Walt Garrison, a Cowboy Three Times Over, Dies at 79
A colorful running back for the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Dallas Cowboys as well as a rodeo standout, he embodied the Texas mythos.
Walt Garrison, a hard-nosed running back for the Dallas Cowboys in the 1960s and ’70s and a member of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame who became a cult hero in Texas, his home state, as the rare Cowboy who actually was a cowboy, has died. He was 79.
The Cowboys announced his death on the team website on Thursday. The announcement did not say when or where he died or cite a cause.
A de facto mascot of his team as well an iron-willed ball carrier, Garrison, who was born in Denton, Texas, was as Texas as the blue star that covered the 50-yard line on the turf of the Cowboys’ stadium.
With a pinch of tobacco often between his cheek and gum, as seen in his long-running series of television ads for Skoal smokeless tobacco, Garrison spoke in an accent that twanged like a pedal-steel guitar; wore cowboy hats seemingly as wide as the Rio Grande; and carried a sharp knife in his back pocket for whittling sticks.
“I would have to describe myself as being a country boy; not a city slicker by no means,” he said in a documentary about his career. “I don’t like to live in town, I don’t like downtown Dallas with the crowds and the stoplights and everything. I like it out.”
As a football player, Garrison lacked flash. Selected by the Cowboys in the fifth round of the 1966 National Football League draft, he tallied only 40 carries during his first two years, and he later joked that in those seasons he was so anonymous that the Cowboys head coach Tom Landry thought his name was Number 32.
“I don’t think Tom remembered my name until my third year in the league,” he said.
During his nine years with the Cowboys, Garrison never reached the 1,000-yard plateau in a season, generally considered the standard for a star running back; his best total was 818 yards on 176 attempts in 1969.
Even so, the six-foot-tall, 205-pound Garrison played in 119 regular-season games and 13 playoff games for the Cowboys and still ranks ninth in career rushing yards for the club, in part because he seemed to turn every attempted tackle into a wrestling match.
