Samford Hall of Fame Members
Biography
Induction Class: 2018
Sport: Football
Billy Bancroft was a star football, basketball and baseball player at Howard College in the mid-1920s. He led Howard’s 9-0 win over arch-rival Birmingham-Southern College in the 1927 inaugural game of Birmingham’s Legion Field, passing for a touchdown and kicking a 29-yard field goal. He went on to coach at Howard, leading the team in the most famous game in Samford football history, the 7-7 tie with defending Rose Bowl champion Alabama in 1935. He served as Howard’s head football coach from 1935-39, and also served as head basketball coach from 1934-38. He played eight seasons of minor league baseball after graduation, hitting a career .276. He drove in the only run for the Birmingham Barons in a famous 1931 Dixie Series (Southern Association vs. Texas League) pitcher’s duel (1-0) between Dizzy Dean of Houston and Ray Caldwell of Birmingham. The game drew the largest crowd in the history of Birmingham’s Rickwood Field (20,074).
