ask these days.
I am sitting here thinking about Gil right now because I wish I could be in his presence this evening.
This evening Gil Speer is going to be inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame. I couldn’t be prouder. Over the years Gil has given a great deal of himself to the game of football in the state of Indiana. More importantly, he has given a great deal of himself to the players he has worked with and the coaches he has been associated with. Be it as a high school player, a high school coach or a college coach, Gil Speer has been very good for the game of football.
Photo Credit: IFCA
I will appreciate this guy as long as I can remember my own name. In my memory, I will always see something like this 1976 photo taken by my friend Jim Plump for the Seymour Tribune…
With apologies to Mrs. Englehart, my senior English teacher, I will say to Gil what I said about myself after I gave a letter-perfect speech about the poet Dylan Thomas. When I had finished my speech, Mrs. E was beaming with a smile on her face and holding up a speech critique sheet that had a large A on it. I sat down next to her and exhaled. “I done good, didn’t I!” Mrs. E grabbed the paper out of my hand and put a minus- mark next to my A.
Today though, this sentiment comes out with ease. I think it is what my dad would say tonight.
Looking at the trajectory of the ball in the photo above, I am quite certain that this was the most embarrassing kick I ever made. The ball is blurry in the photo. It came off my foot in a hurry. In the time you could blink and take half of a breath, the ball struck the cross bar and came furiously back toward the line of scrimmage with nearly as much force. I had to duck to miss the ball’s return. Needless to say, the fans in the stands enjoyed this Keystone Cop scene; I have never heard a crowd collectively laugh at a football game the way this one did. I get it. The good thing is that we won 33-0 over a Mitchell team that came in about as cocky as any group I have ever seen. This was 1984 and Mitchell’s first football visit to North Harrison. I am certain that some of their players figured we would run out of the locker room and run to the tennis courts by mistake. The best part is we went to Mitchell the next year for North’s first ever sectional game and beat the Yellowjackets on their own turf.
This kick was not without consequence. As I said, we won the game 33-0. I was in a computer programming class during first period that semester. Huge computers and floppy disks that looked like pizza coasters. Our teacher was Mr. Harvey Trowbridge, a high school computer pioneer. Harv also filmed our football games. On the Monday after the game, when I walked into class, Mr. T said, “Well if isn’t the old crossbar kid!” I was not amused. I walked over to his desk, leaned in, and said something I won’t repeat here. I’ll give him credit. He had every reason to send me to Mr. Davis. He didn’t. I think we both made our point and that was that. Mr. T never held it against me. I didn’t hold it against him. More than forty years on, it’s still a good story.
Special Teams. That is the dumbest title ever given to any athletic endeavor. It is worse than calling that little flat ball they use in hockey a “puck”.
When teams punt or try to return the punt, or when a team kicks off and the other team tries to return it, or when a team attempts a field goal or extra point, this phase of the game is called “special teams”. Offense is offense. Simple definition. Defense is defense. Simple definition. Special teams is a terrible name for a phase of the game that is an urgent endeavor that takes skill unlike offense or defense. Urgent, eh? Yes. URGENT TEAMS! That’s the name this phase of the game deserves.
Look, I have been on the football field when it was my responsibility to deliver a punt with my feet doing everything they could not to step backwards on the backline of the end zone. Doing so would be a “safety” and would give your opponent 2 points. Do you think I was out there thinking about what a SPECIAL time that was? No! Urgent. The was an urgent time. Urgent times call for URGENT TEAMS. For the love of mankind, can we not give this phase of the game the moniker it deserves? “Special Teams” does not get it. URGENT TEAMS is much better. Seriously. Call it URGENT TEAMS and maybe you won’t see so many high school kickers happy getting a kickoff to travel inside the 20. No, an urgent kicker wants that ball inside the 5.
The die is cast. The mission is on. The football lexicon that we know needs to come alive and realize the importance of that third phase of the game that goes so very far in deciding a team’s field position. You read it here first. It may take twenty years. It may take seven. But I will rattle every cage and bug enough coaches that sooner or later they will either get their heads out of their butts or they will do what they have to do to shut me up. URGENT TEAMS will one day be a thing. I believe it.
Believe it. Just like I believe the Indiana Hoosiers Football program will have to continue to deal with good old-fashioned Deep South envy and hate. Indiana had nothing to do with Ole Miss getting beat by Kentucky last year. Indiana had nothing to do with Alabama getting beat by Vanderbilt last season. Last year the Indiana Hoosiers beat both of the teams that were in National Championship game the year before. Nobody wants to talk about that. No SEC team can claim that. I know. Geography is everything. Maybe Geography is everything. I read three pre-season magazines with total dedication. Athlon Sports, Lindy’s Sports, and Phil Steele.
What a shock! Lindy’s Sports in published out of BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA. There is a pattern here.
Lindy’s has picked the INDIANA HOOSIERS to be the 31st best team in the country. THEY HAVE TO. Paul Finebaum might look ill on them if they don’t.
Athlon, published in California, has the INDIANA HOOSIERS to be the 16th best team in the country.
Big Ten Predictions? Lindy’s picks in Indiana to be the 9th best team in the conference.
Athlon picks Indiana to be the 5th best team in the conference.
Get your popcorn ready. As the Indiana Hoosiers of 2025 rack up win after win after win, there will be SEC pundits, see Paul Finebaum, that will do everything they can to poo-poo the teams on Indiana’s schedule. It is the SEC way. I don’t blame them. The SEC TV contract is chasing The BIG TEN. There, I think I said it all.
I’ll warn you. There is a great deal of “stuff” here. Read at your own risk.
Today at my desk at school, as I was eating cubes of turkey, broccoli, and a baked potato, I did something I must say is uncharacteristic of me. I am not ashamed of it. I’m not. Perhaps the whim came for a reason. It was a “dink” lightbulb over the head moment.
I am sad to say that I am of an age where many of the folks that I have known and have made a great impact on my life are no longer with us. For whatever reason, I thought about Bruce Hemphill today. Forty years ago, when I was 17, Coach Hemphill was an important man to me.
The last time I talked to Coach Hemphill was on the phone many years ago when he was working in athletic administration at UNC-Chapel Hill. The Tarheels. This was more than 20 years ago. That was that. I don’t remember the context of the call. No doubt, I needed something.
Fast forward to 2016. I think about Coach Hemphill again and use the mighty power of the internet to find that he is now the athletic director at McNeese State. I wrote him a letter. I like to write letters. They are much more personal than this forum. Less than a month later, I heard back from him.
Coach Hemphill remembered me. How did remember me? Well, once upon a time he was the receivers coach at Louisiana Tech University and in charge of the peons on the recruiting list.
Don’t get me wrong. It meant the world to me in 1985 when I would get a letter in the mail from him. I remember he sent me a postcard that started “Thinking of you as we are flying to West Texas State…”
I was no great recruit. I was a walk-on. I was a walk-on with connections. My second cousin played for the Woodlawn High School Knights State Championship Football Team in Shreveport in 1968. Seventeen years later, his high coach, A.L. Williams was now the head coach of the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in Ruston. On a visit a week after I played my last high school game, we, my dad, my cousin Nick, and I were walking through the Tech locker room, and my cousin came upon the Tech Offensive Coordinator. “Billy Laird!” my cousin shouted. Billy Laird said, “Nick Hodge!” They shook hands like it meant something. Billy Laird played quarterback at Woodlawn eight years before my cousin played there. A couple of the quarterbacks that came after Billy Laird at Woodlawn were Terry Bradshaw and Joe Ferguson (on my cousin’s team). There is more than 30 years of NFL experience between them.
That night the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs were playing the Northeast Louisiana Indians led by a quarterback name Bubby Brister. NLU beat Tech 13-9. This was a HUGE rivalry back then.
After the game, Coach Hemphill literally came to see me and my Dad and my cousin at a reception we were attending after the game. I still remember how Coach Hemphill and my cousin talked about the loss and “what it meant”. They understood each other.
My time at Louisiana Tech was short. I spent one season swinging my leg in practice. I doubt there is any proof I was ever there. I do remember smiling when I looked and saw that my name had been added to the team “training table” for the winter quarter. This meant I was approved to eat the team food. All I have are a few memories. And some things I wish could forget.
I enjoy remembering Matt Stover holding a 54-yard poke I put over the goal post and Matt telling me that was a “good ball” or “hell of a kick”. I held his kicks too. When that happened, I knew I was out of my league. He had a pop in his leg I had never heard before. Matt Stover in currently the National Football League’s 6th all-time leading scorer.
My favorite memory of that time was when I got knocked out by a 2nd round draft choice. True story. I heard Coach Mills, the coach of the scout team yell, “I NEED A FULLBACK!” He was just down the hill from me, and I sprinted. I don’t know what got into me. I got down there and said, “I’m your fullback!” Someone said, “Coach, he’s a damn kicker!” Coach Mills grabbed my facemask and gave me look, and said, “Nah, boys, he wants to play football! He don’t even have a mouthpiece!” I got in the huddle and was instructed to play fullback and to break to the right flat and look for the ball. I did just that. I caught the pass. I lowered my helmet, and was met by defensive end, Walter Johnson, and to this day I have never been hit like that. I was out! It didn’t last long. When I came to my feet, Coach Mills said, “Damn son! You held on to that ball. Now get out of here before you get killed!”
Walter Johnson was a 2nd round draft pick of the Houston Oilers. He played in the NFL for a while.
So, all these things came back to me today. I have never written of this stuff before. It was not a good time. My grandfather was dying of lung cancer in Shreveport, and I was just plain out of my head. Nothing made sense. That is why I only lasted one football season there.
In 2019, I caught wind that Coach Hemphill, now the AD at McNeese State University, was in poor health with a heart ailment. I wrote him some words of encouragement right then and there. Not long after that, he wrote me back.
So, I have been avoiding the rest of this. Today, I thought about Coach Hemphill. In a search engine, I typed the following: “F. Bruce Hemphill obituary”. My suspicions were correct. He passed away last year. I wish I would have known. I don’t know why I thought all this. Bruce Hemphill was 68.
From here, my mind wandered. I never stopped kicking the football. As time went on, I started punting the ball as much as I kicked it. I knew an old-fashioned square-toed kicker had no chance in life. My punting was my ticket, I thought. The more I punted, the better I punted. The length of the football field couldn’t hold two of my punts. I remember a hangtime of 6.96 seconds. A few years ago, I was talking to someone who had paid attention while I was in my punting heyday. He said it looked like the ball was dropped from an airplane. These are days I enjoyed, and I like to remember.
I was working in the stock room at Sears in 1990. A lady came looking for me and told me there was a Frank Lauterbur on the phone wanting to talk to me. I told her I didn’t know him. She then said he was an NFL Scout. My attitude changed. My 1966 Mustang had a bag of balls in it. I crossed the Ohio River into Louisville and picked up Coach Frank Lauterbur at a motel and we travelled, in my Mustang, to the practice field at Manual High School. This is where Coach Lauterbur worked me out. Those of you who know me know that I have an audible memory. It has something to do with the songwriting I do. Anyway, I can still hear Coach Lauterbur yelling out, “Hell of a kick!” I can also hear him yelling, “Aw, come on, show me something!”
This is the actual critique sheet that Coach Frank Lauterbur was using that day. He gave me one. This one. He told me I had good numbers. If you look toward the bottom, there is a “Touch To Toe” category. This means how much time it takes the punter to catch the ball and kick it. I did not excel here. I was slow. That was that. The reason Coach Lauterbur gave me this one is because he wanted me to work on it. He told me to call him when I got them all at high marks.
When I drove Coach Lauterbur back to his motel, he asked me to come up to his room to chew the fat. It was discovered that a good friend of his, legendary NFL Scout Coach C.O. Brocata, was also my Dad’s high school coach in Shreveport. Coach told me all kinds of stories, including one about Ohio State punter Tom Tupa and how a special teams coach in the NFL has “messed him up.” I assure you I paraphrase.
Coach Lauterbur chewed my butt that night too. He told me to get back into school. He told me I would be a good football coach someday. And so, a friendship was settled.
Over the years, Coach Lauterbur wrote me a few kind letters of reference. Know this… Coach Lauterbur was the head coach of the Toledo Rockets during a time when his 1969 and 1970 teams were a collective 23-0 and winners of back-to-back Tangerine Bowls. He then was hired as the head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes. He didn’t find that kind of success in Iowa City. After the 1973 season, the AD told Coach to fire his defensive coordinator. He refused. The AD then fired the entire coaching staff. Coach Lauterbur went on to long career as an NFL assistant coach. He then transitioned to scouting.
For me, the best of it all is Coach Lauterbur signing this letter, “Your Friend.”
This friendship came in handy in 1996. I was working at a high school that did not have a football program. A school board member came to me and asked if I would be interested in looking into starting a football team there. I called Coach Lauterbur and told him about it. He told me to contact Bill Mallory at Indiana. Coach Lauterbur and Coach Mal coached against each other in the MAC in 1969 and 1970. I can still hear Coach Mal. “Frank? My God, how do you know Frank?”, and away Coach Mallory and I went.
This school’s flirtation with football was short lived. A week after the school board member asked me about coaching the team, the school’s principal found me and told me otherwise in no uncertain terms. He said there would never be a football team there. Many years later, this school did acquire a football team and I smile when I think about that.
Only recently have I given up on my football coaching dream. I hoped that I would be there when a North Harrison kicker kicked a field goal longer than the one I kicked 40 years ago this coming fall. I saw myself running out to the field and throwing the kid over my shoulder and carrying him to the sideline.
Much has been made of the NFL Draft this spring that saw Shedeur Sanders, the former Colorado QB and son of Deion Sanders, fall from faith and hope and land clumsily and sheepishly to the 5th round of the NFL draft. Drafted by the Cleveland Browns. The Browns drafted a quarterback, Dillion Gabriel of Oregon, in the third round. Like I said, this was clumsy and sheepish and just downright awkward.
Some NFL pundits, see Mel Kiper, thought Sanders would and should have been a high draft pick. Sanders landed where he landed. Why? Who knows? There have been stories circulating as to why he fell from grace, be it poor behavior during interviews with teams or his so-called entourage that apparently followed him around from place to place. I said it already. Who knows?
Was it the writing on the wall at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado? Maybe so. Who else gets their number retired and their name on the stadium when they had a record of 13-12? He is Deion Sanders’ boy. Do you want to draft a quarterback that was 13-12 in college and gets his number retired? No, you don’t. You’re like me, you would pass. You don’t want that record. You don’t want his dad calling the GM complaining about fill-in-the-blank. It could be anything.
Dave Schnell is no household name among Indiana University Football fans. In the late 1980s, he produced a 20-13-1 record as the starting quarterback of the Indiana Hoosiers. He is the only quarterback in school history that beat Michigan and Ohio State in the same season. That season was in 1987. Dave Schnell passed away in 2011. He had leukemia. You won’t find his name on the wall in Bloomington. Maybe there should be a petition to put Schnell’s #11 on the side of the Memorial Stadium? No. That is not going to happen. The only number in Indiana Athletic History, including all those championship players coached by Bobby Knight, is #32 worn by Indiana running back Anthony Thompson. If you don’t know this, you won’t know. There is no grand mention to be found. A.T., as he as affectionately known, was a teammate of Dave Schnell. All four years from 1986-1989. ALL FOUR YEARS. Remember those days? Dave Schnell was the one who handed the ball to A.T. Schnell was an Elkhart boy that did good.
Look, when they write the history books one day, providing they hold any truth whatsoever, the age we are living in right now will be subtitled THE AGE OF HYPERBOLE. This due to how things are playing out these days. The age of hyperbole is how we get Shedeur Sanders’ number retired and his name on the side of the stadium. It is a sign of the times. Strange times indeed.
The question left over is can this Sanders kid throw an NFL ball? We have all been fooled before. We thought Ryan Leaf was going to shell the corn. His popcorn was burnt. We thought Jamarcus Russell was going to save the Raiders. He’s the reason NFL rookie contracts have been held in check since. Brock Purdy was Mr. Irrelevant. The last man drafted. He is now a star for the 49ers and earned his Jamarcus Russell-like payday. Remember Tom Brady? If Drew Bledsoe hadn’t been knocked out a game to make way for Tom Brady to take the field, who knows what would have happened?
I thought for sure this afternoon one of my casts while I was fishing in Blue River was a trash cast.
Then a catfish came along to prove me wrong.
Moral of the story: time will tell. I assure you the Age of Hyperbole was nowhere to be found along Blue River this afternoon. I like it that way.
