Jim Swink, TCU’s two-time All-American ‘Rusk Rambler,’ dies at age 78

By: Carlos Mendez
Fort Worth Star Telegram
December 4, 2014

In one of its best football seasons, TCU has lost one of its football legends.

Jim Swink, who as a swift, lanky East Texas teen-ager helped the Horned Frogs win the Southwest Conference championship in 1955, died Wednesday at his home in Rusk. He was 78.

Because of his swerving, evasive running style, Dr. Swink was known as “The Rusk Rambler.”

Despite being an All-American running back as a junior and senior and finishing second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1955, he opted out of an NFL career. His 8.2 yards-per-carry average in 1955 led the nation and is still the school record. His 2,618 career yards rank ninth on the school list.

“He was a guy basically, with Davey O’Brien and Sammy Baugh, that put TCU on the map,” said current Horned Frogs coach Gary Patterson, whose team could win a share of the Big 12 championship Saturday. “The thing about Jim Swink and others that have been in our past is they are our past, they are our history, and you have to be proud of it.”

Dr. Swink was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and into the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000. He won the Doak Walker Legends Award in 2005.

“He was one of the five best players in TCU history and should have won the Heisman,” said Dan Jenkins, a TCU alum, football historian and writer when Swink won the Walker award.

But he opted out of the NFL and went to medical school. He was drafted into the Army in 1966 and served in Vietnam as a medic, returning in 1968 as a captain with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

He was an orthopedic surgeon for 35 years in Fort Worth, practicing mainly at Huguley Memorial Medical Center. In 2006 after a stroke, he returned to Rusk, where he grew up, and continued to practice.

Dr. Swink told the Star-Telegram he did not expect to win the Walker Award.

“Some people have said I’ve always been a legend in my own mind,” he said. “This is a surprise. I thought my days of getting awards had come and gone.”

Dr. Swink led the nation in rushing in 1955 with 1,283 yards on just 157 carries, and he scored 18 touchdowns as the Horned Frogs went 9-2 and finished with a No. 5 national ranking.

Over five seasons starting in 1955, TCU won or shared three Southwest Conference titles, played in three Cotton Bowls and one Bluebonnet Bowl, and posted three top-10 finishes. Its record included a victory against Syracuse and Jim Brown in 1957 as Dr. Swink, recruited by Abe Martin, helped usher in one of the most successful eras in Horned Frogs history.

“Much of what we accomplished didn’t seem such a big deal at the time,” Swink told the Star-Telegram in 2000 before his induction into the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame. “It was just a part of the overall experience of getting a college education. It was also a more innocent time, and we were mostly kids from small towns who hadn’t seen much of the world. It was also the one-platoon era, where you could build a competitive program with a lot fewer people than it takes today.”

His wife, Jeannie Swink, said her husband was proud of one accomplishment more than others.

“He was most proud of being an Academic All-American,” she told the Tyler Morning Telegraph. “He was proud of all of his accomplishments, but he was especially proud of that.”

It makes sense that academic determination kept Swink from pursuing an NFL career. Rather than put his time into becoming a pro player, the pre-med student stuck with his med-school studies and residency.

“The Bears drafted me, and it was tempting,” he told the Star-Telegram. “George Halas used to call me up and talk for an hour. He’d say, ‘I need someone up here who doesn’t fumble the ball.’ But I just couldn’t fit it into my schedule.’

He did try pro football for a year, signing with the Dallas Texans in 1960. But it only confirmed what he feared.

“I just couldn’t do it full time,” he said. “I probably would have played longer if it were possible, but it just wouldn’t work.”

Born March 14, 1936, in Sacul, he moved to Rusk at age 13 to live with Obie and Grace Walker after his mother became ill with tuberculosis. He was a standout athlete in high school and chose TCU in part because the school would let him play both football and basketball.

He never lost his allegiance to TCU football, although his health prevented him from traveling to recent games.

“He religiously followed them,” Jeannie Swink said. “He watched the Rose Bowl on television. His chair was right in front of the television, and Jim was always someone who didn’t set in one place for very long. But when TCU was playing, especially if they were playing good, he didn’t move.”

Dr. Swink certainly would have been watching on Saturday, when the Horned Frogs take on Iowa State with a chance to share a Big 12 title and reach the first College Football Playoff. TCU is ranked third, and the top four teams qualify.

“All those people, they all become friends,” Patterson said. “Everybody’s invested, whether they’re close to you here or far. They’re invested. His family, like anybody else, they’ve been very excited about everything that’s been going on here.”

This report includes material from the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/12/03/6338515/jim-swink-tcus-two-time-all-american.html?storylink=addthis#.VIDRyGA3pCc.facebook&rh=1#storylink=cpy

He was an orthopedic surgeon for 35 years in Fort Worth, practicing mainly at Huguley Memorial Medical Center. In 2006 after a stroke, he returned to Rusk, where he grew up, and continued to practice.

Dr. Swink told the Star-Telegram he did not expect to win the Walker Award.

“Some people have said I’ve always been a legend in my own mind,” he said. “This is a surprise. I thought my days of getting awards had come and gone.”

Dr. Swink led the nation in rushing in 1955 with 1,283 yards on just 157 carries, and he scored 18 touchdowns as the Horned Frogs went 9-2 and finished with a No. 5 national ranking.

Over five seasons starting in 1955, TCU won or shared three Southwest Conference titles, played in three Cotton Bowls and one Bluebonnet Bowl, and posted three top-10 finishes. Its record included a victory against Syracuse and Jim Brown in 1957 as Dr. Swink, recruited by Abe Martin, helped usher in one of the most successful eras in Horned Frogs history.

“Much of what we accomplished didn’t seem such a big deal at the time,” Swink told the Star-Telegram in 2000 before his induction into the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame. “It was just a part of the overall experience of getting a college education. It was also a more innocent time, and we were mostly kids from small towns who hadn’t seen much of the world. It was also the one-platoon era, where you could build a competitive program with a lot fewer people than it takes today.”

His wife, Jeannie Swink, said her husband was proud of one accomplishment more than others.

“He was most proud of being an Academic All-American,” she told the Tyler Morning Telegraph. “He was proud of all of his accomplishments, but he was especially proud of that.”

It makes sense that academic determination kept Swink from pursuing an NFL career. Rather than put his time into becoming a pro player, the pre-med student stuck with his med-school studies and residency.

“The Bears drafted me, and it was tempting,” he told the Star-Telegram. “George Halas used to call me up and talk for an hour. He’d say, ‘I need someone up here who doesn’t fumble the ball.’ But I just couldn’t fit it into my schedule.’

He did try pro football for a year, signing with the Dallas Texans in 1960. But it only confirmed what he feared.

“I just couldn’t do it full time,” he said. “I probably would have played longer if it were possible, but it just wouldn’t work.”

Born March 14, 1936, in Sacul, he moved to Rusk at age 13 to live with Obie and Grace Walker after his mother became ill with tuberculosis. He was a standout athlete in high school and chose TCU in part because the school would let him play both football and basketball.

He never lost his allegiance to TCU football, although his health prevented him from traveling to recent games.

“He religiously followed them,” Jeannie Swink said. “He watched the Rose Bowl on television. His chair was right in front of the television, and Jim was always someone who didn’t set in one place for very long. But when TCU was playing, especially if they were playing good, he didn’t move.”

Dr. Swink certainly would have been watching on Saturday, when the Horned Frogs take on Iowa State with a chance to share a Big 12 title and reach the first College Football Playoff. TCU is ranked third, and the top four teams qualify.

“All those people, they all become friends,” Patterson said. “Everybody’s invested, whether they’re close to you here or far. They’re invested. His family, like anybody else, they’ve been very excited about everything that’s been going on here.”

This report includes material from the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/12/03/6338515/jim-swink-tcus-two-time-all-american.html?storylink=addthis#.VIDRyGA3pCc.facebook&rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/12/03/6338515/jim-swink-tcus-two-time-all-american.html?storylink=addthis#.VIDRyGA3pCc.facebook&rh=1#storylink=cpy

TCU: The Texas-Size Might of the Horned Frogs

How the Big 12’s Smallest School Became Texas’s Biggest Power

By: Jonathan Clegg
The Wall Street Journal
November 6, 2014

Fort Worth, Texas

When Gary Patterson took over as coach of Texas Christian University’s football team in 2000, he didn’t set out to make the school a fixture in the rankings. He sure wasn’t thinking about national championships.

His first priority back then: Try to establish TCU as the second-favorite college team in town.

“We’ve got all these Texas and Texas A&M and Oklahoma grads here, but these are people that love football,” Patterson said shortly after he was promoted from defensive coordinator to the Horned Frogs’ head coach. “If we can touch this community, they will put purple jerseys on and buy season tickets and come to our games.”

That vision has been validated. When the sixth-ranked Horned Frogs host No. 7 Kansas State on Saturday, a matchup with implications for the inaugural four-team College Football Playoff, they will play in front of another sellout crowd, their third of the season.

But along the way, something far greater has taken place here. This tiny private school of about 10,000 students that merely wanted to be its town’s No. 2 team has become the top college-football program in the state of Texas.

“I’m blown away by it,” said Bill Prater, a 1950 TCU graduate and member of the booster club. “Sometimes I can’t quite believe how far we’ve come.”

Barely 20 years ago, TCU had been so dismal for so long that even within Texas, the school had become derisively known as “TC Who?” It seemed that the Frogs were doomed to become perpetual also-rans among the now-dozen Division I college football programs that dot the state.

In 1996, the scandal-prone Southwest Conference broke up, leaving TCU with a murky future. Although TCU had been a member of the SWC since 1923, it pointedly wasn’t invited to join the newly formed Big 12, which instead welcomed Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and even Baylor, a private school with a modest football history.

Left out to dry, TCU was forced to join the far-flung Western Athletic Conference.

“There was incredible anger about that,” said Dan Jenkins, a Fort Worth-based sportswriter and novelist who graduated from TCU in 1953. “The general feeling was that Baylor’s football history wouldn’t make a pimple on TCU’s a—.”

Founded in nearby Thorp Springs in 1873 as AddRan Male and Female College (after founders Addison and Randolph Clark), the school moved to Waco in 1895 before a group of Fort Worth businessmen, with help from the town’s Christian churches, finally lured the renamed Texas Christian University to its present site in 1910 with a gift of $200,000, plus the plot of land on which the campus now sits.

Over the course of its football history, TCU has produced two national championships, 17 conference titles and 30 All-Americans, including legends like Sammy Baugh and Davey O’Brien, the 1938 Heisman Trophy winner.

But by the time the SWC dissolved, those achievements had long been overshadowed by a recruiting scandal in the 1980s that saw the program placed on probation. TCU mustered only five winning seasons between 1966 and 1997. A losing culture developed, producing cheers like “Two, four, six, eight! Score before we graduate!”

“And this on the campus of a school that had been the first Texas team to play in the Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the Orange Bowl,” Jenkins said. “Those dark days of the ’70s and ’80s, I’m glad I missed most of them by living in New York.”

How TCU has returned to prominence is partly owed to the growth of television coverage of college football. The pursuit of TV money by schools and conferences has sparked a wave of conference membership changes in recent years. That has propelled the Frogs on a 16-year, five-conference odyssey, which culminated in an invitation to join the Big 12 in 2012—reuniting with Texas, Texas Tech and Baylor, three of their old SWC rivals.

But it also has something to do with the singular talents of Patterson. In 13 seasons as coach, he has led TCU to 11 bowl games, including a historic Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin in 2011 that capped an undefeated season.

“To whom or what do I attribute the rise of our football program?” said university chancellor Victor Boschini Jr. “Easy answer: coach Patterson.”

This season could turn out to be the finest of Patterson’s career. Having seen his team struggle to a 11-12 mark in its first two seasons in the Big 12—including a 6-12 record in conference play—Patterson ditched his favored ball-control offense in favor of a fast-break scheme designed to keep up with the conference’s turbocharged attacks. The results have been remarkable. The Frogs average 550 yards per game this season and rank third nationally in total offense, up from 345 yards and 106th overall in 2013.

Geography also has played its part. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is a rich area for high-school recruits, allowing TCU to compile top-50 recruiting classes in each of the past six years. It is also a rich area for rich donors. The school’s $164 million refurbishment of its 84-year-old Amon G. Carter Stadium, which is near completion, was entirely funded by private donations.

“The whole thing, debt-free—isn’t that phenomenal?” said TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte. “We call it the Camden Yards of college football.”

For all that, the most important foundations laid down in recent years may be those that Patterson built with the community that has come to embrace his team.

From the start of his tenure, Patterson has focused on recruiting local players to strengthen the connection between the town and the team. Of his 273 recruits since 2000, 74 hailed from the Metroplex area. Only 48 have come from out of state
.

In his first season, he established “Bleacher Creatures,” a program in which hundreds of kids are given a TCU jersey and a chance to run onto the field with the team before the start of each home game. In 2011, defensive tackle David Johnson became the first former Bleacher Creature to play for the Horned Frogs.

Now, with TCU at 7-1 and poised to make a run at a playoff berth and a shot at a national championship, those efforts are paying off. Hours before last month’s sellout 82-27 win over Texas Tech, TCU’s Frog Alley was crammed with fans in purple jerseys—even if some of them admitted they didn’t really belong there.

“I didn’t even go to school here,” said Mandy Brown, a 2006 Texas Tech graduate who was wearing a purple TCU home jersey and matching cowboy boots. “But my family are all in Fort Worth and this is our team, you know?”

The Grifting Wing v. The Governing Wing

While the Tea Party is busy lining their pockets, the rest of the Republicans are actually trying to get things done.

By Steve LaTourette
Politico
August 3, 2014

Vocabulary.com defines a grifter as: A grifter is a con artist—someone who swindles people out of money through fraud. If there’s one type of person you don’t want to trust, it’s a grifter: Someone who cheats someone out of money.

Historically, grifters have taken many shapes. They were the snake-oil salesmen who rolled into town promising a magical, cure-all elixir at a price. The grifter was long gone by the time people discovered the magical elixir was no more magical than water. They were the sideshow con men offering fantastic prizes in games that were rigged so that no one could actually win them. They were the Ponzi scheme operators who got rich promising fantastically high investment returns but returning nothing for those sorry investors at the bottom of the pyramid.

Over the last few years we have seen the rise of a new grifter—the political grifter. And the most important battle being waged today isn’t the one about which party controls the House or the Senate, it’s about who controls the Republican Party: the grifting wing or the governing wing.

Today’s political grifters are a lot like the grifters of old—lining their pockets with the hard-earned money of working men and women be promising things in return that they know they can’t deliver.

Political grifting is a lucrative business. Groups like the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots are run by men and women who have made millions by playing on the fears and anger about the dysfunction in Washington. My former House colleague Chris Chocola is pocketing a half-million dollars a year heading the Club for Growth; same for Matt Kibbe heading up FreedomWorks (and I don’t think Kibbe’s salary includes the infamous craft beer bar that FreedomWorks donors ended up paying for). The Tea Party Patriots pay their head, Jenny Beth Martin, almost as much. These people have lined their pockets by promising that if you send them money, they will send men and women to Washington who can “fix it.” Of course, in the ultimate con, the always extreme and often amateurish candidates these groups back either end up losing to Democrats or they come to Washington and actually make the process even more dysfunctional.

Just look at what happened this past week, when hard-right House members with extensive ties to these outside groups, egged on by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, snarled up a sensible effort to pass a bill that would at least begin to address the crisis of undocumented children at the U.S.-Mexico border. It was an embarrassing display of congressional dysfunction, and it showed that the grifting wing has learned nothing from last fall’s shutdown fiasco.

The grifting wing of the party promises that you can have ideological purity—that you don’t have to compromise—and, of course, all you have to do is send them money to make it happen. The governing wing of the Republican Party knows that’s a damn lie. Our Founding Fathers set up a system of government that by its very nature excludes the possibility of one party or one ideological wing of one party getting everything it wants. Ted Cruz, who quotes the founders almost every chance he gets, ought to know this.

Even Ronald Reagan—who won in two of the biggest landslides in American history—was forced to compromise. It was President Reagan who cut deals with Democrats to extend the solvency of Social Security and put the federal budget on a sounder footing. It was Reagan who famously said that someone who votes with him 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally. Reagan’s record and rhetoric stands in marked contrast to the grifting win of the party today, even as the grifters invoke his memory in their disingenuous appeals.

The governing wing of the Republican Party understands that compromise is not the root of all evil in Washington—indeed, it is the essential ingredient in moving forward any set of conservative policies like those that Reagan fought for.

While the grifters hold a great deal of sway over the Republican Party for now, they are not the majority—not by a long shot. As with any good Ponzi scheme, there are relatively few grifters; the challenge is exposing their scam.

Exposing the grifters is exactly what is happening in the Republican Party today. Groups like the organization that I head, groups like the Chamber of Commerce, business groups and traditional Republican organizations are working to run the political snake-oil salesman out of town—or at least out of our party.

This isn’t about ideology. The Republican Party is a conservative party. This fight is about whether we will govern or continue to let the grifters profit off of the dysfunction in Washington.

Our beef isn’t with the rank and file Tea Party members, either. We understand their justifiable frustration with Washington. Our beef is with the grifters who run the organizations in Washington that are fleecing these hardworking men and women.

We face serious challenges in this country today. America is piling up mountains of debt that threaten the long-term solvency of our country. Our economy continues to struggle to create enough jobs to keep pace with population growth. We have a broken, overly complicated tax code. We face serious, dangerous threats abroad from old enemies and new ones. If the Republican Party is going to be a part of finding solutions to these challenges—and I know it can be—then it is time for grassroots Republicans to say no to the grifters and yes to governing again.

The good news is that it appears that the grifters are running short on time. Unlike in previous election cycles, in primary after primary— from Ohio to Idaho to Kentucky to Mississippi—rank-and-file Republicans haven’t bought what the grifters are selling.

If we are to have a shot at winning the White House in 2016 and actually implementing conservative policies – rather than just fundraising off of talking about them—then this is a trend that must continue. It’s time to run the grifters out of our town.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/tea-party-grifters-109675_Page2.html#ixzz39SqqoLMc

Steve LaTourette is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Ohio’s 14th district who now heads the Main Street Partnership.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/tea-party-grifters-109675.html#ixzz39NzHDw4j

Governments Grab for the Web

By L Gordon Grovitz

Wall Street Journal

April 29, 2014

The Obama administration still doesn't seem to understand the whirlwind it reaped with its decision to give up stewardship of the open Internet. The first Internet governance conference since that surprise March announcement was held last week. The State Department issued a statement before the conference urging everyone to avoid the issue: "We would discourage meeting participants from debating the reach or limitations of state sovereignty in Internet policy."

But deciding who gets to govern the Internet was precisely why many attendees from 80 countries came to last week's NetMundial conference in Brazil.

The host country's leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, opened the conference by declaring: "The participation of governments should occur with equality so that no country has more weight than others." The Russian representative objected to "the control of one government," calling for the United Nations to decide "international norms and other standards on Internet governance." Last week Vladimir Putin called the Internet a "CIA project" and said "we must purposefully fight for our interests."

Authoritarian regimes want to control the Internet to preserve their power. "National sovereignty should rule Internet policy and governance," the Chinese representative said. "Each government should build its own infrastructure, undertake its own governance and enforce its own laws." The Saudi Arabian delegate said: "International public policy in regard to the Internet is the right of governments and that public policy should be developed by all governments on an equal footing."

Even nominal supporters of the existing multi-stakeholder model embraced the end of Internet self-governance. The delegate from India declared a greater role for the world's governments "an imperative that can't be ignored." Neelie Kroes of the European Commission said: "The Internet is now a global resource demanding global governance."

Philip Corwin, a U.S. lawyer who represents Internet companies, noted that 27 of the first 30 speakers at NetMundial were from governments or U.N. agencies—at a "meeting supposedly conceived to strengthen the private-sector-led multi-stakeholder, consensus-based policy-making model."

The conference produced a "consensus" document that asserts: "The respective roles and responsibilities of stakeholders should be interpreted in a flexible manner with reference to the issue under discussion." Carl Bildt, Sweden's foreign minister, offered this translation: "Governments are more equal than other stakeholders when it comes to policy."

The Internet ran smoothly for 25 years because the U.S. ensured that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as Icann, operated without government interference. Authoritarian regimes can censor the Internet in their own countries and jail their bloggers, but until now had no way to get control over the root zone filenames and addresses of the global Internet. Handing over control could allow them to undermine the open Internet globally, including Americans' access to U.S. websites.

Some open-Internet advocacy groups realize it is light-handed U.S. control that has allowed what political theorists would call the "ordered liberty" of Internet self-governance. "Part of the strength of the Internet over the last couple of decades has been that the technical aspects have not had direct political or government interference," Thomas Hughes of the human-rights group Article 19 told the BBC.

Michael Daniel, special assistant to President Obama, declared without apparent irony that "from the U.S. perspective, NetMundial was a huge success." But it's no accomplishment when countries that have long sought power over the Internet embrace the U.S. invitation for them to seize it.

The NetMundial conference was politicized from the start. It was held in Brazil as a favor to President Rousseff after she objected when news broke that the National Security Agency had listened in on her communications. But Sweden's Mr. Bildt pointed out at the conference that "the issue of surveillance in no way relates to the issues of the governance of the net." He added: "I'm stressing this point because sometimes the debate on surveillance is used as an argument to change the governance of the net."

Under bipartisan pressure in Washington, the Obama administration was forced to backtrack during congressional hearings earlier this month. Officials testified they won't necessarily stick to their original September 2015 date for giving up protection of the Internet. Officials said the issue could be pushed to 2019 and thus decided by the next president. Many in Congress want an up-or-down vote on ending U.S. control of the Internet, knowing lawmakers would reject the idea.

President Obama should revoke the plan to abandon the open Internet. The ugly spectacle of countries jockeying to control the Internet is a timely reminder of why the U.S. should never give them the chance.