Bill Banker

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1978

University: Tulane

Induction Year: 1978

Bill Banker, Tulane’s “Blond Blizzard,” couldn’t find a football helmet that fit him during his collegiate football career. So he didn’t wear one.

Once, before the 1929 game with Georgia Tech, Banker wore a helmet onto the field because Coach Bernie Bierman threatened to yank him out of the game if he didn’t. But the helmet slipped over his eyes as the Yellow Jackets were preparing to kickoff, so Banker tossed it to the sideline.

After the kickoff, Banker started toward the Tulane bench. Bierman told him to get back into the game. At that time, players who left the game in one quarter weren’t allowed to return until the next quarter. The coach’s bluff had been called.

An All-State football player at Lake Charles High who developed his strength working on the ship channel from Lake Charles to Orange, Texas, Banker stole the show in the 1926 Southwestern Relays when he won the 50-, 100- and 220-yard dashes, triple jump (then called the hop, step and jump) and took two seconds and a third in the weight events.

Looking back, he felt he would’ve been a farm boy if a New Orleans physician hadn’t encouraged him to go to Tulane.

Clark Shaughnessy was in his final year as the Green Wave coach whn Banker arrived as a freshman. When he left to take over the coaching reins at Loyola, Bierman—who had played with Shaughnessy at the University of Minnesota and served as his assistant coach at Tulane before taking the head position at Mississippi A&M (now Mississippi State)—came back to Tulane as head coach, and inherited a plethora of talent.

As a sophomore, Banker first attracted national attention with an 80-yard run against Georgia Tech. Later that season, playing 60 minutes despite a shoulder separation the previous week, Banker led the Green Wave past LSU 13-6 in a game that ended Mike Donahue’s five-year stint as the Tigers’ head coach.

The following year, Tulane had to settle for a scoreless tie with the Tigers when hank Stoval bumped Banker out of bounds inches from the goal line after a long run. But the Green Wave would not be denied by the Tigers or anybody else in 1929. After a 13-10 win over Texas A&M, Tulane’s only close games that season where a 20-14 victory over Georgia Tech and a 21-15 decision over Georgia. In its last three games (Auburn, Sewanee and LSU) the Green Wave rolled up 91 unanswered points.

Although he played the second half of the game with three cracked ribs taped, Banker helped Tulane wrap up the perfect season with a 21-0 shellacking of LSU. Later, Huey Long—overlooking the fact that Banker was completing his collegiate eligibility that year—announced, “Banker is too good a player to be at Tulane. He’ll be playing for LSU next season.”

Banker set school records that would stand for more than 60 years, scoring 37 touchdowns and 259 points in his career. He averaged nearly 100 yards per game in 27 games and was second in the nation in scoring in 1928 with 128 points.

In the off-season, he worked for Texas Air Transport—delivering mail for the government. Aviation was a risky business at that time, claiming the lives of such celebrities as Knute Rockne and Will Rogers, and Banker had his share of close calls.

“We didn’t have radio communication with the ground,” he recalled. “One day it was after dark when we got back to the Menefee Air Field in St. Bernard. There were no lights on the runway, so a field attendant poured gasoline down the middle of the runway and then lit it. The pilot was able to line up the plane with the runway, and we came in as soon as the fire went out. It was a horrifying experience.”

When Tulane backers saw their franchise standing in front of a plane, cranking the propeller, they quickly found him a job that wasn’t so dangerous.

There were no wire service polls in 1929, but Tulane was hoping for a Rose Bowl bid after its perfect season. Georgia Tech, a 12-0 winner over the Green Wave the previous year had defeated California 8-7 in the famous Roy “Wrong Way” Riegels game. But the bid went to Pittsburgh after the 1929 season, and Southern California demolished the Panthers 47-14.

Although his team was snubbed, Banker went to the West Coast as one of a group of All-Americans selected to appear in a movie, “Maybe It’s Love,” starring Joan Bennett and Joe E. Brown. At a time when Johnny Mack Brown of Alabama and John Wayne of Southern California were using college football as a springboard to movie careers, Banker had an opportunity to become a matinee idol. Darryl Zanuck was impressed with his performance, and signed him to a seven-year Warner Brothers contract for $175 a week—which was more money that he could’ve made in pro football at that time. But six months in Hollywood was enough for the Lake Charles country boy, and he returned to Tulane to finish his work on a degree.

“There wasn’t much emphasis placed on All-American teams then,” Banker recalled. “We didn’t even know when we were setting records, because none were kept.”

He had a brief stint with a pro football team, the Memphis Tigers, before returning to Lake Charles.