Jeff rode north up the military road. It was a cloudy morning in June, 1865. The war was over, and they were going home. It was hard to get used to b… - Harold Keith

And so passed the first quarter century and one year besides of football at the youngish University of Oklahoma, from the time beloved President Boyd had founded the old territorial school on the grassy prairie south of the raw little town of Norman, until President Brooks had rescued it from the politicians, expanding and raising it to new respectability on the same site many years later. The game had become solidly rooted since Jack Harts had planted the first tiny sprig in Bud Risinger's Main Street barber shop in 1895. It would grow even more phenomenally in the second quarter century ending in 1944.

Will's early years were much like those of other children in ranch houses or on farms. He rarely went to town because there were no towns near. Vinita, thirty miles east, was a straggling Indian village on the prairie, Old Claremore was a tiny cluster of stores on the stage route from Vinita to Albuquerque, and Tulsa was then only a switch. But Will was not interested in towns, and cared only for ranch life. There were so many fascinating things to do on his father's farm that the days were not long enough to get all of them done.

His full name was Terence F. Rafferty, and I guess the "F" stood for fiery because that's the kind of fellow he was. Fiery and speedy and tiny and tough. And emotional. When the coach wouldn't start him, his freckled face would go under a cloud and he'd start blinking, and big tears would come rolling out of his eyes until it would get so wet in our dressing room that everybody wished they had fins instead of feet. We called him Red. You couldn't have called him anything else.