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Touchdowns & Turnbuckles:
World Championship Athletes from West Texas State

by Bill Neeley and Justin Neeley

In 1960, a football coach was passed over for promotion at Texas Tech, and subsequently recruited as the new head coach at West Texas State in Canyon, Texas. This focused, determined, hard-nosed but softhearted ex-Marine was named Joe Kerbel, and WTSU (now West Texas A&M) was changed forever.

Success on the football field came with wide-ranging recruiting that integrated WTSU, top-tier football talent went from WTSU to pro football, and connections with the Funk family in Amarillo created a conduit from the football field to the wrestling ring for many WT players.

Noted biographer and WT alum Bill Neeley, author of The Last Comanche Chief and A Tejano Knight, has teamed up with his grandson Justin Neeley to delve into some of the players and personalities connected with WT football under Coach Kerbel and his successor, Coach Gene Mayfield.

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From the Prologue: "Touchdowns & Turnbuckles: Championship Athletes from West Texas State is a collection of mini biographies of athletes who received national and even international attention during their outstanding careers in Canyon, Texas. What ties the stories of each championship athlete together is the influence of WT football coach Joe Kerbel and wrestling promoter Dory Funk on the unusual flowering of athletic talent at WT during the decade of the 1960s."

From the Forward: "Kerbel's recruiting skills, along with his infamous practice sessions, created a winning team for much of the following decade: WT won two bowl games, the Sun Bowl and the Junior Rose Bowl, and trained many athletes for careers in professional sports. The tough practices and workouts developed young men ready for the requirements of professional sports and life."

"Kerbel became acquainted with Amarillo wrestler Dory Funk, Sr. early on in his tenure as head coach. The friendship allowed Funk to scout the Buffaloes' roster for wrestling talent . . . Although Joe Kerbel's tenure at West Texas State may not have been long, his legacy of developing athletes spread all over the nation and even into Canada. Bill Neeley's well-researched and well-written Touchdowns & Turnbuckles tells this story of the number of football and wrestling stars coming out of the Texas Panhandle, and the head coach that made it all possible."

What's in the Book

  • Foreward by Marty Kuhlman, Professor of History, West Texas A&M University
  1. Hell on Wheels: Football Coach Joe Kerbel
  2. Dory Funk, Sr.: Wrestler, Promoter, & Philanthropist
  3. The Funk Brothers: Buffalo Thunder in the Squared Circle
  4. Super Bowl Rings: Buffaloes in Pro Football
  5. Bobby Duncum: Buffalo Cowboy
  6. Dusty Rhodes: The American Dream
  7. Stan Hansen: The Outlaw
  8. Bruiser Brody: Independent Contractor
  9. "Hell on Wheels": No Mas
  10. Coach Gene Mayfield: A New Era in Buffalo Football
  11. Merced Solis: a.k.a. Tito Santana
  12. Tully Blanchard: Best All-Around Wrestler of the 80s
  13. Ted DiBiase: The Million Dollar Man
  14. Kelly Kiniski: Canadian Buffalo
  15. Ribs, Riots, and Rebellion
  16. 2000 Reunion of Kerbel's Players

"He taught you the simple rule that to be successful you had to work a lot harder than your opponent, that you had to get up earlier and work later to be sure you are physically and mentally prepared."

— Corky Dawson
Buffalo Quarterback, class of 1964

Touchdowns & Turnbuckles:
World Championship Athletes from West Texas State
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