The great Sonny Jones remembered

This was September of 2004. Ole Miss was about to go play Wyoming in football. The better story, turns out, was at the Barnett Reservoir in the home of Walker "Sonny" Jones, a former Wyoming football star and an avid Ole Miss fan.

 

I went and spent a Wednesday morning with Sonny to learn how a kid from Philadelphia, Miss., became one of Wyoming's all-time football greats, then became the father and grandfather of two Ole Miss football stars. The coffee was good, the conversation better. I wish I had a recording.

Sonny, who died Friday at the age of 88, could ever more tell a story.

Here's part of the column:

The date was Nov. 5, 1949. Wyoming, playing on the road in Greeley, Col., led Northern Colorado 103 to 0 in the fourth quarter. Wyoming running star Walker "Sonny" Jones already had scored several touchdowns and had long since taken a seat on the sidelines.

Wet football? You ain't seen nothing...

 

The forecast for season openers at Oxford and Starkville calls for wind and a chance of thunderstorms. Dress appropriately. And remember, no matter, what Mother Nature does, it won't be the worst-ever playing conditions for a college football in Mississippi.

That probably happened in 1907 when Ole Miss and State traveled to Jackson for their annual grudge match. Back then, they played at the State Fairgrounds. In 1907, they played after several days of hard rain. Much of the field was under water. Newspaper reports say that in some areas of the
field, water was nearly knee deep.

State, then Mississippi A&M, won the game 15-0, and nobody drowned.

Some Ole Miss players, however, did get sloshed. Legend has it that Ole Miss
coach Frank Mason chose to provide an urn of coffee on the sideline to keep
his team warm. To make sure that his guys were good and warm, he spiked the
coffee with bourbon whiskey.

So you probably won't be surprised to learn that Mason coached only that one
season at Ole Miss - or that his team lost all six of its games, scoring six
points and allowing 195.

When asked afterward about his team's travel plans, Mason said he was
staying in Jackson but sending his team back to Oxford.

"And I hope I never see them again," coach Frank Mason said.

If that's not a Hall of Fame moment, I don't know what is.

Orley vs. Rick: Here's how we pick 'em

I'll never forget what my daddy told me when I first started picking games for a newspaper more than 40 years ago. "Son," he said. "You were better at picking your nose."

Ace, my dad, had a way with words. So does Orley Hood, already a sports writing legend before he went to the other side of the newsroom way back when. Can't tell you how many times I picked up Orley's column and said, "Dang, I wish I had written that."

"O" and I are going to have some fun picking the games this season. Hope you enjoy.

My picks

Mississippi State 45, Jackson State 7: State simply has more and better athletes. Bigger, faster, stronger. JSU will get a nice paycheck. This would have been a more interesting game in, say, the early 1970s when JSU was churning out NFL players the way the SEC does now.

Ole Miss 31, Central Arkansas 17: Should Central Arkansas win, it would not be as big an upset as Jacksonville State beating Ole Miss in 2010. I would expect the Rebels, playing their first game under a new coach, to be more ready for this one. Ole Miss needs to play well. This is not a sure thing.

Nebraska 24, Southern Miss 17: The betting line — 19.5 at last look — seems far out of line to me. Unless USM has a rash of turnovers I would expect this to be a close game in the fourth quarter. If USM gets good play at the QB position an upset is quite possible.

Orley's

Mississippi State 52, Jackson State 14: Rick's right. This would be more fun if Walter Payton and Robert Brazille were playing for the Tigers. Alas. The fear for JSU's coaches has to be a double-edged brain-blistering psychic bleed-out from playing against SEC athletes on the road with three hours of tens of thousands of cowbells ringing as background music. Hope the money's
worth it for JSU.

Ole Miss 24, Central Arkansas 10: But, hey, who knows? Four years ago could you have pictured such uncertainty confronting an Ole Miss team against a, uh, nobody? Last time I was in the stadium, Alabama's Trent Richardson scored four touchdowns in the time it takes to put mustard on a concession stand hotdog. I haven't gotten over it. Hope the Rebels have.

Southern Miss 24, Nebraska 20: OK. I know. New coach. New quarterback. Yada, yada, yada. Against Nebraska! Mighty Nebraska. Big Red. Yada. But I'd rather risk looking like a dope than pick a Big Ten team over Our People. Besides, you know Ellis Johnson's guys will play like their hair's on fire. Hope that never changes.

 

Here's how they'll finish....

These predictions come with with a caution: As hard as it is to believe, I have been wrong before. One year, long ago, I picked Mississippi State to win seven games. The Bulldogs won one and lost 10. As the season progressed and losses mounted, I received a phone call from the same Ole Miss fan every Sunday morning. "Well, the Bullies lost again and I just want to know," the wise guy would say, "was that one of the seven or one of the four."

That said, most times I have come within one or two games of the teams' actually records. Let's try again.

Mississippi State: I can guarantee you these Bulldogs won't go 1-10. They play 12 games. I'm guessing they eventually will play 13 because they'll win eight in the regular season and then go bowling. As I wrote yesterday, the Auburn game on Sept. 8, is huge. Win that one and the Bulldogs have a chance — a chance, mind you — to be 7-0 going into Alabama. The schedule is back end-loaded, however. After playing Middle Tennessee State on Oct. 20, the Bulldogs play Alabama, Texas A & M, LSU and Arkansas, before finishing with Ole Miss.

Ole Miss: If Hugh Freeze were to win four five games, he ought to be Coach of the year. If they Rebels win six, they should go ahead and commission a statue. Unfortunately, I think the Rebels are destined for 3-9. Freeze inherits a mess. This is going to take some time.

Southern Miss: If USM has success against the first half of its schedule, the Eagles could garner some national headlines. They open with Nebraska and also play Louisivlle, Boise State and UCF in a front-loaded schedule. So much depends on the quarterback position after four years of Austin Davis. It would be better to play that front end on the back end, after the new coaching staff has settled on a quarterback. As it stands, I've got USM at 8-4 and bowling.

Jackson State: Quarterback is also the key at JSU. The Tigers will badly need to win against Tennessee State Sept. 8 at Memphis after taking a licking Sept. 1 at Starkville. I've got the Tigers finishing 7-4.

Circle these games, dates

Mississippi football fans, circle these games:

• Auburn at Mississippi State, Sept. 8, 11 a.m. It's one of the biggest early season games in recent memory in Mississippi college football. You look at this State schedule, and the Bulldogs, with a victory over Auburn, would have a chance to take a 7-0 record into an Oct. 27 game at Alabama. A chance, mind you: Troy, on the road, is not a gimmee. Neither is Kentucky on the road or Tennessee at home. But State has a chance to make a national splash this year. The schedule sets up nicely for the Bulldogs.

• Central Arkansas at Ole Miss, Sept. 1. 6 p.m. There's no such thing as a gimmee for Hugh Freeze's first Ole Miss team. Can't remember a Mississippi coach inheriting such a problematic team or such a horrendous schedule. “But Central Arkansas?” you say. Central Arkansas was 9-3 last year and boasts a roster with several BCS transfers, including former Ole Miss receiver Jesse Grandy. Again, this Ole Miss can't look past anybody.
  
  
• USM at Nebraska Sept. 1, 2:30 p.m. Oddsmakers have Nebraska a three-touchdown favorite, in large part because the Golden Eagles break in a new quarterback after four years of the splendid Austin Davis. USM has won at Lincoln as a three-TD underdog before. Hard to see it happening this time, but I'd also be surprised if Nebraska wins in a rout.
  
  
• Jackson State at Texas Southern, Sept. 15 at Houston. The Tigers need to come out of their first two games (non-conference games at Mississippi State and against Tennessee State in Memphis) with a 1-1 record. Then comes Texas Southern in the SWAC opener. That one very well could determine the direction of this JSU team.

Tomorrow: A stab at predicting the records of State, USM, Ole Miss and Jackson State.

He could throw that speedball by you....

Seems like every class in every school has one. Bobby Myrick, who died Thursday in Hattiesburg, was ours. He was that guy who could do anything in sports. Just give him the ball and get out of the way.

A three-sport star, Bobby was voted most athletic of our very athletic Class of 1970 at Hattiesburg High School. He went on to pitch for Mississippi State, the original Jackson Mets and then in the Major Leagues for the New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

What those Major Leaguers never knew is that they never saw the real Bobby Myrick. He hurt his arm at State and never really did throw as hard — or with as much pop, as they say — after that. But he was so gifted he was still in that tiny fraction of one percent that make the big leagues.

In Hattiesburg, we saw the real Bobby. I caught him as a kid. He was my claim to fame as an athlete. Really. Kids would come by the dugout to look at my left hand, red and swollen from his wicked fastballs. I caught Bobby by default. Most everyone else was scared to.

Remembering Superman (Hamilton)

The last time these eyes saw Taylorsville native Billy Hamilton, he was playing basketball, not baseball, and he was stealing balls, not bases. This was Feb. 24, 2009, at Mississippi Coliseum.

The headline on my next day's column read: "Sometimes even Superman loses."

Billy Hamilton was Superman that day. Apparently, he still is.

Surely, you've seen the news about how Hamilton, playing for the Class AA Pensacola Blue Wahoos, has broken Vince Coleman's record and become the all-time single season stolen base king of professional baseball. He had stolen 147 going into Wednesday night's game. If the Cincinnati Reds don't call him up before then, he will put that speed on display at Trustmark Park beginning Friday night when the Wahoos come to Pearl for a five-game series.

Hamilton, you will remember, was all-state in three sports at Taylorsville. He might have been the state's best player in three sports. He certainly was the quickest and the fastest.

Here's one passage from that column of of three years ago: "In what sadly might have been the last basketball game he will ever play, Taylorsville's Billy Hamilton did everything Tuesday - everything, that is, except win. Hamilton, as quick and fast as any hoops player these eyes have seen, scored 39 points, passed out nine assists, grabbed six rebounds and had a personal hand in 59 of his team's 70 points. Coahoma County nevertheless managed a 74-70 victory over Taylorsville in the opening round of the State Class 2ATournament."

A visit from Magic's Pat Williams

Pat Williams, executive vice-president of the Orlando Magic and once voted one of the 50 most influential people in NBA history, visited Jackson and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.

He made our day at Hall of Fame. “You've got a wonderful place here, a great product,” Williams said after a 45-minute museum visit. “You have a great sports story to tell in Mississippi.”

We certainly do, but Williams, who was in town to speak about leadership to C Spire Wireless associates, is quite a story himself.

How many people do you know who:

* Traded Pete Maravich away and traded for Julius “Dr. J” Erving?
* Have written more than 70 books?
* Is the father of 19, including 14 adopted from four different nations?
* Hosts three different radio shows?
* Earned a Ph.d in Humane Letters after starring as a baseball catcher at Wake Forest and then playing minor league baseball?
* Drafted Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal among others?

Some folks don't understand Favre

Not surprisingly, many in the national media are having fun at Brett Favre's expense now that he is the offensive coordinator at Oak Grove High, just west of Hattiesburg.

They don't get it. They certainly don't get Brett Favre.

He is the son of a high school football coach, the late Big Irv Favre. Brett's passion for football comes from those early days, going to his dad's practices, being around the players and the coaches, being around the game.

It is that passion that enabled Favre to play 20 years in the NFL, to play more consecutive games than any player in NFL history, to play through injury after injury and to become the league's all-time leading passer. Nobody ever made playing such a rough sport look like so much fun.

It was that passion, first instilled by his father, that caused that memorable game back on Dec. 22, 2003. Remember?

One day after his father died of a heart attack, Favre decided to play in a December 22, 2003, Monday Night Football game against the Oakland Raiders. Favre passed for four touchdowns in the first half and 399 total yards in a 41–7 Green Bay victory over Oakland. He finished the game with a passer rating of 154.9– the highest of Favre's career and just 3.4 points shy of perfect.

Afterwards, Favre said, "I knew that my dad would have wanted me to play. I love him so much and I love this game. It's meant a great deal to me, to my dad, to my family. . ."

Favre honored Big Irv that night.

You ask me, he still honors him today as a volunteer offensive coordinator, who could do anything with his time but chooses to spend it teaching teenagers how to play the game he loves.

Happy first Friday night

There must be something really special about what goes in the water bottles Mississippi high schools use on Friday nights.

Just has to be be.

How else to explain it?

Jerry Rice, pro football's all-time leading receiver and scorer, played his high school football a few miles outside out of Starkville.

Brett Favre, pro football's all-time leading passer, played his prep ball in Kiln.

Walter Payton, pro football's second all-time leading rusher, played his high school football in Columbia.

Archie Manning, the patriarch of America's first family of football, first played at Drew.

All together now: 'One game at a time'

All right, football teams everywhere are in two-a-days. Whistles are blowing. Coaches' neck veins are bulging. Sweat is pouring. And players are asking themselves, “Why exactly am I doing this?”

Fans, of course, can't wait. Everybody is undefeated. Tailgating is less than a month away. And even if you don't go to the games, you can turn on your TV at 11 in the morning and watch football non-stop till past midnight on any number of channels.

It's not a season; it's a marathon. You, the fan, need to prepare for it. You need to practice. You need to study. Practice makes what? Perfect. That's right. You need to focus. You need to get yourself in mid-season form before the season.

You need to get your cliches in order.

I am here to help.

First off, remember, football is not played on a field. No, it's a gridiron. Makes no sense, I know, but it just is. This time of the year everybody expects gridiron glory.

52 Years Later, Boston Remembers the Gold

It was 52 years ago this week, about a month before the 1960 Rome Olympics. Ralph Boston, a Laurel farmer's son and the youngest of 10 children, was a nobody, a largely unknown 21-year-old student at Tennessee State.

Boston, at 73, well remembers the night a nobody became a big somebody. The U.S. Olympic track and field team was holding a conditioning meet in preparation for Rome at Mt. San Antonio College near Los Angeles. Boston, a long jumper, leaped 26 feet, 11 inches, breaking the 25-year-old record of the legendary Jesse Owens. It was the last world record Owens owned.

“Suddenly people recognized me,” Boston said, chuckling at the memory Wednesday. “Before that night nobody outside of Laurel, Mississippi, knew who I was and the people in Laurel knew me as Hawkeye Boston, not Ralph Boston.”

Boston remembers a strapping, young man from Louisville, Ky., stopping him in New York just before the U.S. team boarded a plane for Rome.

“He said, 'You're Ralph Boston, I want to take your picture,'” Boston said. “Then he said, 'You don't know who I am yet, but you will soon.' And then he introduced himself as Cassius Marcellus Clay. You don't forget things like that.”

No, we can only suppose, you don't. Nor do you forget what Boston did next, which was win the gold medal in Rome.

Roy Cochran: a Mississippi Olympic story

I've covered nearly 30 Super Bowls, more Masters than I can count, a couple U.S. Opens, a World Series and several national championship games.

But I covered the Olympics only once — in Atlanta, in 1996. It was an experience not to be forgotten, including the bomb that went off in Centennial Park one night just before our deadline.

There was no shortage of Mississippi stories to write. Ruthie Bolton, from the tiny Greene County town of McLain, was the heart and soul of a gold medal-winning U.S. women's basketball team. Angel Martino, who then lived in Hattiesburg, was gold-medal winning captain of the U.S. Women's Swim team. Ron Polk helped coach the bronze medal-winning U.S. baseball team.

And then there was the day I met Janice Cochran-Pendleton, a woman from Kansas whose roots went back to tiny Richton, Mississippi, near McLain.

Turns out Janice Cochran-Pendleton was the daughter of Leroy Braxton “Roy”Cochran, of Richton, who had won two gold medals in the 1948 Olympic Games at London. Boy, did Janice have a story to tell....

Proctor Brought High School Sports Into the 21st Century

Ennis Proctor began his career as a coach and ended it as an administrator to whom high school athletes and coaches across Mississippi owe boundless gratitude.

Simply put, Proctor brought Mississippi high school sports into the 21st century after inheriting an organization that languished in something very much like the 19th century.

When Proctor took over as the executive director of the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA) in 1991, the state's public schools offered only nine sanctioned sports. Worse, the MHSAA had less than $100,000 in the bank and one telephone line in the office. The MHSAA didn't even have a fax machine. Relations between the governing body of Mississippi high school sports and the media covering it bordered on non-existent.

Now then, look at what Proctor left behind when he retired in 2011: 24 sanctioned sports (an addition of 15); a bank account of more than $2 million; an office with multiple phone lines, fax machines and computers; televised championships; and the respect of coaches, administrators and media statewide.

"Ennis Proctor has done more for the improvement and promotion of high school sports than anyone I know in Mississippi or anywhere else," says his successor, Don Hinton. "His accomplishments are truly legendary and are not just recognized in Mississippi but all over the country."

Bulldogs' Malone Could Score With the Best of Them

It's a relatively new term basketball coaches use these days when they say a player "can score the ball." It means that a player can find different ways to get the ball in the hoop.

Well, brothers and sisters, Jeff Malone could ever more score the basketball, even before there was such a phrasing. He could score it from long range, from mid-range and by taking it straight to the hoop. He could score coming off a screen or by pulling up and shooting over the defender.

He became Mississippi State's all-time leading scorer before going on to score more than 17,000 points over a 13-year professional basketball career.

Malone's first year at Mississippi State (1979-80) coincided with my first year of covering State for The Clarion-Ledger. Not before – or since — have I seen a smoother, more technically correct jump shot. Malone, a strongly built, 6-foot, 4-inch shooting guard, would elevate and then put up a shot that so soft that it seemed it almost had to go through the bucket.

Naismith Hall of Famer Bailey Howell, generally recognized as Mississippi's most accomplished basketball player, was an MSU season ticket holder when Malone played for the Bulldogs