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