Walt Garrison Quotes
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Walt Garrison is the ultimate cowboy. A rodeo cowboy growing up in Lewisville, Texas; an Oklahoma State Cowboy as a college football fullback in 1963-65; a Dallas Cowboy as an NFL fullback 1966-74; and still a cowboy at heart, in every way.
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I thought the Dallas Cowboys were special. But the team stayed together. All teams stayed together back then. I can name you 40 guys that only played for Dallas, including Bob Lilly and Roger Staubach and Meredith. I could go on and on and on and on. We had very few other players that came from other teams. Now you have a little small nucleus of players, and about a third of your team changes every year, because of the salary cap, because of free agency. Some guy makes more money, pretty soon a guy starts making that money, you can't afford to keep him.
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I grew up in Lewisville, there was like 2,200 people at the time. My mother and dad grew up there, went to the same high school I did. Back then, we didn't specialize in any sport. You played football, then basketball, then baseball and ran track. It was great. We had a high school rodeo team. Why I got interested, I don't know. My uncle had a farm. Used to ride calves and horses. It was just kind of natural. Anybody that could ride, entered the rodeos.
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I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn't recruit me and he said: 'Well, Walt, we took a look at you and you weren't any good.'
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My favorite teammate of all time was Dan Reeves. Dan and I roomed together for four years. Dan's probably one of my best friends. I can understand him. He's from Americus, Ga., got that old, slow, southern drawl stuff. Dan's a great guy. Great competitor. He probably taught me more about football than any of the coaches did. He was still a student of the game. When you go from college to the pros, college football, yeah, you've got a playbook, but it ain't that big. Well when you get in the pros, you've got a playbook that's pretty thick. I was lost, really. But he showed me what to study and how to study.
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I keep up with guys from the OSU days. Rusty Martin from Checotah, he was my roommate for three years until he got married. Larry Elliott from Elk City. Charlie Durkee, who was a kicker for us. Leon Ward, who drowned in a boating accident, was another good friend. We still have reunions. We all go back to the spring game. We talk about how good we used to be, just like everybody does. As you get older, it's really great to see guys you struggled with. That's what made the Dallas Cowboys close. That'....
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It was good growing up in a small town. The whole town would shut down on Friday, 5 o'clock. If I'd been a bank robber or wanted to ransack a house, there wasn't nobody in town. The cops would go, too. They'd lead the bus to wherever, to Plano or Cooper or Commerce, wherever we was playing. It was something for a town to rally around, whether we had a winning season or a losing season. It was a place to go gossip, a place to go see friends.
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At Oklahoma State, I get a letter from the Cowboys. I'm so excited. "Hey, watching your progress as a football player.” All this stuff, you know. I'm so proud, showing it to everybody. A guy named Jeff Edwards, who was from Midland, who came up there on a scholarship, but he had one leg shorter than the other, and it got to bothering him, so they made him a trainer. He got the same letter. So that burst my bubble.
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Oklahoma State was the only (school) that offered me a scholarship. When you've only got one to choose from, it don't take you long to make up your mind. I liked Stillwater. People said, "You're not going to like Stillwater because it's stuck right out in the middle of nowhere.” Well, that's the thing I liked about it the most. They had horses and cows and sheep and hogs. Stuff I was used to. If I had gone to Texas or Oklahoma, I'd have been out of place. But I kind of fit in up there. You wore blue jeans and a hat. Like I tell people, I'm from Texas, I'll always be a Texan, but I owe so much to Oklahoma State. Anything I've got today comes from Oklahoma State.
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To be honest with you, when Dallas drafted me, I was going to school to be a veterinarian. I said I'll go down there, see if I can play. If I can, that's good. If I can't, I'll be back in school. My goal was to play one year on the taxi squad. That's real high expectations. Then I made the team, and I wanted to be a starter, and after Perk retired, I got to be a starter. I wanted to make the Pro Bowl, and I did that. I wanted to be all-pro, and I never did that.
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Coach Tom Landry, I don't know how to describe him. You can't say enough good things about him. One word to describe him would be fair. He didn't play favorites. He told you what you needed to do to play. If you did that, you'd get to play. If you didn't do that, somebody else would. After I retired, my wife and I went in a restaurant. Coach Landry and his wife were in there. He said, "Walt, come over, sit down.” We sat down and visited. I said, "Coach, you've said more to me tonight than you've said in nine years.” He said, "Walt, you just can't get close to players when you coach. If you get to be friends with the players, then it might alter your judgment in what's best for the team. You might find yourself playing favorites.” And he never did, which I always respected him for that.
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Why is football important? Good question. Like Will Rogers said, all of us can't be heroes, somebody's gotta sit on the curb and clap when they ride by. I think that's what it is. People want to pull for something, whether it's America and you want to fly your flag ... why are NASCAR fans so adamant? Why do they pull for Jeff Gordon or Little E? People want to have something to pull for. You become part of a brotherhood. If you're a Dallas Cowboy fan, you seek out other Dallas Cowboy fans.
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My rookie year, he helped me so much. Him and Don Perkins, the fullback that was ahead of me. Perk helped me a lot. I told him one time, I said, "Perk, you're helping me? I'm trying to beat you out.” He said, "Walt, I want to go to the playoffs. I want to go to the Super Bowl. If you're better than me, you oughtta be playing instead of me.” But I never was better than him. If he hadn't retired, I'd still be sitting on the bench.