Hogs' earn respect wherever they go
JERRY AULDS

Great passions inspire and define us. We revere those who love greatly, and who has ever loved with more fervor or adoration than Antony for Cleopatra, Achilles for Helen of Troy, or a Texas high school football coach for his "hogs?"

The hogs in question are not fourfooted porkers but the big, sturdy and steady young men who go down in the Friday night trenches and "root out" opponents so one of the faster and more nimble teammates can score.

It's unglamorous and unsung work, but coaches love them and tell stories about them and never fail to embrace them when a former hog comes calling home.

Former Ricebird headman Bob Gillis and current athletic director Mike Rice share similar passions for the hogs.

Gillis, now an ECISD superintendent for finance, sort of hung out with his young hogs.

"Hogs are smart. They think about things. But more than that, they're loyal. They care about each other and other people," said Gillis, who remembers each of his hogs and exults in the out-in-the-world victories achieved by them.

Lilburn Cecil Schulz Jr., "Bubba" to his friends, pulled out and made his last block for Gillis and the Birds back in 1992, but "once a hog, always a hog," and Bubba's hog attitude stood him in good stead when he went to work as an ag teacher for Bellaire High School last November.

Our source said Schulz had just two classes with his students before escorting 15 of them to a big FFA shindig in Kansas City.

Later, at a local banquet, the Bellaire FFA chapter president declared the trip a huge success, but said it would have been a disaster if "Mr. Schulz had not asked me to his motel room," she blubbered.

While the audience did a collective gasp, she hastened to explain that the former Ricebird hog invited all 15 of the students to his room, seated them in a circle, and "made us tell something about our mommas, daddies, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and nieces. They why we liked agriculture and what we expected to do with our lives," she said.

Bubba then told them his El Campo growing-up story.

"The hog is now the favorite Bellaire show animal," claims our secret source.

Coach Rice said, for him, the perfect hog spirit was depicted by Kevin Treadwell, Tim Autry, Pernell Zambrano and Ryan Carpenter, four young men who used to clear the way for former 'Bird running back, now Rice superstar, Michael Perry.

Rice recalled the hog quartet was eating lunch and yukking it up at a sandwich shop across from a local nursing home when they saw one of the nursing home residents having trouble getting across the street on foot.

"Nobody said anything. It was if the play had already been called in the huddle. All four of them got up, went across the street, blocked the traffic and escorted the man safely across to the other side," said Rice.

"Root, Root, Root for the home team," and chalk up another score for the hogs!

This classic Jerry Aulds' column first appeared in the El Campo Leader- News on Aug. 8, 1998.