Inducted 2022

Eddie Davis, who is also a recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Faculty award honoring his 41 years of service to the school, is a 2022 Sports Hall of Fame inductee. 

Davis was hired by Dr. Herb Barks, Jr. ’51 in 1981 as an athletic trainer when former football team doctor Barry Heywood ’52 noticed Davis’s work as an assistant trainer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  He would serve as Baylor’s athletic trainer for 32 years.

An athletic trainer’s responsibility is prevention, treatment, and rehab, which begins each day by checking the fields before games to make sure they are safe, making sure there is water and ice, setting up tables for the sidelines, and organizing emergency equipment. It’s not glorious work, but it is important work.  And although he was hired to be the football trainer, Davis gradually began working with other teams and the school’s athletic program continued to grow.  By the time he left his position in the athletic office, Davis was serving the athletes of over 60 Baylor varsity, JV, and Middle School teams throughout three seasons.

As the internet began changing the marketing and communications landscape for schools began to change too, and sports updates were becoming an increasingly important component of websites, Davis began maintaining the athletic section of the website with scores, photos, and sports stories and began doing the same for Baylor magazine. Davis called his updates the Raider Recap, and created a recognizable news platform for Baylor athletics that would eventually become the school’s social media brand for athletics.