By Tracy Gupton
Who is going to win today’s Super Bowl? The Chiefs or the 49ers? Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs are appearing in their fourth Super Bowl in the past five years! While Kyle Shanahan’s San Francisco team hasn’t won a Super Bowl since the 1990s.
Columbia High School can take pride in the fact that not one, not two, but three former Roughnecks have played in NFL championship games. James Ray Smith (WCHS graduating Class of 1951) and his Cleveland Browns did so long before the Super Bowl came into being. And Dennis Gaubatz (WCHS graduating Class of 1958) was the starting middle linebacker for the 1968 NFL champion Baltimore Colts who played in Super Bowl III back in the day when the Super Bowl pitted the champions of the National Football League and the now-defunct American Football League.
The last former Columbia Roughnecks high school stud to play in a Super Bowl was the late Charlie Johnson (Columbia High School graduating class of 1970) who was an All-Pro nose tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles. “Big Charlie” played in Super Bowl XV 43 years ago in New Orleans. While Gaubatz’s Colts actually won the NFL championship game over the Browns in December 1968, another common thread Gaubatz, Smith and Johnson have, in addition to all three having suited up in the maroon-and-white uniforms of the Roughnecks in high school, they all three were on the losing teams in Smith’s lone NFL championship game appearance and the two Super Bowls Gaubatz and Johnson played in.
Johnson, who died a couple years ago in his late sixties, was 28 when he started at nose tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV. He graduated from West Columbia High School in 1970, played college ball at the University of Colorado, and appeared in three Pro Bowls during his 9-year NFL career with the Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings. The last time a Columbia Roughnecks player appeared in a Super Bowl was when Charlie Johnson played in Super Bowl XV in 1981, which was won by the then-Oakland Raiders 27-10. The Raiders now play home games in Las Vegas where today’s Super Bowl will be played.
The Baltimore Colts defeated the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in the NFL championship game on Dec. 29, 1968, in Cleveland. Dennis Gaubatz of West Columbia is the only former Roughneck to actually win an NFL title. But the 1968 NFL champions were upset by the champions of the old American Football League, the New York Jets, 16-7, on Jan. 12, 1969, in Miami, Florida, in the third Super Bowl.
Johnson, the MVP of the 1969 Roughnecks team that played in the state championship game, was an All Pro defensive lineman for the NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles in 1980. Like his fellow former Roughnecks James Ray Smith and Dennis Gaubatz, Charlie Johnson also played for the losing team in the championship game when the Oakland Raiders defeated Johnson’s Eagles 27-10 on Jan. 25, 1981, in the New Orleans Superdome in Super Bowl XV. By the time Johnson came into the league the NFL and AFL had merged and the Super Bowl became the NFL championship game.
The year 1957 marked this writer’s birth in January, the West Columbia Roughnecks’ deepest appearance in the high school football playoffs in history at that time, and a native son playing in the NFL championship game in late December.
Charlie Johnson was five years old when Dennis Gaubatz was the best player on the Roughnecks football team that advanced to the state Class 2A semifinals. Head Coach E.S. Golson’s 1957 Roughnecks were one win shy of appearing in West Columbia High School’s first state championship game. But the Brady Bulldogs ruined the Roughnecks’ hopes of being 1957 state champs.
A month or so after his former high school team was eliminated from postseason play back in southeast Texas, James Ray Smith and the Cleveland Browns were appearing in the National Football League championship game. That game was played December 29, 1957, at old Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Michigan.
Backup quarterback Tobin Rote led the Detroit Lions to a lopsided 59-14 victory on that frigid day over legendary NFL Coach Paul Brown’s Eastern Conference champions. Like Charlie Johnson’s Philadelphia Eagles were many years later, Jim Ray Smith’s Cleveland Browns were favored by three points to defeat the host Lions, winners of the NFL’s Western Conference. But what do the oddsmakers know?
Dennis Gaubatz’s Baltimore Colts, 1968 NFL champions, were heavily favored to wallop the 1968 American Football League champions in the third NFL-AFL dogfight. That game was played in the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, on January 12, 1969. Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers had easily won the first two NFL-AFL matchups over the Kansas City Chiefs in January 1967 and the Oakland Raiders in January 1968, leading pro football fans nationwide to view the old American Football League as inferior to the older, more established NFL.
And today, as the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs prepare to meet in Las Vegas in Super Bowl LVIII (58), one has to look way, way back, 55 years ago, to recall the first time a former Columbia Roughnecks standout player took part in pro football’s marquee event. That would be Dennis Earl Gaubatz, the starting middle linebacker for the then Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
Gaubatz, celebrating his 84th birthday today, was the starting center on offense for West Columbia High School and roamed the defensive lineup from his linebacker position that memorable 1957 season as a Roughnecks leader. He was born February 11, 1940, in Needville but spent most of his younger years growing up in West Columbia.
After a successful college football career at Louisiana State University, Gaubatz was drafted by the Lions in the eighth round of the 1963 NFL draft. Detroit traded Gaubatz to the Colts in the summer of 1965, where he barked defensive lineup orders for the next five seasons, retiring after the 1969 NFL year.
The Cleveland Browns were soundly defeated by the Baltimore Colts in the 1968 NFL championship game but Hall of Fame Coach Don Shula’s Colts were upset by Broadway Joe Namath and the New York Jets 16-7 in Super Bowl III. That was the last time the Jets appeared in a Super Bowl. It remains the biggest upset in Super Bowl history, where former Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank enjoyed the champagne bath in the Jets locker room after that game played in Miami 55 years ago. Ewbank coached the Colts to back-to-back NFL championships in 1958 and 1959 and coached the Jets from 1963 through 1973. Ewbank had been a former assistant coach under Paul Brown in Cleveland before getting the Colts head coach job in 1954.
Shula would later win multiple Super Bowls as head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Shula’s 1972 Dolphins went undefeated that season, defeating the Washington Redskins 14-7 in Super Bowl VII in Los Angeles to set the bar at its highest point. No other NFL team has ever gone undefeated since Miami did it 52 years ago.
But Shula was outcoached and his Colts were outplayed by Ewbank’s Jets in Super Bowl III. With the 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall at quarterback, the Colts sputtered on offense in Miami that day and trailed the Jets 13-0 entering the fourth quarter. Shula replaced Morrall with Hall-of-Famer Johnny Unitas for the final quarter. Morrall had thrown three interceptions and Unitas was picked off once in his attempt to rally the troops and lead the Colts to a come-from-behind win. The Colts did succeed on one successful drive late in the game but the lone Baltimore touchdown was not enough and the Jets prevented West Columbia’s Dennis Gaubatz from earning a Super Bowl ring.
The last former Roughnecks great to appear in a Super Bowl was the late Charlie Johnson, Marvin Gray MVP award winner for the state champion runner-up Columbia High School football team in 1969. Jack Hays got the Roughnecks one step further than Elston Golson did a dozen years earlier in Coach Hays’ first season as Columbia High’s new athletics director. Leland Surovik had back-to-back seasons in more recent history as a Roughnecks head coach whose teams reached the state semifinals but, like Golson’s 1957 team, failed to advance to the state championship game.
Jack Hays’ 1969 Roughnecks team remains the only Columbia High football squad to play in a state championship game. Brownwood High School defeated the Necks in that Class 3A state championship battle 55 years ago at Baylor University’s stadium in Waco.
Johnson and Charlie Davis, the two best players on the Roughnecks’ 1969 state championship contender, both played college football at Colorado University before their pro careers began. Davis never played in a Super Bowl but remains the former Roughnecks player taken highest in the NFL draft. He was a second round pick of the Cincinnati Bengals who will always be mentioned in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ record books as the first offensive player to score a touchdown in Bucs’ history. Cincinnati traded Davis, the key running back for the Roughnecks in the late 1960s, to Tampa Bay for that expansion franchise’s first season.
The Oakland Raiders defeated Philadelphia 27-10 in the Super Bowl played 43 years ago in Louisiana. Raiders quarterback Jim Plunkett was named the game’s MVP for throwing three touchdown passes but Oakland wide receiver Cliff Branch could just as easily have won that honor. Branch, a teammate of Charlie Davis’s in college with the Colorado Buffaloes, caught two TD passes from Plunkett against the Eagles that day. Branch had five receptions for 67 yards.
While two former Roughnecks came up on the losing end in their lone appearances in NFL championship games (Gaubatz’s Colts were NFL champs in 1968 but lost the Super Bowl), both Gaubatz and Johnson led their teams in tackles in the Super Bowl games they played in. Charlie Johnson, who passed away at age 69 August 13, 2021, in Angleton, had the only sack of game MVP Plunkett, a Heisman Trophy winner from Stanford in college, and led the Eagles with six solo tackles in Super Bowl XV.
Gaubatz and cornerback Lenny Lyles each had nine solo tackles to lead the Colts in Super Bowl III.
Jim Ray Smith graduated from West Columbia High School in 1950 and was an All-American offensive tackle at Baylor University where he started on both sides of the ball. Smith was drafted in the sixth round of the 1954 NFL draft by the Browns. Like Charlie Johnson, Smith had to devote time to service to his country in the U.S. Army during his prime sports years.
While the same age as Charlie Davis (both were seniors at Columbia High School in the 1969-70 school year), Charlie Johnson played for Colorado University in Boulder after Davis had moved on to the NFL. Smith was drafted by the Browns when he still had his senior year to play for the Baylor Bears. He began as a defensive end for Paul Brown in 1956 and was moved to offensive guard his second season of pro ball.
Coach Brown rotated Jim Ray Smith with Herschel Forester in the 1957 season, using them as “messenger guards” carrying the plays Brown called on the sideline to the huddle on the field. But after the Browns were embarrassed by the Lions in the 1957 NFL championship game, Smith became a full-time starter at right guard where he was All-Pro several seasons while with Cleveland. Smith played nine seasons in the NFL, the final two with the Dallas Cowboys in his home state of Texas. James Ray Smith, now 91 and living near Dallas, was inducted into the Baylor Bears Hall of Fame in 1968, the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987, the Cleveland Browns Legends Hall of Fame in 2005, and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.
PAST NFL CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES have included former Roughnecks pro football players, from left, James Ray Smith in 1957, Dennis Gaubatz in 1969 and Charlie Johnson in 1981. These photos were all scanned from Gusher yearbooks from the trio’s senior years at West Columbia High School, Smith in 1951, Gaubatz in 1958 and Johnson in 1970.
A little bit of trivia to show the difference in pro football in these former Roughnecks’ playing days compared to the NFL today: Attendance at Briggs Stadium in Detroit was 55,263 when Jim Ray Smith appeared in the NFL championship game, pre-Super Bowl, December 29, 1957. When Dennis Gaubatz was the middle linebacker for the Baltimore Colts, attendance at Super Bowl III in Miami was 75,389 on January 12, 1969. And 12 years later attendance at the game in the Superdome in New Orleans was 76,135 January 25, 1981, when Charlie Johnson appeared for the Eagles in Super Bowl XV.
James Ray Smith and other Browns players, including the man many view as the greatest NFL player of all time, Cleveland running back Jim Brown, were paid $2,750 each while winning Detroit Lions players received $4,295 shares for appearing in the 1957 NFL championship game. That was so long ago that Red Grange was one of the three men in the NBC broadcast booth.
NFL players in the present day are much more well off financially. In addition to their multi-million dollar annual salaries, the 49ers and Chiefs players will be compensated nicely for appearing in today’s Super Bowl. Losing team’s individual shares at last year’s Super Bowl were $82,000 while players on the winning team in last year’s Super Bowl were paid $157,000 each.
Tickets to the 1957 NFL championship game in Detroit were sold for $7.50 each while tickets to today’s game in Las Vegas cost thousands of dollars.
Only two former Columbia Roughnecks have appeared in a Super Bowl over the past 58 NFL seasons. And they both led their teams in tackles in losing efforts on Super Bowl Sunday so many, many years ago.
