The Dollars cowboys player has died as ……
DALLAS (AP) — Walt Garrison, the Oklahoma State Cowboys’ leading rusher in the Big 8, a Dallas Cowboys fullback who won a Super Bowl, and a rodeo cowboy, has passed away. He was seventy-nine.
The NFL franchise announced that Garrison passed away over night in a story that went up on their website on Thursday. The reason of death was not stated.
The 6-foot, 205-pound Garrison, who was selected in the fifth round of the Oklahoma State football draft, played nine seasons in Dallas until retiring in 1974 as the team’s third-best rusher and fourth-best receiver ever. Despite this, he still ranks fourth in Dallas’ career rushing list with 3,491 yards and 4.32 yards per carry.
But what really made Garrison the ultimate cowboy was his rodeo career, which he referred to as his first love. His 1970s television advertisements featured the catchphrase “Just a pinch between your cheek and gum is all it takes,” which he used frequently as a spokesperson for U.S. Tobacco and its Skoal smokeless brand.
The Cowboys said that after team meetings, the little-used backup from his rookie season would go out and compete as a steer wrestler in nearby rodeos, returning to the hotel before the 11 p.m. curfew.
Garrison was cited as adding, “I wasn’t starting.” “All I was doing was covering for the Kamikaze squad and returning kicks and punts. Hell, you might suffer more injuries from them than from rodeoing. While I didn’t give it any thought, the Cowboys did.
Soon after, Dallas coach Tom Landry forbade players from working two jobs throughout the season. But during the off-season, Garrison persisted.
“Coach Landry brought up the fact that my contract said it would be void if I was injured playing another sport,” Garrison remarked. And I replied, “All right. I didn’t realise rodeo was that risky.
After the 1970 season, Garrison ran for 65 yards in the fifth Super Bowl loss to Johnny Unitas, Earl Morrall, and the Baltimore Colts, and for 74 yards in the following year’s Super Bowl when Roger Staubach led Dallas to a 24-3 triumph against Miami. After rushing for 784 yards and seven touchdowns and adding 390 yards and three more touchdowns from receptions, Garrison was selected for the 1972 Pro Bowl.
In 1975, while participating in steer wrestling at the U.S. Tobacco-sponsored national collegiate rodeo in Bozeman, Montana, Garrison did injure his knee, necessitating his 30-year-old retirement from the NFL.
Garrison compared the three or four seconds it takes to wrestle a steer to the ground to the normal time of an NFL play, saying, “There’s a lot of similarities between rodeo and football.” The energy and concentration required for bulldogging are same to those required for football.
Garrison played baseball, basketball, and football at Lewisville High School. He was born in Denton, Texas. Although he started out as a linebacker at Oklahoma State, he quickly switched to running back. In 1964, he outpaced Kansas’s Gale Sayers to lead the Big 8 in rushing, and in 1965, he finished with 924 yards and five touchdowns in ten games.
He is a member of the Oklahoma State Athletics Hall of Honour and the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, and the Dallas Cowboys 25th anniversary team.
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