Bob Lutz: Former WSU players weigh in on a potential football revival

Bringing back Wichita State football seems like such a romantic thing.

It’s been gone for almost 30 years now. The struggles that the program dealt with on the field from year to year and sometimes game to game have been erased from our memories. Meanwhile, the sport of football has never been more on the American conscience.

Since then-WSU president Warren Armstrong and athletic director Lew Perkins announced the bad news after another apathetic season in 1986, it’s always seemed as if something was missing at Wichita State. But the absence never amounted to much more than pangs of remorse.

Until this week, that is, when president John Bardo cracked open the door for football’s possible return. And since the news scooted out from that long-locked door, it’s all anybody wants to talk about. That includes the dozens of former Shocker players who for years have had to explain to friends and family why there’s no longer Shocker football.

“This is always a topic when some of us are invited back to Wichita for alumni events and things like that,” said former WSU kicker Joe Williams, who kicked a 67-yard field goal for the Shockers in 1978, still tied with Texas’ Russell Erxleben and Arkansas’ Steve Little for the longest in college football history. “I think they think it keeps us happy without bringing football back. They give you some cake, a little bit of ice cream. Be happy with what you had in the past and let’s just go with basketball.”

Williams is resigned, as are so many other former players, to football’s fate. But now there is a new, aggressive president with Superman vision and it has some of these guys using their imaginations again.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to tell people they once played football at Wichita State – and for an actual football program to be in place?

“Football drives collegiate athletics in the modern world,” said former WSU defensive back Maurice Foxworth, now an attorney in St. Louis. “A few of us former Shockers went to the Final Four (in Atlanta) a few years ago and we were treated like rock stars by the fans that remembered Shocker football from that era. It made us feel good.”

With each passing year, though, football becomes a more distant memory. If you graduated from high school in 1999 or more recently, you probably can’t remember Shocker football.

Wichitan Dick Sanders, who played quarterback for the Shockers in the early 1950s, is hopeful, yet cautious.

“I remember when (former WSU president) Gene Hughes came to one of our lettermen meetings, got introduced and immediately said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, boys, we’re not going to have football at WSU,’ ” Sanders said. “And there were mostly all ex-football players in that group. So that was the end of that.”

Sanders said there’s nothing like watching a college football game in person on a brisk fall day and it’s something he misses at his alma mater.

“But we’ve lost so many of the guys who used to be at those lettermen meetings,” Sanders said. “Football was talked about at almost every meeting. Now I don’t know if you could get much interest.”

Gauging interest is Bardo’s No. 1 charge. Then, of course, comes finding to pay the exorbitant bill that a start-up football program would produce.

It’s the bill that concerns former Shocker great Bob Long, a receiver who played one season for WSU in 1963 that preceded a seven-year NFL career with Green Bay, Atlanta, Washington and the St. Louis Rams.

Long, 74, lives in Wisconsin and was in Wichita recently to speak to a group of alums.

“We had a good team in ‘63 with Henry Schichtle at quarterback, Bill Parcells, Miller Farr but even though we won the Missouri Valley we didn’t draw that well,” Long said. “I think 15,000 or 20,000 was the most and that was for the first game of the year.”

Long concluded that geography hurt Wichita State football as much as anything.

“You have Colorado to the west, Nebraska to the north, the Oklahoma schools to the south and Kansas and Kansas State in your own state,” Long said. “Wichita kind of became known for getting third-rate players and my fear is that would still be the case.”

Wichita State had two winning seasons from 1964-86. In the middle of that was a disastrous plane crash in 1970 that killed 14 players and coach Ben Wilson, among 31 who died.

“They never recovered,” Long said. “I would tell them to absolutely not bring back football and I know a lot of people won’t like me saying that. But they’ll never be able to draw well if they do start it up.”

Another former Shocker receiver, Brian Hanning, played under Jim Wright from 1975-78. He endured four losing seasons.

“But the experience of playing there was incredible,” said Hanning, a wealth management specialist who lives in Wichita. “I owe a debt of gratitude to the university because playing there was a life-changing experience for me. I met my wife there and I’d love to see other guys get the same experience.”

Hanning said it’s too early to know how viable a football renaissance would be at Wichita State, but he applauds Bardo for the initiative.

“I think he’s just an incredible leader,” Hanning said. “And I think this is the right thing to do, to really explore this and decide if it’s the right thing for the community and the university or not. It it is, then let’s bring football back. If it isn’t, then let’s all move on.”

This story was originally published December 11, 2015 at 4:06 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Former WSU players weigh in on a potential football revival."