OPINION | REX NELSON: The Wandering Weevils

Jim Brewer grew up at Rogers and then spent four decades deep in southeast Arkansas as a member of the staff at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Brewer became one of the nation's top sports information directors at UAM before moving on to jobs as information director and media services director for the university.

Brewer is retired now and lives back in northwest Arkansas at Bentonville. But he never lost his love of the Boll Weevils and recently came out with a book, "They Played for Laughs: The True Story of Stewart Ferguson and the Arkansas A&M Wandering Weevils, College Football's Marx Brothers."

The book chronicles a fascinating chapter in the history of Arkansas sports. From 1939-41, the football team at what was then known as Arkansas A&M College traveled the country. The Boll Weevils weren't playing to win. They were playing for fun.

"College football is serious business," Brewer writes. "What began on Nov. 6, 1869, as a diversion for a group of students from Rutgers and Princeton has become a multibillion-dollar industry, replete with the corruption and blurred values that follow big money. Today, the sport's major powers receive millions of dollars in revenue from television, ticket and memorabilia sales.

"Head coaches at the largest universities are routinely signed to multiyear, multimillion-dollar contracts, presiding over programs that bring national exposure to their schools while creating a subculture of boosters and fans who are more than willing to ignore the sport's rules and governing body."

The goal is to win championships. From 1939-41, though, Ferguson gave the sport something it had never seen.

"Ferguson was also a professor of history, a man who thumbed his nose at college football's establishment and played the game on his terms," Brewer writes. "His players were country boys from the segregated South and most had never been more than 10 miles from home. For three seasons, they traveled thousands of miles in an old battered bus. Along the way, they met movie stars and politicians, stood on the shores of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and were awestruck by the Grand Canyon and the steel-and-concrete canyons of New York.

"They became national sensations. Sportswriters of the day called them the Marx Brothers of college football. They rode bicycles from sideline to huddle and stood at attention with their helmets removed as enemy ball carriers raced through them for touchdowns. They tackled their own quarterback, quacked like ducks in the rain and serenaded fans with their own version of 'You Are My Sunshine.' They lost most of the time, but Ferguson didn't care and neither did his players. When it was over, when the Wandering Weevils had played their last game on Nov. 26, 1941, the young men who played football for a lark were soon thrust into military service."

The more Brewer researched these three seasons, the more intrigued he became. He thinks there's still a lesson for us in this era when we take college football so seriously.

"Modern college football should take note of Stewart Ferguson and the Wandering Weevils," Brewer says. "They truly didn't care whether they won or lost. They played the game for fun with no illusions of personal glory and certainly not money. Ferguson held to the quaint notion that the sport should be an enriching experience for his players, not a win-at-all-costs battle for survival. As big-time college football struggles with corruption, maybe it's time to pause and consider the Wandering Weevils."

Ferguson wrote: "I do not believe that I am a fanatical, glory-hallelujahing reformer in anything. Even though our football was considered crazy by some people, I doubt if it was any more so than making a game the ultimate thing in the lives of youth and coaching viciously toward the winning of it. ... Many may never know what I am trying to describe.

"I can't put it in words, but I saw it many times in the faces of my Boll Weevil players. I guess that's the real reason we went crazy in football. Who cares about scores when your eyes are shining?"

Could something like this happen again? Brewer doubts it.

"You would be hard-pressed to find a coach with Ferguson's mindset, a man willing to turn convention upside down, an original thinker who puts the interest and well-being of his players ahead of victories on the field," Brewer says. "Next, you'd need a university president and athletic director secure enough in their posts to allow the coach a free hand in running the football program and who shared their coach's view of athletics and the importance or lack thereof of winning.

"Would such a team be able to find opponents willing to accept an easy win while being mocked by a bunch of clowns? Would today's game officials play along or would they strictly enforce the rules?"

Buddy Carson, who played on those teams, said: "We really didn't care that we were losing. Just look at the places we went, the things we saw. I wouldn't have traded that for anything."

"The story of Stewart Ferguson and the Wandering Weevils serves as a stark reminder of just how much college football has changed since those last carefree days before World War II," Brewer writes. "Ferguson's boys never received $100 handshakes from overzealous boosters, didn't receive new cars paid for by anonymous benefactors and didn't play the game with one eye on a career in the NFL. Their fathers didn't shop them to the highest bidder, and while they weren't saints, their names didn't end up on a police blotter."


Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

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