What if Andy Hawkins had played Baylor football?

By Brice Cherry

Every Baylor football fan knows that Daniel Sepulveda is the best punter ever to don the green and gold.

But sometimes it's fun to play "what if?" So what if Andy Hawkins had come to Baylor? Could the Bears have had a Ray Guy Award winner three decades before Sepulveda?

It's entirely possible.

Obviously you can't blame Hawkins for the choice he made. Hawkins was a multi-sport start at Midway who signed with the Baylor football team in February 1978. But he ended up never playing a down for the Bears, because later that year the San Diego Padres selected Hawkins with the fifth pick of the major league draft.

Hawkins went on to a successful 10-year pitching career in the big leagues, notching the Padres' only win in the 1984 World Series and later throwing a no-hitter for the Yankees in a loss to the White Sox in 1990. He's now the bullpen coach for the Texas Rangers.

Baseball has been very, very good to Hawkins. But there was a time he still considered giving up the game to try his hand — or foot — at playing football for the Bears.

"I had signed to play for Baylor, then I had gotten drafted that summer," said Hawkins, one of the speakers at Wednesday's First Pitch Luncheon. "The next year I was in Reno, Nevada, just getting my brains beat in. I mean, I was getting lit up on a regular basis.

"But I had a real good manager, and he talked some sense in to me. But, yeah, I considered football, no doubt about that."

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