As best it could be recalled, the moment unfolded something like this:
The Texas Christian University Horned Frogs had just claimed their first decisive victory under then second-year coach Jim Wacker, who had never had a bigger job. Wacker, who was then given to histrionics as he is now, stood in the middle of the locker room that 1984 season at Utah State in Logan, Utah, and gave his players one of those I-Love-You-Guys' speeches. You know, one of those where the coach recounts all the hard work and sacrifice that was made and the adversity that was overcome.Wacker was nearly in tears, TCU athletics spokesman Glenn Stone remembered, when he reached what sounded like the end of his soliloquy.
Then the coach added one more emotional line:
"And one more thing," Stone, chuckling, recalled Wacker as saying, "you guys have got to turn those towels back in."
Stone said he had no idea of what Wacker was referring to until, one by one, players sheepishly ambled over to the middle of the floor and started making a tall pile of white bath towels. They were from the Best Western Baugh Motel in Logan, where they had stayed the night before.
"One kid, a sophomore, flipped one towel on the pile and then another and another," Stone said. "I asked him if all those were his. He said. `No. I only got one."'
The other two were for his position coach and that coach's wife.
The story popped back into Stone's mind recently after the North Texas University football team was caught in their own towel heist. In the same city. At the same hotel. Just one weekend after the Idaho football team got busted there in a looting of linen, too.
Big ol' tough football players apparently just can't keep themselves from filching the Baugh Motel's towels. After all, they're as fluffy as can be and embroidered in aqua with three cute little sheep leaping over a cloud.
"They're real nice," said Pacific sports spokesman Mike Miller of the infamous Baugh towels. "I've stayed there nine or 10 times. If I was going to steal a towel, I'd steal one of theirs."
North Texas had its players return the towels before they left Logan. North Texas coach Matt Simon then ordered his team to clean up their home stadium Sunday as punishment. He considered sending them to a nearby department store's white sale, but quickly realized they'd actually enjoy that.
"We've had that happen quite a bit," Baugh Motel manager Elizabeth Maughan said of towel nabbings. "We've had some teams from California take them. We had one coach make the team bus pull over and empty their suitcases."
Maughan said she recently got an order for a dozen sets of her motel's towels from a California college football player. He wanted them as Christmas gifts for some of his teammates to remember their time in Logan.
No problem there. The motel sells their towels for $20 right at the front desk. They are that popular. Maybe if the NCAA allowed college athletes to work during the school year, they'd buy the motel's towels rather than pilfer them.
The Baugh Motel, which is where most Utah State opponents stay, sent Idaho an $800 bill for the towels its players lifted, Maughan said. The Vandals - hey, that's Idaho's nickname - are collecting the motel's property for return.
The local Logan newspaper thinks the motel is too lenient with its looters. It ran an editorial cartoon recently suggesting that not pressing charges against the visiting players will lead them into a life of crime that will be discussed for years by Geraldo Rivera.
Personally, I think the worst that can come of this is that more women will think that the coed baby shower is really a good idea.
"Usually, it's the team that's never been here before that takes the towels," Maughan said. "Once they've been here, there's no problem after that."
North Texas won't be back for a couple of seasons.
There is, however, a better way than familiarity for the Baugh Motel and college football to avoid more towelgates in the future.
"We could get our pool towels and put them out," Maughan admitted. "They're real skimpy."