[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 205 (Wednesday, December 20, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2427]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  TRIBUTE TO DON FAUROT, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI TIGERS FOOTBALL COACH

                                 ______


                            HON. IKE SKELTON

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, December 20, 1995

  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to pay tribute to Don Faurot, 
a legendary figure in University of Missouri athletics, who died on 
October 19, 1995. He was 93.
  Don Faurot, who coached the Tigers football team from 1935 through 
1956, was credited with creating the split-T formation at Missouri in 
1941.
  He was 101-79-10 in his coaching career.
  Coach Faurot's 1939 team won his first Big Six title and the Tigers' 
first trip to the Orange Bowl. As an 8-year-old boy, I was present in 
Miami, FL, when his M.U. team played Georgia Tech.
  Missouri's football stadium is named for him.
  Through the years, he had continued to attend every Missouri home 
game.
  Coach Faurot, who set the cornerstone for the Missouri football 
program that exists today, was even more respected for the integrity he 
brought to the game.
  ``If everybody in collegiate athletics was a Don Faurot,'' Big Ten 
Commissioner Wayne Duke once said, ``then collegiate athletics would be 
what it is supposed to be.''
  Don Faurot was born in Mountain Grove, MO, on June 23, 1902. Despite 
losing the first two fingers on his right hand in a boyhood farming 
accident, he was a 145-pound fullback at Missouri in 1923 and 1924, and 
played basketball and baseball.
  He took over the football program at Missouri in 1935 after coaching 
9 years at Kirksville State Teachers College, now Northeast Missouri 
State University. At Kirksville, his teams went 26-0 from 1923-32, the 
best small college record in the country.
  When he returned to Missouri, he took over a team that had won just 
two games in 3 years and the athletic program was $500,000 in debt.
  Under Faurot's direction, though, the Tigers won three conference 
titles and went to four bowl games. When he retired as athletic 
director in 1967, the program was in the black and the stadium's 
seating capacity had doubled to more than 50,000.
  This despite rigorously adhering to recruiting policies and relying 
primarily on homegrown players.
  ``If you lose with home-state boys, that's bad,'' he said. ``But if 
you lose with out-of-state boys, that's terrible. If you win with 
imported athletes, that's good. If you win with your own, that's 
great.''
  A member of football's National Hall of Fame and the Missouri Sports 
Hall of Fame, Faurot remained active in his later years as talent 
procurer and coach for the Blue-Gray game in Montgomery, AL, and as 
executive secretary of the Missouri Senior Golf Assocation.
  In 1972, Coach Faurot received what probably ranked as his greatest 
personal honor when the Missouri football stadium was officially named 
Faurot Field.
  In 1926, Don Faurot, an agricultural student at Missouri, helped lay 
sod for the field, then known as Memorial Stadium.
  Coach Faurot is survived by his wife, Mary, of Columbia, three 
daughters, seven grandchildren, and a brother, Fred, of Columbia.

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