Over the course of his 79 years, Walt Garrison was called a cowboy in a number of ways. For nine seasons he was a fullback for America's Team under coach Tom Landry, he was an athlete at Oklahoma State where he was a member of the football and rodeo teams and was also later a professional steer wrestler.
Garrison, according to the Dallas Cowboys, died Wednesday night. He was a North Texas native who was born in Denton and who attended high school in Lewisville before going to college north of the Red River.
Garrison played fullback for the OSU Cowboys from 1963-1965 and was named to the 1964 All-Academic Team and led the Big Eight in rushing yards in 1965. He was named Outstanding Back in the Senior Bowl. While at OSU, he also spent a year with the school's rodeo team.
After college Garrison was taken as the Dallas Cowboys' fifth-round pick (79th overall) in the 1966 NFL Draft. While playing fullback in the NFL, the Cowboys said Garrison played in 119 regular season games and another 13 post-season contests during his nine-year career.
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According to the team, Garrison still ranks fourth on the club's all-time list for average yards per rush (4.32) and is ninth in career rushing yards (3,491).
In an interview with the team, Garrison said while he enjoyed playing football his true love was rodeo and that if he could have made more money doing it he'd have stuck to it full time.
Garrison called Dallas's 1971 win in Super Bowl VI over Miami a highlight of his NFL career but said he was "tickled to death" when in 1974 he won some money and placed in a couple of events bulldogging (steer wrestling) at "the daddy of them all," the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo.
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After retiring from his professional careers in football and rodeo, Garrison was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. He is also a member of the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame and was named to the Dallas Cowboys' 25th anniversary team. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in 1993 and in 2000 he was inducted into the Oklahoma State Athletics Hall of Honor.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been shared publicly.
