Last Thursday I wrote about the barbecue they held in the stadium the night before football practice began but today we will see the guys finally get down to work. (I’m very grateful, by the way, to a couple former players who helped identify the people in last week’s pictures.)

The Houston Post sent out a photographer by the name of Cox to take pictures of the practice out on the old field. I have seen thousands of images of football games and practice sessions in my career and I’m not afraid to say openly that the great majority of them aren’t particularly good. These are different, though. I don’t know whether Cox was this good all the time or if he just happened to be having a good day on September 1, 1964 but these are some of the most interesting and even entertaining football shots I’ve come across in recent memory.

So here are a few, in no particular order:

These images are all found at the Houston Post Collection, RGD6.00 7309.

Bonus: Just for fun, here’s how I find these things. First I get a box. They are full of envelopes that are each full of negatives, all arranged by date. There are a lot of these boxes and each one holds a lot of envelopes. The envelopes hold a lot of negatives. I am, to say the least, deeply thankful for the volunteer who spent years labeling them. This is the one that held today’s pictures:

Inside each envelope is an assignment sheet with instructions for the photographer:

These sheets are folded in half or thirds and the negatives are tucked into them. Here’s the bottom part of this assignment sheet, which is how I know the name of the photographer. I find this endlessly delightful.