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The Texas high school football season has entered week 7, and the Texas Longhorns’ current commits are all over half-way through with their season as they prepare for important district games and await Saturday’s Red River Rivalry game, one most of them will be watching as future Longhorns for the first time.
This week’s schedule is not replete with high-profile matchups, but California tight end commit Spencer Shannon will be playing in the country’s most high-profile game of the season thus far, as his Mater Dei team will be part of a contest between the nation’s top two ranked high school teams.
In last week’s games, Arch Manning had his best statistical performance of his senior year, and he passed his famous uncles in a pair of all-time stats categories for their high school.
Hunter Moddon contributed in all three phases of a game his team won in double-overtime.
Andre Cojoe helped lead his team to a big win over its toughest district opponent, and they look poised for their first undefeated regular season in school history.
The same may also happen for S’Maje Burrell’s team, which is having its best season in nearly two decades and will play an undefeated opponent on Friday with their district’s eventual championship likely on the line.
In a less positive development, the Longhorns’ 2023 class lost wide receiver Jonah Wilson, who re-opened his recruitment last Saturday after having been committed to Texas since June.
For the team’s remaining 24 commits (minus the two who are out for the season due to injury), the 2022 season moves along and the playoffs are a week closer. Hawaii linebacker commit Liona Lefau will begin his playoff run before any of the other future Longhorns, as his team’s regular season ends this week.
After you’ve been updated on how the 2022 season is going for each of UT’s commits, you can read this column’s weekly series on history lesson on a standout Longhorn from the late 19th century who went on to become one of Oklahoma’s earliest head football coaches.
The start times listed for each game below are according to their local time zone.
2023 QB Arch Manning — New Orleans (Louisiana) Isidore Newman
Last week: Completed 17 of 28 passes for 356 yards and 7 touchdowns in a 52-22 win over Pearl River (Louisiana).
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, at Belle Chasse (Louisiana)
Arch Manning averaged a touchdown pass for every four attempts last Friday in his team’s 52-22 win over Pearl River. In passing for 356 yards and 7 touchdowns, he reportedly broke Isidore Newman’s school records for career passing yards and touchdowns, which had previously been held by his uncles Eli and Peyton Manning. Arch’s MaxPreps page now credits him with 101 passing TDs for his varsity career, along with 18 rushing scores.
He is now within reach of the school’s all-time records for total touchdowns (127) and total offensive yards (8,681), both of which are held by former Newman QB-turned-Stanford wide receiver Jay Tyler.
Newman is 4-1 for the season and has one more non-district game before playing its three district foes. On Friday, the Greenies will be on the road against an undefeated Belle Chasse team, which competes in Class 3A and was 12th in the power ratings for Non-Select Division I teams as of last week. Newman is currently rated 4th among Select Division III teams.
2023 RB Cedric Baxter Jr. — Orlando (Florida) Edgewater
Last week: No game.
This week: Thursday, October 6 at 7:00, vs. Orlando (Florida) Timber Creek
Apparently it takes a hurricane to slow down Cedric Baxter’s production on the football field. Edgewater’s game against Apopka Wekiva was originally scheduled for last Friday, then was postponed to Monday due to the impending landfall of Hurricane Ian, then after heavy rains fell on the Orlando area late last week the game was postponed to a later date. The two teams are district opponents, so the game will have to be played at some point.
Both Edgewater and Wekiva have a bye week scheduled for the final weekend of October, so that would seem to be the week that would make the most sense for a make-up game, but Edgewater’s MaxPreps schedule shows a new date with Wekiva on Monday, October 10, which would be four days after tonight’s game against a 2-3 Timber Creek team, and four days before their game scheduled for Friday of next week.
2023 RB Tre Wisner — DeSoto
2023 WR Johntay Cook II — DeSoto
Last week: Bye
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, vs. Mansfield Legacy
DeSoto is 4-1 coming off of its bye week and ranked 11th in Class 6A. The Eagles will host a 3-2 Mansfield Legacy team that also had its bye last week, and in its most recent game won 19-7 over a Dallas Skyline team that DeSoto had beaten 63-0 the week before.
2024 WR Hunter Moddon — Houston Clear Lake
Last Week: Caught 3 passes for 19 yards, had 2 carries for 18 yards, returned 2 punts for 46 yards, and intercepted a pass in 32-30 double-overtime win over League City Clear Creek.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, vs. Friendswood Clear Brook
Clear Lake improved to 4-1 for the season and started off district play 1-0 with a 32-30 double-overtime win against Clear Creek. On Friday, the Clear Lake Falcons will host a Clear Brook team that is winless at 0-6 this season, and has lost 11 of its last 12 games dating back to 2021.
2023 WR Ryan Niblett — Aldine Eisenhower
Last week: Team beat Aldine Nimitz 46-21.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, at Aldine MacArthur
Ryan Niblett and the Eisenhower Eagles got their first win of 2022 last week, beating fellow Aldine ISD school Nimitz by a 46-21 score. Eisenhower is now 1-4 for the season and 1-1 in district play.
On Friday, the Eagles will face a 2-3 Aldine MacArthur team that is likewise 1-1 in district, and which beat Nimitz 30-6 two weeks ago. Eisenhower won last year’s matchup with MacArthur 42-7, and has won 13 of the last 15 games in that rivalry.
2023 TE Will Randle — New Orleans (Louisiana) Isidore Newman
Tore ACL during a game on Sept. 16 and will miss the rest of the season.
2023 TE Spencer Shannon — Santa Ana (California) Mater Dei
Last week: Caught one pass for 7 yards in a 21-13 win over San Juan Capistrano (California) JSerra Catholic.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:30, vs. Bellflower (California) St. John Bosco
Spencer Shannon caught his first pass of the season last week in Mater Dei’s closer-than-expected 21-13 win over JSerra Catholic. Mater Dei’s win ensured that this week’s game against St. John Bosco would be a matchup of the #1 and #2 teams in the country.
The USA Today Super 25 national rankings have Mater Dei at #1 and St. John Bosco at #2, while MaxPreps ranks them in the opposite order. This will be the 40th time the two schools have played each other on a football field, and not the first time they have met as the top two teams in national rankings.
California high school stadiums tend to be on the small side by Texas standards, and Mater Dei’s home stadium seats only about 9,000. Last month, the teams were offered the use of SoFi Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers and a venue with over 70,000 seats. It would have been the first high school game played at SoFi Stadium, which opened in 2020, but Mater Dei officials elected to keep the game at their home stadium. Predictably, the game has already been announced as a sellout.
According to MaxPreps’s preview of the game, Mater Dei and St. John Bosco between them have 48 players who are prospects graded with three stars or more by 247Sports.
2023 OL Jaydon Chatman — Killeen Harker Heights
Last week: Team beat Waco Midway 24-13.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:30, at Hutto
Harker Heights improved to 5-1 overall and 2-0 in district play following its 24-13 win over Waco Midway a week ago. The Knights travel to play 3-2 Hutto on Friday. Hutto had a bye last week and lost to Midway 48-37 in its most recent game on September 23.
A win would give Harker Heights a 3-0 district record with three games remaining, and would do a lot to ensure that the Knights reach the playoffs for a fourth straight season.
2023 OL Andre Cojoe — Mansfield Timberview
Last week: Team beat North Richland Hills Birdville 54-28.
This week: Bye
Mansfield Timberview remained unbeaten with a 6-0 record after its 54-28 win over Birdville last week. Timberview outgained Birdville 540-280, with a 389-28 advantage in rushing yardage. Based on its 2022 resume, Birdville is, at worst, the third-best team in District 5-5A Division I. Having beaten the Birdville Hawks, Timberview’s only real obstacle remaining on the way to its first undefeated regular season in school history is an October 28 game against a Richland team that is currently 5-0.
The Wolves are ranked second in Class 5A Division I and have a bye this week before resuming district play in the following weeks with games against a pair of 1-5 teams: Dallas Molina and Dallas Sunset.
Interestingly, MaxPreps’s ratings for Class 5A Division I agree with TexasFootball.com and put Longview at the top, but it ranks Timberview 15th and Denton Ryan (Texas Football’s #3 team) all the way down at 18th, dinging both teams for a very weak strength of schedule.
2023 OL Trevor Goosby — Melissa
Last week: Bye
This week: Thursday, October 6 at 7:00, at Mesquite Poteet
At the midpoint of their first season as a Class 5A program, the Melissa Cardinals are 3-2 and have a 2-0 district record. The five teams left on their schedule have a combined season record of 10-15.
The Cardinals are coming off their bye week and will begin the second half of their regular season tonight against 1-4 Mesquite Poteet. Poteet also had its bye last week, and in its most recent game lost 54-7 on September 23 to a Crandall team that Melissa had beaten 50-22 the week before.
2023 OL Payton Kirkland — Orlando (Florida) Dr. Phillips
Last week: Bye
This week: Thursday, October 6 at 7:00, vs. Orlando (Florida) Lake Nona
Hurricane Ian resulted in a lot of high school football games in central Florida being postponed or canceled last week, but Payton Kirkland’s Dr. Phillips team was not affected by that, as they had a scheduled bye week. The Dr. Phillips Panthers are 2-3 for the season, and are scheduled to play tonight against a 2-2 Lake Nona team that has had a long layoff with Hurricane Ian making landfall on the Florida coast the weekend after its bye week. The Lake Nona Lions have not played a game since September 16.
2023 OL Connor Stroh — Frisco Wakeland
Last week: Bye
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, vs. Frisco Liberty
Wakeland scored a 38-10 upset win over state-ranked Frisco Lone Star in its most recent game two weeks ago. Coming off their bye week, the 2-3 Wakeland Wolverines will look to even their record on Friday night against a Frisco Liberty team that lost to Lone Star 69-14 last week. Liberty went 10-2 just last year, but is winless six games into its 2022 schedule and has been outscored by 36 points per game.
Liberty beat Wakeland 66-0 the last time the two teams played in 2019, but Wakeland leads the all-time series 7-5.
2023 DL Sydir Mitchell — Oradell (New Jersey) Bergen Catholic
Last week: Made 2 sacks, forced a fumble, and recovered a fumble in a 35-7 win over Wayne (New Jersey) DePaul Catholic.
This week: Bye
The Bergen Catholic Crusaders bounced back after their first loss of the season by beating DePaul Catholic 35-7 last week. Notably, Bergen and DePaul are coached by brothers Vito and Nick Campanile, respectively. You know you’re a high school football player in New Jersey if your head coach is named Vito or has a brother with that name.
Bergen Catholic is 5-1 for the season and is ranked third in the state according to this week’s USA Today Network rankings. The Crusaders have a bye this week and will play the first of their three remaining regular season games on October 15.
2023 DL Dylan Spencer — Houston C.E. King
Last week: Made 7 tackles (4 for loss) and 2 sacks in a 38-3 loss to Galena Park North Shore.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, vs. Humble Kingwood
Dylan Spencer produced a very admirable stat line in his team’s 38-3 loss last week to North Shore, the top-ranked team in Class 6A.
The King Panthers are 3-2 overall and 1-1 in district play, and their games have had very little drama. Their three wins have come by an average margin of 38 points, and in both of their losses they were outscored by exactly 35 points.
On Friday, King will face a Kingwood team that is 4-1 overall with a 1-1 district record. Its only loss of the season was a 56-0 blowout two weeks ago at the hands of Humble Atascocita, currently ranked 7th in Class 6A.
2023 EDGE Derion Gullette — Teague
Injured - out for 2022 season
2023 EDGE Billy Walton — Dallas South Oak Cliff
2023 CB Malik Muhammad — Dallas South Oak Cliff
Last week: Team beat Dallas Spruce 48-0.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:30, at Dallas Kimball
South Oak Cliff evened its season record at 3-3 last week after a sloppy but still easy 48-0 win over Spruce. SOC was penalized 12 times for 90 yards and committed three turnovers, but outgained Spruce 317-38.
Having put together a three-game winning streak after opening the season with three straight losses to quality 6A and 5A Division I teams, SOC re-entered the state rankings this week and is now 10th in Class 5A Division II.
SOC is 2-0 in district play, and on Friday night will play a Dallas Kimball team that is 2-3 overall. Kimball beat Spruce 34-29 two weeks ago, then had its bye last week.
2023 LB S’Maje Burrell — North Crowley
Last week: Bye
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:30, vs. Saginaw Boswell
North Crowley is 5-0 and in the midst of its best season in several years. The Panthers had their bye last week, and crept into the state rankings for Class 6A for the first time this week, sliding in at #24. Standing in the way of the Panthers’ first undefeated regular season in school history is Friday’s opponent, 5-0 Saginaw Boswell. Boswell is seeking its first undefeated regular season since 1996, and has outscored each of its first five opponents by at least 19 points.
The North Crowley-Boswell matchup on Friday night will most likely decide the champion of District 3-6A. Hurst L.D. Bell is also 5-0, but doesn’t have a resume as impressive as North Crowley or Boswell.
2023 LB Liona Lefau — Kahuku (Hawaii)
Last week: Team lost to Baltimore (Maryland) St. Frances Academy 22-15.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:30, at Honolulu (Hawaii) Moanalua
Facing a nationally-ranked opponent for the second time in three weeks, the Kahuku Red Raiders held a late lead and nearly pulled off an upset, but were foiled by a last-minute touchdown.
The Red Raiders played host to Baltimore powerhouse St. Frances Academy (ranked 3rd in the nation by both MaxPreps and USA Today) last Friday in a game that kicked off at 1:00 am Eastern Time. The game was a defensive struggle for much of its length. The game was tied 8-8 at halftime, and Kahuku took its first lead early in the 4th quarter after going on a 99-yard scoring drive that put them ahead 15-8. The Red Raiders then recovered the ball on a squib kick on the ensuing kickoff to immediately get the ball back at the St. Frances 24-yard line. But a few plays later St. Frances recovered a fumble and returned it 75 yards for a touchdown, though they were unsuccessful on a two-point conversion attempt and Kahuku maintained a 15-14 lead.
That remained the score until St. Frances got the game-winning points on a 5-yard touchdown pass with 39 seconds left in regulation, and pulled ahead for good by a score of 22-15. Kahuku’s only two losses this season have come against two of the top three ranked teams in the country, St. Frances and St. John Bosco.
On Friday, the 6-2 Red Raiders will face Moanalua in their final scheduled game of the regular season.
2024 CB Jaden Allen — Aledo
Last week: Made 4 tackles in a 52-7 win over The Colony.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, vs. Fort Worth South Hills
After getting off to a very uncharacteristic 0-2 start to the 2022 season, Aledo has started to round back into “Aledo” form. The Bearcats are now 4-2 and ranked 6th in Class 5A Division I, and have outscored their first four district foes 229-54.
Last week they got their fourth straight blowout win, beating The Colony by a 52-7 final score in a game the Bearcats led 42-0 at halftime. Expect a similar result on Friday when they host a 1-4 South Hills team that lost 72-0 to The Colony back on September 10.
South Hills got its only win of the season on September 2 by a 42-21 score against Venus, a team that competes in Class 4A Division II. South Hills has been outscored by its other four opponents by a combined 227-0.
2024 CB Aeryn Hampton — Daingerfield
Last week: Team beat Hughes Springs 56-6.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, at New Diana
Daingerfield got back into the win column last week after blasting Hughes Springs 56-6 in its first district game of the season. Daingerfield was coming off a bye week and had lost its two previous games after bring previously ranked near the top of Class 3A Division II.
The 3-2 Tigers will look to improve to 2-0 in district play when they travel on Friday to play a New Diana team that has lost three straight games and is 0-2 in district.
2023 S Jamel Johnson — Arlington Seguin
Last week: Bye
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, at Everman
Seguin is 2-3 for the season and 1-1 in district play. The Cougars beat Corsicana in their most recent game two weeks ago, and on Friday will play 4-1 Everman in a game that would go a long way toward helping their playoff chances if they were to win it. Everman is 2-0 in district play, and its only loss of the season was a 62-61 defeat on September 2 at the hands of Stephenville, the current top-ranked team in Class 4A Division I.
2023 S Derek Williams — New Iberia (Louisiana) Westgate
Last week: Team beat Shreveport (Louisiana) Magnolia School of Excellence 77-0.
This week: Friday, October 7 at 7:00, vs. Lafayette (Louisiana) Teurlings Catholic
In last week’s post I wrote that the upcoming game between Westgate and Magnolia School of Excellence might be the most profound mismatch I’d ever seen on paper in all the years I’ve been writing this column. The Louisiana High School Athletics Association ranks teams in each division according to a power formula, which determines the seeding for teams when the playoffs begin in November.
Going into last week’s games, Westgate, the defending Class 4A state champion, was 2nd in the Non-Select (public school) Division I power ratings, while the Magnolia School of Excellence was rated 32nd (i.e. next to last) in the Select Division IV ratings. A more stark mismatch between teams in one state could scarcely be imagined.
The outcome of the game — Westgate triumphed 77-0 — was quite predictable. The aftermath was just as funny, as the appearance of Magnolia School of Excellence on Westgate’s schedule dropped the latter’s strength of schedule so much that it dropped from 2nd to 6th in this week’s updated Non-Select Division I Power Ratings, while Magnolia’s schedule strength was helped so much by its losing by 77 points to Westgate that it rose from 32nd to 29th in the Select Division IV Power Ratings! That’s what can happen when computers and not actual human eyeballs are used to determine how good a team is.
Westgate is 5-0, and Friday’s game against Teurlings Catholic should do wonders for its strength of schedule, as that opponent is #1 in this week’s Select Division II ratings. Westgate has beaten Teurlings Catholic in each of the past four regular seasons, but those games have been relatively close; the Tigers won them by an average margin of 11 points.
Historic Longhorn Notable of the Week: Marshall Morgan “Mark” McMahon (1898-1901)
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With this being the week of the Red River Rivalry game, I wanted this week’s featured historic Longhorn notable to have an Oklahoma tie of some sort. Only 20 Oklahomans have won letters at Texas, and most of them were not significant players in the Longhorn program’s history. I’ve previously written about the most notable of Oklahomans to play football for Texas, and didn’t wish to repeat my past work here. Instead, you readers will get a history lesson on a long-forgotten UT standout who went on to become one of Oklahoma’s earliest football coaches.
Marshall Morgan McMahon is probably a name unfamiliar to well over 99.9% of Longhorn football fans, but he was long regarded as one of the program’s early greats, and his early school life and football career occurred during an interesting time in the history of Texas education.
McMahon born in 1878 in Savoy, Texas, a small town in Fannin County about six miles south of the Red River and 15 miles east of Sherman. He was the third oldest of six children born into his family that survived childhood, and in his college and post-college years he was usually referred to by either his initials “M.M.” or the nickname “Mark”. He and his older siblings received their early education at the nearby Savoy Male and Female College, a private college that operated in Savoy between 1876 and 1890.
Along with educating college students and awarding bachelor’s degrees to its graduates, Savoy College also had a preparatory wing that educated students preparing for college. Colleges and universities having a prep school or academy on their campus was common at that time, but Savoy College was unusual in that it also served primary school students. For over a decade it educated primary, preparatory, and college students who came from various parts of north Texas, as well as many Native American students who were from present-day Oklahoma.
A Savoy College catalogue from the late 1880s reported that it had an enrollment of about 300 students altogether, from the primary school level and up, but the school was destroyed by a fire in 1890 and was never re-opened. Mark McMahon was 12 years old at the time that the Savoy College building burned, and he likely received further schooling at Savoy’s public schools in the seven years between that time and 1897, the year he first enrolled at the University of Texas.
McMahon played on the UT football team for four years (1898-1901), was captain of both the football and track & field teams in 1901, and graduated in 1902 with a Bachelor of Literature degree. His older brother William Emmet “W.E.” McMahon was also a member of the UT football team for two years (1900-01), playing halfback while he was a law student.
Fannin County’s time as a talent pipeline for the University of Texas has been long forgotten, but “Big” McMahon and “Little” McMahon, as Mark and W.E. were dubbed at the time, were two of the seven Fannin County residents who won letters at UT during the first ten seasons of Longhorn football (1893-1902). In the 1900 season alone, four of the 17 men who won letters in football were from that county.
By my count, only five other Fannin County products have won letters in the 120 years since then. UT’s last football letterman from Fannin County was Lonnie Bennett, a running back from Bonham who won three letters between 1971 and 1973. The relative preponderance of quality football material to come from that area in the early days of UT football compared with the paucity of it since then makes more sense when you consider that at the time of the 1900 census Fannin County was the seventh-most populous county in Texas, with more residents than Austin’s Travis County. Fannin County was home to nearly 52,000 people in 1900, but its population dropped sharply in the decades that followed and was less than 23,000 by 1970. It has since risen above 35,000 but still has fewer people than it did in 1890.
Mark McMahon was a starter at tackle and guard at different points in his UT football career. According to the football roster included in the 1901 Cactus yearbook, he stood 5’11” and weighed 175 pounds. A giant, he was not, and in fact he weighed 50-60 pounds less than the team’s heaviest player, a behemoth of a law student from Houston named Leo Sam, who was nearly 6’3” and weighed 230 pounds or more.
But despite being of unremarkable size even for a football player of the late 19th century, McMahon was hailed in the years after the end of his career as one of the best linemen from the first decade of Longhorn football. In December of 1912, the Houston Post asked local attorney and former UT football player Richard West “R.W.” Franklin to pick an “All-Time Eleven” for UT football. Franklin had been a teammate of McMahon’s on the 1898 team and served as the team manager the following year, and he had closely followed his alma mater’s football teams in the years since his graduation. Franklin picked McMahon as the second-team right guard on his “Longhorns of all-time” team, which covered the first 20 seasons of Longhorn football history.
Several years later in 1925, Thomas Ulvan “T.U.” Taylor, the longtime dean of UT’s school of engineering and a noted football enthusiast who claimed to have watched every player in the history of the UT football program except for one from its very first team in 1893, put together his own “all-time team” for UT football that was published in the Alcalde, the magazine of the UT ex-students association. In Taylor’s estimation, McMahon was one of the best tackles the school had ever had, and though he primarily played right tackle during his college days he was named as the first team left tackle on Taylor’s all-time Longhorn team.
A few months after graduating from Texas in 1902, Mark McMahon was hired as the football coach at the University of Oklahoma. Their team was then called the Rough Riders, and they had begun the 1902 season without an official coach. At the time of McMahon’s hiring the team had already played three games, beating a town team from Guthrie, Oklahoma, and losing against Texas and a team from the Dallas Athletic Club.
Oklahoma fielded its first varsity football team in 1895, and before 1902 the team had never played more than five games in a season. According to The Oklahoma Football Encyclopedia by author Ray Dozier, McMahon “modernized the game by introducing the first tackling dummy and added more games to the schedule”. OU won five of its remaining six games in the 1902 season after McMahon took over.
He returned to lead the 1903 Oklahoma team, which finished with a record of 5 wins, 4 losses, and 3 ties. The twelve-game schedule in 1903 was by far the longest OU had ever played up to that point, and not until 1931 would they again play so many games in a single season.
The normal mode of travel for away games at that time was by train, and so it was not unusual for teams to play two or three games in a short amount of time when they traveled a long distance to play a scheduled opponent. On October 17, 1903, McMahon led his Oklahoma Rough Riders against his alma mater in Austin. UT had won all four of it previous games against OU (McMahon had played in the first three of them), with the cumulative score of those games being 73-14. But on that October afternoon in 1903, the game ended in a 6-6 tie. To travel to Austin and leave town without a loss was seen as a huge accomplishment for Oklahoma football at the time.
Two days later, the Rough Riders traveled to Bryan for OU’s first-ever game against Texas A&M, one in which they emerged victorious by a 6-0 score. According to Dozier, “When the team returned to Norman, they were given a hayride and paraded through the streets, a spontaneous celebration for not losing to Texas and the Texas A&M victory.”
The rest of that season did not go as well for McMahon’s crew. During one stretch of the 1903 campaign, the Rough Riders played five games in four states over the span of 20 days (November 7-26), and went 1-4 in those contests, including an 11-5 loss to Texas in Oklahoma City. It was the last time that Texas and Oklahoma would play each other twice in the same season until 2018, when Texas won the Red River Rivalry game but Oklahoma won a re-match in the Big 12 Championship game.
In the Rough Riders’ final game of the season, played on December 4 against a town team from Lawton, OU had a very shorthanded roster and was two players short of a full 11-man lineup. Lawton, which had offered to pay $400 to OU for its team’s expenses for traveling to Lawton, allowed OU to suit up some former players who were no longer students so that they could field a complete lineup. McMahon, who was 25 years old at the time and two years removed from his last game as a collegian, suited up himself and played in the game.
He left behind both OU and his coaching career after the 1903 football season, and began a long legal career. He worked as a lawyer in the town of Durant in Oklahoma Territory for a time, but returned to Texas soon afterward. He moved to Fort Worth in 1919 and lived in that city for the rest of his life.
In 1937, Mark McMahon and his brother W.E. McMahon — who had a long and interesting career as a lawyer himself — were part of a group of 128 former students of the Savoy College who formed an ex-students association and organized the first reunion of former pupils and teachers of the college, which had burned down 47 years earlier. Mark McMahon died in 1947, at the age of 68.
W.E. McMahon lived to the age of 91, passing away in 1967. In 1962, five years before his death, he attended the final reunion of Savoy College’s former students, at which point only four were known to still be living.
Previous Historic Longhorn Notables of the Week
Week one: Thomas Milik (1944)
Week two: Raymond Clayborn (1973-76)
Week three: Ox Emerson (1929-30)
Week four: Winston McMahon (1906)
Week five: James Ross “J.R.” Callahan (1943)
Week six: A.J. “Jam” Jones (1978-81)
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