Billy Ray Smith Sr. was part of a Southwest Conference champion and Cotton Bowl team at Arkansas. He only got better from there
As the countdown to Super Bowl LX continues, we continue our series of Super Bowl players who were Arkansas Razorbacks. Billy Ray Smith Jr. was a tremendous and special Razorback, but his decade-long career with the San Diego Chargers never led him to the Super Bowl. His father, Billy Ray Smith Sr., was able to not only reach the promised land but win the big game as a member of the Baltimore Colts.
Billy Ray Smith Sr. forged a very special Arkansas playing career. He was first-team All-Southwest Conference as a Razorback. He was also part of the 1954 SWC championship team which reached the 1955 Cotton Bowl. Personal excellence led to team accomplishments. That is the dream of every athlete.
Billy Ray Smith Sr.'s story of professional success contains a supremely painful memory. Smith's first Super Bowl appearance was in SB III in January of 1969. That was the game in which the Baltimore Colts lost as 18-point favorites, which remains the biggest upset in the 59-year history of the Super Bowl. The Colts' defense actually wasn't bad, but the Baltimore offense imploded in a 16-7 loss to Joe Namath and the New York Jets. Billy Ray Smith Sr. and his teammates had to live with the haunting awareness of that failure. Only a Super Bowl championship would wipe away the bitter taste of that experience.
Smith Sr. and his Colts were able to get back to the big game in the 1970 season. In the first season after the AFL-NFL merger, the Colts -- a longtime NFL franchise -- moved to the AFC and played the NFC champion Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V. The game was in Miami's Orange Bowl, the same stadium where the Colts stepped on a rake against the Jets two years earlier.
Smith Sr. and the Colts forced several Dallas turnovers, the last of which set up Baltimore for a walk-off game-winning field goal. Colts 16, Cowboys 13. Smith had climbed the professional mountaintop. The pain of Super Bowl III was not eliminated, but it was significantly reduced.
Smith, who had been playing elite competitive football since the mid-1950s at Arkansas, called it a career after that victory. His last football game was a Super Bowl win. You can't do it any better than Billy Ray Smith Sr. did at the end of his career. He rode into the sunset as a world champion.