Published October 13, 2024

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday night in October than in Tiger Stadium watching LSU play Ole Miss in football. I did it a few times. I’ve got lots of stories.

Last night during work, I put the game on my TV and pulled out some reading material that inspired this blog post.

We’ll get to that. First, let me mention some of my Ole Miss-LSU experiences.

There was quite a turnaround

I saw the visitors beat Gerry DiNardo’s last LSU team by 19 points in 1999. Ole Miss looked a lot like the team I had seen 10 months earlier beat Texas Tech by 17 points in the 1998 Independence Bowl. Deuce McAllister was pretty impressive in both games.

On one of his touchdown runs in the bowl game, McAllister was running right at me as I stood near the end zone talking to someone on a cellphone. Top that, I thought.

Ole Miss won three straight against LSU from 1997-99, but Nick Saban led a reversal of fortunes in the series after becoming LSU’s coach in November 1999.

In 2001, I interviewed Archie Manning for a story about his son, Eli, going to Baton Rouge to play quarterback for Ole Miss, just like he had. Don’t say “Archie who?” If you’re paying any attention to college football this season, you know. In 2001 the phrase was, “Eli’s coming.”

Archie and Ole Miss had beaten LSU twice before his senior season, but wearing a heavy cast on his broken arm for the 1970 game in Tiger Stadium, he was humbled. LSU won 61-17, returning three punts for touchdowns and making it look easy.

My favorite part of the phone interview with Archie was when he said his mom thanked LSU coach Charles McClendon for going somewhat easy on her injured son. They mostly wrapped him up and did not take him down as hard as they normally would, Archie said, and he told me he would always be grateful to Cholly Mac for that.

Less than six weeks later, the old coach died.

In LSU’s 2003 and 2007 national championship seasons, I saw LSU win road games against Ole Miss. In the years between, I saw LSU win overtime games at home against Ole Miss.

But I never saw anything like what fans saw when Ole Miss played LSU in Tiger Stadium on Halloween night in 1959.

Billy Cannon’s punt return

You knew ABC/ESPN would show the familiar clip of LSU’s Billy Cannon returning an Ole Miss punt 89 yards in a 7-3 win that briefly kept alive the 1959 Tigers’ hopes of repeating as national champions.

Last night I read about that game as this year’s renewal of the rivalry played out on my TV. My good friend, the late Marty Mulé, whose name has appeared on this site more than once, interviewed Cannon years ago and wrote about the night that helped him win the Heisman Trophy in 1959.

There have been many touchdown runs by gifted athletes who had moves that Cannon didn’t have. But, as with anything, context is everything. Cannon played on offense and defense, and we know he returned kicks. In other words, he didn’t rest much during games.

Context is why I get upset when people downplay The Catch, the one Willie Mays made of a Vic Wertz fly ball in the 1954 World Series. I’ve heard it called overrated. Nonsense. There is no Major League Baseball playing field as spacious as the Polo Grounds in New York in ’54. The distance from home plate to center field was listed at 483 feet. Mays, playing in shallow center field, had to run a long way to catch up to that one.

Ask anyone who calls the catch overrated if they’ve ever had to run down a ball hit directly over their head. I’ve tried it. It’s disorienting and so difficult.

I’ve seen outfielders make spectacular leaping catches at the wall, but I’ve never seen anyone do what Mays did. The same with Cannon’s run.

Context tells you how great it was

Cannon’s context was that he was a two-way player who put his body to the test game after game and somehow had the stamina for the fourth-quarter heroics against Ole Miss in 1959.

Late in a game like that, to still have the energy to outrun the Ole Miss team, that was amazing enough. But for Cannon to seal the win with a game-saving tackle later, and all of this after his early fumble nearly cost LSU the game? Who commissioned that script?

There’s enough out there for you to read from now until Halloween about that night and about Billy Cannon and about LSU and Ole Miss. There are songs. So many dramatic finishes. “You are now entering Louisiana. Set your clocks back 4 seconds.” I have a story about that sign, too, but that will have to wait for another day. So will the other stories.

Well, except for one or two that feel personal.

My dad and the last time

I listened to games on the radio with my dad when I was young. Sometimes I think he liked that better than watching on TV. I understand. He was born in 1928 and had radio long before he had a TV.

Radio lets your imagination fill in some of the details.

On Nov. 3, 1979, I got home from playing guitar at an out-of-town wedding to find my dad in one of our two rocking chairs in front of the house, listening to the end of LSU’s 28-24 win over Ole Miss in Jackson, Mississippi. I’d missed that one, but maybe I’d catch the next one with him.

I never got the chance. One year later, I played guitar at his funeral. He died Nov. 1, 1980. That night, LSU and Ole Miss played in Tiger Stadium. LSU won 38-16. I’m fairly certain I listened on the radio.

Although I’m also certain he told me stories about Billy Cannon’s run, I don’t remember them. But I have a bonus story for you.

My jaw dropped when I saw that jersey number

As LSU got closer to playing its last baseball game in Alex Box Stadium, I researched and wrote a story on its namesake. A former LSU baseball and football player, Box joined the Army and died in North Africa during World War II at the age of 22.

I interviewed his nephew, who was named after him, and his brother, who was still alive and close to 90 years old in 2006 and 2007 when I visited him. They both told me so many great stories about Alex Box the young man who never got to grow old.

They also showed me a photo of him in his LSU football uniform. My jaw dropped.

He was wearing No. 20. That’s a number you no longer see on an LSU football jersey. It’s Cannon’s old number, and nobody gets to have it anymore. Alex Box wore it nearly 20 years before Cannon’s famous run. I had no idea. I’m not sure very many people did. Later, the Box family let me make copies of the photo. I tucked one away for safekeeping.

My favorite part of that story? When Billy Cannon was running toward the north end zone for the touchdown that beat Ole Miss in 1959, Alex Box’s nephew was in the stands. His famous uncle’s jersey number was coming right at him.

As it turned out, my Deuce McAllister moment had already been topped.