When football fans hear “Battle of the Brazos,” they think of an old rivalry between Baylor and Texas A&M (formerly The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas), two schools situated on the Brazos River. Before the days of the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conferences, there was the Southwest Conference (SWC), where Baylor and Texas A&M vied for the title of SWC champions for decades until the conference was disbanded in 1996. But there were a few years when the schools did not compete, and it was because of a tragedy that has been swathed in myth and bias. A young A&M cadet lost his life as a result of a heated brawl between the two sides during halftime of the game on October 30, 1926.

Baylor and A&M had developed quite the rivalry in the years since their first face-off in 1899. It was the big public college versus the small private college, with the added competition for Baylor women’s hearts, as A&M was still an all-male institution. The cadets often courted the Baylor gals, invoking the ire of the Baylor men ready to come to their defense. The football field became the perfect setting to release this frustration and to try to come out on top for all the girls, alumni, and other fans to see. To add to the stakes, during the 1920s the Baylor-A&M game was often the biggest of the season, being played in the famous ten-thousand-seat Cotton Palace stadium (pinned on map below) and often also serving as Baylor’s homecoming game. A&M would bring its entire cadet corps and parade through the streets of Waco as well. The festivities surrounding the game were highly anticipated, and it was always a full house.

With such revelry comes emotion and team spirit, and these can sometimes get out of hand. In fact, trouble had been brewing at this football showdown in the years leading up to the fateful game in 1926. In 1922, a riot broke out after the game and was broken up by firehoses. In 1924, another riot erupted after the Aggies lost, and both male and female students were allegedly assaulted until the Waco police dispelled the violence. When the 1926 game rolled around, Baylor had law enforcement ready for any postgame shenanigans, but to everyone’s surprise, the violence came long before the game ended.

It all started with what was thought to be some low-stakes mockery. Normally, the A&M cadets would perform at halftime and show off their military calisthenics. This year, the entire corps did not come to the game, so with only four hundred cadets in attendance, they decided not to perform. But Baylor took it upon themselves to make sure the crowd still got a cadet calisthenics show. Dressed as fake cadets, some Baylor men took to the field and made fun of the military routine of their rivals. This caused blood to boil among the Aggie attendees. Then, to make matters worse, a Ford vehicle full of Baylor women came out onto the field touting signs with previous Baylor football scores on them. This particularly irked the Aggies because of a previous game between Baylor and A&M when a Ford car had nearly collided with some Aggie students during the halftime show. Just the sight of a car was too much for a few to handle.

Two cadets, later identified as W. L. Lee and G. L. Hart, hopped onto the field and sprinted toward the moving vehicle. Lee dove into the car window and grabbed the steering wheel, jostling the car and causing one of the women to fall off the back. The Baylor men then took to the field to protect their women, and mayhem ensued. The young men swung not only fists, but also clubs and parts of the wooden chairs from the stands. It was in this chaos that cadet Charles Milo Sessums was struck by a chair on the left side of his head near midfield, falling flat to the ground. Cadet William Moers Jr. carried him to the first aid station while the band quelled the riot by playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Lead Aggie yell leader J.D. Langford apologized to the crowd and made his men swear to stay in their seats thirty minutes after the game ended to avoid further fracas. Things seemed to have settled, and the game continued to its completion, with Baylor winning 20-9.

But soon no one remembered the score. After being checked out at the first aid station, Charles Sessums was taken to Providence Sanitarium. The doctors detected a skull fracture, but medicine had little to offer Charles. His doctors assumed that with rest he would make a full recovery, but sadly he passed away at nine o’clock the next morning due to a blood clot that formed because of the fracture. His parents traveled from Dallas to collect their son’s body, and a funeral was held in their home on November 2, 1926.

Despite an investigation by Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, the man who struck the fatal blow was never found. Though detective Ila Floyd Benedict narrowed it down to a handful of suspects, he never called for an arrest. In fact, some of the interviews Benedict conducted led him to suspect a cover-up by the town mayor, Dr. H. F. Connally. Relations between the two schools soured in the wake of these events, especially after the Baylor and A&M presidents released a joint statement sharing the blame for the incident. Both student bodies vehemently protested, blamed the other, and called for a cessation of athletic competition between the two schools. Baylor and A&M would not compete in any capacity for five years after this tragic incident.

Baylor and A&M played for the last time in 2011, and by that time most people did not even know about the riot that killed Charles Sessums. But it remains an important event in the history of the university and the town of Waco. Author T. G. Webb captured the full story and outlined the suspects in his book: Battle of the Brazos: A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder.

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The “irreverent gadflies.” When Baylor University students think about the NoZe Brothers today, they picture fellow students performing shenanigans around campus while wearing big plastic noses, wild wigs, and eclectic outfits. They think of The Rope, a satirical newspaper filled with nonsensical rhyming distributed around campus. But while shenanigans and satire have always been at the heart of the bizarre ways of the organization, working incognito has not.

The NoZe brothers began in 1924 as a counter organization to the very serious Baylor Chamber of Commerce, who they viewed as a “snooty bunch.” Officially the first social club on campus, the organization quickly grew in number and acclaim. The name NoZe Brothers, originally spelled Nose, originated from the first president’s especially large nose. This president, Leonard “LongNoZe” Shoaf, is still a figurehead, saint, and guiding light of the unruly organization. Another founder, John Moilliet, started the tradition of naming all members something to do with “noZe” and kicking off the trend of NoZeprose, the zany, rhyming lingo of the group. The goal from the beginning was quite simple: to find any and every weakness in or upon the campus environment and display it in a satirical manner. The subject matter over the years has ranged from Baylor administration to fundamentalist Christianity.

Absurdity indeed reigns when the Brotherhood is involved. In the 1960s, the Brotherhood painted an entire bridge over the Brazos in their signature pink and blue colors. In the 1970s, a group of female students decided to sell cookies to benefit the prisoners in North Vietnam. The Brothers followed their lead and sold “commode-roasted wieners” for the disabled grandmothers of World War I. Around the same time some Brothers also decided to direct traffic and issue driving citations, but the citations were of course nonsense. On that day students were charged with “driving a blue car down a black street on a green day,” parking on holy grounds, having the wrong color car, having three left tires, having an ugly car, or parking in a “constipated” area. Students were fined anything from 5,327 ½ cents to 100 tuna to a partridge in a pear tree. The money from the tickets was for an equally bizarre cause: placing AstroTurf in Baylor’s Russell Gymnasium. The stranger the task, the more fun the Brothers had.

NoZemen are also known for their event appearances, especially with homecoming floats. For the first few years, the Brothers used the Elm Mott fire truck as their float, but they soon branched out. One year, the float consisted of a sophisticated outhouse that members guarded with water pistols. Another year they wheeled a large, paper-mache, headless John the Baptist through campus. More recently, they fastened a rug to the bumper of an old truck and proceeded to “sweep under the rug” for the entire length of the parade route as a comment on recent scandals in Baylor athletics. Other stunts are a bit more innocuous, like satirizing the Wall of Jericho by parading around the annual Christmas tree in Burleson Quad, blowing horns, and declaring that the tree will soon fall. They have also been known to interrupt various events in Waco Hall, such as Pigskin and chapel, in order to distribute copies of The Rope. More regularly, they are known to paint the noses of statues on campus a bright pink color.

The NoZe brothers generally operate as a democratic organization, with certain executive positions that have changed over the years. Currently, the organization is headed by the “Lorde Mayor,” with the “Shekel Keeper” in charge of funds and advertisements, and a “Cunning Linguist” in charge of publications and correspondence. The rest of the senior members sit upon the “Bored of Graft,” overlooking various activities. All other members are known as “NoZemen,” and new members as “Neophytes.” Graduated members are “exiles,” anyone lucky enough to date a member is a “fortunate,” and nonmembers are “infidels.”

Yet the line between satire and sacrilege can be quite thin, especially for Baylor administration. The first major incident came in 1965 when the Brotherhood was expelled from campus for publishing curse words in The Rope. This incident came on the coattails of the Brothers painting the Seventh Street Bridge pink and blue and scrawling “Satch” (meaning good or affirmative) and “Gob” (meaning negative) across the beams. Dean of Students W. C. Perry saw to it that this was their last prank and used The Rope publication to take them down. Through the mediation of Brother LongNoZe, who happened to live and work in Waco at the time, the Brotherhood was able to return to campus in 1967, but with a new way of doing things.

The NoZe brothers did not want to change their ways to accommodate Baylor, so they decided to go underground instead. Costumes and fake noses became essential as they sought to hide their identities from administration and students alike. In fact, the Book of Holy Law, written to govern the Brotherhood, then articulated two absolute rules: guard identity and maintain the strictest secrecy regarding brotherhood activities. But this did not stop the storm of controversy surrounding the NoZemen. In 1975 they were once again almost kicked off campus for showing up at Pigskin after being expressly banned and presenting a NoZeman dressed in a foil bikini as their homecoming queen candidate. Though they managed to remain on campus this time, they soon met their demise in 1978 when they printed a fake version of the student newspaper The Lariat declaring that homecoming had been canceled. After returning to campus a year later, the organization was kicked off at least one other time in 1999 for a racially insensitive article in The Rope.

The NoZe brothers’ history is dotted with hilarity, intrigue, and trouble, but they remain a beloved part of Baylor student life. In all their endeavors, they hope to make Baylor a better place, but to have fun while they do it.

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