Red River Rivalry
The OU vs Texas game is historic for personal and state reasons.
It is Red River Showdown Week.
For the first time ever, the Southeastern Conference will feature Oklahoma vs. Texas from the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas.
I always get a little sentimental this time of year.
The FIRST game ever played in the Cotton Bowl of the Fair Grounds of Texas happened on Saturday, October 18, 1930.
My Mother’s Dad - OU’s Fred Cherry
The Cotton Bowl, initially called Fair Park Stadium, was built during five spring and summer months in 1930.
The first college football game played in the new stadium was between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns.
My maternal grandfather, Fred Cherry, (picture above) was a sophomore tight end for Oklahoma University that year (1930).
In those years, players played on both offense and defense, and my grandfather started for Oklahoma and played the entire game.
Both OU and Texas were held scoreless during the first half of the 1930 game.
The first touchdown of the game, and for that matter the first touchdown ever scored in the Cotton Bowl, occurred in the middle of the third quarter, and it was a 30-yard touchdown pass to my grandfather, Oklahoma Tight Enid, Fred Cherry.
According to the Oklahoma Encyclopedia of Football, Oklahoma quarterback Guy Warren threw a 30 yard pass to Fred Cherry who took the ball into the end zone and gave Oklahoma a 7 to 0 lead over Texas.
Though Texas would eventually win the game 17 to 7. Texas scored all 17 of their points in the fourth quarter.
My grandfather holds the distinction of being the first player to ever score in the Cotton Bowl.
Fred Cherry would go on to play against Texas in 1931 and 1932 before he graduated with a petroleum engineering degree. He became a personal friend of OU Kappa Alpha fraternity brother and 1931 Oklahoma graduate Carl Albert, future United States Speaker of the House.
Fred Cherry worked in the oil fields of Texas, where he met my grandmother Virginia Salyer, and after their marriage, grandad would quite the oil field, take a job at the state capital in Oklahoma, before quitting that job in order to fulfill his calling as a Christian evangelist.
I was born thirty years after my grandfather played for Oklahoma University, but I can distinctly remember watching OU football games at his house while growing up, particularly at Thanksgiving.
My grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack in 1970 at the age of 58, but my love for OU football continued.
On October 14, 1972, my father (Paul Burleson) and I, returning to Borger, Texas, in the plane of some friends after attending the Red River Rivalry Game (OU won 27-0), had to crash land the plane during severe thunderstorms.
I was 10 years old.