Razorback, CFL star Wayne Harris dies
FAYETTEVILLE — Wayne Harris, an All- American linebacker at Arkansas and a Candian Football League Hall of Famer for the Calgary Stampeders, is dead at age 77, the CFL club confirmed Thursday night.
Born in Hampton and reared in El Dorado, Harris remained in Calgary after his CFL career from 1961- 72. His son Wayne Jr. is a Stampeder coach.
“” Wayne Harris was a great player who meant so much to this franchise and to this city,” Stampeders president Gordon Norrie said in a statement quoted Thursday night by the Associated Press. “He was also a great man who will be missed.”
Harris came out of El Dorado High as a 1957 freshman recruit of the Razorbacks’ Jack Mitchell regime, lettering for Frank Broyles’ teams from 1958- 60 ( the 1959 and ‘ 60 teams winning Southwest Conference titles).
He earned the named “Thumper” from El Dorado days for his ferocious hitting but was so fast that “he dropped back in coverage and against Rice intercepted a pass 35 yards deep,” the late Wilson Matthews, Harris’ Arkansas linebackers coach, once recalled.
Matthews coached All- American RazorbacXks linebackers Cliff Powell, a current nominee for the College Football Hall of Fame, and College Hall of Famer Ronnie Caveness, but said Harris, a College Football Hall of Famer, 1960 firstteam All- American and two- time academic All- American, also inducted in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and Razorbacks Hall of Honor, “was the best at his position of anyone up here that I know of. He played linebacker but he was so quick he could play anywhere.”
As for the “Thumper” business, Matthews recalled Harris pulverizing SMU quarterback Don Meredith, later with the Dallas Cowboys and ABC’s Monday Night Football announcing team, in a 1959 game at the Cotton Bowl.
“It is hard to see a receiver when your eyeballs are in the back of your head,” Matthews recalled.
Harold Horton, a Harris teammate and later an Arkansas assistant coach and administrator and retired Razorback Foundation President between winning national championships as the head coach at the University of Central Arkansas, enlightened younger Razorback fans Thursday night.
“For Razorback people that don’t know, he was the best of the best,” Horton said. “The people that watched him play and played with him will tell you that.
He was quiet and unassuming until he got on the football field, then everybody knew who he was. The punch when he tackles you, you went backwards. No question Wayne Harris was a big part in getting this program to a championship level.”
Harris