Allan “Buckwheat” Cox, a star for UT Martin in the late 60s, early 70s, led Tilghman to 5 title appearances, winning 1 (1985)
Allan Cox was called “Buckwheat” in college at UT Martin where he was a very good player. Cox passed away after a lengthy battle with illness, but for 21-years, Cox was the face and embodiment of Tilghman High’s “Blue Tornado.” Cox also served his country in Vietnam and brought every single soldier, entrusted to his command, home safely. For his efforts in Vietnam, Cox was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with a “V” device. This was awarded to soldiers for acts of heroism in combat. Cox was awarded this for his heroism, as an infantry platoon leader, with the 101st Airborne Division. Leading men into battle and bringing them out victoriously was sort of a Cox, life long characteristic on and off the battlefield, on and off the grid iron.
HB Lyon, Scouting Director, “KPGFootball”
Paducah, KY: I don’t know whether you are familiar with John Wright or not. This would have been someone very familiar to Allan Cox as I am sure Wright was around back then.
John Wright is a famous sports writer who is now the Sports Editor for a newspaper in Murray, Kentucky. The distance between Murray and Paducah is approximately 47-miles.
Wright would have covered Coach Cox for all of his quarter century on the scene. The two would have been familiar, if not very friendly, take our word for it.
Cox won 106-games, and made 5-title game appearances, between 1983 and 1993 while the head coach of Tilghman’s “Blue Tornado” football program. Cox served as an assistant on the Tilghman staff from 1973-1983. Wright was there for all of it, including the 1973 and 1985 championship seasons.
Anyway, Wright has a certain way of putting things. This way of putting things is exactly why people have read him for so many years and what makes him great at his job.
I was at a ball game with John one night and he walked up to me and said something I won’t soon forget. “Fletcher, let me tell you something. There is a leviathan being loosed in western K-Y and the beast has taken the form of Paducah Tilghman’s ‘Blue Tornado.'”
Wright was making specific reference to the football team Sean Thompson and staff had developed in the KHSAA’s 4A classification. Wright and I had this conversation, in 2023, at the “Lake Area Bowl” in Cadiz, KY.
Tilghman went 13-1 in ’23, losing in the semis to Covington Catholic. The next season, ’24, Tilghman went 15-0 and won the 4A championship.
Cox won 106 games in 11 seasons as HFC at Tilghman and went 7-3 against Jack Morris and “Mighty Mayfield.”
KHSAA Statistical Website
This “leviathan” of which Wright spoke that night has gone on a 28-1 run since his pronouncement. The team is, in deed, a leviathan.
That leviathan has been around Tilghman High for a very long time. Paducah Tilghman has won over 800-games and is 4-4 in title appearances so it isn’t like the “Blue Tornado” has been getting sand kicked in its face all these years. Tilghman is the 4th winningest program in KHSAA history.
If Alan Cox didn’t create the leviathan over the course of his 21-years with “The Blue Tornado,” he certainly kept, fed, nurtured, and loved it mighty well.
Cox was hired as an assistant at Tilghman in 1973. Cox worked for Coach Dan Haley and was around for the ’73 title “The Blue Tornado” won over Boyd County, 28-7. Haley and Cox would go back to the title game in 1980, losing to Trinity and its coach, Roger Gruneisen (4A), 31-8.
Cox became the head football coach in 1983. Cox would win 106-games in his 11-seasons at the helm. Under Cox, “The Blue Tornado” would win a title in 1985 and play for titles in 1987, ’88, ’89, and ’92.
Cox was a fierce disciplinarian. There is a famous story about his making players, on their hands and knees, rid the playing field of weeds by using screw drivers.
It was said Coach Cox just couldn’t abide weeds on the field. It really wasn’t about the weeds as much as it was about the discipline to take care of one’s home and the ownership one takes when one is charged with caring for a program.
One will be reluctant to tear down what he had to personally build. That is the theory.
“Homeowners” tend to take better care of their homes than renters. Homeowners have greater incentive to maintain a property in which they are heavily vested and which directly impacts their assets and their financial standing and net worth.
Cox didn’t want players to rent success in the program; he wanted them to buy it, own it
Friday Night Fletch
Cox wanted his players to invest in the program, experience the pride of ownership, experience the long-term commitment which comes with ownership, and be directly responsible for its reputation, upkeep, and prosperity. That was why he had his players screw-driving weeds.
The weeds were symbolic. These weeds weren’t just weeds.
All of this is rather impressive and a worthy life-lesson assuredly. It may pale in comparison to Cox’s service record as a member of the 101st Airborne Division (Army) in Vietnam.
At the age of 22, and the oldest man in the platoon, Cox “…came out of there, and…never lost a soldier…the whole time…,” Larry Shanks told The Paducah Sun. “They all came back home – alive.”
Shanks and Cox played together at UT Martin in the late 60s, early 70s. Both of them were stars at Martin and both became successful high school coaches, Shanks in Union City, Tennessee and Cox at Paducah. The two remained close friends until Cox passed.
Shanks wasn’t the only one taken aback by Cox’s war record. His former player, Randy Wyatt, was too.
“The fact he led a troop of men to the Vietnam War, and brought everybody back home safely, says everything,” Wyatt told The Paducah Sun. “Who does that?”
Maybe even more than championships, football coaches at Paducah’s Tilghman High will always be judged by how well or poorly they match up with Mighty Mayfield. The two teams play in one of the oldest rivalry games in the commonwealth.
Cox and his “Blue Tornado” faced Jack Morris and the Cardinals 10-times with Cox at the helm. Morris, a hall of fame football coach and someone we have already featured, was disappointed he lost to Cox seven times in ten years.
Morris respected the heck out of Coach Cox. Morris respected the program Cox and others had built.
Jack Morris from Mayfield had a healthy respect for both Allan Cox and his “Blue Tornado”
Morris in an interview to “The Paducah Sun”
“We loved playing them,” Morris told The Paducah Sun. “It was tough. It was a nerve-wracking thing to play them. It was a lot of pressure. A lot of our old fans said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, you better beat Tilghman once in a while, or you won’t be around long.’ That’s how it was.”
After his tenure at Tilghman ended, Cox coached at Madisonville-North Hopkins, and then in Florida. Cox would return to Paducah to coach Lone Oak for a couple of its inaugural seasons at the turn of the millennium (2002, 2003).
Alan Cox spent 25 or so years coaching kids in and around the area where he lived much of his life. The wins and losses were important, but they weren’t everything.
“It’s not about the football,” Wyatt told The Paducah Sun. “It’s about the life lessons he taught us through the game of football. I know for me personally, that’s what it [was] all about.”
For us too, my friend. For us too.
This is Friday Night Fletch, reporting for KPGFootball, reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!
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