Tennessee's Bobby Gordon showed his toughness is Vols 1957 Gator Bowl win

Bobby Gordon staggered back towards the huddle. 

The Tennessee tailback, seconds after a tremendous clash with Texas A&M do-it-all All American and Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow at the 6-yard line, dropped to the muddy Gator Bowl turf. 

The crowd, celebrating the violent collision like Romans in the Coliseum, was suddenly hushed. The Vols were finally on the cusp of scoring in the fourth quarter, but the player that got them this far was face down and void of consciousness. 

Gordon did get back up, then got the ball the next three plays, driving Tennessee to the goal line and setting up Sammy Burklow’s chip-shot field goal—the difference in the Vols’ 3-0 triumph over the Aggies in the 1957 Gator Bowl.

“That (Gordon) is a real thoroughbred,” Crow told reporters after the game. 

“(Crow) is pretty good on a pass defense, but needs more work on tackling,” the banged up and bruised Gordon quipped at the Gator Bowl awards banquet later that day.

For Tennessee, the victory ended a bowl game hex. The Vols had lost three in a row after Robert R. Neyland’s 1951 team beat Texas in the Cotton Bowl. 

Now, one of Neyland’s disciples was at the helm in Bowden Wyatt. 

“Our team never played a better game or a better team,” Wyatt said after accepting the trophy. “I’m proud of my boys.”

A month earlier, Tennessee was unsure it would even get a bowl invite. The Vols lost three games in the regular season, including a 20-6 loss at unranked Kentucky in the second to last week.

A win over Vanderbilt put Tennessee back in the good graces of the Gator Bowl committee and the Vols were bound for Jacksonville and Dec. 28 date with Texas A&M and out-going head coach Paul Bear Bryant, who was set to take over Alabama after the game. 

“I know I felt awfully happy that any bowl wanted us,” offensive lineman Bill Johnson said. “I sure did want to go out with a victory.”

The Aggies began the season with eight-straight wins and were No. 1 in the major polls in mid-November, but close losses to Rice and Texas over the last two weeks of the season kept them from winning the Southwest Conference and a coveted Cotton Bowl bid.

Wyatt and Bryant were plenty familiar with each other. Wyatt was a freshman at Tennessee the year Bryant played on a partially broken leg for Alabama in its 25-0 win.

The two clashed as head coaches when Wyatt’s Arkansas Razorbacks beat Texas A&M, 14-7 at Kyle Field in Bryant’s first season in 1954. 

Wyatt took the Tennessee job a couple of months later.

Bryant, meanwhile turned the Aggies into a contender in the SWC. After going 1-9 in his first season ‘54, Texas A&M won seven games the following year and then won the conference in ‘56.

Crow had a lot to do the program’s quick turnaround. He played both ways, nabbing five interceptions on defense and rushing for 562 yards and six touchdowns and passing for five more scores as a halfback during his Heisman campaign in 1957.

Crow had glowing endorsements from both coaches. Bryant called him the greatest player he ever coached. Wyatt said he was the best player that the Vols would face.

“Tennessee’s chances for an upset will ride on their success in containing the vaunted Texas A&M offense, sparked by the heralded John Crow,” Haywood Harris wrote in the Knoxville Journal the day of the game.

Harris’ words proved true. On the rain-soaked field at the Gator Bowl on a dreary day in Jacksonville, the Vols’ defense held Crow to just 46 yards on 14 carries. 

Penalties kept Tennessee from taking advantage, though. Gordon returned a punt 82 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter, but a clipping penalty negated it. 

Two fumbles wiped out Vols drives deep in Texas A&M territory in the third quarter, but the defense continued to hold. No Aggies drive went inside the 35. The one that got that close, Crow fumbled after getting hit by Joe Lukowski and Carl Smith pounced on it to give Tennessee the ball back. 

Bobby Urbando corralled Crow on a fourth-and-4 run that snuffed out Texas A&M’s other promising drive at the 40 in the second quarter. 

Nothing worked for Bryant, not even his “unorthodox” spread-T formation that the Aggies ran again and again with little success. 

The drive that decided the game began for Tennessee with 11:20 left. It started with a Gordon pass to Bill Anderson for 19 yards. He hit Landon Darty for another nine yards two plays later. 

After Gordon and Crow clanked at the 6, creating a sound that echoed throughout the Gator Bowl in a brief moment of silence as on-lookers marveled, the Vols were back on the doorstep. 

Gordon got Tennessee as far as the 1, but was stopped on third down. The Vols huddled as Wyatt pondered his next move. Then he called out to Burklow. 

Burklow had never made a field goal to that point. He was 17-of-19 on extra point attempts during the season, but had missed his only two field goal attempts in 1956 and hadn’t attempted one yet in ‘57.

 Before he trotted onto the field, Wyatt grabbed him. 

“Son, go in there and kick it,” Wyatt said. “It’s just like an extra point.”

Burklow could be easily spotted as the huddle broke. His clean orange jersey and white pants stood out against a brownish gray backdrop. 

The ball came off of his foot low and to the left, missing the six outstretched hands of Texas A&M players closing in from both sides and in front. It continued to carry left, then straightened out, clearing the crossbar by about three feet. 

The kick all but ended a stretch of postseason misery for Tennessee. 

For the seniors that carried the burden of a Sugar Bowl loss to Baylor the year before that blemished an otherwise perfect season, beating Texas A&M was personal. 

“I think the loss to Baylor last year helped a lot,” Johnson said in a more joyous Vols locker room in Jacksonville than the one in New Orleans 361 days earlier. “We went down there with a perfect record like there wasn’t anything more to win…We were serious about winning this one.”