John Kimbrough should probably be No. 1 on this list and maybe he’s closer to 1B than two. It was difficult to find all the scoop but one thing we all know, he helped lead the Aggies to the AP National Championship in 1939. He was a consensus All-American in 1939 and in the Sugar Bowl against Tulane, Kimbrough rushed for 159 yards on 25 carries. The Aggies would win 14-13 to claim the National Championship.
Head Coach H.H. Norton said that Kimbrough was “the greatest football player in the world. And you can put my name on that with a picture. Tulane was all they said it was, but we just had too much.”
In 1940, Kimbrough and the rest of the Aggies were primed for another run at a National Championship. The Aggies would race out to a 8-0 record only giving up 27 points but would lose any shot at back to back championships when they fell to Texas 7-0. The Aggies would bounce back to beat Fordham in the Cotton Bowl to finish 9-1 and sport a 20-1 record in the last two years. Kimbrough would be named a unanimous All-American in 1940 while finishing second in the Heisman voting.
Kimbrough would finish his career with 1,357 rushing yards and would end up not playing in the NFL but would play professionally in the third American Football League and the All-America Football Conference.