3 Army A’s, Team Captain as a Cow, and Assistant Coach under Earl Blaik in the Fall of 1950.
Bill Yeoman first appeared on the college football scene as a 17-year old freshman at Texas A&M in 1945. He won a letter. He received an appointment to West Point.
Yeoman, 6 foot 2, 200 pounds, played center for Army 1946-48. He was captain in 1948. Army had a 22-2-4 record in his time. Yeoman served in the Army 1950-53.
He returned to civilian life and was assistant coach at Michigan State 1954-61. In 1962 he became head coach at the University of Houston, a job he held for 25 years.
Houston started football in 1946 and had received no national recognition before Yeoman arrived. He turned the program into a winner. Yeoman invented the veer formation. For three straight years Houston led the nation in total offense, averaging 437 yards a game in 1966, 427 in 1967, and 562 in 1968. The 1968 total was an NCAA record at the time. Houston also led the nation in scoring, 42.5 points a game that year.
Yeoman nicknamed his defensive unit the Mad Dog Defense. The Cougars were 5th in the nation in the final poll in 1979, 4th in 1968. Houston joined the Southwest Conference in 1976. In 11 years Yeoman won four conference championships -in 1976, 1978, 1979, and 1984. His overall record was 160-108-8. In a 20-year stretch 1965-84 the record was 144-73-7. His teams went to 11 bowls.
Yeoman served the post season as coach in the Blue-Gray, Shrine East-West, and Hula Games. Bill Yeoman was born December 26, 1927, in Elnora, Indiana. He attended Glendale, Arizona, High School.
His Cougars went 5-4-1 in Post Season Bowl Play.
Bill Yeoman was inducted into the Houston Hall of Honor in 1998 and into the National Football Fondation’s College Hall of Fame in 2001
Football’s Greatest Decade
– – by Bernie Mcarty – http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/CFHSN/CFHSNv01/CFHSNv01n1b – – see page 5
This writer believes West Point 1945 is the greatest team of all time. The 1944 Army team may actually deserve that title, but it was never tested. Army was also undefeated in 1946, 1948 and 1949.
Army’s top stars during 1945-1949 were the effulgent “Touchdown Twins”, Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard, Arnold Tucker, Arnold Galiffa, Rip Rowan, Bobby Jack Stuart and Gil Stephenson in the back-field, and up front Joe Steffy, Art Gerometta, Jack Green, Bill Yeoman, Joe Henry “Tex” Coulter,Al Nemetz, and the sterling end duo of Hank Foldberg and Barney Poole.
In 1945 the Newspaper Enterprise Assoc. simply picked the entire Army team as its All-American team, stating no group of All-Americans could beat the Cadets. Only a world war could have brought together such a collection of players to one institution. But it took the coaching genius of Col. Earl Blaik to mold the players into a cohesive unit. In truth, Navy personnel was equal to Army’s on an individual basis. The Middies never jelled as a team, however.
The 1951 Army outfit might have been as good as the 1945 Cadets, but the infamous cribbing scandal wiped out the team.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Yeoman
For What They Gave on Saturday Afternoon 