By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

Somewhat begrudgingly, Bill Hicks admitted that he "cried like a baby" when he got the call about being elected to the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame.

"I hadn't done that in years," said the 77-year-old Hicks, part of the Hall of Fame class that will be inducted this Friday and honored during Saturday's 7 p.m. Homecoming game against West Virginia.

Hicks, an All-Southwest Conference center in 1961 and named to Baylor football's All-Decade Team of the 1960s, returned to his alma mater for 13 years as a defensive assistant (1969-81) in a coaching career that spanned six decades.

"I told Walter (Abercrombie), I don't know that I deserve it as a player, but I promise you this, there's no one that appreciates it any more than I do," Hicks said of his conversation with the "B" Association executive director. "I don't think anybody in the world loves Baylor any more than I do. . . . I told my wife, Iris, ‘I can die now.'

"What more could a man ask for than to have a great family, a great career, great friends? And now, to top it all off with the cherry on top with this great honor, it's just so meaningful, and I appreciate it more than anyone will know."

Growing up in Little Rock, Ark., Hicks was at Central High School during the controversial 1957 integration where both the Arkansas National Guard and 101st Airborne were called in.

"When you're in the middle of something like that, you don't even realize that you're a part of history," he said.

Starting both ways, Hicks was part of Central High's 33-game winning streak and three consecutive state championships, culminating with the '57 team winning the mythical national championship.

He also won the state championship in the shot put and discus for then-track coach Clyde Hart.

"Here I was gloating about winning state in Arkansas. I think I threw it like 48 or 49 feet (in the shot put)," Hicks said. "And I remember Clyde bringing me a clipping of a newspaper in Texas that had Randy Mattson winning the Texas state championship and threw over 60 feet. That kind of popped my balloon."

Hicks nearly followed his high school football coach, Wilson Matthews, to the University of Arkansas. But instead, he signed with Baylor.

"I was the bad egg that left Arkansas, which you just didn't do," he said. "Momma sent me down to Kroger's to get a loaf of bread. This was right after I signed with Baylor. And this old boy in overalls - I had never seen him before -came up to me and started cussing me. He said, ‘You have no right to leave the state of Arkansas. We educated you, we raised you, and you go off and sign with Baylor?'''

He was part of a 1958 freshman team that included running back Ronnie Bull, quarterback Ronnie Stanley and fellow lineman Herby Adkins. Along with Hicks, that trio earned All-SWC honors and helped the Bears get to the 1960 Gator Bowl and the Gotham Bowl the next year as seniors.

As part of the one-platoon era, Hicks played center and linebacker for the Bears.

"It's a different game now, everything's so specialized," he said. "I hate to see it as a coach. In some of these big high schools now, they almost demand that a kid choose one sport and then they put him at one position. Sometimes, kids are still maturing and developing, and you don't know what their best talents are and what their best position might be. We're trying to put them in a hole too early, I think."

Coming to Baylor, Hicks' plan was to follow his dad into the ministry and work specifically with youth, even getting his degree in psychology.

But, he stayed on at Baylor as a graduate assistant, working with the freshman football team while finishing up his education classes to teach history and English.

"I didn't know much about anything, but I knew a little more about football than I did anything else," said Hicks, who had a 3.64 GPA at Baylor. "That was kind of the way I entered into coaching. And I wouldn't trade my coaching career for a million dollars."

After the two years as a GA at Baylor, Hicks went on to coach at Texas A&I and West Virginia before coming back as the defensive line coach for the Bears under Bill Beall.

"I kind of kick myself for those three years. We only won three ballgames," Hicks said. "I thought I was going to have to go into the insurance business or something."

Instead, he was one of three assistants retained by Grant Teaff. Hicks coached 10 more years at Baylor, helping the Bears win Southwest Conference titles in 1974 and '81.

"His ability to relate to youngsters made him one of the best coached I had," Teaff said. "The players loved him. He's very good at teaching techniques. He loves the game and he loves coaching."

After three years as the head coach at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, Hicks coached the defensive line at the University of Texas with both Fred Akers and David McWilliams.

"I remember Donell Teaff called and congratulated me when she heard we had gone down to Texas," Hicks said of Teaff's wife. "And she said, ‘Bill, you're Baylor-born and Baylor-bred, I hope you don't have a heart attack the first time you put on that orange and white.'''

Taking a different route than most, Hicks spent his last 15 years at the high school level with stops at San Angelo Lakeview, Victoria Stroman, Midland Lee and Amarillo High before retiring in 2007. Then, when he got a call during his 50th anniversary cruise to Alaska with his wife, Hicks came back for one year as the linebackers coach at Midland Lee in 2013.

"I think once you coach, you're always a coach, I don't care where you go," he said.

Hicks calls his 10-year stint as the ninth-grade coach at Amarillo "probably my best years."

"Now, maybe I related to that age a little more," Hicks said with a chuckle. "They thought I was some kind of guru since I had coached in college, and they would listen to me. But, I really enjoyed working with those 15-year-old kids."

Since his second retirement, Bill and his wife now live at a home in Pilot Point, Texas, on the east side of Lake Ray Roberts.

"I've got two acres, just enough to kind of keep me busy trimming trees and that sort of thing," he said. "We're back in the country where there's water and trees. . . . Do I miss coaching? Yes. Do I miss the kids? Yes. But, from 11 o'clock Saturday morning to 11 o'clock at night, I'm in my chair and trying to figure out what I would do to pass rush the spread offense and how I would try to stop this and stop that."

In other words, he's still coaching.

Joining Hicks in the 2017 Hall of Fame class are fellow football player Ron Francis, 2004 NCAA tennis champion Benjamin Becker, Steffanie Blackmon off the 2005 women's basketball national championship team, track stars Jeff Jackson, Bill Payne and Jennifer Jordan Washington and women's golfer Melanie Hagewood Willhite.

In addition to Friday's Hall of Fame banquet at the Waco Convention Center, the inductees will ride in Saturday morning's Homecoming parade and then be introduced at the end of the first quarter of Saturday night's football game versus 23rd-ranked West Virginia.