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Texas
A&M played National Champion Center College in Dallas on New Year's Day in
1922
in the Dixie Classic Football Game. In this hard played game,
an underdog Aggie Team (SWC Champs that year)
was slowly but surely whipping a team that boasted three All-Americans.
Unfortunately, the first half produced
too many injuries for
feared he wouldn't have enough men to finish the game. At that
moment he called into the stands for E. King Gill,
a reserve who had left the football team after the regular season to
play basketball.
Gill,
who was spotting players and wasn't in uniform, willingly volunteered
and donned the uniform of injured player Heine Weir. Gill never
actually played, but he was the only man
left on the bench when the game ended.
Gill's readiness to play symbolized the willingness of the Aggie fans
to support their team
to the point of actually entering the scrimmage.
This spirit has continued and even today the Aggie student body, known
as
The Twelfth Man, remains standing as a gesture of its loyalty and
readiness for duty.