How woozy Tennessee football tailback, unknown kicker beat Bear Bryant's Texas A&M 66 years ago

One moment Tennessee tailback Bobby Gordon lay unconscious face-down in the mud.

And the next he was crashing head-first into a Heisman Trophy winner just short of the goal line in hopes of beating Texas A&M.

When Gordon could not gain another yard, Tennessee football coach Bowden Wyatt outmaneuvered the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant, who was coaching his last game with the Aggies.

But it took Vols kicker Sam Burklow, a scout team player wearing the only clean jersey on a mud-soaked field, to capture a 3-0 win in the 1957 Gator Bowl.

It was first game between Tennessee (4-1, 1-1 SEC) and Texas A&M (4-2, 2-1), a series that resumes on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS) at Neyland Stadium.

Here’s how a woozy tailback, a savvy coach and a one-hit-wonder kicker pushed the Vols past the Aggies 66 years ago.

‘Almost a pointless embarrassment’

Gordon won the Gator Bowl MVP with only 60 yards rushing on 32 carries.

It was that kind of a grinding game. Although rather than “three yards and a cloud of dust,” it was a muddy mess because of morning showers that soaked the field in Jacksonville, Florida.

The game was scoreless until the 5:30 mark of the fourth quarter, which was a nightmare for the national TV audience and the 43,709 in attendance, then a Gator Bowl record.

“The Gator Bowl, where touchdowns (used to) reign, was almost a pointless embarrassment,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Gordon broke an 82-yard punt return for a touchdown. But it was negated by a clipping penalty on captain Bill Anderson, who later served as the John Ward’s longtime broadcast partner on the Vol Radio Network.

There were no other highlights until UT’s game-winning drive and a bone-crunching collision.

‘On legs of boiled spaghetti’

On a key 11-yard run, Gordon pierced the line and smashed into John David Crow, Texas A&M’s two-way star and the 1957 Heisman Trophy winner.

Both players fell hard at the Aggies’ 7-yard line, but Gordon didn’t get up. Newspaper accounts vary about the severity of his condition.

A couple of reports said Gordon lay unconscious, and athletic trainers woke him. The Chattanooga Daily Times said an oxygen tank was wheeled onto the field to revive him.

Every report said Gordon was unsteady even when he got back on his feet. A teammate caught him before he fell again. And the Knoxville Journal reported that Gordon staggered like a “hilarious drunk … toward the huddle on legs of boiled spaghetti.”

Needless to say, concussion protocol was still decades away.

Gordon didn’t leave the game. His run had set up a first-and-goal situation for the Vols. So he ran the ball on the next three plays, reaching inside the 1-yard line to set up a critical decision.

Bowden Wyatt outcoached Bear Bryant

Wyatt, the third-year Vols coach, already had outmaneuvered Bryant before his fourth-and-goal decision. And that wasn’t a shock.

By then, Bryant was an accomplished coach after guiding Kentucky and Texas A&M to conference titles. But he wasn't yet iconic in the sport. His six national championships came at Alabama, where his tenure started after the Gator Bowl.

And Bryant had a 1-6-2 record against UT after losing the Gator Bowl.

Meanwhile, Wyatt had led UT to a 10-1 record and the SEC title in the 1956 season while earning the national coach of the year award. So he faced Bryant with his fair share of confidence.

Under Bryant’s guidance, Texas A&M started the game in an unorthodox offensive formation with only one lineman on one side of the center. And it tried it again later in the game. But Wyatt's defense adjusted, and Bryant's plan never worked. The Aggies failed to get past UT’s 35-yard line.

Wyatt, meanwhile, changed his approach on the game-winning drive. After keeping the ball on the ground all afternoon, the Vols tossed two passes for 29 yards to reach the red zone as the Aggies were caught flat-footed.

Then came that fourth-and-goal call.

‘Go in there and kick it’

Bryant admitted after the game that he hoped UT would try for the field goal. After all, the Vols hadn’t made a field goal in the 1957 season, and Texas A&M’s Roddy Osborne was Bryant’s secret weapon.

Osborne had sealed two wins for the Aggies that season by blocking field goals.

“I sent (Osborne) in with the instruction to rush but he didn’t come close to touching it,” Bryant told The Tennessean.

The Vols needed less than a yard for a game-winning touchdown, but Wyatt knew the value of a kick. As a Vols captain on Gen. Robert Neyland’s 1938 team, Wyatt had drilled a field goal in the Orange Bowl win over Oklahoma. It had been the only field goal made by a UT player in a bowl game to that point.

So rather than run the ball, Wyatt turned to a scout team player and gave simple instructions.

“Sammy, just go in there and kick it like it was an extra point,” he told Burklow.

Burklow followed coach's footsteps with bowl kick

Burklow, a junior from Hazard, Kentucky, had made 17 of 19 extra-point kicks. But he was 0-for-2 on field goals in his career, and both were attempted a year earlier.

His primary job on the Gator Bowl trip was on the scout team, where he ran Texas A&M’s plays in practice to prepare UT’s starters for the game. When Burklow jogged onto the field, his gleaming No. 34 orange jersey stood out among his mud-covered teammates.

Gordon, who had regained consciousness a few minutes earlier, was the holder. He caught a high snap and set the football on the tee. Burklow kicked a low line-drive through the uprights for the 17-yard game-winner, his only field goal that season.

Wyatt, 19 years after his Orange Bowl field goal, went through a kicking motion on the sideline as Burklow’s foot struck the football, and the Vols erupted in celebration. But the kicker’s place in UT history didn’t immediately occur to him.

“I didn’t get scared – at least not until after I came out of the game,” Burklow said. “That’s really the first chance I had to think about it.”

JFK assassination, 21-inch TV and a nose full of cotton

Six years later, Burklow witnessed a globally historic event when President John F. Kennedy’s body was rolled past him in the emergency room in Dallas.

It was Nov. 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was assassinated. Burklow had just finished UT medical school, and he was working as an intern at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Burklow, 84, has spent the last few decades as a doctor of internal medicine in Fresno, California.

Bryant returned to his alma mater at Alabama and became one of the greatest coaches in sports history. But first, he attended the Gator Bowl postgame banquet, where he gave the Vols credit for the victory.

“Tennessee was better prepared, and that’s a tribute to Bowden Wyatt and his staff,” Bryant said.

Frank Leahy, the iconic Notre Dame coach, had agreed to succeed Bryant at Texas A&M. But on the day after the Gator Bowl, Leahy announced that he failed his physical, which disqualified him for the job.

Without a top-notch coach, Texas A&M slumped. The Aggies had nine consecutive losing seasons until they beat Bryant’s Alabama squad in the 1967 Cotton Bowl. Gene Stallings, who played and coached under Bryant at Alabama, was the Aggies’ coach.

The Gator Bowl was the Vols’ first win in a national TV game. As the winning coach, Wyatt received a 21-inch TV. Every UT player got a Gator Bowl watch.

Gordon, the hard-nosed tailback from Pulaski, played two seasons professionally for the Chicago Cardinals and Houston Oilers, where he won an AFL title. He played defensive back and, coincidentally, kicker.

Gordon, 54, died in a Knoxville house fire in 1990.

But to wrap up his Vols career, Gordon attended the Gator Bowl banquet the day after he was knocked unconscious by Crow but didn’t miss a play.

“I’ve got a nose full of cotton, so you’ll have to bear with me,” said Gordon, holding his MVP trophy and grinning at the Heisman Trophy winner who injured him. “(Crow) is pretty good on pass defense, but he needs more work on tackling.”

Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Email adam.sparks@knoxnews.com. X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.

Get the latest news and insight on SEC football by subscribing to the SEC Unfiltered newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: How unknown Tennessee kicker beat Bear Bryant's Texas A&M 66 years ago