Each year, TCU and SMU meet for one of Texas football’s most colorful trophies, the Iron Skillet. The rivalry began in 1905 and has carried generations of bragging rights across Dallas and Fort Worth.
Its most famous chapter came on November 30, 1935, when undefeated SMU and undefeated TCU met in what many called the “Game of the Century.” A trip to the Rose Bowl was at stake, something no Texas team had yet achieved.
Crowds far beyond the stadium’s official capacity poured into Amon G. Carter Stadium. Tickets were resold for astonishing prices during the Great Depression, and the game was broadcast nationwide on NBC radio.
SMU won 20-14, but TCU had its own legend in Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, whose passing attack was considered revolutionary for the era. In those days, throwing the ball often was treated almost like poor manners.
After Baugh moved on to professional football, coach Dutch Meyer simply looked to the bench and found another star, Davey O’Brien, who would go on to win the Heisman Trophy in 1938.
TCU was a national power in those years, and Dutch Meyer had a reputation for finding quarterbacks with strong arms and sharp instincts long before modern passing offenses became common.
That is where my family story enters the picture.
Meyer offered a scholarship to a young man from Big Sandy, Texas named Gordon Donald McKinley, later my father-in-law, Rita’s dad, and Papaw to the grandchildren.
He reported for August two-a-days, the grueling preseason practices that defined college football in that era. His father, known as Pappy, dropped him off and returned home to East Texas.
Family lore says Gordon beat him back home.
The fuller story is that he stayed through two weeks of practice before deciding college life in Fort Worth was not for him. He was homesick for East Texas and came home.
Some might shrug and say it was only a scholarship offer. But this was not an ordinary opportunity. It came from one of the premier programs of the time, from the same coach who developed Sammy Baugh and Davey O’Brien.
Gordon certainly had the tools. Even years later, he was broad-shouldered, powerful, and possessed a remarkable arm. At fifty years old, he could still throw a football more than fifty yards.
So each season, when I glance at the TCU-SMU score, I cannot help but think about that homesick young man from Big Sandy.
And I wonder what might have been.
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