Rev. Jacqueline Brannon Giles (then Jacqueline Davis) walked away from her first encounter with Warren Wells, thinking he was cock-sure, bordering on arrogant. Later, she discovered his unbridled confidence translated directly to the success he enjoyed on the job—playing wide receiver for the AFL/NFL’s Oakland Raiders in the late 60s and early 70s.
Giles and Wells were then undergraduates at Texas Southern University, an HBCU located in Houston. Then, a budding mathematician, Giles was asked by TSU football head coach Alexander Durley to tutor members of his team so they could remain academically eligible. It was in this setting in the mid-60s that Giles and Wells had their first verbal exchanges.
“Warren came to one of my tutoring sessions,” recalls Giles, “and I was on the board doing the mathematics, and Warren says, ‘Jackie, you do math on the blackboard, but I do math and physics on the football field.’ Well, I laughed and I told the department, ‘That boy sure is cocky. But guess what? He could back it up with his play.’”
And with his classwork, according to Eva Pickens, the former TSU employee who organized the 2015 “Tigers in the NFL: A First and Goal Celebration,” an event honoring Wells and other former Tiger greats who were NFL alums.
Pickens, who was part of the TSU contingent that went to Canton, Ohio for the Michael Strahan Hall of Fame induction, said it was there that TSU and Wells kept coming up.
“People kept telling us about these stories and about how great Wells was, first of all, as a student, an education major, and also as an athlete, and just all-around nice guy,” said Pickens, who returned to Houston determined to find and celebrate these Tiger/NFL alums, thinking it was just a handful.
“By the time we had finished our research in 2015, we found that 77 former TSU students played in the NFL. But it was Wells’ name we heard the most.”
But long before Pickens’ discovery, Giles and Wells’s inauspicious beginning grew into a lifelong friendship; one where Wells, upon becoming an Oakland Raider, invited Giles, then living in New York, to attend a game against the New York Jets on Dec. 6, 1970; a game in which the outcome was decided on a 33-yard TD pass with eight seconds to go in the game.
While Wells worked his magic on the gridiron, Giles, a Houston native, graduated from TSU with degrees in mathematics and English, attended Brooklyn Poly (now NYU School of Engineering in Brooklyn) and earned a master’s in Pure Mathematics from Texas A&M University. Giles also serves on two national boards in mathematics and teaches math at HCC and her alma mater TSU, as well as provides free math tutoring to K-12 students through SHAPE Community Center located in Houston’s iconic Third Ward.
Giles remained close friends with Wells long after his playing days, difficult years that saw the once great athlete fall on hard times fueled greatly by economic challenges and alcoholism. And again, Giles was on the scene tutoring Wells, this time on the process of getting his disability and retirement benefits from the AFL/NFL.
Forever the mathematician, and less than a part-time football fan, Giles became intrigued by the numbers Wells put up on the gridiron, especially when compared to some of the game’s most famous and revered wide receivers.
She discovered that during Wells’ first five years in the league, his numbers stacked up to and more often than not, surpassed the TD and yards-per-reception numbers of greats like Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Rice and others.
“I looked at Warren’s data and as I recall, his yard reception average is 26.8. If you keep up with wide receivers, even now, they seldom have that high a yards-per-reception average. His career average, I believe is 23.1. For years, he held the record for yards-per-reception, but then they changed the rule and a player had to be in the NFL for so many years to get that kind of recognition. But I argued that Warren had intensity and integrity on that football field. He had robust data; that’s data that stands out even now, if you look at other wide receivers,” said Giles.
And when Giles discovered that most former players voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame (HOF) did so with the help of journalists who made their cases for admission into the HOF for certain players via their media articles, she became a journalist pushing for Wells to be considered for induction into what some call the greatest “team” ever assembled.
Similar arguments were used to push for running backs Gale Sayers (Chicago Bears) and Terrell Davis (Denver Broncos) to be inducted into the HOF after only playing for seven seasons.
“I want Warren to be honored because I thought he was extremely gifted and intelligent too. And I just thought that because they changed the rule, that was a way to suppress recognizing him and other HBCU players,” said Giles.
Thus, she set out to apply her trade (mathematician) and passion (journalism/writing) to make the case for Wells, writing hundreds of articles for the renowned BleacherReport.com, many of which focused on increasing national awareness of Wells’ on-field accomplishments. Wells wrote many of those articles under the pen name “Honor Warren Wells TheTorch,” a name Giles chose as a shout-out to the fact that out of all the Raiders greats over the decades, Wells was the one chosen to light a ceremonial torch in Dec. 2015 before the Raiders-Packers game in honor of the then recently deceased Raiders legendary owner and Hall of Famer Al Davis.
Pickens’ event helped celebrate Wells and other Tigers.
“Warren and the others were so proud. But what I liked, I took a seat and I just watched them congratulate one another… And just hearing those stories and those highlights and the challenges they had to overcome as Black players. It just warmed my heart. And the pride Warren had being a TSU tiger. His Beaumont home was painted maroon and gray—TSU’s colors,” said Pickens.
And though the Raiders honored Wells after his passing in 2018, Giles continues to fight to get Wells the Hall of Fall recognition she contends Wells’ on-field stats deserve.
“I know there were some other challenges in his life, but that had nothing to do with his performance on the football field. And I think he ought to be honored for his unique performance on the football field.”
