1939Mythical State Champions
1939: The Undefeated Redhounds Who Gave Corbin Its First Football Championship
Before state championship games were played in large stadiums, before Kentucky high school football was divided into classifications and decades before a playoff bracket determined who would survive until December, Corbin had already produced a championship football team.
The 1939 Redhounds completed an undefeated season and were recognized as state champions, giving Corbin the first football championship in what would become one of the most respected traditions in Kentucky high school football. The Kentucky High School Athletic Association continues to include 1939 among the championship seasons claimed by the program, along with 1955, 1976, 1980 and 1982.
There was no state championship game waiting at the end of the season. There was no five week playoff and no neutral site where the two remaining teams could settle the issue over four quarters. Kentucky had not yet created the postseason system that later generations would come to know. Teams built their reputations across an entire fall, and championships were determined through records, schedules, statewide opinion and the judgment of those who followed the sport.
Corbin left little room for complaint.
The Redhounds did not lose.
At quarterback was William E. “Wild Bill” Wilson, one of the central figures on a team that would be remembered long after the final game was played. Wilson directed a Corbin offense during a season when the Redhounds established themselves as one of the best teams in the state, and his football career appeared headed beyond high school before the events of the next several years changed the course of an entire generation.
For the players on the 1939 team, however, there was no knowledge of what was coming. There was only another football season in a town where the sport had already begun to matter deeply.
Corbin was a railroad community, and high school athletics were becoming one of the places where the city could measure itself against communities across Kentucky. The school had already enjoyed statewide athletic success, winning the boys basketball state championship in 1936, and by the end of the decade Corbin had developed a reputation that extended well beyond Whitley County.
The football team added to it.
The Redhounds of that era played in a different game than the one familiar to modern fans. Offenses were built around the running game, field position was critical, substitutions were limited and players frequently remained on the field for both offense and defense. Equipment offered far less protection, travel was more difficult and teams did not have the benefit of film rooms, computerized statistics or scouting services.
Football was simpler in appearance and often far more demanding in practice.
Corbin thrived in it.
The undefeated record became the foundation of the Redhounds’ championship claim. Without a postseason tournament, there was no opportunity for Corbin to advance through a bracket or meet another contender in an official title game. The season itself was the test, and the Redhounds completed it without a defeat.
That distinction is important when looking back at the championship today.
Calling the 1939 title a mythical championship does not diminish the accomplishment. The term simply identifies the system used before official playoffs existed. Schools across the country claimed championships in similar fashion during that period, and Kentucky was no different. Teams were compared through their records, strength of competition and reputation, and champions were recognized without a final championship game.
Corbin was one of them.
For a program now associated with generations of successful teams, 1939 represents the beginning of the championship line.
The Redhounds would wait 16 years before another team matched the accomplishment. In 1955, Bill Tucker’s Corbin team completed an 11 and 0 season behind junior star Calvin Bird and was again recognized as a state champion. That team became one of the most celebrated in school history, but even those Redhounds were following a championship standard that had already been established.
The standard began in 1939.
That is what makes Wilson and his teammates particularly important to the history of the program. They were not simply another successful Corbin team from an era that has largely disappeared from living memory. They were the first Corbin football team to be remembered as state champions.
Their season became part of the history inherited by every Redhound team that followed.
Players growing up in Corbin during the 1940s and 1950s did not have to imagine whether their school could compete with the best football programs in Kentucky. It had already happened.
The 1955 team proved it again.
The 1962 team came close to adding another championship in the modern postseason era. Corbin defeated two time defending champion Highlands, 10 to 0, in the state semifinal before losing to Danville, 13 to 6, in the championship game.
Then came the run that permanently established Corbin as a statewide football power.
Under Archie Powers, the Redhounds defeated Mayfield, 6 to 0, to win the 1976 Class 2A championship. Corbin returned to the championship game in 1977 and finished runner up before winning again in 1980 with a 16 to 7 victory over defending champion Fort Campbell.
Larry “Cotton” Adams, who had played on the 1962 team and later worked as an assistant under Powers, became head coach and guided Corbin to another championship in 1982. The Redhounds defeated Glasgow, 18 to 6, after scoring all 18 of their points in the fourth quarter.
By then, Corbin had become one of Kentucky’s established championship programs.
The foundation had been laid more than four decades earlier.
The 1939 team played before most of those later Redhound legends were born. There was no Archie Powers on the sideline, no Cotton Adams in uniform, no Calvin Bird returning kicks and no state championship trophy waiting at Commonwealth Stadium or Cardinal Stadium.
There was simply a group of Corbin players trying to win every game placed in front of them.
They did.
The undefeated season ensured that the Redhounds would be remembered, but the championship designation gave the team a place that no Corbin football team before it had occupied.
They were first.
That carries a different kind of significance.
When later generations talked about Corbin football tradition, they were not discussing something created in the 1970s. The program’s reputation had already been built across decades. The 1939 team was part of the proof.
It is difficult to reconstruct every detail of a high school football season played more than 80 years ago. Complete statistics are scarce. Newspaper accounts have not all survived in easily searchable form. Rosters and individual scoring records are far harder to find than those from the modern era.
That makes the pieces that remain even more valuable.
We know the season ended without a loss.
We know Wild Bill Wilson was the quarterback.
We know Corbin was recognized as a champion.
And we know that the KHSAA still includes the 1939 Redhounds when recounting the championship history of the program.
Those facts are enough to establish the place of the team.
The rest deserves continued research.
The old newspapers from Corbin almost certainly contain more of the story. Somewhere in those pages are the weekly scores, the names of linemen who cleared the way, the backs who carried the football, the defenders who made stops, the coach who directed them and the opponents that spent that fall trying to become the first team to beat the Redhounds.
No one did.
That is the fact that has lasted.
The 1939 team did not need a championship game to define its season because Kentucky did not have one to offer. The Redhounds were judged under the system of their time, and by that standard they reached the top.
They finished unbeaten.
They became champions.
And they gave Corbin football its first championship season.
Every championship team that followed added another chapter.
The Redhounds of 1939 wrote the first one.
