football playbook and scouting reports for the 1963 fayetteville (ark.) bulldogs
DESCRIPTION
This document has the handwritten playbook for the 1963 Fayetteville High School football teams, plus scouting reports for the teams FHS would be playing. All were written by Coach Jay Donathan and his staff.TRANSCRIPT
FAYETTEVILLE HIGH SCHOOL
(Fayetteville, Arkansas)
Purple Bulldog's
1963 FOOTBALL PLAYBOOK
AND
SCOUTING REPORTS
Playbook and scouting reports by
Coach Jay Donathan and
his assistants
From the Files of Dan Durning
In middle August, 1963, a group of high school boys in Fayetteville, Arkansas joined
similar groups of kids throughout the United States in a grueling ritual: two-a-day
football practices. It was not easy to go out in the hot summer heat wearing football
pads, but we gamely suited up and sweated ourselves into shape.
The coach of the team, the Fayetteville Bulldogs, was Jay Donathan, a lean man with
closely cropped hair. He had played football for the Arkansas Razorbacks and landed a
job coaching the high school team in the city in which the University of Arkansas is
located. I don't know if he intended to make coaching a career, but 1963 would be his
last year coaching the Fayetteville team. At the end of the season, he announced that he
was leaving coaching to study to be a dentist.
As a first-year player, a sophomore, I was more scared of Coach Donathan, who had a
reputation as a task master, than the twice-a-day practices. Both were pretty harsh.
Through those summer practices, I learned of the joys of downing tall, cool glasses of
A&W root beer after the morning practice, and I also learned to fear the ferocious pain
of leg cramps in the evening following the afternoon practice.
When we assembled for our first team meeting, we were given a playbook with the main
plays that we would be running. Our first job was to learn the system and terminology of
the playbook so that when a play was called, we would know who to block and where to
run.
Looking at the playbook we were given, it is easy to recall the numbering system. Each
play was three digits. The first digit was the formation. The second digit was the back
who would be carrying the ball: 2= left halfback, 3= full back, 4= right halfback. The
third number was the slot to which to runner was supposed to go, ranging from 1
(outside the right end) to 9 (outside the left end). If I were the right tackle, I knew that
the runner would be going through any hole that I could create with my blocking if the
third number of the play was a 3 or 4.
We spent lots of time in our practices running the plays repeatedly. We quickly mastered
the playbook and could focus on carrying out our assignments instead of trying to figure
out what they were.
After the season started, we were given scouting reports on the offensive plays and
defensive configurations of the team we were scheduled to play the coming Friday. The
playbook came with a clasp that we could use to add sheets each week. The following
pages consist of the playbook and the scouting reports that I was given during the
season.