Wards of the League

D Magazine is including an article in their September issue of what can happen when you least expect it. And if you’re not a subscriber to DM you should be.

I won’t give too much away and just let the story speak for itself. It’s about a finding I came across.

Basically, in Wards of the League, I made an unintended blunder, on page 172, that I'm now happily amending.

For now, a huge thanks goes out to Dan Williams, his father Stan Williams appears on back cover of the book.

And I want to thank a wonderful young lady named Esmeralda Ovalle of Kerrville’s Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library for everything she did to make this new addition happen.

Also, thanks to Kenn Tomasch, a great friend and fellow history buff who possesses photo restoration skills I can’t even describe.

Finally, and most importantly, none of this story would have been possible without Dallas’s own Squire Haskins Photographers and their current President and Owner Karen Thomas Campbell. The company was founded by Lewis B. (Squire) Haskins in 1947 and was contracted to be the Texans team photographer. Karen has been with Squire since 1990.

So, my biggest thanks go out to Karen who has become a good friend through this process. She has graciously allowed the Texans story to utilize the photos that Squire took during that lone season.
Below is shot of Karen and me at one of the Barnes & Noble signing events we had for the book.

Oh, and I can't forget a shout out to my own pro photographer Deb Cobern for taking this picture on what was a fun day.

Go check out D Magazine's September issue coming out next week!

It's been a few weeks since we posted anything on this Wards page.

Apologies for that and let's go to the next game of the exhibition season.

The Texans finally broke camp after spending the last six weeks in the purgatory heat of Kerrville. They would be coming back to Dallas to finish out the training camp season at their new practice home, Burnett Field in Oak Cliff.

Game five of the exhibition slate would welcome local favorite, and previously failed acquisition target, Doak Walker. The game took place at the Cotton Bowl on Friday night September 12th in front of what was estimated to be 32,000 fans. Sadly, most of them were not paid attendees. As the Miller brothers and their marketing machine donated many of the tickets for free in hopes of building local interest.

Walker and his Detroit Lions would become the eventual 1952 NFL Champions. However, on this meaningless night, statistic wise, the Texans would play well enough to keep it close as they fell to Detroit by a score of 21-14. Still, with only one game remaining before the regular season, the Texans stood with a summer winning record of 3 and 2.

After taking their first loss of the exhibition season, the Texans traveled an hour from Kerrville to San Antonio for a Friday night game against the Washington Redskins. Giles Miller wanted to develop some sort of rivalry with fellow, and racist, owner George Preston Marshall. Marshall had grown tired of his Redskins being a middle-of-the-pack team, so he recently brought in the Packers legendary coach Curley Lambeau. Stepping up from two military games to the Philadelphia Eagles and now to Lambeau would be just the challenge Miller's Texans could build on. Not to mention the Redskins were led by Texas icon Slinging Sammy Baugh. Around 19,000 spectators showed up to Alamo Stadium to witness the Texans get their first win against real NFL competition. Winning against a Lambeau team would prove to be a huge confidence booster. Four games into the summer, the Texans were 3 and 1. For those who don't know, and you'll notice Texans quarterback Bob Celeri carrying a white football, you are not seeing things. During the 1950's the NFL would use white balls during night games like the one shown here from the authors collection.

I also want to give a shout out to Dan Smith Jr. and his Fans of the 1952 Dallas Texans page. Check it out as well.😜

Week three of the exhibition season meant taking a step up for the Texans. The squad traveled from Kerrville to the West Texas town of Odessa to play against real NFL league competition. On Friday night August 29th the game was played at W.T. Barrett Stadium again the Philadelphia Eagles. Odessa was, and of course still is, a football crazed town so the crowd of 17,000 folks wasn't a surprise by any stretch. Neither was the final score which was Texans 7 - Eagles 24 giving the team their first loss of the exhibition season.

The second exhibition game of the summer was played on Saturday August 23rd at Buccaneer Stadium in Corpus Chisti. An estimated crowd of around 6,000 people showed up to watch the Dallas Texans defeat the Carswell Air Force Base team, known as the Bombers, by a final score of 27-0. Optimism was growing!

We're going to start sharing some memorabilia items in weekly posts that didn't make the book. The first of which is the game program, or scorecard for lack of a better example, from the Texans first ever exhibition game. It was played on a hot Saturday night, August 16th, against the squad from Brooke Army Medical Center. Close to the training camp site, the game was played at nearby Antler Stadium in Kerrville. The military team was known as the Comets. Final score Texans 34 - Comets 7.

I had a great time talking to fellow football historian Kenn Tomasch last Friday.

Kenn runs the podcast known a Sports Rewind on the YouTube Channel.

Here's a coming soon commercial plug attached, and I'll put the word out once the piece goes live. Kenn has done some very entertaining graphics and photos that we didn't put in the book. I was waiting to share these and Kenn's production is probably the best we've done since the book was released.

Take a pre-look and hope you enjoy once it's out. It's called "A Texas-Sized Football Failure"

https://youtu.be/H8HzSTw5800

The NFL's First Texas Team

The NFL's First Texas Team Before the Dallas Cowboys became a dynasty, there was another NFL team in Texas — and it didn’t even survive a full season.In 1952, the Dallas Texans became ...

Below is a link to Gridiron Greats Magazine who recently did a discussion for Wards of the League with me.

Just before the holidays I finished my sixth podcast.

It's just a real casual conversation with Bob Swick and Joe Squires, who are football nuts like me. It was fun doing this with these two guys, and it's nice doing something productive and not being retired all the time! 😆

For anyone that wishes to see, it’s posted below.

The run time is approximately one hour. There's an introduction and my part starts at the two-minute and forty-second (2:40) mark and the talk continues until the end.

Happy New Year everyone!

NFL's 1952 Dallas Texans w/ author Mike Cobern Gridiron Greats Magazine podcast is part of the Sports History Network - The Headquarters For Sports Yesteryear.EPISODE SUMMARYWith Special Guest Football Au...

Want to give a huge shout out to the Blue-Ribbon Committee for making the Dallas Texans own Buddy Young a nominee and on the list of Semifinalists in the Contributor category for the NFL Hall of Fame. Buddy, along with eight others, will be considered by the Committee on November 11th and one will be selected as the nominee to the full Selection Committee when it votes in the final class of 2026 Hall of Fame enshrinees. Speaking for all of us, this recognition whether he makes it or not, is long overdue.

Mike Cobern
I haven’t made any real updates to this page in a while now and I thought that with the one-year anniversary of the release of Wards of the League being in the rearview mirror it would be a good time to make some periodic updates.

For those of you who read it, and assuming you have if you followed this FB group, you’ll remember that I had mentioned in Chapter 19 – DEAD LAST – page 172 that the Texans never even had a group team picture taken. And at the time of my writing, there was never any to be found. However, not long after the book’s release I discovered one. It was obtained from the son of one of the players whom I had become acquainted and friends with.

I thought everyone following this might like to see it really did exist as shown here in my TV room.

Enjoy!

PS: I will be posting some of the individual player photos soon that were taken by the team photographer.