Reviewed by: Battle of the Brazos: A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder by T. G. Webb Alan C. Atchison Battle of the Brazos: A Texas Football Rivalry, a Riot, and a Murder. By T. G. Webb. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2018. Pp. 184. Appendices, photographs, notes, bibliography, index.) Paid players, expensive coaches, zealous students, and significant financial profits are characteristic of college football in the early twenty-first century. They also describe the Texas A&M–Baylor rivalry of the early 1900s. Sadly, one result of this competition was the death of A&M cadet Charles Sessums during a half-time riot in 1926. Author T. G. Webb believes such an event would be unlikely today. (Many might disagree.) Battle of the Brazos, Webb’s well-researched and detailed rendering of the [End Page 477] events surrounding the riot and the game, does not attempt to alter those beliefs, but instead successfully informs readers about the violent events that occurred at the Cotton Palace in Waco. Webb opens his examination of the tragedy with a brief account of the half-time melee, followed by a lengthy discussion of background information, including the history of the Brazos River, the founding of both universities, the early development of college football, the creation of the Southwest Conference, and even a thumbnail biography of former Texas governor Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross. Here, and throughout his account, Webb employs hyperbole, stating, for instance, that “in the fall of 1894 . . . football fever . . . was sweeping the nation” (19). This comment follows Webb’s mention of the 1896 A&M season record of 2–0–1; the small number of games suggests that any fever was very mild. Likewise, referring to the death of a student during a brawl as murder tends towards sensationalism. Disregarding the exaggerations, those familiar with Texas and college football history may still find these lengthy digressions extraneous. But diligent readers are eventually rewarded with a detailed account of a game that denied A&M a Southwest Conference Championship. According to the Dallas Morning News, the 20–9 Baylor win was “the most sensational in the traditional history of rivalry between Baylor University and Texas A&M” (57). While the first section of the book is highly detailed, the real story, grand in its own right, begins in the second part of the book. Here, Webb focuses on the halftime and Sessums’s death. With this task, more daunting than a game summary, Webb is exemplary. His narrative follows numerous false trails resulting from anonymous tips, conflicting eyewitness accounts, multiple suspects, and political and institutional cover-ups by both universities and the Waco police. Fortunately, Webb’s attention to detail enlightens rather than obscures. When on December 8, 1926, both colleges agreed to sever “all athletic relations” (102), the search for Sessums’s assailant became solely the task of Pinkerton Detective Floyd Benedict. The third part of Battle of the Brazos analyzes Benedict’s investigation. Once again, readers will appreciate Webb’s detailed storytelling, but like Benedict, they will rue the lack of substantive information concerning the young man’s death. Thus, the final section of the book is unfortunately the briefest. This dearth of information is not due to a lack of research; Webb has been diligent in that area, producing a monolith of interest to fans of college athletics and Texas history. Indeed, Battle of the Brazos includes a lengthy bibliography for a brief book, including archival sources, books, magazines, and newspapers. Regrettably, neither Benedict nor Webb was able to identify the perpetrator. However, that does not diminish Webb’s [End Page 478] ability to dispense valuable knowledge of this unsavory episode in college football’s past. Alan C. Atchison Texas State University Copyright © 2019 The Texas State Historical Association