By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            As an all-district, All-Metro and All-East Texas defensive back at South Garland High School who was also the Colonels' starting quarterback, placekicker and kick returner, Ken Quesenberry was being recruited by the who's who of college football coaches. 

            But on a recruiting visit to the University of Texas, Longhorn All-American center Bill Wyman showed up at Quesenberry's hotel to take him to the airport on Sunday morning instead of the traditional visit with the head coach and an expected scholarship offer. 

            "Had they offered me a scholarship, I would have accepted it that day," Quesenberry said. "I flew back, and all the way home I got so mad that by the time I got off the plane, I said, 'I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going somewhere where I can beat Texas.'''

            That turned out to be Baylor. 

            In his third year with the Bears, "Quiz" was the starting safety on the 1974 "Miracle on the Brazos" team that knocked off 12^th-ranked Texas, 34-24, en route to the school's first conference championship in 50 years. 

            "I ran into Coach (Darrell) Royal a few years after I graduated," said Quesenberry, part of the Baylor Athletics 2023 Hall of Fame class. "At the time, I was dating a former Texas cheerleader who was good friends with him. We went up to the press box, and she introduced me to Coach Royal. And he said, 'Oh, I remember you. We missed on you.'''

            Part of Grant Teaff's first recruiting class in 1972, Quesenberry wasn't initially interested in Baylor at all because the Bears had won just three games in the previous three seasons under Bill Beall. "And nobody knew who (Teaff) was," when he was hired from Angelo State. 

            "My high school coach (James "Jocko" Harris) told me there was a Baylor coach here to see me," Quesenberry said. "I said, 'Coach, I'm going to work out, can you just tell him I'm not interested?' And he said, 'Well, I think you need to tell him that yourself.' I walk into the coach's office, and it was (BU assistant and former NFL quarterback) Cotton Davidson standing there. Cotton was a boyhood hero of mine. I had Cotton's signed chinstrap. We went out and threw the ball together, and I agreed to come down for a visit."

            Teaff was the closer on that visit, telling Quesenberry "We've been holding this scholarship for you, but we can't hold it forever."

            "I found out later that they were struggling to find anybody back then. They couldn't give scholarships away," he said. "But he got me with this, he said, 'If you come here, they will never forget you. You're going to be a part of a foundation of a winning program for years to come. And Baylor will never forget you.' And guess what, they're going to remember me."

            The 10th player off that 1974 team to be elected to the Baylor Hall of Fame, "Quiz" calls it a "team award."

            "It was a long time coming, but I understand why. And it's the right time," he said. "I'm just so grateful to Baylor and so grateful to the 'B' Association. I just want everyone to know that this is a team award. I've got a lot of guys out there that didn't start or didn't play that much, but they are just as much a part of this as the other Hall of Famers. And I love every one of them."

            Growing up in Garland, "Quiz" oftentimes shadowed his father, A.K. "Quizzy" Quesenberry, a coach in Dallas ISD who was also the public address announcer at the Cotton Bowl in the 1960s for the Dallas Cowboys, SMU football, Texas-Oklahoma and the New Year's Day bowl game. 

            "I watched some of those great SMU teams in the mid and late '60s, the Hayden Fry-coached teams," he said. "And a lot of guys who played Division I ball, I saw play in Dallas high school games. So, it was kind of an evolution for me. Even in high school, they said I had an instinct for the game. I don't know if that can be coached or not, but it was certainly developed in my case."

            With Baylor coming off a 2-9 season and last-place finish in the Southwest Conference in 1973, the cover story for Texas Monthly going into the next season chronicled the impending death of the private schools, specifically Baylor, TCU, Rice and SMU in the old Southwest Conference. The cover had an animated picture of a football player in a casket. 

            "I remember the casket and that magazine article," Quesenberry said. "And Coach Teaff, of course, remembered it, too."

            Quesenberry said none of them really knew how good that 1974 Baylor team would be, but the Bears went through three-a-day workouts that summer on the hot Astroturf at the old Baylor Stadium and "we came back stronger, we came back faster and we came back determined that we were not going to be a losing team."

            "I don't know that any of us thought we would win the championship," said Quesenberry, an All-SWC pick in 1974 when he had three interceptions. "Even though we started out 0-2, we had been beaten by Oklahoma, the defending national champion, and Missouri beat us on a punt return for a touchdown. We knew we had something special if we could get over the hump and start winning a game or two. And that's what happened."

            The Bears were a modest 4-3 overall and 2-1 in conference play when they rallied from a 24-7 halftime deficit to knock off the Longhorns, 34-24, on Nov. 9, 1974. 

            "They weren't just killing us. They came out in two tight ends and they were running the wishbone and just kind of moving us down the field," Quesenberry said. "We made a halftime adjustment and basically had a nine-man front with the two safeties covering the tight ends. We had them on their heels. And by the time they started throwing, it was too late. I remember they left the scoreboard on all night."

            Despite suffering a torn ACL in the third quarter of a 41-20 loss to Penn State in the Cotton Bowl, Quesenberry had 12 tackles and an interception to earn Defensive MVP honors. He was named to the all-decade team of the 1970s for Baylor and the Cotton Bowl. 

            "I had surgery, but they just cleaned it out. They didn't really know how to repair it back then," he said. "It was either play or not play, and I wanted to play because I thought I might have a chance to go to the next level. And it just wasn't going to happen. I lost my lateral quickness. Nevertheless, we talk about it all the time with my teammates about our artificial knees and artificial hips. And to a man, we would do it again."

            Graduating in 1976, "Quiz" struggled with substance abuse issues until 2010, when he found his way back and "I gave it to God."

            "When you're an alcoholic or an addict, it can get you. And it did me," said Quesenberry, who's based in Tulsa, Okla., with his wife, Polly, and serves as Field Services Marketing Manager for Recovery Healthcare Corporation. "I got on my knees one day in August of 2010, and I said, 'God, please help me. I don't want to live like this.'''

            Quesenberry, who got the Hall of Fame call this summer from his teammate and longtime friend Ricky Thompson, said he's going to "absorb it and enjoy it" when he's inducted on Nov. 3. 

            "I'm going to remember it, and I know it's just going to be a wonderful thing," he said. "I'm going in with some great athletes and people of character. And now, I'm one of those. To be honored this way by Baylor University and the 'B' Association is beyond belief and more than anything I could have ever imagined."

            Joining Quesenberry in this year's Hall of Fame class are fellow football player J.D. Walton, track and field's Stan Curry, Sandy Forsythe Massey and Tiffany Townsend, tennis All-American Denes Lukacs, baseball's Max Muncy and longtime Baylor basketball color analyst Pat Nunley. 

            Tickets to the Nov. 3 banquet at Baylor's Cashion Building Banquet Room are $50 per person, with table sponsorships also available at the green ($600) and gold ($800) levels, and can be purchased by contacting the "B" Association at 254-710-3045 or by email at tammy_hardin@baylor.edu.