Texas A&M Aggies Win Global Bragging Rights in 1919
By Sunny Nash and Bill Watkins Excerpt from Their Upcoming Book:
Redneck Radio Man and the Black Beauty Queen
Aggies planned and orchestrated the first live radio broadcast on the globe in 1919 using the Thanksgiving Day Lone Star Showdown football game between Texas A&M University Aggies and University of Texas Longhorns.
(Cushing Historical Images Collection: Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University, Kyle Field, College Station, Texas
AMC (A&M College) vs. TU (Texas University) 1919
One hundred five years ago, Aggies in the Engineering Department at the Agricultural & Mechanical College of Texas (AMC, now Texas A&M University, ne hundred and five years ago, Aggies in the Engineering Department at the
College Station, (aka: Aggies, A&M, TAMU), pioneered sports media and digital
journalism on a global scale at Kyle Field Football Stadium on November 27, 1919, at the Thanksgiving Day gridiron Lone Star Showdown1 between AMC Aggies and Texas University (TU), now University of Texas at Austin (aka: UT, Texas, Longhorns, Horns).
In Texas, Thanksgiving weekend would not have been Thanksgiving at all without “One of the best rivalries in all of college football, the annual Lone Star Showdown between Texas and Texas A&M, played every single year (Thanksgiving Weekend) from 1915-2011,”2 although A&M-UT games date back to 1894—UT defeating A&M, 38-0,3 and were interrupted in 2011.
The Lone Star Rivalry in 1919 was about more than continuing a Thanksgiving tradition or winning a football game. The 1919 showdown set the scene for A&M electrical engineering students to broadcast the world’s first live football game. The 1919 Thanksgiving match between A&M and the UT pushed Aggies to football and engineering victory, the first live electronic football broadcast to the public.4 Aggies beat the Longhorns on the field, and beat the large commercial radio stations from coast to coast into the history books. This A&M victory helped establish the beginning of live play-by-play sports broadcasting, digital journalism and the Age of modern news gathering and reporting.
Bolton Hall, Texas A&M University 5 College Station
“Lab Preparation for First Sports Broadcast Nov 1919” 6
William A. “Doc” Tolson of Sherman, Texas, electrical engineering student, member of the A&M Amateur Radio Club, and A&M Class of 1923, played a significant role in the 1919 broadcast. Some locals credit this broadcast with earning the call letters, WTAW—Watch The Aggies Win, later the commercial call letters, WTAW-AM Country-Western Radio Station in Bryan, Texas. A&M sold WTAW in 1960, and did not own another radio station until 1977 when it created KAMU-FM, a National Public Radio Affiliate.
The 1919 Thanksgiving football broadcast, though successful, was not flawless. The A&M engineering students and radio club planned to use shortwave radio relay for final score announcement only, but “Doc” Tolson, Frank Matejka and others decided to transmit the entire game, play-by-play, in Morse Code, the oldest digital language, invented in the mid-1830s, used in maritime, railroad and Civil War communications on both sides. Morse Code binary dots and dashes predate binary computer code arranged in ones and zeros.
(Photo by John West; Texas A&M University, College Station 5XB, Studio 1920)
W. A. “Doc” Tolson
Electrical Engineering Student, Class of 1923, A&M Radio Club
With dots, dashes and spaces, Morse Code, still used for certain military communications, can produce alphabets, numbers and punctuation by electrical pulse, but the
Aggie engineering students found Morse Code too slow for play-by-play announcing. So, Harry Saunders and assistant coach, Dana Xenophon Bible, invented play-by-play football code that was translated into dynamic text to correspond with specific ball and field locations to be announced to fans over public address systems.7 After abbreviating every possible football situation, they sent abbreviations lists and translations keys to broadcasters. The 1919 shortwave relay broadcast was not wireless, due to wired antennae along the signal route to extend coverage to each station on the network, delivering play-by-play calls to fans.
After their 1919 football and broadcast victory, Aggies returned UT’s mascot, Bevo, which the Aggies had kidnapped from Austin two years earlier. “On Sunday morning, February 12, 1917, four Aggies, equipped with all the utensils for steer branding, broke into the stockyard at 3:00am. A struggle ensued, but the Aggies branded Bevo with the 13 – 0, A&M’s victory score over UT in the Thanksgiving Showdown in 1915.
(Photo: 1917 Public Domain)
Aggie Pranksters Who Branded and Kidnapped Bevo 8
Aggies fattened up Bevo, who was all but forgotten during the WWI (1914-1918), and returned the UT mascot at halftime during the 1919 Thanksgiving Lone Star Showdown at Kyle Field in in College Station. The Longhorn football team invited Aggie football team to their January 1920 football banquet in Austin, featuring barbequed Bevo, and presented the 13-0 side of Bevo’s hide as a gift to the Aggies.9 The idea of having a wild, charging Longhorn bull as the UT mascot was not considered again for twenty years, according to the Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.10
(Photo: 1917 Public Domain)
Branded Bevo – A&M 13-0 over UT
A&M Returned Bevo to UT during Radio Broadcast
1919 Thanksgiving Game Halftime 11
Aggie engineering students did not stop experimenting with their 1919 play-by-play broadcast, which was not considered fully wireless. According to Franklin K. Matejka, 5RS ham operator, Caldwell, Texas, A&M went on to attempt the first fully wireless play-by-play football broadcast in 1920, a match between Oklahoma and A&M using ham radio stations. After bad weather interrupted the original plan, they used telephone wires to help accomplish the broadcast. Matejka reported, “We considered the broadcast only a stunt. What began as experiments by electrical engineering students in A&M’s amateur radio club which operated under the call sign 5YA, now called W5AC, became instrumental to the current state of broadcasting,”12 said club’s historian, David Gent, Class of 1975.
Jack Mahan (left), Heine Weir and Bugs Morris13
Right: (Photo: Cushing Library Historical Images Collection; Public Domain)14 Kyle Field 192015
The Aggie broadcast of the heavily contested game from Kyle Field on November 25, 1920, between the undefeated Texas A&M Aggies and the University of Texas Longhorns was A&M’s first fully wireless football broadcast, which transmitted over 5XB on experimental amateur radio equipment.16 Since receiving amateur licensing in 1915, A&M had surpassed the nation’s first commercial station in live football broadcasting, Pittsburgh’s KDKA, licensed in 1921.
By 1921, Aggies had successfully broadcast four play-by-play, two of which were fully wireless play-by-play broadcasts, the first in the nation: (1919 A&M-UT, 1920 A&M-Oklahoma, 1920 A&M-UT, 1921 A&M-UT). Not until September 1921 did KDKA air its first broadcast of a college football game—Pitt vs. West Virginia,17 two years after the Aggies made history broadcasting the first play-by-play college football game in 1919, first in the world. Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1921,18 the contest between Texas A&M and University of Texas ended in a scoreless draw.
Genius means learning from mistakes to gain wisdom.
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Author Resource Box
Aggies Win Global Bragging Rights in 1919 is the story of football broadcasting and the dawn of digital journalism, first introduced to the world by electrical engineering students at Texas A&M University in 1919.
Aggies Win Global Bragging Rights in 1919 is derived from the upcoming book, Redneck Radio Man and the Black Beauty Queen, by Sunny Nash and Bill Watkins. This is a story more than one-half century in the making about a radio renegade, who dared to integrate Country Music airwaves during the Black Power Movement, when he hired, sight unseen, a tough-hided former beauty queen and journalism major at Texas A&M University in 1973.
Bill Watkins—Former Owner and Station Manager 1960, WTAW-AM
Country; Popular Podcaster – Thoughts While Thinking; President, Texas Association of Broadcasters; BA Marketing, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX; Graduate Certificate, Harvard University Business School, Cambridge MA; Naturalized Aggie by Gene Stallings, Former Head Football Coach, Texas A&M University, College Station TX.
Bill Watkins on Facebook “Before I hired Sunny Nash, I knew nothing about her, except ‘the voice’ on the Radio Shack holiday commercial, and I wanted ‘the voice’ on my drive-time morning news. So, I offered her a job over the phone without so much as a meeting.”
Sunny Nash—Former WTAW News 1973; Program Director National Public Radio Affiliate (NPR), KAMU-FM 1977; Houston Chronicle Columnist, Houston TX; Award-Winning Television Producer, Los
Angeles CA; Independent Executive Editorial Project Management and Publishing; BA Journalism, Texas A&M University; Graduate Diploma, Media Law, London School of Journalism, UK; Postgraduate Diploma Project Management, London School of International Business, UK. Sunny Nash on Linkedin
“When I walked into my first meeting with Bill Watkins, his face revealed that I was a complete surprise to him, but I have to credit his immediate recovery when he asked me when I could start the job.”
Article References
Many sources for this article originated in oral histories. Original speakers may have inadvertently reported different dates for the same events, which is the reason Sunny Nash and Bill Watkins cross-checked sources with other sources corresponding to the same event. Some sources were the results of verbal interviews, while others originated in written documents. The authors compared many verbal accounts, newspaper articles, journals, databases, museum images and other digitized print sources to build as reliable as possible a trustworthy timeline to support this article.
1 Unknown Photographer, (2006 Contribution), Football – 1911-1919. Digital: Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, Texas A&M University, College Station, Available electronically from https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/110559
2 McVeigh, Griffin, A special Thanksgiving series history against Texas A&M, USA Today, November 29, 2019,
https://longhornswire.usatoday.com/2019/11/28/a–special–thanksgiving–series–history–againsttexas–am/
3 Wake up the ghosts!Texas, Texas A&M Rivalry that goes back to 1894 is reborn, Associated Press –
Texas, Austin, Texas, November 26, 2024,
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south–texas–elpaso/news/2024/11/26/texas—texas–a–m–rivalry–that–dates–to–1894–is–reborn
4 Calhoun, Beth, Focus, WTAW Aired First Football Broadcast (1919), Texas A&M Newspaper Collection,
University Archives,
seq-17.pdf
5 WTAW Photo, Oliver, Bill Collection, Wednesday is the 100 Anniversary of the Nation’s First Radio Play By Play Broadcast, Heard on What Would Become WTAW, WTAW news Talk 1620 (AM Radio), November 24, 2021,
https://wtaw.com/wednesday–is–the–100th–anniversary–of–the–nations–first–radio–playby–play–broadcast–heard–on–what–would–become–wtaw/
6 Caption Card sourced to WTAW, Oliver, Billl, Wednesday is the 100 Anniversary of the Nation’s First Radio Play By Play Broadcast, Heard on What Would Become WTAW, WTAW news Talk 1620 (AM Radio), November 24, 2021,
https://wtaw.com/wp–content/uploads/2021/11/WTAW–100thAnnPxP_1919broadcast_photo.jpg
7 The Battalion. (College Station, Texas 1893-current, November 08, 1979, Image 17, Texas A&M Newspaper Collection,
https://newspaper.library.tamu.edu/lccn/sn86088544/1979–11–08/ed–1/seq–17/ocr/
8 The UT History Corner, Bevo, https://jimnicar.com/ut–traditions/bevo/
9 Ex-Students Association of the University of Texas, Alumni Center, Aggie Branding Crew Image, https://www.texasexes.org/about–us/history–and–traditions/truth–about–bevo
10 Welcome to the History of LongHorn Sports,
https://www.texaslsn.org/naming–bevo–folklore–and–fables
11 Ex-Students Association of the University of Texas, Alumni Center, Bevo Branded Image, https://www.texasexes.org/about–us/history–and–traditions/truth–about–bevo
12 Underwood, Harnnah, A campus club’s historic stunt, The Battalion, April 15, 2021, https://thebatt.com/life–arts/a–campus–clubs–historic–stunt/
13 Photo: Cushing Library Historical Images Collection; A&M Players: Jack Mahan (left), Heine Weir and Bugs Morris, https://myaggienation.com/athletics_history/football/year_by_year/1920/article_03d7cadaf6f4–11e2–8e0d–001a4bcf887a.html
14 Kyle Field Football Stadium, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, 1920, Author Unknown, Original Source Unknown, Cushing Library Historical Images Collection, Texas A&M University, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KyleField1920.jpg
15 The Stadium was designed by Edwin Jackson Kyle, Texas A&M Graduate, Class of 1899, TAMU Horticulture Professor in 1902, and 1904, as Athletic Council Chairman, designed and funded the 500seat stadium: From My Aggie Nation, Courtesy Cushing Memorial Library, August 29, 2013-March 11, 2020. https://myaggienation.com/campus_evolution/athletic_venue_history/kyle–field/article_91f7d34210b6–11e3–be98–001a4bcf887a.html
16 Texas State Historical Association, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ebr01
17 Salamon, Ed, Pittsburgh’s Golden Age of Radio, Arcadia Publishing, 2010,Charleston SC, p. 15, https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/9780738572239?srsltid=AfmBOorsuhHMkoySAvLZ013TprSqVsvJlbJxtWrVUE4pUlMbow9YSyH
18 Matejka, Frank, Texas A&M First Play-By-Play Football Broadcast, Texas A&M Amateur Radio Club
Q5A, College Station, Texas, Brazos County, USA., February 1980,
http://old.w5ac.tamu.edu/5xb.html