LITTLE ROCK — Doyle Wallace almost certainly is the only former football player asked to submit notarized confirmation that he had earned a unique achievement.
As coach and athletic director, the late Elmer Smith spent eight years building Southern Arkansas University’s modern athletic program. Then he left to join Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Texas A&M football staff in the spring of 1954.
At some point during Smith’s College Station days, he mentioned to Texas A&M assistants that one of his SAU athletes had blocked a teammate right out of one of his shoes.
Eventually, Smith grew weary of the other coaches “snickering and heckling” and contacted Wallace, who by then was coaching high school football in his hometown of Bald Knob.
“I vaguely remembered what Coach Elmer was talking about,” Wallace said in a recent phone interview. “He told me I blocked a player named George Kelly out of one of his shoes during practice one day in 1950. Anyway, I wrote a letter and had it notarized, telling the story like I felt Coach Elmer wanted it told to the other A&M coaches.
“But I couldn’t resist adding, ‘Coach, you have to remember, nobody’s [football] shoes fit very well in those days.’ ”
In This Really Happened, Elmer Smith’s privately published 1975 memoir, he wrote that Wallace played left end offensively and right end defensively, “and could generate more power in the shortest distance of any man his size that I can remember.”
“We designed a play where his assignment was to release through the line and crack back on the defensive right end. It was a wide reverse, and just as the end was ready to tackle the ball carrier, Doyle would time his block where it would not be a clip. He was vicious with this block... He was a 185-pound buzz saw.”
Wallace, 80, won a runoff election Nov. 23 to become Bald Knob’s mayor for the second time. He was first elected in 1998, and then stunned in 2002 when he fell six votes short ofa second term.
SAU’s homecoming game, which Wallace rarely misses, was scheduled for Oct. 30 this year, just before the Nov. 2 elections. Wallace stayed home and campaigned.
“I realized I got a little too complacent in 2002,” he told friends. “I thought I had it locked up, so we spent the weekend before the election in Branson. I knew I was never going to make that kind of mistake again.”
After a 1951-1954 Korean War hitch in the Air Force, Wallace returned to the SAU Muleriders and felt forced to waste his final year of football eligibility due to a knee injury.
While completing his degree, he played baseball in 1955 and 1956 as a right fielder who batted above .300 both years. But he likely would be better remembered around the old Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference for several thunderous collisions at home plate and second base.
First base, too, come to think of it.
Cleanly picked off by the opposing pitcher in a 1956 game at Magnolia, Wallace slammed back into first base. The first baseman’s cap flew toward home plate. The ball trickled down the right field line after being knocked from the first baseman’s grasp.The first baseman landed on his back in foul territory. The base umpire stared open-mouthed a few seconds before saying “safe.”
Wallace was inducted by the SAU and Henderson State athletic halls of fame for his playing exploits with the Muleriders and his 12-year stint as the Reddies’ volunteer golf coach, worth seven AIC titles and eight NAIA District 17 championships.
In 1948, Elmer Smith invited Wallace and Rod Pinkett, another Bald Knob athlete, to come and try out at Magnolia A&M, the junior college ancestor of SAU.
“I think there were 112 players in camp that fall,” Wallace said. “Pinkett and I both got scholarships.
“At that time, I was about 5-9 and 165 [pounds], and some large sophomore playing linebacker got to kneeing me. So I hit him with a couple of punches on his helmet. That might have been when Coach Elmer got interested in me.
“I had no idea how Coach Elmer heard of us. When I finally asked, he said [Augusta Coach] Curtis King recommended us to him. I was amazed. Bald Knob folks in those days didn’t think they liked Coach King and his players. After that, I started to really like Coach King a lot.”
Sports, Pages 18 on 11/30/2010