BOBCAT ATHLETICS HALL OF FAME: Wayne Purdom
2/20/2020 4:13:00 PM | Football, General
A fireplug from Yakima, Washington, Wayne Purdom was a champion on the gridiron and the mat
A closer look at the former Montana State athletes and teams who enter the Bobcat Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2019. Induction ceremonies are February 21, 2010...
BOZEMAN, Montana – Jerry Jimison, the long-time Mayor of Glendive, Montana, played on some of Montana State's great football teams in the mid-1960s. He will never forget his first impression of teammate Wayne Purdom, who enters the Bobcat Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday.
"When you first saw Wayne and met him you would think, 'How could somebody this short and squatty be tough enough to play college football?'" he said of the team's new 5-9, 190 lb fireplug. "But we soon learned that as short as he was he had strength, he had quickness, but most of all he had a nose for the ball."
That nose for the football sticks with all who watched Purdom play. He came to Montana State in January, 1965 after two seasons at Yakima Valley College and immediately plugged into the starting lineup at defensive guard. He turned heads immediately, returning an intercepted pitchout 35 yards for a touchdown during the spring game. Injuries necessitated that he line up on the offensive line as well at times, but he started throughout the season on defense and by his senior season was the team's middle linebacker.
Purdom's size as a player in the defense's front seven, especially in an era in the Big Sky Conference that featured big, bruising backs, is something Erickson has always remembered. "He wasn't very big, 5-foot-8, 5-foot-9, 190, 195 pounds, something like that, but he was All-Big Sky his senior year. He was a hell of a player. You talk about a guy who was a tough son of a gun, he never missed a play. He was tackling guys like Ray McDonald (of Idaho), Lee White from Weber. McDonald was as good as we ever played, a number one draft pick (of the Washington Redskins), about 240 pounds."
"Thunder Ray" McDonald became an Idaho legend after leading the Vandals to wins over Washington State in his first two varsity seasons, and was also an All-America sprinter on the UI track and field team. But Erickson remembers Purdom standing tall against the much bigger back. "I remember my sophomore year I was starting at quarterback and Ray McDonald was (Idaho's) big stud, and I remember Wayne hit him a number of times right in the chin. He was a ferocious football player, and a great leader, and a great person."
Jimison remembers Purdom's quickness. "We practiced defense (together) all week during practice, but somehow, come game time, I'd get off a block and think I was going to make a tackle and zoom there Wayne would go, flying by me, and get there first. It was amazing."
Skill on the football field wasn't all Purdom brought to Montana State. After checking in the shoulder pads when fall faded to winter, he grabbed a wrestling singlet and went right to work. Erickson remembers Purdom serving as an attraction as one of Herb Agocs' matmen. "We used to all go to matches just because he was wrestling. I think he was the only football player who was wrestling at the time. We'd go to those matches, all of us together, just to watch him."
Purdom's football teammates weren't disappointed by his performance as a wrestler. He joined a Bobcat wrestling dynasty. The team had won the first two Big Sky Championships, in 1964 and 1965, and Purdom helped propel the team to its third straight. The Bobcats finished the 1965-66 season with an 11-0-1 dual record, and in fact had rolled up a 32-0-3 record in dual matches under Head Coach Herb Agocs, whose tenure coincided with the school's Big Sky era. The 1966 Big Sky Championships were held in Bozeman, and the Cats rolled to their third straight title. Purdom captured the 177 lb title, and although Montana State's reign ended one year later Purdom's didn't. The former junior college conference champion won the 1967 177 lb crown, as well.
Sportswriter Norm Clarke, originally from Terry, was early in a career that would lead him to national renown. He covered the mid-1960s Bobcats for the Helena Independent-Record, and says Purdom's brilliant gridiron aggression was rooted in his wrestling career. "Wayne was a once-in-a-generation force. He was relentless. I really believe his athleticism as a championship wrestler took him to another level on the football field."
Purdom's toughness pervaded the Bobcat defense, Jimison said. "I can tell you that he was one guy you'd never want to get into a fight with, because the fight wouldn't be over until you killed him. He wouldn't quit. He was one of those guys that refused to lose and refused to ever quit. It was his attitude that rubbed off on lots of Montana State football players, thank God. He was a winner."
The Bobcats struggled through the 1965 campaign, when youth and injuries confined Montana State to a 3-7 record. In 1966, the Cats returned seven starters on offense, nine on defense, and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jan Stenerud as the kicker. Sophomore quarterback Dennis Erickson found "a ready-made championship team" when he took over starting honors that fall, and said there was no doubt to anchored the defense. "His senior year Wayne was a captain and the leader of the defense, he was the guy who ran the show for our defense in '66. He was a big-time player."
Purdom was brilliant in 1966, and so were the Bobcats. MSU smashed its first four opponents, beating South Dakota State, Portland State, Idaho and Fresno State by an aggregate score of 170-29. The team slipped in a 35-23 loss at North Dakota State, then obliterated Idaho State, Weber State, North Dakota and the Grizzlies. The 38-0 win at Missoula was particularly gratifying to those who wore the Blue and Gold. Montana State lost its regular season finale to Missouri Valley champion Tulsa 13-10 and after earning a bid to the Camellia Bowl fell to an uber-talented San Diego State team 28-7.
In an era when small schools didn't track defensive stats, Montana State's game against a strong Tulsa team that had played in back-to-back Bluebonnet Bowls offers a window to Purdom's performance. He recorded six tackles, two for a loss, with a sack in that game.
Purdom's sense for finding the right gap and making plays has stuck with Erickson through the years, even reminding him of a linebacker he eventually coached at the University of Miami. "We were a 4-3 (defense) and (Purdom) was the middle linebacker so he had to make plays all over the place," Erickson said. "In those days the middle linebacker was the guy that made a lot of plays. I wouldn't say he was overly fast, he just had a great nose for the football. Great linebackers have a great nose for the football. Ray Lewis wasn't fast, but he had a great nose for the ball, and Wayne was kind of the same. He was a guy who studied the game, and knew where the ball was going before the guys on offense knew. He was tough."
Jimison lined up with Purdom on defense for two years, but it was after their football careers when Jimison really came to know Purdom. "As a person, he was committed to kids and family and athletics," Jimison said. "(We) student taught together in Livingston in the spring of 1968… so we rode back and forth together over the hill five days a week for 12 weeks and did our student teaching together over there. As a result, obviously, it wasn't a long trip – in the winter time it took a little longer than normal – but we had an hour a day in the car together visiting about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He was a super individual as a person. He was always willing to help out, he was always concerned about people other than himself, he was a very selfless individual, and I can't say enough about his character as a human being."
Purdom returned to Yakima Valley College, where he had won championships as a football player and wrestler before replicating those feats at Montana State, and enjoyed a three-and-a-half decades long coaching career. Jimison saw it coming. "He had a very good understanding of the game, and you just knew that he was one of those guys that was going to be a real good communicator, be able to get (across) his philosophy and his game plan and what he wanted out of a player, that was very evident." Purdom was inducted into the Yakima Valley College and Northwest Athletic Conference halls of fame before passing away in 2009.
Jimison said his old friend made a lasting impact. "You go through life meeting hundreds and thousands of people, and a few of them you remember forever. Wayne was one of those that I will remember forever because of his character and his achievement."
