Those famous words, uttered by Jack Cristal each time the Mississippi State Bulldogs score a win, had great meaning last night as another reunion of vintage football players was wrapped up in MSU colors.
Pictured above from left are former MSU coaches Billy Stacy, John Correro, Harper Davis, Current Head Coach Dan Mullen, Johnny Majors, Leonard McCullough, Pap Morris and Scott Suber.
Pictured above, the earliest team (1949-1951) was represented by Bo Reed, Hank Moseley and Frank Newsom.
Current head coach Dan Mullen participated, a first for a reigning head coach since I’ve been covering the group. What a stand-up guy! He had little to gain from taking time to be with this illustrious crowd, but his appearance spoke volumes in terms of respect and regard for his predecessors and the university.
Former coaching great Johnny Majors entertained the crowd with his memories of time spent coaching the Bulldogs in the late 1950s. He and his wife had a close friendship with athletic legend Dudy Noble and he shared some heretofore undisclosed stories. Unfortunately I cannot share them because they would be viewed by some as “off color.”
Personally I thought they were vividly “colorful.”
Majors just return from a trip to Minnesota where he taped an interview with Coach Murray Warmath who some might remember from the past. Coach Warmath is 97 and just as sharp as he always was, reported Majors.
This elite fraternity of former cheerleaders, coaches and football players who were members of Mississippi State teams during the years of 1949– 1961, meets bi-annually. Sadly, the numbers grow smaller each year as teammates pass on.
“But they live on in our memories and in the stories we tell one another during the reunions,” said Charlie Weatherly, who organized the reunion with the help of Jimmy Lee Dodd, both Bulldawgs during the 1950s.
Team 1955-1958 – Darrel Royal, coach
Sure hope someone was taking notes to pass on to me those Dudy Noble tales. I have already heard a few!
Daddy would have loved this story! He, too, had many stories of Coach
Noble….who, by the way, helped Daddy get his first coaching job in West Point!
August, 1938.
Believe it or not, Bo and I were at MSU for the football seasons of 1958 and 1959. I was supposed to graduate in 1955, but I stopped school after my sophomore year to be able to travel with Bo while he was in the Air Force. We both came back and finished at MSU after he left the Air Force. I took a number of history classes during this time, and so a lot of the football players were in my classes. During those years football coaches would walk unannounced into a class and ask the teacher if the football players in the class were doing well with their school work….calling the players’ names aloud in front of the whole class. A silence brought on by terror would ensue while the teacher went to her grade book and looked up the grades. If a football players’ grades were not up to par, the football player would get a scolding from the coach right there in front of the class. This is the truth, so help me. My, how times have changed!!