Walt Garrison
– PRCA File Photo
ProRodeo.com
Walt Garrison, a Super Bowl-winning running back for the Dallas Cowboys and a member of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, passed away Oct. 11. He was 79.
Garrison was known for his career with the Dallas Cowboys where he was a star fullback from 1966-74.
Garrison played 119 regular season and 13 playoff games for the Cowboys over nine seasons and still ranks fourth on the club’s all-time list for average yards per rush (4.32) and is ninth in career rushing yards (3,491).
In Super Bowl VI in Dallas’ 24-3 win over the Miami Dolphins on Jan. 16, 1972, Garrison had 14 rushing attempts for 74 yards, and he caught two passes for 11 yards.
He also was a cowboy in the literal sense, performing in rodeos during the offseasons and even, for a while as a rookie, the night before home games.
“People ask me what my greatest thrill was,” Garrison said in the 1983 PRCA Media Guide, “and, I tell them winning the Super Bowl. But second is taking fifth place up in Cheyenne.”
Garrison was a steer wrestler in the PRCA, and his top highlight was placing fifth in the average at the 1974 Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days.
Garrison also was a representative of the U.S. Tobacco Company and was an active promoter of rodeo nationwide. Garrison was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo., as a notable in the 2018 class.
“We ran around together for a long time,” ProRodeo Hall of Famer Roy Cooper said. “He liked to do what he did best, he liked to bulldog steers and he liked to play football. He was fun to hang out with. There was never a dull moment, it was always fun to be around him. I enjoyed him and he was a good friend of mine for a good while. He took me everywhere. He signed me up with the (U.S. Tobacco Company) and when I was younger, he took me a lot of places and hung out with me. We spent a lot of time together.
“He was a character. He could tell poems and jokes and he was funny. He also was a good bulldogger, and he did a lot for rodeo with U.S. Tobacco Company. You can’t say anything bad about him.”
Fellow ProRodeo Hall of Famer Phil Lyne concurred with Cooper about Garrison.
“Walt was a great guy,” Lyne said. “He was always in a good humor and pleasant to be around.”
And, Lyne said he and Garrison had a running dialogue about football.
“Walt and I had a deal where we would see each other and I would tell him ‘Let’s talk about some football,’ and he would say ‘No,’” Lyne said with a laugh. “I can’t remember how that started but he really didn’t talk a whole lot about football. He was just a super guy who was a lot of fun to be around.”
Garrison grew up in Lewisville, Texas, where he spent his youth riding horses and steers. He competed in high school rodeo in bareback riding, bull riding, calf roping and steer wrestling.
He never hid his passion for rodeo according to his son, Marty.
“His first love was rodeo, no doubt, ever since he was really young,” said Marty Garrison to the ProRodeo Sports News in 2018. “That’s what he would have done had he not played football in college and then got drafted by the Dallas Cowboys. His whole life, his love was rodeo.”
Transitioning from standout NFL running back to a steer wrestler wasn’t too complicated for Garrison.
“There’s a lot of similarities between rodeo and football,” Garrison said in an article posted Oct. 11 on Dallascowboys.com. “Steer wrestling probably takes, depending on the size of the steer, the time is anywhere from three and a half seconds to six seconds. And a football game lasts a lot longer, but if you take an individual play in football, a regular play is three or four seconds. And the amount of energy and the amount of focus you need to have in bulldogging is the same as in football.”
Garrison took a scholarship to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater where he was a two-time All-Big Eight honoree.
His junior year in 1964, Garrison led the Big Eight in rushing with 730 yards, beating out Jim Grisham and Gale Sayers, and was named to the conference all-academic team.
During his senior year in 1965 he was named to the All-Big Eight team after finishing the season with 924 rushing yards, 107 receiving yards and five touchdowns, and he helped the Cowboys defeat the Oklahoma Sooners for the first time in 20 years in the last game of his OSU career.
After completing his eligibility for football, he spent a year with the Oklahoma State rodeo team. Garrison was drafted in the fifth round by the Dallas Cowboys in 1966.
Garrison made sure that his Cowboys’ signing bonus included a two-horse trailer so he could still attend rodeos. Coach Tom Landry stopped Garrison from competing in nearby rodeos the night before a game by allowing him to follow the rodeo trail in the offseason.
“I rodeoed in the offseason. I steer wrestled. I roped some calves, but mostly steer wrestling,” Garrison said in article Oct. 12 on the Dallascowboy.com website. “And Coach Landry pointed out that there was a clause in my contract that if I got hurt doing another sport, that my contract would be null and void, and I said, ‘OK.’ I didn’t think rodeo was that dangerous.”
In addition to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, Garrison was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in 1993 and in 2000 he was inducted into the Oklahoma State Athletics Hall of Honor. He was also named to the Dallas Cowboys’ 25th anniversary team and was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.