That's 100% correct. Johnny Roland came to Columbia to...

Posted on: February 11, 2020 at 22:37:25 CT

work construction the summer before his freshman year. The construction job aside, the MU coaches were primarily motivated by the need to keep Bud Wilkinson's clutches off of Roland, because, as you wrote, this was prior to the implementation of the National Letter of Intent program. [Note: Wilkinson was OU's legendary coach at the time.] Nevertheless, that didn't stop ol' Bud. Around 5:30 one afternoon in late July, 1961, a freshman football player interrupted a meeting of the Mizzou coaches as they planned for the start of fall practice a few weeks later. The kid says (I'm paraphrasing how my Dad described it), "Hey, some guy from OU is trying to kidnap Roland!" The coaches ran out of the meeting room in the basement of old Rothwell Gymnasium and over to the dorms where Roland was temporarily housed. The dorms were just south of Rothwell and the old tennis courts. The OU guy is talking to Roland next to his car. Coach Harry Smith, who was a bear of a man and a former All-American at USC, pins the guy against his car. The guy (some grad assistant, as I recall) stammers that he was just doing what Wilkinson ordered him to do. Harry says, "You can tell Bud that Roland isn't going anywhere and if you show back up here again, you'll end up in the trunk of your car!" Needless to say, there were no more "kidnapping" attempts of Johnny Roland by OU.

Edited by Tigerborn at 06:56:58 on 02/12/20