anybody know bennie cotton ?

[Bigblue07]

i read about him on the abc primetime website, they interviewed him for the special theyre airing tonight over texas high school football.
I was just wondering if anybody on here knew cause he sounds like a really cool guy.

[JKLL]

From the Port Arthur News

Texas Sports HOF displays Cotton as top schoolboy fan

"If I can't work it out to see at least three games on a Friday and Saturday, I consider it to be a lost weekend" -- Bennie Cotton

By BOB WEST - PORT ARTHUR NEWS SPORTS EDITOR

As the curator of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, Jay Black knows a legend when he sees one. That's why he's created a first-of- its-kind exhibit at the Waco facility to acknowledge Orangefield's Bennie Cotton as the king of schoolboy football fans in a state where football is unchallenged as the king.

"The guy is amazing," said Black, who made a recent trip to Orangefield to gather material for the exhibit which is to open today. "I am constantly around sports fans and people who know a lot about sports and he is by far the biggest sports fan I have ever met."

Is he ever!

Cotton, 71, has spent fall Friday and Saturday nights for the past 43 years, as well as some Thursday nights and many Saturday afternoons, traveling Texas to watch high school football. Name a town in the state with a team and a stadium -- from 6-man to 5A -- and chances are good he's been in the stands for at least one game.

From Orangefield to Odessa, from Beaumont to Breckenridge, from Chester to Canadian, from Anahuac to Amarillo, Bennie Cotton's eaten barbecue, digested football and made friends. He's particularly big in Odessa, where former Permian coach Gary Gaines sent a signed football from a state championship team for his retirement party at DuPont in West Orange.

"I love high school football and the people who are involved with it," Cotton says. "I'm convinced the coaches in particular have more of the right attitude about life than you'll find in the business world. These guys that coach 30 or 40 years influence a lot of kids. For most of them, it's a very positive influence."

Cotton, a 1948 Orangefield graduate, can't tell you how many schoolboy games he's attended, but he can pinpoint the exact number of schools he's seen in the act of blocking and tackling. The number is 736 and counting. That's up from 730 when the 2003 season started. The latest additions are Chisum and Aquilla, which competes in 6-man football.

Black is able to provide some insight into the total number of games. One of his exhibits in the Cotton display is a box stacked with programs from the games he attended in 1999. As he's done every year, Bennie wrote the final score and other observations on the programs before filing them away.

Black counted 62 different game programs from the 1999 season, or an average of four games per week. Being conservative and saying he's averaged 50 games over those 43 years as a full-time fan, the number you arrive at is 2,050 games. That, of course, isn't counting all the Orangefield games he saw before and after a stint in the Korean War.

And before the revelation.

"One day it just hit me that there were teams all over Texas that I had never seen and needed to see," he said. "It just became a passion. I wanted to see the great programs -- at all levels -- and the student support and the fan participation. Man, it's been a real experience.

"You go to those small towns, especially in North and West Texas, and everything revolves around the high school football team. To those people, football is NOT the Dallas Cowboys. Football is the school in the town where they live. They close down the towns for a high school football game."

For Bennie, who used to use vacation days for football travel when he was employed at DuPont, the greatest time of the year is the state playoffs. With doubleheaders and sometimes tripleheaders scheduled at the same stadium, November and December weekends are absolute nirvana. His record is seven games in one weekend. Once, because of the distances that had to be traveled, he went 49 hours without sleeping.

"Most of the time, I can't sleep when I'm on the road," said Cotton. "I'm too excited, thinking about the next game I'm going to see. I usually don't have time to stay in motels. If I get really tired, I'll pull over and take a nap."

The purity of Cotton's devotion to high school football hit home with Black when he was trying to decide on the best time to open the Hall of Fame exhibit. He opted for a Friday afternoon during the playoffs, hoping for a large media turnout to trumpet Bennie as the state's No. 1 schoolboy fan. Unfortunately, the timing was all wrong for the honoree.

Cotton politely declined the chance to be the star of his own show, saying he couldn't commit to anything in Waco on a playoff weekend because there were games in other places he needed to see. So now Black is hoping that one or two of the December state championship games will be scheduled for Waco, thus creating an opportunity to stage a press conference with Bennie.

"It's a great honor and I appreciate what they are doing for me," says Cotton. "But I couldn't give up going to playoff games. When Jay set the date some time back, I didn't know where I was going to be on Nov. 21."

The decision, in fact, was not finalized until Thursday.

For the record, he was in Tyler for Forney against Carthage on Thursday night. Tonight he'll be in Huntsville for Waco Connally-Jasper, then it's Humble-North Shore Saturday afternoon in Humble and Washington-Katy Saturday night at Aldine's Thorne Stadium. Just your typical four-game weekend.

Most of the time, Cotton travels alone. Marilynn, his very understanding wife of 48 years, used to make an occasional trip, but rarely goes on the road any more. They will, however, head to Clovis, N.M., together next week to visit their youngest daughter and two grandchildren for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Bennie, of course, will catch three or four games after turkey, as he always does.

"Clovis is just a few miles from the Texas Panhandle," he said. "I'll be able to run all over the Panhandle and watch several playoff games. Those fans have seen me so often they probably think I live out there somewhere."

Due to his distinctive cap, Cotton tends to draw attention from football fans everywhere he goes. The 14-year-old headwear started out featuring the names and school colors of the 50 winningest programs in the state. He's since added more schools and is constantly being sweet talked by fans who want to see their favorite team on the cap.

"It's quite a conversation piece," he said. "People remember me when they see the cap."

Although Cotton is unique in his pursuit of high school football, there are others like him. He's in frequent contact with a group of four he calls the "football hounds." They doggedly pursue the game with a similar passion but are several hundred games behind him.

The fraternity includes David Reed of Plano, Paul Crunk of Fort Worth, Bob Downtain of Hurst and Carl Leone of Richmond. Over the years they kept running into each other at games, began comparing notes and developed a five-way friendship that led to weekly phone calls.

"We talk about coaches, which teams are playing well and the games that are worth going to see," Cotton said. "It's a big help to me because they all have computers and get information off the Internet. I'm an old recluse out here in Orangefield and I don't use a computer. I used to keep up by subscribing to about 10 newspapers but that got too expensive."

Computer or not, Cotton, whose other passion is the study of European history, is well organized. With the help of Texas Football magazine and a UIL schedule book, he sits down every August and maps out a color-coded schedule matrix of games that look attractive during the regular season. Then, after conversing with the other football hounds early in the week, he narrows down his choices for weekend viewing.

Rarely are the game selections based on going to see a great individual player. Nor does he go out of his way to add a team he hasn't previously seen. For Bennie Cotton, it's more about good coaching, quality teams and intriguing matchups.

Distance is rarely a factor. More than once, he's driven the 605 miles to Lowery Field in Lubbock.

"It's 12 hard hours, provided I don't stop to talk to anybody" he said.

If a matchup he likes is in Bivens Stadium in Amarillo, that's where he heads. When Gaines was coaching in Odessa, that West Texas city was one of his favorite places. The destination just as easily could be Snyder. Or Junction, where he claims you get the best hamburger in Texas. Or Wink. Or Spur.

Spur, incidentally, holds a special attraction for him because of what he considers one of the three most unusual stadiums in the state. The other two are in Chester and Cristoval.

"Spur's stadium only has seats on one side, like the stadium in Chester," he said. "It was built by the CCC before World War II and it has a big bronze plaque set in stone that tells the story of the construction and who was involved. Visiting coaches make it a point to check out the plaque."

Always along for the ride on Cotton's trips is his prize signature book. Before or after every game he attends, he asks both head coaches to sign the book. He then fills in their backgrounds. The book currently has 108 pages crammed with names and notes. You won't see it in the Hall of Fame display because Bennie never lets it out of his sight.

The centerpiece of the Cotton display, meanwhile, is a large map of the state of Texas. In it, Black has stuck in a push pin to designate every city in which Bennie has attended a game. It's mind-boggling to look at the map and think of all the driving that was involved.

Miles driven, incidentally, is the one thing about his high school football odyssey Bennie Cotton won't discuss.

"I never think about it," he says. "I don't know and I don't want to know. I think it would scare me."

the Port Arthur News,