In 1922 football was young. It had been only 16 years since the introduction of the forward pass. Only three years had gone by since the rule change that allowed receivers to catch the ball anywhere on the field, rather than just in designated zones. During that season the fledgling American Professional Football Association would change its name to the National Football League; Pop Warner was still writing his monumental Football for Coaches and Players; and Knute Rockne, in his fifth year coaching the Fighting Irish, would field the fabled “Four Horsemen” for the first time.
Two years earlier, representatives of six Black colleges in Texas--Bishop, Paul Quinn, Samuel Huston (today Huston-Tillotson), Prairie View, Texas College, and Wiley--had met together to form the Southwestern Athletic Conference. Of the six, only Prairie View A&M continues in this conference today, but for the first decade of its existence these schools were the Southwestern Athletic Conference, one of the most loyally supported conferences in the nation and a proven incubator of professional talent.
Raymond Theodore Sheppard, born December 10th, 1902, to Jim and Edna Sheppard of San Antonio, played football for Paul Quinn from fall 1922 to the spring of 1926. A standout athlete from the beginning, his freshman year was spectacular--Paul Quinn went undefeated through the regular season, and faced the undefeated Bishop College team in a New Year’s Day showdown in which Sheppard played quarterback. Bishop scored a field goal early, but the two teams were locked in a scoreless defensive struggle for the rest of the game. In one last drive, with just seconds to go, Sheppard maneuvered his offense into range and kicked the tying field goal.
In the freewheeling offense of the day, rushing, punting, and even passing might be shared among the quarterback, halfbacks, and fullback. Under these circumstances it was hardly a demotion for a player to move from quarterback to halfback, and Sheppard was obviously Paul Quinn’s biggest “triple-threat man,” capable of moving the ball by all three means. His natural talent was at fullback, and it is likely he played there during the rest of his college career; the 1923 season featured another outstanding Paul Quinn quarterback, “Hub” Tinsley. They closed the year with a Christmas Day rematch with Bishop, which they won before a crowd estimated at 3,000.
During the 1925-26 season, his final year, Sheppard was named first-team halfback on the All Negro American list. Spalding sports reporter Paul W. L. Jones had this to say:
“Sheppard is the greatest Negro back in the game today. He is the most accurate punter in foot ball. A great open field runner, he can twist and squirm, dodge and duck and stiffarm as can few players. His punting brought his team out conqueror in many contests. Opponents of Paul Quinn start worrying whenever the Quinnites get within thirty-five or forty yards of the goal posts, for Sheppard’s toe seldom fails to send the ball straight through the uprights. His field goal record is one of the most remarkable in foot ball history.”(The Crisis, v.31 n.5, March 1926, p.224)
In 1932 Jones still felt the same, placing Sheppard as halfback in his “All-Time Negro Football Team.”(The Crisis, v.44 n.1, Jan 1927, p.16) Sheppard’s final season as a Quinnite was as dramatic as his first, if not as satisfying in outcome. Bishop College won the conference, having lost only to Wiley; Wiley in turn had been beaton only by Paul Quinn. The Tigers’ post-season game on New Year’s Day 1926, against Straight College (a predecessor of Dillard University), was a 33-0 shutout that must have provided some consolation.
Sheppard had more on his mind than football that January; on the 24th he married Frankie Betrice Freeman. In the fall of 1927, he returned to Paul Quinn as football coach, succeeding his own coach Harry Long. In his first time to coach against his old rival, Sheppard proved that he would still bedevil the Bishop College Bears; the Houston Informer sports page reported the game with the headline, “Paul Quinn Eats Bear Meat.” Revenge was sweet for Bishop, however, when they defeated Sheppard’s Tigers 14-0 in 1928.
(Ironically, these ferocious rivals would one day call the same campus home. In 1961 Bishop College moved from Marshall, Texas to southern Dallas; then in 1990, following Bishop College's closing, Paul Quinn College moved to the Dallas campus where, as one alumnus put it, "Bishop ghosts still walk the halls.")
In 1929 Paul Quinn College withdrew from the Southwestern Conference, and by 1930 Sheppard had moved on to coach at Wiley College, where he and Frankie both taught. He spent a much longer part of his career coaching for Central High School in Galveston, Texas, the oldest Black high school in the state (both in founding and in its facilities!), and made the transition in 1954 to the new Central High facility. (In 1968 Central High merged with Ball High to create an integrated institution.)
Sheppard was a founding member of Galveston's Rho Nu Chapter of Omega Psi Phi, and was known for his good works in the community. His legacy lives on through the Ray T. Sheppard Youth League, a non-profit organization that provides Galveston youth with summer athletics and “year-round mentoring,” very much in the spirit of its namesake.
For more about HBCU football in the Lone Star State, see Robert Fink's excellent doctoral dissertation, Black College Football in Texas (Texas Tech University, 2003).
The Internet Archive has a 1922 NCAA Football Guide online.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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