“The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors, creates opportunities, enlightens, and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.”                                        Malcolm Gladwell

1926 – Masonic Home Orphanage, Fort Worth, Texas: The orphanage, which sat on 200 acres just east of Fort Worth, was started in 1900. Its purpose was to provide housing and education for the orphans of Free Masons.  The facility was a lonely depressing place, home to 150 children, including five-year-old Hardy Brown and his two siblings. They came to live at the Masonic home after witnessing their father gunned down by a rival bootlegger.

The Fort Worth Masonic Home never had a football team until they hired Rusty Russell in the summer of 1927 as the school’s first coach. The young coach wasn’t sure why he took the job. He thought maybe it was an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of young men who desperately needed a second chance at life.

Russell was having great success as the coach of the Temple High School Wildcats, having coached them to the state semi-finals the previous year. Fellow coaches thought Russell was crazy to leave a well-established Texas program. His pregnant wife agreed with them. No one believed the tiny orphanage could compete in high school football, but Russell ignored his head and followed his heart.

In 1927, the Masonic Home Masons played in the B division, the smallest division in Texas. Russell hauled his team to away games in a smoke-belching flatbed truck. Though the twelve players in donated, mismatched uniforms and hand-me-down helmets didn’t look like much, they shocked the Texas football world by going 8-2 in their first season. After watching the team play, a sportswriter dubbed the speedy underdogs the “Mighty Mites.”

Russell’s offense, an early version of the spread offense, utilized the speed and quickness of players, who were often outweighed by 50 pounds per man. From 1927 to 1931, the Masonic Home compiled a 37-11 record. Texas had never seen this style of gritty, relentless football. Bound by the loss of their parents and other hardships, the boys were determined to prove to the world that they were somebody.

In 1932, in a move that had high school fans scratching their heads the Mighty Mites were moved up to Class 7A, the biggest division in Texas. With just 12 players, all that could fit on the old truck, they competed against much larger schools who dressed out 100 players. The Masonic Home routinely beat the big, affluent schools in Dallas, Houston, and Amarillo. Those schools dreaded playing the hard-hitting Mighty Mites who had nothing to lose and everything to prove.

The Mighty Mites reached the state semi-finals in 1934, 1938, and 1940. With All-State Linebacker Hardy Brown, they played 3-time state champion Amarillo High in the 1940 state championship game. After being stopped on the one-yard line when the game ended, the Mighty Mites lost a heartbreaker 14-7 to the Golden Sandies. The team walked off the field as 12,000 fans stood to their feet chanting, “Mighty Mites! Mighty Mites!”

Although the Mighty Mites never won a championship, they captured the hearts of millions of people in Texas and across America. In 1940 Fort Worth built a 15,000-seat stadium to accommodate the large Mighty Might crowds. The stadium became known as the ‘House the Orphans Built.’

Rusty Russell coached for 15 years at the Masonic Home, compiling a 127-30-12 record. He was later the head coach at Southern Methodist University. In 1971, Russell was inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame.

After graduating from the Masonic School in 1940, Hardy Brown signed a scholarship with the University of Tulsa, where he was selected All Missouri Valley Conference linebacker for three years. The 6-foot, 190-pound Brown played for 10 seasons in the National Football League with the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers, and Washington Redskins. Hardy Brown ranks No. 5 on the Top 10 Hardest Hitters in NFL history.

More than 80 years later, football fans in Texas still talk about the football team from the Fort Worth Masonic Home who traveled to games on an old flatbed truck. Rusty Russell gave the orphans two things they desperately needed: hope, and an opportunity to be something other than orphans. They were winners.