Earl Campbell: The Tyler Rose

Football towns are common in Texas. But Tyler, Texas produced one who stood apart even by Texas standards. Earl Christian Campbell was born on March twenty-ninth, nineteen fifty-five, the son of a rose-growing family in Smith County, and grew into one of the most physically punishing running backs the game of football has ever seen.

At John Tyler High School he was already drawing serious attention. At the University of Texas he carried the Longhorns' offense on his back, rushing for one thousand seven hundred and forty-four yards in his senior season of nineteen seventy-seven to lead the nation, and winning the Heisman Trophy, the sport's most prestigious individual honor. His combination of breakaway speed and collision-seeking power was, in the understanding of coaches and defenders alike, unusual.

The Houston Oilers selected him first overall in the nineteen seventy-eight NFL Draft. He won NFL Rookie of the Year that same season, then named the league's Offensive Player of the Year in each of his first three seasons. During that stretch he averaged nearly seventeen hundred rushing yards per year.

He played in the era of the Oilers' Luv Ya Blue enthusiasm, a franchise moment for Houston football that Campbell's production largely created. His jersey number thirty-four was retired by the Oilers in nineteen eighty-seven. On July twenty-seventh, nineteen ninety-one, Campbell was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

The award given annually to the top running back in college football is now named the Earl Campbell Tyler Rose Award, linking his name permanently to the city and the flower that both claim him as their own.