John Day man heads to Hall of Fame with ’81 WSU football squad

JOHN DAY — Rod Retherford of John Day recalled a high school football coach told him he was too small to play the sport. But he went on to play on Washington State University’s historic 1981 Holiday Bowl team.

In October he joins former college football teammates for that team’s induction into WSU’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Retherford began his football career on the fields of Grant Union High School, later became a captain for the Washington State football team and even signed a contract to play in the Canadian Football League for the Hamilton Tigercats. He knows what the 1981 Holiday Bowl team means to the WSU football program.

“We were credited with starting the whole tradition of getting to bowl games,” he said. “That’s what makes our team special. We started it; it’s been going ever since.”

The induction ceremony is Oct. 23 at Beasley Coliseum in Pullman, Washington.

Retherford played under legendary coach Jim Walden, the PAC-10 Coach of the Year in 1981 and 1983. The WSU Hall of Fame inducted him in 2008.

He arrived at Washington State University as a walk-on and earned a full-ride scholarship. But a shooting accident before his first game nearly ended his playing days.

He would return to the team as a walk-on but with a bullet lodged in his neck.

Retherford said Grant Union High School’s head football coach in 1975 told him he would never play due to his small stature. But the next year brought a new coach, Don Jones.

Jones spotted Retherford at Gleason Pool and asked him if he’d be interested in playing football during the 1976 season. Retherford was 5 feet, 3 inches tall and tipped the scales at 120 pounds.

“My reply was, ‘You’re asking me to play football,’” Retherford recalled, “and he goes, ‘Yeah, we need all the help we can get.’”

Retherford started at free safety. The team tied with Vale for top spot in the district, but a tiebreaker sent the Vikings to the state playoffs. After high school, he competed in rodeo.

“I was little when I graduated, so I got my pro card, and I just took off rodeoing for the next three years,” he said.

While out on the rodeo circuit, Retherford said friends from rodeo convinced him to enroll at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario in 1978 to ride for the college’s rodeo team.

TVCC also had a football team that competed with nine other junior colleges in the Northwest. By that time, Retherford had grown 7 inches and tipped the scales at 165 pounds.

“I was a lot faster than everyone around me,” he said. “And I had some hops. I could dunk basketballs two-handed easily.”

One of Retherford’s former teammates at TVCC started on the defensive line for WSU and informed him the university had lost its entire starting defensive backs corps and urged him to make the trip to Pullman and compete for a spot on the team.

After the 1979 football season concluded at TVCC, Retherford reached out to Washington State to continue his college football career. Retherford said WSU’s receiving coach at the time, Ken Woody, told him he didn’t see enough in game film to offer him a scholarship, but did offer to make him a preferred walk-on with the team.

In the spring of 1980, Retherford arrived in Pullman as a walk-on defensive back.

Retherford worked hard enough during the 11 spring practices to earn a full scholarship on the team.

But in the fall of 1980, a week away from a date with Michigan at the Big House, Retherford was involved in a grizzly shooting accident that took the season from him.

While in his car at WSU, one of Retherford’s teammates who was unfamiliar with guns saw Retherford’s .22 pistol on the floor of his car after it had slid under the seat. Retherford’s teammate picked the gun up and asked him if it was his pistol.

“I didn’t know he picked it up, and I was going to tell him, ‘Yeah, it’s loaded; don’t mess with it,” he said.

But before he could finish the statement, the teammate pulled the trigger.

The .22 round struck Retherford in the shoulder, exited and lodged between the two vertebrae in his neck while taking the right rear artery to the back of his head out. Retherford said the shooting instantly paralyzed from the neck down.

By the time he’d arrived at the hospital, Retherford said the bleeding had stopped and his motion, save for his right shoulder, had returned. Retherford said doctors at the hospital informed his coaches that he would never regain the use of his shoulder and would never play another down of football again.

Retherford lost his scholarship, withdrew from school and returned to John Day.

Football, however, was not far from Retherford’s mind. He began daily attempts to raise his arm, but the muscles had atrophied so badly it was impossible.

Retherford began practicing kicking, thinking he could return to the team as its kicker. Three months after taking up kicking, Retheford stepped in front of the mirror as he had every morning, and to his astonishment, there was movement in his right shoulder.

What followed were daily resistance exercises with the goal of once again getting his shoulder strong enough to play football. Six months after getting shot, Retherford walked back into coach Walden’s office to reclaim his spot on the team.

He said his coaches questioned whether he could play with a bullet lodged in his neck. Retherford said he had to walk on to the team a second time to show he could play.

Retherford again secured a full scholarship, this time as a part of a team that broke a 51-year bowl drought at Washington State.

WSU fans had ample reason for optimism heading into the 1981 season. The team compiled a 4-7 record in 1980 but were dominant in victory and competitive when falling short.

That 1980 team lost to then Pac-10 powerhouse University of Washington by a touchdown in the Apple Cup to end the 1980 campaign. During the 1981 campaign, the PAC-10 championship came down to the Apple Cup for the first time ever.

The Cougars would lose the Apple Cup 23-10, but the team’s disappointment was short-lived. Immediately after the game, WSU received an invitation to play in the Holiday Bowl, its first bowl berth since the 1930 Rose Bowl.

Jimmy Burrow, the father of Bengals starting quarterback Joe Burrow, was a graduate assistant during spring practice for WSU during the 1981 season, splitting his time between WSU and playing in the CFL. Burrow later became the university’s tight end and defensive backs coach.

While he didn’t coach the team during the 1981 Holiday Bowl run, he said he saw the team had noticeably improved from the year before.

“Just being there in the spring, you could see that they’d really come a long way from the previous year and the previous spring that I was there,” he said.

Burrow said he followed the team while playing in the CFL and even spoke to Walden from time to time. Walden’s excitement and confidence during those talks were an indicator to Burrow that Walden thought his team could earn an opportunity to play in one of the 16 available bowls at the time.

George Murdock of Pendleton said the 1981 Rose Bowl team returned WSU to some semblance of relevance in the world of college football. Murdock is a former East Oregonian publisher, former Umatilla County commissioner, retried education superintendent and a WSU alum.

“You went to the games because you had a good time, but you never thought of anything big happening,” he said. “So when they were chosen to go to the Holiday Bowl, that was a huge deal.”

Wazzu ultimately lost the 1981 Holiday Bowl to the Jim McMahon-led Brigham Young University Cougars 38-36. Murdock said despite the loss, the Holiday Bowl team is more than deserving of its Hall of Fame induction and should be viewed as one of the best WSU teams ever. The team broke a 51-year bowl drought and set the stage for Murdock to attend 10 bowl games in the years since that Holiday Bowl berth.

Burrow also said the team deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. He also credited that team with laying the foundation for the success coaches such as Dennis Erickson and Mike Leach would find at WSU.

“Anybody that was successful after that would look to that ’81 team as the team that kind of got it started,” he said.

The 1981 football squad joins the 1997 team in the Washington State University Athletic Hall of Fame. That team was 10-2 overall, shared the Pac-10 title and played in the Rose Bowl, losing in a tough contest 21–16 battle against the Michigan Wolverines.

Walden died in July. Retherford said Walden would be proud to see his 1981 team enter the Hall of Fame.

“The thing with Coach Walden is, if you did not end up as a good human being and successful at whatever you chose to do, he felt like he failed,” Retherford said. “He loved us, everyone, and we loved him.”

Retherford played one more season for WSU, leaving the program after the 1982 season and signing in 1983 to play for the Hamilton Tigercats in the Canadian Football League.

By then, Retheford’s heart was no longer in the sport of football and had returned to his first love — rodeo.

Retherford said he informed his coaches in Hamilton that he’d played football to prove that he wasn’t too small to play the game, but he didn’t think that was adequate motivation to continue to play. Along with those feelings came the desire to return to rodeo.

Retherford looks back on his years with the WSU football team amazed that he was a part of it all. Retherford has three daughters who constantly remind him that his playing days were 50 years ago and to simply move on.

“You know why I ain’t shut up in 50 years?” he asked. “Because I was that little kid … even though I did it, I still can’t believe I did it.”