He Really Pounds It Out

And if Woodard's bulk, Walker's arm or Dickey's legs can't get the Aggies on the scoreboard, there is always Tony Franklin's bare right foot. A junior from Fort Worth, he kicked field goals of 64 and 65 yards last season against Baylor. He approaches the ball like a sidewinder, but he kicks with the top of his foot rather than the side. Before the Texas Tech game he put on an astonishing display.

"He must have kicked 15 65-yard field goals in warmups," marveled Sloan. "That's intimidating. Maybe I should have blindfolded my team."

The A&M-Tech game was the biggest thing to hit Lubbock since a 1970 tornado literally twisted the tallest building (20 stories) in town. A record 55,008 people packed Jones Stadium to see sixth-ranked A&M and seventh-ranked Tech lambast each other in what many believed would be the game to decide the Southwest Conference title. Back at College Station, home of A&M, 6,000 more watched on closed-circuit TV.

For connoisseurs of collegiate rah-rah, there was no better place in America to be last weekend. Tech's Saddle Tramps, a booster group, rang their cowbells. A&M's student body, collectively known as "The Twelfth Man," continued its custom of standing throughout the game. A Tech student dressed up as the Zorro-like Red Raider and rode a black horse on the stadium's $45,000 rubberized track and another student dressed up as a mustachioed bandit, Raider Red, waved huge papier-m�ch� pistols. A&M brought its mascot, a collie named Reveille IV. There were bands, coeds, pompons, blue cotton candy and hysteria.

Within the sidelines, Texas Tech had Rodney Allison, fearless hunter of rattlesnakes around his hometown of Odessa, Texas and a quarterback considered by many to be the best in the country. He had always been a skillful runner, but Sloan has made a passer out of him, too. "An absolute Houdini," Sloan calls him.

"They keep a lot of pressure on you offensively and have a great quarterback to trigger it," said Bellard. "They can burn you, even when you are in good position defensively."

Bellard also was worried about Woodard, who had injured a groin muscle the previous week in A&M's 27-6 defeat of Virginia Tech and would not start. Which is probably why Sloan did not carry out his threat to start the Red Raider's horse as Tech's fullback.

Tech felt even better after scoring on the game's first series. A screen pass from Allison to Tailback Mark Julian was good for 51 yards and a touchdown. But disaster struck moments later in the form of an Aggie safety blitz. Usually a veer quarterback gets hurt on an option play while pitching out or carrying the ball himself, but Allison's injury came on a drop-back pass, A&M Safety Carl Grulich tackling him 19 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Allison broke a bone in his left leg and, at the earliest, he does not figure to be back until the Texas game on Oct. 29.

In a second-period goal-line stand, the Red Raiders kept Woodard out of the end zone on four straight plays, the last time stopping him for no gain at the one-yard line. A&M tied the score on Walker's first touchdown pass of the season, but Tech took the lead back just before halftime on a school-record, 57-yard field goal by walk-on Bill (Blade) Adams, who had just been given a scholarship.

After a Walker-to-Dickey screen pass went 68 yards for another Aggie touchdown early in the third period, Tech took the lead for the third and last time, recovering a fumble on the A&M 16 and carrying it in four plays later to make the score 17-14.