1964 NFL Draft: Oral history – Dallas Cowboys' turning point

Packers team historian Cliff Christl has assembled an oral history series on the NFL Draft, highlighting significant and noteworthy years as a prelude to Green Bay hosting the 2025 draft in late April. New installments will be posted most weekdays. For access to the full series thus far, click here.

1964

The 29th NFL Draft was held at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom in Chicago. It started at 9:04 a.m. Monday, Dec. 2, 1963, and ended 21 hours, 43 minutes later at 6:47 a.m. Tuesday. The first of the 20 rounds took 8 hours, 8 minutes.

On Sunday, the day before the draft, 12 of the NFL's 14 teams had played their 12th game of the season. Thus, many coaches and other club officials had to scramble just to get to Chicago on time. Green Bay and Detroit had played on Thanksgiving, four days earlier.

And who says Vince Lombardi didn't have a sense of humor?

At about 5 a.m., with the selections dragging on, Lombardi, then in his fifth season as Packers coach and general manager, took his pencil and wrote on his slip of paper, "Oscar Upchuck of Old Nausea," and handed it to the runner who was turning in the picks.

He, in turn, handed it to Jim Hamilton, former Los Angeles police chief who was serving as watchdog over the proceedings and announcing the choices. As Hamilton slowly read the name, "Oscar Up-chuck of Old Nau…," the room erupted in laughter.

The American Football League draft was held two days earlier, on a Saturday, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Six of the AFL's eight teams would play the next day.

With the two leagues competing to sign players, the NFL Draft had taken on a different look from its sessions in the 1950s and earlier. Five head coaches stayed at home and conducted their drafts by telephone. Dallas, the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco also had teletype machines hooked up at their tables in the Sheraton.

With the NFL's new plan of sending representatives on the road to try and sign players as they were drafted or at least alert teams if they learned a player had signed with the AFL, there was no time limit for a team to make its pick. As a result, the first round took almost three-and-a-half hours longer than the previous record set in 1960, the first year of competition between the leagues.

Lombardi (Associated Press, Dec. 3, 1963): "(It's) ridiculous. Every team in the league should be fully represented at the draft. Then they wouldn't take so much time."

Detroit Coach George Wilson (AP, Dec. 3, 1963): "I'd also take my time if I were back home in a big easy chair and doing it by telephone. The only guys hurting are the ones that are present."

After the first round, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle set a 30-minute limit for the second-round choices and 15 minutes thereafter.

At the end of the marathon session, William Wallace of the New York Times subtly reported: "Delegates from the teams then departed, leaving the ballroom … and its full ashtrays to the next group, the National Cancer Prevention Society."

A change in fortune for the Cowboys

On draft day, the Dallas Cowboys, an NFL expansion team in 1960, were 3-9 and facing a fourth straight losing season. They had gone winless their first year, 0-11-1, and followed that with 4-9-1 and 5-8-1 records. They would finish the 1963 season, 4-10.

Before they were officially granted an NFL franchise, the Cowboys had signed two players to personal service contracts that provided a solid foundation for their offense: quarterback Don Meredith and halfback Don Perkins. They also had hit the jackpot with their first pick in their first draft in 1961, selecting future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Bob Lilly. In 1963, they added a quality middle linebacker in the first round, Lee Roy Jordan.

Otherwise, of the 34 players who finished the '63 season with them, eight were draft picks, seven of them selected in the 11th round or later; eight were signed as rookie free agents; three were acquired in the expansion draft; four were claimed on waivers; and 11 were acquired in trades, including four who were older than 30.

The Cowboys also had lost three perennial AFL All-Stars from their 1961 draft: linebacker E.J. Holub, tackle Stew Barber and future Hall of Fame guard Billy Shaw. Moreover, their top pick in 1962, taken in the second round, had turned out to be a colossal bust in more ways than one. He was 6-foot-7 quarterback Sonny Gibbs, whose NFL career consisted of two games and three pass attempts.

Excluding their four best players, about the only positive sign for the Cowboys was that they had uncovered three defensive keepers among their rookie free agents in 1962: cornerback Cornell Green, linebacker Dave Edwards and safety Mike Gaechter.

The 1964 draft proved to be the Cowboys' turning point.

It didn't start well. With the fourth overall pick, they selected another memorable bust, defensive tackle Scott Appleton (6-3, 230) of Texas.

But then they landed three future Hall of Famers: defensive back Mel Renfro of Oregon in the second round, wide receiver Bob Hayes of Florida A&M as a future in the seventh round and Navy quarterback Roger Staubach, who also had a year of eligibility remaining and was facing a four-year service commitment after that, in the 10th round.

Although the Cowboys had to wait on two of those three choices, they all had rare talent in the eyes of scouts.

On Renfro (6-1, 195)

LESTO scout Fido Murphy, (Fall 1963 Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "The perfect football player and best in the nation. This boy could be a running back, flanker, defensive back and can catch kicks. Can pass."

Oregon assistant coach John Robinson (Fall 1963 LESTO Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Outstanding runner and pass receiver. Very good blocker. Pretty good passer. Great tackler. He could be a good man-to-man defender. Terrifically fast."

University of Arizona scout and future Cowboys scout Ron Marciniak (Fall 1963 LESTO Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Runs real hard. Good hands as an offensive receiver. Good defensive back. Tackles well, covers zone real well, comes up fast on running plays. He is one of America's best track hurdlers. Good legs and balance. I recommend him highly as a pro prospect. He has ability to play in the pros both on offense and defense."

On Hayes (5-10, 178)

Florida A&M head coach Jake Gaither (Fall 1963 LESTO Scouting Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Great runner and receiver. Real football player. Fastest man in the world but not just a track man. Loves contact, great personality, easy to coach, terrifically fast."

LESTO scout Ken Stilley (Fall 1963 Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "This boy is the world's fastest human. I would take him as a No. 1 choice. No one can catch him, has good hands, will compete in 1964 Olympics. 9.2 – 100 yards. A great prospect. A fine kid. #1 rating."

BLESTO scouting director Jack Butler (Summer 1965 Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "#1 rating. His speed is greatest asset. Drops a lot of balls. Moves not great but getting better. Doesn't have real sharp, quick breaks. Relies on speed."

On Staubach (6-2, 195)

Detroit head coach Buddy Parker (Time All-America Team, Nov. 29, 1963): "For his position, the best college player I've ever seen."

Iowa coach Jerry Burns, co-coach of the North in the annual Shrine All-Star Game after University of Miami quarterback George Mira had shredded his defense with 27 completions in 42 attempts for 366 yards (Miami Herald, Dec. 23, 1963): "I'd have to say (Mira) is the best I've seen. I think Mira is a better passer than Roger Staubach, who had a better team to help him. Mira has to do it by himself."

Cowboys player scouting director Gil Brandt (Christl interview, Nov. 13, 1978): "I went to see Staubach to find out how interested he was in playing pro ball. And he was interested. So there was a chance and in the 10th round, you take a lot of chances. But this was kind of an educated chance because we had an inside tip that he was going to play pro football. We drafted him as a redshirt. Without the service commitment, he would have been a first-round pick."

Actually, the Cowboys might have emerged with a fourth Hall of Famer if they had not lost a draft-day coin flip with Washington for the third overall choice. The Cowboys hoped to draft Texas Tech's split end Dave Parks, who went first to San Francisco, or Arizona State's Charley Taylor.

When Washington snared Taylor, the flustered Cowboys took 2 hours, 39 minutes before submitting Appleton's name. As it turned out, the Cowboys traded his rights to Pittsburgh and the Houston Oilers of the AFL signed him. But the next defensive lineman to go was future Hall of Famer Carl Eller two picks later.

Oilers director of personnel John Breen (Christl interview, Feb. 25, 1979): "(Appleton) was a free-lancer in college. He was quick, but the coach let him roam and everybody covered up for him. He wasn't quick enough for a linebacker, and he wasn't big enough for a tackle. He had short arms. He had no strength up in his arms, He couldn't ward off blockers. He couldn't play any place except at Texas the way he did."

Appleton would not be the last of the Cowboys' mistakes. They eschewed safe picks and sought players with high ceilings regardless of risk.

Brandt (Dallas Cowboys Weekly, Dec. 1, 1979): "Let me say this about our drafting methods. We try to draft people on potential."

That being so, in the years ahead, their first-round hits and misses would more than balance out. The classic example was the drafting of Yale running back Calvin Hill with the 24th pick in 1969; and then Boston College running back Bill Thomas, who finished with a career rushing total of 36 yards, with the 26th choice three years later.

But here again, those flyers would be offset by late-round and free agent nuggets, along with shrewd trades that yielded high first-round choices like defensive end Too Tall Jones (No. 1 overall in 1974 following a 10-4 finish), defensive tackle Randy White (No. 2 overall in 1975 in the wake of an 8-6 finish) and running back Tony Dorsett (No. 2 overall in 1977 following an 11-3 finish).

Stability: Key to the Cowboys' rise from expansion team to NFL power

While Hayes didn't sign until 1965 and Staubach until 1969, Renfro made the Pro Bowl and Associated Press' second all-pro team as a rookie enroute to the Cowboys finishing .500 for the first time.

Over the next two years Dallas won the NFL's Eastern Conference, but lost twice to Green Bay in the league championship. In 1970, the year the NFL-AFL merger was finalized, the Cowboys won the newly named National Football Conference before losing to the Colts in the Super Bowl. A year later, the Cowboys whipped Miami, 24-3, to win Super Bowl VI and their first league title.

From 1965 through 1985, they never had a losing season, won 13 division tiles and captured Super Bowl XII.

The key to their success? Stability. Same people, same lines of authority, same system for the first 29 years of their existence.

Throughout that entire period, Tex Schramm ran the team initially as vice president-general manager and then as president-GM. Tom Landry was the head coach and had final say on player personnel. Brandt oversaw the personnel department.

Schramm had spent 10 years working for the Rams, first as publicity director and then as GM. Hired in 1947, he was on the inside when the Rams developed the NFL's first sophisticated scouting department. Hence, when he took over the Cowboys, Schramm followed the same blueprint. The one designed by Rams owner Dan Reeves and executed by scout Eddie Kotal.

Landry also had cut his teeth as a coach with a winning organization. He ran the New York Giants' defense as an assistant for six years, when they won one NFL championship and lost two other title games.

Schramm (Christl & Don Langenkamp interview, circa late 1970s): "In the first 10 years, I spent 80 percent of my time in personnel. Tom Landry has always had the final word in the draft."

Red Hickey, Cowboys assistant coach, 1964-65, and head scout, 1966-81 (Christl interview, Jan. 10, 1979): "Clint Murchison, who owns the club, you hardly ever see him. You don't even know he exists hardly. He lets Tex Schramm, president, general manager, run the ballclub. Tex lets Gil run the personnel department. Tex lets Landry coach. And we all go to work."

NFL insiders will tell you that not all coaches are good evaluators of talent; and what's more, some head coaches want a say in the draft but won't invest the necessary time to prepare for it.

Not Landry.

Dick Mansperger, Seattle director of player personnel and former Dallas scout (Christl interview, Feb. 15, 1979): "He's a great evaluator. He has an objective view of things. He very carefully goes over everything with Gil. Landry listens. He's amazing."

Schramm hired Brandt based on what he said was a long-held secret, one he remembered from when they first connected. It was in 1952, when the Rams as defending NFL champions were going to play the College All-Stars at Chicago's Soldier Field. Schramm was GM at the time; Brandt, a 20-year-old Milwaukee native.

For three weeks before the game, the All-Stars practiced at what was then St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wis., located roughly 25 miles west of Milwaukee.

Schramm (Christl & Langenkamp interview, circa late 1970s): "(Brandt) was a friend of Elroy Hirsch. Elroy was on our team, and we were going to play the College All-Star team. We wanted someone to sneak in (to their practice) and see what the All-Stars were doing. I think Gil was the guy Elroy got to go and look at what they were doing. In those days, you didn't know if they'd run a single-wing or split-T or what the hell they were doing. But Gil started doing little chores for the Rams."

Brandt's main source of income when the Cowboys hired him was from his work as a baby photographer for three Milwaukee hospitals. But he yearned to land a fulltime job in the NFL and brought a tireless work ethic with him. Brandt expected the same of his scouts.

Dick Steinberg, New England's director of player development and former Dallas scout (Christl interview, circa early 1980s): "He works the hell out of his people. He's extremely tough, but he's not all that involved in evaluation. He doesn't go out. He doesn't look at films. But he's a hell of an administrator."

Reed Johnson, Denver director of player personnel and former Dallas scout, 1973-80 (Christl interview, 1983): "Gil does a good job of reading your reports. He has the capacity to take reports with him on airplanes, at home, at the office. He can sit there and read 15 or 20 and digest. He knows what to look for, what things jump out at him. And he has such a tremendous capacity to retain information. He's like a damn elephant. He's amazing."

Bucko Kilroy, New England general manager and former Dallas scout (Christl interview, Jan. 11, 1979): "They're very thorough. It's a holdover from the Rams organization. When they draft in Dallas, the only ones present are Schramm, Brandt, Landry, Hickey."

Innovation: Another secret to the Cowboys' early success

The implementation of two of Schramm's futuristic concepts roughly coincided with the Cowboys' first draft bonanza in 1964. One was the use of computers in preparation for the draft. The other was a scouting combine, where teams shared scouting reports on players in advance of the draft.

Schramm left the Rams in 1957 to become assistant director of sports at CBS. The network owned rights to the 1960 Winter Olympics, and Schramm was working closely with people at IBM on new technology, namely computers, for use in the broadcasts.

In late 1959, as Schramm was putting together the Cowboys' organization, he turned to the people at IBM to see if computers could be used to quickly assign grades to players without the personal prejudices of scouts influencing them.

Schramm (Christl & Langenkamp interview, circa late 1970s): "Well, we started the computer (age in pro football). The IBM people put me in touch with Service Bureau Corp., which was the software arm of IBM. Their headquarters was in Palo Alto, Calif. And they recommended a guy by the name of Salaam Karishi, who was supposed to be brilliant. And we started talking about the concept. It took us about four years to develop it where it started making some sense."

Schramm (Christl & Langenkamp interview, circa late 1970s): "We don't just turn the computer on and there is our draft. But it is our starting point."

Brandt said the Cowboys started using computers as part of their draft preparation in 1962. Schramm, on the other hand, said it wasn't until the 1965 draft when they became fully engaged in the use of those computers.

In the beginning, the Cowboys like all other NFL teams had a skeletal scouting staff. Back then, teams had one- or two-man personnel departments and still relied heavily on weekend scouts and college coaches for reports on players.

Thus, in 1961, according to Schramm, the Cowboys, Rams and San Francisco started secretly sharing scouting reports and created the NFL's first scouting combine: Troika. Later, when it expanded to four teams, it became Quadra.

Hamp Pool, who returned to the Rams in 1961 as an assistant coach and later became the director of the combine (Christl interview, May 19, 1979): "Troika started when Dallas came into the league. It started because of the ties between Schramm and Reeves. Plus, Reeves was a close friend of the Morabitos (owners of the 49ers). It was done secretly for several years, maybe two or three."

Schramm (Christl & Langenkamp interview, circa late 1970s): "We were the first ones who started scouting combines. We hired people to give the information to all three clubs. For several years we didn't want anybody to know we were doing it, so two guys went out and identified themselves as being with the Cowboys, two with the Rams, etc. But their reports were done in triple and we shared the information."

Two other combines were created shortly thereafter. One was what started as LESTO (Lions, Eagles, Steelers Talent Organization) in 1963, then became BLESTO when the Bears joined in 1965, BLESTO-V when the Vikings joined in 1966 and eventually BLESTO–VIII before common sense prevailed. "It got to be ridiculous," said Butler, its longtime director. "So we made it Blesto, Inc."

The third combine – CEPO (Central Eastern Personnel Organization) – was formed in 1964 with the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland, Green Bay and St. Louis Cardinals as original members.

Record-shattering draft

As of 2025, the 1964 draft still holds the record for most Hall of Famers. It has produced 10 and all signed originally with NFL teams, despite the AFL holding a separate draft.

Four of the future Hall of Famers were taken in the first round and two were college halfbacks converted to wide receiver in the pros. While projecting players at a different position is often viewed as a risk, scouts seemed to recognize already in college the receiving skills of Charley Taylor; and Ohio State's Paul Warfield, taken 11th by Cleveland.

As background, the 1963 season also was the last under college football's one-platoon rule. Thus, Taylor and Warfield doubled as defensive backs and were considered top prospects there, too.

On Taylor (6-3, 198)

Arizona State assistant coach Dick Tamburo (Spring 1963 LESTO Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Could play flanker, back or defense. Good speed and hard, tough runner. Good reactions on defense. #1 rating."

Marciniak (Fall 1963 LESTO Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Good leg drive. He has good hands and ability to catch the pass. Real good quickness and speed. Hard runner to bring down. Has wide range of coverage on defense. Good hard tackler. Covers zone real well. Fast."

LESTO's Murphy (Fall 1963 Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "One of the best running backs in the country, if not the best. Fine character and competitor. Is also a great defensive back. A prize plum."

On Warfield (6-0, 190)

LESTO scout Will Walls (Fall 1963 Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Has broad jumped 26 feet. Carried ball 57 times in 1962 for a 6.4 average. Very good speed. Caught 8 passes for 139 yards and 2 TDs in 1962. Will draft high."

Butler (Fall 1963 Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Very good speed. Hands are OK. Good runner. Question if strong enough for running back. Could be a defensive halfback. Maybe a high choice. #1 rating."

Bernie Crimmins, Purdue assistant coach and former Indiana head coach (Fall 1963 LESTO Report, Pro Football Hall of Fame): "Fast, evasive, very good receiver, top pass defender. Does great job covering man-to-man or zone. Very good tackler."

Taylor began his career in Washington as a halfback and was named AP Offensive Rookie of the Year, rushing for a team-high 755 yards while also catching 53 passes and averaging 15.4 yards per reception. He was moved to split end in the eighth game of his third season.

Warfield, on the other hand, started at split end as a rookie and was named to the Pro Bowl.

The other future Hall of Famers drafted in 1964 besides the Cowboys and the two receivers included Nebraska tackle Bob Brown, the second overall pick by Philadelphia; and Eller, who went to the Minnesota Vikings.

The others were safety Paul Krause, a second-round choice; linebacker Dave Wilcox, third round; and halfback Leroy Kelly, eighth round.