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The Wandering Weevils . . . College Football’s Marx Brothers

From 1939 to 1941, the football team from tiny Arkansas A&M College turned the college football world upside down. The Boll Weevils—or Wandering Weevils as they were known in the national press—traveled the country playing football for laughs. Along the way, they became national sensations, using unorthodox formations, wild plays and on-field pranks that left friends and foes alike convulsed in laughter or scratching their heads in bewilderment. Collier’s magazine labeled them the “Marx Brothers of College Football” and newspaper headline writers struggled for adjectives to describe Ferguson’s team . . . “A Circus Without Fleas,” “The Nuttiest Team in Football,” and “Fergie’s Wacky Eleven.” The architect of this madness, head coach Stewart Ferguson, believed the game should be played for fun and conceived the outrageous idea of turning football games from serious sport into comedy. His players were country boys. Most had never been more than 10 miles from home. Now they were traveling the country from coast to coast, touring Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields, gawking at New York skyscrapers, meeting radio and motion picture stars, and seeing natural wonders like the Grand Canyon and the redwood forests. This is their story.