When Greg Thomas first walked into the quarterback room at the University of Arkansas in 1984, he knew he measured up. Not just physically, but Thomas came with the right pedigree, fit and timing for the new Flexbone offensive system coach Ken Hatfield was implementing in his first season in Fayetteville.
No Doubting Thomas Razorbacker Exclusive: Part 2
Greg’s father, Allie Thomas Sr. grew up as a two-sport athlete in football and baseball but was denied an opportunity to play at the major college level due to the segregationist policies of his time. That didn’t stop him from becoming a hall of fame state-championship-winning coach and principal while raising his son to follow in his footsteps in San Angelo, Texas.
"We found out real quick that he wasn't just another hard hitting quarterback. He was actually pretty damn smart. He picked it up quick and made pretty damn good decisions."All-SWC Fullback, Marshall Foreman
Legend has it that San Angelo happened to also be the birthplace of the wishbone offense that sprang up deep in the heart of West Texas. Later it was stolen from the University of Texas and smuggled across the Red River into Oklahoma by Arkansas renegade Barry Switzer who used it to run roughshod over college football for the preceding decade.
In pursuit of his second national championship, Switzer – who hailed from a dry county in Southern Arkansas near the Louisiana border – began making runs back into Arkansas where he stole gold star recruits like Pine Bluff quarterbacks Danny Bradley and Eric Mitchell or future college football hall-of-fame tight end Keith Jackson from Little Rock to help accomplish his goal by 1986.
With another future NFL great in Little Rock’s Leslie O’Neal opting to play at Oklahoma State, Broyles could see the writing on the wall. Arkansas needed to follow suit, but the groundwork needed to be laid. Greg Thomas was chosen to do the job.
"The years between, let's see, '84 and 'probably '87 — for some reason, they don't talk a lot about those years," said Marshall Foreman who as a fullback developed a close relationship with Thomas while playing in the Razorback backfield. "And there was two of those years in there where I think we won nine or 10 games and stuff like that.
"I don't know what it is, but, there's some years in there. They don't talk a lot about those years. It's like they skip those years and go straight into to the Quinn Grovey years."
Houston, we have a problem
When Hatfield arrived on “The Hill” to replace outgoing coach Lou Holtz, then Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles — who moonlighted as college football’s most visible color TV analyst alongside legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson — felt he was poised to bring a second national championship to Arkansas. This time as AD rather than head coach as he did 20 years before.
As head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, Switzer – a former player and assistant under Broyles for the Razorbacks, led the vanguard in embracing African-American athletes among post-integration major college football programs in America’s Deep South.
The intractable Broyles and Arkansas had been more reluctant and watched Switzer use his wishbone to win his first national title in 1973. By not hesitating to employ black athletes on either side of the ball and regardless of position, Switzer maintained Oklahoma’s place among college football’s elite while Broyles’ Razorbacks often struggled to keep up.
The most notable exception came in the 1978 Orange Bowl where Holtz’ Razorbacks walloped Switzer's Sooners and finished No. 3 in the country. That aside — by 1984, the clock struck 13 and Broyles knew it was time to move forward – whether a recalcitrant minority wanted to or not.
"I didn't go there, but Barry was different," said former Razorback All-SWC runningback Marshall Foreman who was recruited by Switzer out of Houston, Texas in 1983. Because of Oklahoma's overloaded backfield, Foreman decided to take his talents to Arkansas, but he said coaches like Switzer and former Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt had an ability to relate to black athletes that many coaches today still do not possess. "Barry and I'm going to just say another — they are the same person, and that's Houston (Nutt)."
"Those two cats? Hey. You let them in your house, they're going to set you right, and they're good at it. Both of them got that black swag that most of us have. Those two white boys — if you close your eyes, you would think they were black. Yep. That's what Barry had that Ken and a lot of those other coaches didn't have. He knew how to communicate with black people."
Broyles had coached the program’s first black player, Darrell Brown, in 1965. John Richardson became the first African-American to accept a scholarship at Arkansas just after formal nation-wide integration in 1970 — making Arkansas the last school in the Southwest Conference to do so. Rice University had been the first only a year before.
As AD, Broyles made South Texas’ Martin Lemond Arkansas’ first black quarterback by 1976, and the resistance those pioneers faced was enough to keep them in relative obscurity. However to become a starting black quarterback — one of the first in the Deep South — brought Thomas maximum resistance and minimal notoriety.
Thanks to his father’s experience, Greg Thomas couldn’t help but be aware of some of this history when he arrived on campus in the summer of that year, but he would soon be in for some vivid reminders.
His familiarity with the wishbone from San Angelo, helped him distinguish himself among 12 hopefuls at freshmen minicamp. Raw talents like future NFL Hall-of-Fame safety, Steve Atwater who hailed from St. Louis were in the mix but — like Thomas had been in high school — was soon moved to defensive back.
"Going through Spring ball nobody had a starting position," said Limbo Parks who transferred in from the junior college ranks that spring. "Everybody is testing everything. They had me on the sixth team coming in and I’m a JUCO All-American. I was kind of pissed. How do you have me on the sixth team?
"So Greg had to work his way up because you still had seniors who were in front of him who were coming back, but by the end of the spring both of us had solidified ourselves as starters. Greg had his battle trying to prove he was the man. We didn’t probably bond in the spring, but once we got to the first game and we got down to Mississippi playing Ole Miss, we kind of got in the same boat."
The speed and arm talent that caught the eye of then-Razorback baseball coach Norm DeBriyn also impressed then-Razorback quarterbacks coach David Lee. Lee, who went on to his own storied career in the pros, was brought in from Vanderbilt for his knowledge of more traditional drop-back passing offenses to be add more aerial versatility to the Flexbone.
Flipping the Script
When upper classmen returned for the full summer camp, Thomas was unable to get any practice reps and found himself still buried at the bottom of the depth chart. To show what he could do, Thomas ventured onto the defensive practice field and volunteered to run the scout team offense in preparation for the season opener at Ole Miss.
“I was just being a knucklehead and trying to prove a point,” Thomas said. Once allowed on the practice field, Thomas immediately began to flip the proverbial script.
Arkansas’ defense had long been second to none and under defensive coordinator Fred Goldsmith and that didn’t change. Goldsmith meticulously studied the Ole Miss offense and drilled his team on what to expect from the Rebels.
What he didn’t expect was Thomas to lead the scout team twice down the field on the first-team defense. Thomas had done some studying of his own and knew what Goldsmith expected Ole Miss to do. Instead of throwing the ball where the defense was prepared, he connected with fellow-freshman like tight end Kerry Owens (who would later be drafted into the NFL by the Cincinnati Bengals as a linebacker) — driving Goldsmith into a rage.
Goldsmith’s initial reaction was to order Thomas off the practice field. “He is changing the … plays!” Gold Smith is quoted in Thomas’ award-winning memoir, No Doubting Thomas: The Hog Whisperer. “Get me a quarterback that will follow the script!”
On his way off the field, Thomas yelled back, “Do you think Ole miss is going to run the same play twice? Throw it to the same receiver and get him killed?”
Goldsmith must have reflected on Thomas’ “knuckleheaded” feedback. For giving his defense “one hell of a look," Goldsmith went to Lee on the next day and asked for Thomas to run the offensive scout team for good.
Those looks eventually saw Thomas move up the depth chart and into the backup spot to senior starter Brad Taylor alongside senior Danny Nutt (younger brother of Houston). Although some online sources list Thomas as originally playing running back, he says that never was the case.
"When (Thomas) got there, for one, we didn't have quarterbacks that were made for the option," said Foreman who was Thomas' guide during his recruiting visit and later became one of his closest teammates. "We didn't have running quarterbacks that could run like him, and, we found out real quick that he wasn't just another hard hitting quarterback. He was actually pretty damn smart. He he picked it up quick and made pretty damn good decisions.
"He was cocky a little bit, but I like that. He was more confident than cocky though."
Off the hook
Thomas would see his first action as quarterback by week 4 against the Naval Academy at Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium. He described the greeting from the home crowd as “phenomenal." He stepped under center for the first time on September 29 in a game televised nationally on ESPN. Any boos were drowned out by the faithful 54,812 in attendance.
No sooner than he arrived back to his dorm room in Fayetteville however, Thomas found a vocal minority who would not keep silent.
One of the first things he noticed was that roommate David Smart, who wasn’t on the travel squad, had taken the phone off the hook. Thomas then noticed the strange look on Smart’s face and soon learned that their publicly-listed phone line had been bombarded with hate calls and even death threats.
“Sometimes they speak. Sometimes they scream, but every time they cuss, call you names and hang up,” Smart is quoted in the book. At least four times Thomas went out to his car to find his tires had been slashed.
The roommates eventually had to have the phone number changed — multiple times — and Thomas’ family in Texas started sending what support they could. Thomas credited teammates and coaches for helping him hold things together on and off the field in an era when online trolling wasn't a thing.
"Cowards do what cowards do," said Parks. "Cowards send stuff anonymously. Cowards don’t come in people’s faces and say it. They do it from the back door. I would say it was fan based more so than anything. Unfortunately back then there was no Twitter, Facebook or nothing like that. It was straight up letters.
"I wasn’t being targeted because I’m a lineman, but he’s playing the most recognizable position in the state of Arkansas. As far as I was concerned, I never thought anything of it. I had seen black quarterbacks on TV at Oklahoma and Missouri and everywhere else where I was from. But it just happened to be different at Arkansas simply because it had never happened before."
Thomas said in a recent podcast that over the years he's learned from other Arkansas quarterbacks that a certain amount of hostility goes with playing the position.
“It’s not just me. Every quarterback that starts at Arkansas goes through something,” Thomas said. “What I had to deal with was different, but every Razorback quarterback catches hell in some way. Mine was just more extreme.”
Thomas says he remains a die-hard Razorback to this day – even as a coach today at one of Texas’ most high-profile high schools at East Plano in the Dallas Metroplex area. After all, Arkansas gave him the chance to play quarterback at the major college level when schools in Texas did not.
He feels returning the love shown by supportive Razorback fans has become a “duty” he is obliged to honor. During his playing days, he especially enjoyed encouraging youth that lined up after games seeking autographs or mementos from their heroes – just as others once did for him growing up.
That mutual affection made up for any negativity Thomas experienced – so much so that he often ran afoul of Hatfield for his fondness of joining fellow members of the student body who liked to wear “Tuck Fexus” t-shirts during Longhorn week.
" If a man brings his kid and wants his kid to take a picture with me, why am I gonna hold that away from that kid?" Thomas said. "He's done worked his butt off to come watch this game. I'm not going to corner myself off from that because it wasn't ever fair. That's the hard thing about it. But when you have an administration and you have a coaching staff that should've stood up and said, 'I'm glad you didn't do it.' So I had to do that."
Buoyed by the best Arkansas has to offer, Thomas persevered and saw playing time in eight of 12 games — enough action that he was not able to redshirt with the rest of his 1984 recruiting classmates. That may have eventually cost him a chance to share in the future glory the rest went on to experience under Hatfield, but it did put him in position to realize his goal going by 1985.
In retrospect, Thomas wonders if he and other freshmen like linebacker Ricky Williams, running back Sammy Van Dyke and defensive lineman David Schell would have been better served redshirting with the rest of his incoming class.
"Brad was a good quarterback, so why is it reversed when I'm playing?" he said. "Why do I have to waste an entire year as an experiment? Because that's basically what it was. It wasn't that I couldn't play as a freshman, or I wasn't ready to play. It is are the people ready for it, and can we deal with the fall out?"
Stay tuned for Part III coming soon!