A Nod to the Squad

Sometimes, dreams are inspired by a whirl of athletic artistry, laid at your feet.

It was the mid-1970s and Warren Barhorst, 9, sat in a chair in the north end zone at Texas A&M University’s Kyle Field, a crazy maze of movement before him.

“They used to put chairs on the track. I’m sitting in the last one, on the goal line. This A&M player gets hit, flips into the end zone, and scores a touchdown right in front of me,” recalls Barhorst. “I swore right then and there that I was going to play football for Texas A&M. That was my dream going forward.”

And he did, albeit in one of the most unexpected, never-before-done Aggie ways. He was chosen from student body tryouts to become a member of Texas A&M’s 12th Man all-volunteer kickoff team, a gutsy band of non-scholarship walk-ons in the 1980s who couldn’t wait to take to Kyle Field. 

Students of every ilk, fit to not-so-fit, responded to head coach Jackie Sherrill’s advertisement in the campus newspaper, The Battalion, that trumpeted “No Experience Required.” A throng of 252 showed up for the first meeting, including two females, who were diplomatically sent on their way.

MAROON MEMORIES Player Ronnie Glenn, a sea of towel-waving Aggies behind him, can’t contain his glee before a kickoff at the 1986 Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

“The advantage was that we had tons of kids who were good high school football players, but weren’t recruited to play in college, but still had the ability,” Sherrill says.

The coaching staff got to work. Agility and running drills. Chiseling through rock to find diamonds.

Skeptics were quieted quickly. The 12th Man Kickoff Team became a nationwide sensation, holding opponents to one of the lowest yards per return averages in the league. 

Sherrill’s walk-ons helped the team clinch three Southwest Conference titles, and Cotton Bowl championships in 1986 and 1988, against Auburn and Notre Dame, respectively.

This advertisement in A&M’s newspaper, The Battalion, drew the attention of students who tried out for Sherrill’s walk-on 12th Man Kickoff Team.

“It was the bonfire of ’82 that gave me the idea,” explains Sherrill of Texas A&M’s then long-standing annual tradition, symbolizing its burning desire to beat the Texas Longhorns. That rivalry resumes for the first time in 13 years on Nov. 30, with UT’s entry into the Southeastern Conference.

Sherrill bonded with students working on the 1982 bonfire. Handed a pair of three-generation-old pliers, he worked alongside them, learning to wire logs. Hoisted up the stacks by crane, he had a birds-eye view of the monumental, around-the-clock effort of Aggie students. He listened to their stories about cherished traditions.

And, coming off a lackluster season, he had an epiphany. 

Could he light a fire under a struggling Aggie team by connecting to the passion of the student body? “There are 40,000 students here. If these kids are typical of other kids on campus, I can teach kids to cover at kickoffs.” 

After all, E. King Gill had been the model for enthusiasm at Texas A&M since 1921. 

Coach Jackie Sherrill grew used to being hoisted by players, winning three Southwest Conference championships and two Cotton Bowls during his tenure.

Gill, an Aggie basketball player and former member of the football team, was in the press box, helping reporters identify players on the field, when coach Dana X. Bible – his team racked with injuries – asked him to suit up against Centre College in the Dixie Classic, the precursor to the Cotton Bowl. Though Gill didn’t actually enter the game, he inspired generations of Aggies after him to be prepared if called upon. It’s why the student section symbolically stands throughout every game. Ready.

Barhorst had been ready, ever since witnessing that touchdown as a kid. 

“You can’t describe the feeling, all those fans screaming,” he says of Kyle Field, known for daunting decibel levels. “To this day, every time I go to Kyle Field for a game, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. I joke that it’s E. King Gill whispering in my ear, ‘You can do it!’ 

“That experience at A&M taught me to pursue your dreams. Never quit,” Barhorst continues, recalling a 1988 Cotton Bowl play in Dallas where perseverance paid off.

Warren Barhorst takes down the field with Notre Dame player and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown’s towel on a tackle in the 1988 Cotton Bowl.

At one point, he’d considered quitting the team. He’d married the love of his life, Lisa Highsmith, his junior year. Then came baby Spencer. Between family, class, and a demanding football practice schedule, he recalls, “something had to give.” 

“Hell, Barhorst, don’t quit! Someday you could make a play that will change your life,” former 12th Man player Dennis Mudd encouraged him. 

Barhorst hung in. And then came Cotton Bowl opponent, Notre Dame. Returning a kick was Tim Brown, an electric Heisman Trophy winner and Dallas hometown boy. 

“Talk leading up to the game was all about Tim; the prodigal son returns. The game starts off and Tim had a pretty good first half, but he didn’t catch a pass in the second half. We got in his head,” Barhorst says. 

An A&M strong safety offered some advice. “He came into the huddle and said, ‘Hey, whoever tackles Tim Brown, take his belt towel. It’ll get inside of his head and jack him up.’”

Barhorst tackled Brown, grabbed his towel and was almost to the sideline. “Brown chases me down, tackles me and starts to fight to get his towel back. 

GLORY DAYS Warren Barhorst, Coach Jackie Sherrill, Dave Coolidge, and Ronnie Glenn reminisce about their special time at Texas A&M. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

“Now, consider, that Coach Sherrill had come down to the 12th Man section of the locker room before the game and said, ‘Guys, we’re on national TV and you guys are like banty roosters, you’re always looking to start fights and stuff. None of that today. You’re representing the university,’” Barhorst remembers. 

“So, I’m thinking, ‘Okay, here I am, last game of my career, and Coach is going to kill me because I started this.’ But it turns out, Coach was madder at Tim Brown than he was at me. They should’ve thrown Brown out for such a flagrant foul, but they didn’t. They gave him an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and then Coach Lou Holtz was smart enough not to put him back in the game.”

Aggies prevailed, 35-10.

“My name is in trivia games,” quips Barhorst, owner of a successful insurance business. “Who was the A&M guy who took Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown’s towel?”

Kickoff squad member Dave Coolidge remembers long, hard practices. The walk-ons came early and stayed late and were still at it long after the scholarship guys convened to the showers and dining hall. “We had to earn it.”

Sherrill's players, including Warren Barhorst (to the right of #45) and Ronnie Glenn (at front, holding poster) celebrate after winning three consecutive Southwest Conference championships.

Sherrill awoke a sleeping giant with his novel ideas, says Coolidge, who was introduced to A&M football by his dad, a graduate of the Corps of Cadets, 1952. “The scholarship guys saw how hard we worked. It inspired them, I think. It made the whole team work harder, be better.”

Coolidge stays in touch with former teammates, both walk-ons and scholarship players, including quarterback Bucky Richardson, who made quite a splash during his 1987 freshman season.

Richardson scored the winning touchdown against UT, clinching A&M’s third straight Southwest Conference title, sending the Aggies to that Cotton Bowl, the scene of the Barhorst Towel Takeoff. 

“Those guys just loved football,” Richardson says. “For a group of guys that ran down on kickoffs, they put in the time, going through all the rigors of everybody else on the team. Sherrill was a trailblazer. Those guys were great.”

Beating the Longhorns on a cold, wet night at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium in 1986 is an especially fond memory, Coolidge says. “I got to play in that game. We had to beat Texas on the road to win the conference that year and go to the Cotton Bowl. They had Eric Metcalf, the best returner in the country, going up against a bunch of walk-ons and we bottled him up. 

“We learned so much through Coach Sherrill,” he adds. “He’s a genuine guy with a heart of gold. To this day, if you needed help at 3 a.m., you could call him, and he’d answer. And he’d come.”

Gardner Parker doesn’t bleed maroon. He’s of the orange palette. But he grew up in Bryan-College Station and understands A&M’s traditions. “Though I’m a ‘t-sip,’ I think their traditions are wonderful. The best there are,” says the University of Texas alum, a former president of the Texas Exes’ Houston chapter. He’s close friends with Sherrill, a relationship forged through their mutual friend, the late football coach Mike Leach. 

The kickoff team couldn’t wait to take to the field. Dave Coolidge, number 7, and Ronnie Glenn, number 9, are in on the action here.

“Jackie Sherrill loves A&M. And his players love him. I’m talking about an unconditional love,” says Parker.

“I think of those players as my kids,” responds Sherrill, 81 in November. “I’m proud of them. I mean, they did win a lot of football games for me. The 12th Man guys earned their spurs, and it’s helped them in life because it was hard, and life is hard.” 

Texas A&M now uses a single 12th Man walk-on who wears No. 12 and participates on special teams, a change made by Sherrill’s successor R.C. Slocum after Texas Tech returned a kickoff for a touchdown against A&M in 1990.

But long after the 12th Man unit hung up its cleats, Sherrill had another epiphany, a way players could contribute in a different way. In 2008, the 12th Man Kickoff Team Foundation was formed to provide student scholarships, support communities through hospital visits and financial aid, and do personal speaking engagements, with players sharing their stories of inspiration. They also share their stories in a book called No Experience Required: Jackie Sherrill and Texas A&M’s 12th Man Kickoff Team, produced by Dockery House Publishing for the foundation.

“It’s a close group. We have a couple of text thread chains where we talk about all sorts of different things: politics, sports, and of course, football,” says former squad member, Ronnie Glenn, who is on the board of the 12th Man Kickoff Team Foundation. 

Sherrill and friend Gardner Parker might prefer different school colors, but the Aggie-Longhorn relationship is pure gold, they say.

“As good fortune would have it, being a starter on the kickoff team in ’85, ’86, and ’87, I got to participate in all the activities that the scholarship guys did related to winning the Southwest Conference championships and being in the Cotton Bowl. We got the same per diem they got, and all the swag that came with it,” Glenn says. “Other than the fact that I paid for my education, there was no real difference. 

“I remember a practice in ’86 where we put the hurt on a couple of our scholarship guys and that’s when they said, ‘Man, these guys are for real!’” 

Glenn, still a lover of all things sports, is a volunteer competitive team baseball coach with the nonprofit organization, SpringSpirit. 

He thinks back to a Thanksgiving night, 1985, a showdown for the conference crown between the Aggies and the Longhorns, a sold-out Kyle Field. “You couldn’t hear yourself,” Glenn says. The Aggies blitzed Texas 42-10, giving the team its first Cotton Bowl berth since 1967. 

The crowd went crazy. Eighteen years of frustration released into the night air.

Former Aggie head coach Jackie Sherrill and his 12th Man Kickoff Team are bonded for life. Pictured, from left: Dave Coolidge (seated), Ronnie Glenn, Coach Sherrill, and Warren Barhorst. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

“Aggies hadn’t seen their football team make it to win a Southwest Conference in so long,” Glenn says. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything that loud. It’s unmatched.”

He talks of a decades old copy of The Texas Aggie Magazine. He’s on the cover, hands to the sky, waving his towel before a kickoff at the 1986 Cotton Bowl. A sea of maroon behind him. 

It’s been blown up poster size, a treasured keepsake. “I’m touched that my two daughters had that in their rooms when they were at Texas A&M,” he says. “So many special memories and stories from that kickoff group. What a special time.”