We all fondly remember Adam Sandler’s portrayal of Bobby Boucher, a waterboy who, after unlocking his Medula Oblongata, goes on to become the terror of the fictional South Central Louisiana State Mud Dogs’ linebacker corps.
But did you know that during the 1920s, there was a real waterboy, Wayne “Chicken” McCluskey (Nov. 17, 1906 – April 2, 1962)*? His story comes down to us today as an interesting footnote in books about Texas high school football history? Indeed, albeit with a few critical differences, McCluskey’s story even somewhat mimics the waterboy-turned-into-player version of Adam Sandler’s movie character.
McCluskey’s association with football began at Stephenville High School. The diminutive fourteen-year-old appears in the 1921-1922 high school year book,The Aviator, pictured alongside principal and Yellow Jacket head football coach, J. C. Dykes. In that same annual, McCluskey’s smiling face appears (far left, second row from the bottom) as part of the “Class of 1926”—the 8th graders at SHS that school year.
One yearbook summary page rehearses in detail the Class B Yellow Jackets’ 4-5-1 season, including a cryptic reference to a rather embarrassing and still-standing school record. “De Leon’s splendid team carried us away to the tune of 122-0.” The final three lines of this same page pay tribute to McCluskey, declaring “Do not forget our mascot, ‘Chicken’ McCluskey, who did much to keep the spirit in the boys thru the season and who is very much appreciated by them as well as Coach Dykes.”
Yellow Jacket fortunes marginally improved in 1922. The team ended its season with a record of 5-5-0. Page 46 of the 1922-1923 Aviator finds the pensive fifteen-year-old freshman, McCluskey, seated squarely on the bottom row of that year’s team photo. Immediately before him is the SHS water bucket bearing his nickname, “Chicken.”
Above are the 1922 Stephenville Yellow Jackets. Front row and center is fifteen-year-old freshman waterboy, Wayne McCluskey.
The 1924 and 1925 Yellow Jackets continued to improve, enjoying back-to-back winning seasons (8-1 and 6-3, respectively). The 1924 team even brought Stephenville its first district title and playoff run. Alas, Wayne McCluskey’s personal goings and comings from 1924-1925 are largely lost to history. Stephenville High School produced no yearbooks from the 1923-1924 through the 1936-1937 school years.
Evidently, during those years McCluskey (like Bobby Boucher) abandoned his waterboy duties and donned the shoulder pads, such as they were in the 1920s. If he didn’t do so for Stephenville, by the fall of 1926 he was doing it for Dallas Oak Cliff. If that date sounds suspect, it should. Assuming “The Chicken’s” academic career moved forward on schedule, he should have graduated high school (presumably SHS) in the spring of 1926—at least three months before the kickoff of the 1926 high school football season. Whenever, wherever, or even whether he graduated, McCluskey is found in the 1926-1927 Oak Cliff year book, listed among those scheduled to graduate in the spring of 1927.**
McCluskey’s cameo appearance helps to explain an account related by Harold V. Ratliff, the Texas Associated Press sports editor commonly known as “Mr. Schoolboy Football.” Among many other things, Ratliff’s Autumn’s Mightiest Legions—his 1963, first-ever narrative history of Texas high school football—addresses the issue of suspect eligibility during the opening decade of UIL supervision of this new sport. In Chapter IX, “The Tigers Roll On,” Ratliff sketches the 1926 Waco Tiger title run that brought Waco High School its third state championship in a compact five seasons. In that year’s final, Waco played Dallas Oak Cliff for the second time in three years. In brutal 1924 weather conditions just two years earlier, the Tigers sustained an embarrassing 31-0 defeat and were eager to redress the balance in 1926.
In fact, Oak Cliff was fortunate just to be in that year’s final. Starting in mid-November and continuing all the way to the day of the championship game itself, multiple schools (Paschal, Ranger, Cleburne, and 1925 finalist Dallas Forest Avenue) sought to have the Leopard eligibility revoked. And very real Oak Cliff issues did exist.
Indeed, statewide at least a few schools tried everything from ingenious sleights of hand to outright deception to evade rapidly-evolving eligibility requirements regarding residency, age, attendance, grades, and other legitimate considerations. Even still today, there abound stories about 1920s Lone Star football where sixteen year-olds lined up across from fully-bearded, heavily-muscled twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three year-old “Encores” (graduates who returned home to be welcomed back to their former high school teams).
The precise details of the nineteen-year-old “Chicken” McCluskey’s migration into the Oak Cliff football program remain obscure. What we do know is that he played on the 1926 Oak Cliff team. We also know that Ranger, after losing 25-7 to Oak Cliff in the semifinal, subsequently filed a protest to the State Committee, declaring Leopard head coach, Howard Allen, had played several ineligible athletes in the semifinal contest. One of them was McCluskey (who, by that particular game, had turned age twenty). But age was neither the only nor the most important consideration.
About this debacle, Harold Ratliff writes: “Ranger had charged that Wheeler Smith, Wayne McCluskey and John Hall had violated the transfer rule. . . . Ranger said Smith came from Fulton, Missouri, Hall from El Paso, and McCluskey from Stephenville and they had not been properly certified to the state office under the transfer rule” (Autumn’s Mightiest Legions, p. 39). And Ranger was completely right. As remains today the style of coaches hoping to get all their players—especially seniors—into the late-round playoff contests, Oak Cliff’s coach cleared his bench before the semifinal’s end. In so doing, he had played several athletes for whom the required “transfer slips” had never been filed.
In what sounds hauntingly familiar to the invalidation of the 1998 Katy Tiger semifinal win—the result of playing a reserve who had hidden his academic ineligibility from his coach—Oak Cliff was similarly and justifiably exposed to the Ranger accusations. The principal difference between the two examples resided in the fact that Ranger’s protest arrived in Austin on the very day that Oak Cliff played Waco in the final.
“ Chicken” McCluskey was among those transfers whose paperwork never had been filed. Of course, by 1926 he had probably grown a bit since, at age fourteen, his yearbook picture alongside Coach Dykes showed him more than a head shorter than his Yellow Jacket mentor. Still, as his Oct. 8, 1942 draft registration documents attests€ McCluskey, at his tallest, was never any more than 5’ 8.” Something, however, compelled the highly competitive Leopards—contestants in the finals of 1921, 1924, and 1926—to welcome him into their ranks.
Whatever role McCluskey might have played during the 1926 season, UIL did not approve. Page 2, column 2 of the January 1927 Interscholastic Leaguer (vol. X, no. 5) specifically mentioned him and the other Oak Cliff players whose eligibility had been challenged. Regarding “The Chicken,” the Leaguer wrote:
“Wayne McClusky [sic]: Ineligible under Section 14 for the reason that he changed from the Stephenville High School to the Oak Cliff High School at the close of the 1925 football season, and no transfer certificate for him was filed, as required in the rule above referred to. He was ineligible at Stephenville for Interscholastic League contests at the time of his withdrawal from Stephenville, according to a signed statement from Superintendent T. A. Parker. Superintendent Parker refused to sign a transfer certificate for him when the same was submitted to him by this office.”€€
Citing Section 11, Article VIII, UIL’s State Committee suspended Oak Cliff (albeit temporarily, as was later decided) from the high school football season of 1927.
What truly brought McCluskey to Oak Cliff may never be entirely proven. We can speculate, however, that poor grades at SHS or the end of his football career as a Yellow Jacket—perhaps both—left him wanting one last opportunity to play again. “The Chicken’s” proximity to a Stephenville program beginning to experience success probably gave him a taste for playoff action. Simultaneously, the recent and consistent Leopard success just 85 or so miles to the northeast no doubt lured him in the direction of Dallas.
Exactly where McCluskey made the transition from waterboy to player cannot be precisely pinpointed. But the team spirit he exhibited as an 8th grader on the sidelines would undoubtedly have translated into an asset for any team in Texas. If his smallness in stature calls into question his on field effectiveness, he would not have been the first undersized overachiever to lay a Bobby Boucher-style hits on opposing players.
But then, as now, the rules must be followed. The annoyance of bureaucracy and paperwork notwithstanding, attention to the details can spare a program a world of hurt if executed in an honest and timely manner.
*McCluskey is buried in Stephenville’s West End Cemetery— Findagrave.com Link
**See McCluskey Ancestry.com Link
€ See WWII Ancestry.com Link
€€ On the UIL ruling against Oak Cliff, see PDF Link .
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