UA Little Rock Archivist Revisits Forgotten Football Legacy at CALS Event
James Wethington, archivist and engagement coordinator at the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, brought a hidden chapter of university history to life during his July 2 CALS Legacies & Lunch talk at UA Little Rock Downtown.
His presentation, “Chasing Glory: The Story of Little Rock Junior College Football,” traced the rise, fall, and glory days of the university’s first collegiate sports team.
“They went from pretenders to contenders to champions,” Wethington told the audience. “This team laid the foundation for the university’s entire athletics program.”
The team began in 1930, part of a nationwide boom in college football popularity during the sport’s so-called “Golden Age.” Although the early years were rocky—with four head coaches in the first season alone and a record of 7-22-5 during the initial five-year run—the team left its mark. Students even chose “Trojans” as the team’s mascot, which continues today.
After the team first disbanded in 1935, the junior college turned to intramural sports and offered students options like fencing, tennis, golf, swimming, rifle shooting, and boxing. However, students voiced disappointment over the lack of collegiate spirit on campus without a formal athletics program.
It wasn’t until 1947 that Little Rock Junior College President John Larson and Coach Jimmy Karam revived the program. Karam championed player scholarships, housing, and meal stipends for student-athletes and recruited players from rural Arkansas, even going so far as to build goalposts from wood to train athletes when regular football equipment was not available.
The team’s post-war comeback was extraordinary. In 1947, they earned their first winning season and played in the Coffee Bowl, winning their first bowl appearance 31-7. In 1948, they won seven games and made their second bowl appearance against South Georgia Junior College in the Junior Sugar Bowl, losing 18-7. By 1949, the Trojans were undefeated and headed to Pasadena, California, to face Santa Ana Junior College in the Junior Rose Bowl. The Trojans won 25–19 in front of a national audience.
“It was a monumental occasion for our college,” Wethington said. “I think the Junior College Rose Bowl win is one of the crowning achievements of our institution’s athletics history.”
The football program eventually folded after the 1955 season due to financial concerns. Yet its legacy lives on. The team’s trophies are displayed in the Bailey Alumni and Friends Center, and its influence is still felt throughout the university’s current athletics program. In 2006, the 1949 team was inducted into the Little Rock Trojan Athletic Hall of Fame.
“Without football, I don’t know where our athletics program would be,” Wethington said. “We are Little Rock’s team, and we can be a team the city is proud of.”
The event, hosted by the Central Arkansas Library System, attracted attendees including the daughter and granddaughter of Woody Johnson, who was the last head football coach from 1953 to 1955.
Wethington has been researching LRJC football history since 2022 and first presented on the topic at the Arkansas Historical Association’s annual conference in 2024. His work draws from university photograph collections in Ottenheimer Library, archived yearbooks, historical newspapers, and “The People’s College, Little Rock Junior College and Little Rock University, 1927-1969,” a 1987 book by Jim Lester chronicling the early history of UA Little Rock. He plans to publish his research in the Pulaski County Historical Review to further spotlight the university’s early sports history.
“It’s a unique bookmark in the history of the university,” Wethington said. “A hidden gem that deserves to be remembered.”
You can find a recording of the presentation here.