Football Coaches Convention

ANAHEIM,CA.------Over 6000 Coaches gathered for their annual convention in this Southern California town, home of Disneyland, and Grant Teaff and his American Football Coaches Association staff did perhaps their best job ever in making this four-day event memorable for all in attendance.
I attended my first AFCA Convention in 1952 in Cincinnati and treasure being an Honorary Member of the AFCA. Mississippi State Coach Silvester (Sly) Croom was named the Fellowship of christian Athletes' Coach of the Year. He was also the Southern Regional nominee. In his response he said that the biggest disappointment of his life came when he applied and did not get the job as Coach of his Alma Mater, the University of Alabama where he was a standout player and later an Assistant Coach.
He also coached at Green Bay and then was named the first Black Coach in the Southeastern Conference at Mississippi State University by Athletic Director Larry Tempelton, whose contract was not renewed this year after many years of faithful service to his alma mater.
I ran into Ed Orgeron, whose loss to Mississippi State,after an 14-0 lead, cost him his job at Ole Miss. He told me the Ole Miss chapter was history and he was looking forward top his next opportunity. He had a five year contract and was dismissed after three seasons. He was counting on Texas transfer Jevan Snead leading the Rebels to better things after a red shirt season. Now Houston Nutt, his successor, will build the 2008 Redand Blue around Snead.
It was good to see Appalachian State coach Jerry Moore in Anaheim. All he did was win his third straight national championship, which included the monumental upset of the University of Michigan in the Big House at Ann Arbor to open the season.
The victory was called perhaps the biggest upset in college football season. I call it the biggest upset since Mississippi Southern turned back defending Orange Bowl champion Alabama in the first game of the 1953 season in Montgomery, 25-19. At the time this was called the biggest upset since little Centre College went east to beat Harvard with Bo McMillan leading the charge.
In the College Football Hall of Fame at Kings Island, Ohio there was an area designating this upset win. In the relocation to South Bend there is no mention of same.
There is also no display of the famous Knute Rockne Win for the Gipper speech in South Bend. which was the most popular display at Kings Island. The new National Football Foundation regime which took over after Chairman Vincent de Paul Draddy's death and Executive Director Jimmie McDowell's requested retirement put a shopping mall fellow in charge of the shift from Kings Island to South Bend. A nice fellow he did not know the difference in sports between first and third base.
It is not too late to put the Rockne exhibit in the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend
There should also restore Mississippi Southern's win over Alabama tying this in with Appalachians triumph over Michigan. On that 1953 team were two backs, Fullback Bucky McElroy, a bull-dozing 200-pounder from Monroe, La., the fabled Black Knight of the Bayous and Hugh Laurin Pepper, a 190-pound jet-propelled Benton Bomber, who the previous season had rushed for more yardage than Oklahoma Heisman Trophy winner Billy Vessells and Buck McPhail.
Both McElroy and Pepper, who won Mid-Bracket All-America honors, should be in the College Football Hall of Fame. They also led Southern to a 14-0 win over the University of Georgia later that season. Georgia's quarterback was Zeke Bratkowski,. who had been averging three touch=-down passes a game, and Alabama's Quarterback was Bart Starr. Bama went on to win the SEC and play in the Cotton Bowl against Rice.
Jerry Moore has been invited to come to Jackson Feb. 11 and be honored for the second time by the All-American Football Foundation for the second time at the Foundation's 90th Banquet of Champions at the Jackson Hilton Hotel.
Prior to the AFCA Convention I attended the Rose Bowl and watched the University of Southern California, at full strength with Quarterback John David Booty fully recovered from a mid-season injury, sock it to the The University of Illinois. I saw USC whitewash Notre Dame, 38-0 in South Bend as well. USC, LSU and Georgia were all national champs on contenders after the bowl games were played. If there was another week to play one of the three would have still been left out. It was a great unpredictable season and now it is time for Recruiting which will determine future champions. New coaches are on board. New challenges on the horizon. Let the action resume.
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