THORNTON, Texas – Like most young men in Texas, James “JD” Linnstaedter’s love of football was inherited from his family just as much as his name.
Some of JD’s earliest memories are throwing the football in the front yard of his grandfather’s lake house in Thornton, Texas. The boy admired his “Pa” for many reasons. James “Jimmy” Linnstaedter, now closing in on his 85th birthday, is the type of man they just don’t make anymore: a decades-long football coach who built a houseboat on Lake Limestone and helped construct his own two-story home. But while those details were cool, the thing JD has always most revered about Pa was his athletic career.
Jimmy was the first, and still the only, Brenham High School student to earn four varsity letters in the four major sports for four consecutive years in the 1950s. Then, he blossomed into Texas A&M’s leading rusher from the halfback slot in 1961. Not that JD knew all this as a child in the front yard. He didn’t discover these facts until his freshman year of high school, when his Montgomery Lake Creek Lions traveled to Brenham, and he stumbled upon Pa’s Hall of Honor plaque. Jimmy never talked about himself. His achievements would only surface in hints and allusions to the good old days. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d miss it. Jimmy wasn’t the type of guy to boast, much less twice.
So JD would cling to these stories about Pa for dear life, not knowing when he’d hear the next one. He’d ingrain them into his memory until they became as much a part of his own story as his Pa’s. Now an incoming freshman quarterback at Schreiner University, JD reached college football by competing against the high school version of his Pa this whole time.
If JD’s football career has been a lifelong race against Jimmy Linnstaedter from 70 years ago, then the starting block was that front yard in Thornton. Those were the first glimpses of the young boy’s rocket arm, and Pa was his first receiver. That is, until one day when Pa decided to play defense.
“Intercepted!” Jimmy said, as grandfather and grandson both busted out laughing.
Then, he tossed the ball back to JD – and also threw in a fun fact that would rock the boy’s world.
“You know, I had 35 of those one year in high school.”
Wait – what?
Even to JD’s 10-year-old brain, 35 interceptions in a single season seemed impossible. The NFL and FBS records for single-season interceptions are 14. Did teams even throw the ball 35 times in a season in the 1950s when Pa played?
That night, JD got on the computer and typed “Jim Linnstaedter 35 interceptions” into the search bar. Sure enough, the record popped up on Dave Campbell’s website. Jim Linnstaedter was listed as the state’s all-time leader with 35 interceptions in the 1956 season. Like all good researchers, JD had to verify it. That could’ve been a typo. But then he went to the NFHS national record book and saw that, not only was Pa the state’s all-time leader for single-season interceptions – he was the country’s all-time leader.
JD sprinted into his dad’s room with the evidence. Dad, he said, did you know Pa has the national record with 35 interceptions in a single season?
James Linnstaedter was just as shocked as his son. His dad had been his coach his entire life. James knew about Jimmy’s all-state career at Brenham and Texas A&M days. But he’d never heard about an interception record.
“The interesting thing about Dad is that he doesn’t really brag,” James said. “So I don’t think any of his football players really knew he had all those records.”
So JD planned to let everyone know on his grandfather’s behalf. He might as well have been floating on a cloud walking into the school cafeteria the next day. His grandfather was a legend, and he had the goods to back it up.
“At first (my friends) were like, ‘No way,’” JD said. “But then I got on my phone and showed it to them. You can’t argue with Dave Campbell’s.”
Except, what if you could? And what if people had?
As a sport, Texas high school football is particularly susceptible to inflated or outright false stats. After a century of play and over 1,500 teams, there are simply too many players for a perfectly centralized bank like the NCAA or the NFL has.
Really, the closest thing Texas high school football has is one man – Joe Lee Smith. Inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame in 2007, Smith has spent six hours a day since 1965 compiling season-by-season football scores and stats for his website Texas High School Football History. His database is beyond impressive, with troves of individual stats dating back to the 1920s and season-by-season records for every public school 11-man program. Smith has dedicated his life to an incredible act of service, a one-of-one character we can all point to as part of what makes Texas high school football different from any other sport in the world. And yet, even his website is incomplete. It does not hold any six-man or private school records. There aren’t any tackling records either. Adding those would be impossible.
So Texas high school football fans have Smith, Dave Campbell’s record book, and the NFHS record book as an imperfect amalgamation of the sport’s all-time leaders. There is no way to have a records official at all of the thousands of Friday night football games. Really, they’re beholden to the high school football coach, and, maybe, the local beat writer. And in an age where newspapers are gutting high school coverage, it’s even more difficult to establish records. For instance, we know that Mount Enterprise’s Kaegan Ash broke Kenneth Hall’s single-season rushing record this past year. But do we really know that? Did we watch every run and chart it? Or did we watch the highlights and take the Mount Enterprise staff at their word? (I’m not trying to disprove Ash’s record – it happened. Just trying to prove a point.)
For these reasons, Kevin Askeland, a longtime senior writer and high school football historian at MaxPreps, has always been skeptical of “unbreakable records.” It’s not that he has a personal vendetta against any of the record-holders. In his mind, if he finds out a record is wrong, he’s giving the next generation a fair chance to break it. And the more records that get debunked – like Netcong High’s John Giannantonio’s 4,756 yards in the 1950 season and 754 rushing yards in a single game, or Bedford County Training’s 52 straight shutouts in the 1940s – the more motivated he is to sniff the rest out.
Askeland has had his eyes on Jim Linnstaedter’s single-season interception record for at least half a decade. In that time, he believes he’s found plenty of damning evidence. For starters, the record occurred in 1956. Linnstaedter was a freshman that year. And, Brenham had its worst season in three decades, posting a 1-8-1 record. That means Linnstaedter had to have 3.5 interceptions a game for a team that only won one game.
What’s more, Askeland has actually dug through the Brenham Banner-Press archives. The paper has a box score of statistics for every game. As a team, the Cubs had only seven interceptions all season.
Askeland thought that maybe Linnstaedter had 35 interceptions his entire career, not in a single season. So he moved on to Linnstaedter’s sophomore year in 1957. That season, Linnstaedter is listed with eight interceptions, including three in one game. But the entire team had just 15. The Brenham Banner-Press had more of the same story in 1958 (Linnstaedter is listed with four interceptions) and 1959 (three). All told, that’s 15 interceptions over four years, not 35 in his freshman season alone.
So where the hell did the 35 interception total come from? That’s the question I set out to answer when I visited the Linnstaedter family on Lake Limestone. Only, the story I expected to be focused on a record turned into the tale of a family fighting for its legacy.
“Everybody likes the underdog,” James said. “I think my dad is an underdog in this because there are so many people trying to refute the story. It was documented and documented again. But (the number is) so unbelievable that people want to take it away.”
Sign In