Buck Bailey: The Making of a Legend

There never has been--and may never be again--another sports figure like Buck Bailey. He was a gifted athlete, a fine coach, and a gentleman. Buck was a devoted family man who also earned the loyalty of the teams he coached, and commanded the respect of his peers.

From the time he arrived at WSC in 1926, until he retired from WSU in 1961, Buck was a “triple threat”: on the baseball diamond, on the football field, and on the golf course. In his three and a half decades at Washington State, he compiled an enviable record and achieved national distinction for himself and the school. In fact, one of the main reasons Buck Bailey became a legend was because he dedicated himself to championing the cause of the great institution of higher learning.

This book tells his story, the story of a dirt-poor athlete, who came to the Palouse from West Texas by way of California to make an indelible mark on the national intercollegiate sports scene for Washington State University.

Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson, a native of Eldorado, Texas, was a 1938 WSC graduate and nephew of Buck Bailey. Gibson helped found the Stanford Research Center.