He waited in front of a television set at his home in Orlando, Fla., that Saturday. He thought it would be a phone call that delivered the news. But he found out like average fans – by watching television. The Arkansas native heard his name called earlier this month along with that of another native Arkansan, Willie Roaf.

“It was one of the greatest feelings in the world,” Kennedy says.

Cortez Kennedy, Class of 2005

For the first time, two past Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductees will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the same class.

Kennedy, who played at Rivercrest High School at Wilson, was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.

Roaf, who played at Pine Bluff High School, was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

“It was a long process,” Kennedy says of the wait to make it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Kennedy spent his entire pro career with the Seattle Seahawks. Only one other person who spent a full career in Seattle – wide receiver Steve Largent – is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Kennedy played on only two teams with winning records and in just one playoff game during his 11-year career. Yet his individual statistics were remarkable. He played in the Pro Bowl eight times, earning a spot in the game in just his second season.

Kennedy had 58 career sacks, an unusually high number for a tackle. He was the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1992 after recording 14 quarterback sacks. Kennedy, whose final season was 2000, was named to the Seahawks Ring of Honor and the University of Miami Hurricanes Ring of Honor. He also was named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 1990s.

Kennedy was an iron man, completing seven seasons without missing a game and playing in at least 15 games 10 times during his career. He’s just the 14th defensive tackle to make it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Center Rob Tobeck, who played with Kennedy in Seattle for a season and against him twice as a member of the Atlanta Falcons, told The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.: “You had to know where he was. You had to have a second pair of eyes on him. He commanded a double team. … Even in practice, when the offensive line goes down and does one-on-one pass drills, you had to be quick to get to your set because he was so quick and explosive off the ball.

“He was an incredible talent and a really good guy. No doubt it’s good seeing another Seahawk, a teammate and a guy that you played with and that you had a lot of respect for as an opponent, getting in. … And to see a guy that was also such a good teammate makes me happy. He had great hands, too. I think that sometimes doesn’t get talked about a lot in line play – playing off blocks with your hands – but he certainly was good with his hands.”

In the cotton country around Rivercrest High School, which has a rich sports tradition, playing football was the thing to do.

“Cortez Kennedy says he found the game of football for one simple reason,” Scott Johnson writes in The Daily Herald at Everett, Wash. “’Where I grew up, in Wilson, Ark., there was nothing else to do,’ he said. ‘We used to throw rocks at each other for fun.’

“Kennedy chuckled as he said it, like he so often does. A massive, 300-plus pound man, Kennedy puts people at ease with his laugh as quickly as he initially disarms them with his size. The cackling sound of Cortez Kennedy’s pleasant chuckle often reminded teammates that football is, after all, a game.

“Kennedy himself never had big goals as a football player. His dream in life was to follow his stepfather into the construction business or, at best, make it as a state trooper. Even when he started to shine at the sport during his days at Rivercrest High School, Kennedy was anchored down by subpar grades in the classroom. He ended up at Northwest Mississippi Community College, where he fully expected the playing days to quietly wind down to an oblivious conclusion.”

When Kennedy was playing junior college football in Mississippi, an assistant coach from the University of Miami who also happened to be a native Arkansan, Tommy Tuberville, visited the school.

Tuberville, now the head coach at Texas Tech, is a graduate of Camden Harmony Grove High School and Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia. He’s also a 2008 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee. Tuberville had come to Senatobia, Miss., to look at an offensive lineman, but the defensive coaches urged him to take a look at Kennedy instead.

“At 6-3 and 306 pounds, Kennedy moved like Baryshnikov while packing the punch of Tyson,” Johnson writes. “His reputation preceded him at Miami, where there was so much talk about Kennedy’s arrival that even some of the school’s most famous football alumni had to stop by to get a look at him. Jerome Brown, a former All-American who was in his rookie year with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, was among the players who sought out Kennedy right away.”

Kennedy remembered it this way in a 2008 interview: “I was in the weight room lifting when this guy comes busting through the doors saying, ‘Which one’s this fat kid who’s supposed to be like me?’ Then he introduced himself and gave me a hug. He said, ‘Keep up the good work.’’’

Kennedy and Brown became close friends. Kennedy, who had earned All-American honors at Miami (the Hurricanes won the national championship his senior season), ended up using Brown’s agent, Robert Fraley. The agent also became a close friend and adviser to Kennedy.

Seattle, which traded its two first-round choices to move up in the draft, selected Kennedy as the third overall pick in 1990. In the summer of 1992, while planning a trip to Florida to see Brown, Kennedy learned that Brown had crashed his Chevrolet Corvette in his hometown of Brooksville, Fla., and died. Brown was 27.

“Mentally, it messed with me because I never had lost a friend like that, a person I cared about like that,” Kennedy said in that 2008 interview.

Fraley, his agent, died in the 1999 plane crash that also killed golfer Payne Stewart.

In the fall of 1992, Kennedy temporarily changed his jersey number from 96 to 99 to honor Brown. Despite being on a 2-14 team, Kennedy was the unanimous selection as the NFL Defensive Player of the Year. He played like a man possessed that fall with those 14 sacks and 28 tackles for loss.

Several months after Fraley’s death, Kennedy played in his first NFL playoff game and gave his bonus to charity in memory of Fraley and Brown.

Johnson writes: “Kennedy’s playful side was a mask at times, hiding the pain that had bored its way into his soul over much of his adult life.”

Kennedy now lives in the same Orlando neighborhood where Fraley once lived.

“Cortez Kennedy spent most of his playing career as a dichotomy,” Johnson writes. “Big, strong and quick as a whip on the field, he was often docile and relaxed off it. Mean and nasty between the trenches, Kennedy was more of a softy when the pads came off.

“On the field, Kennedy was known for a quick first step that often put him in the opponents’ backfield at about the time the ball was exchanged from center to quarterback. Off the field, Kennedy was known more for his infectious laugh – a wheezing, guttural, heh-heh-heh chuckle that often included a stuck-out tongue. … Cortez Kennedy was an enigma of sorts, but Seattle Seahawks fans will most remember him as a football player. His shy personality often led him from the spotlight, and so Kennedy did most of his talking with what he did on the field.”

Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press describes Kennedy’s Orlando home as being like a museum these days.

“His last Seattle Seahawks helmet is perched on a shelf, and his Miami degree – the one he went back to finish at his own expense after leaving school early for the NFL – is on the wall, not far from photos of him posing with two U.S. presidents. There’s a street sign bearing his name from his hometown, framed letters from giants of sport, palm trees around the pool, unbelievable golf-course views and just about anything else he would want.

“Some days, his biggest dilemma is deciding whether to catch the afternoon flight from Florida back home to Arkansas for a quick deer hunting trip. His life is happy, full, complete.”

Though he remains a fan favorite in Seattle, Kennedy now spends a great deal of time with the New Orleans Saints. He has close friends working for the team. In Orlando, neighbors include Lou Holtz, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and golfer Ian Poulter.

“On one recent afternoon, Kennedy got into his golf cart – he rarely golfs – and zipped around the development,” Reynolds writes. “A bowl of soup at the clubhouse. Chatting with some neighbors after they putted out on the first green. Saw a young girl near the tennis courts and asked her why he hadn’t seen her parents around in a couple of days. He couldn’t drive 100 feet, it seemed, without someone taking notice.”

Kennedy’s 16-year-old daughter, Courtney, is a high school junior and a star athlete in basketball and track.

“He is still a mountain of a man, though in very good shape,” Reynolds writes. “Weight almost ended his football career at Miami, before Randy Shannon – his former roommate – would literally guard the refrigerator to keep him out of it at night, then would wake him up early the next day for training runs while wearing a black garbage bag to create even more sweat and heat. A 90-minute walk is part of his regular regimen. He is quiet, soft-spoken, thoughtful. He’s saved his money, envisions a return to the NFL in some capacity someday, probably after Courtney starts college.”

Shannon says: “People, fans, people around him, they always liked him because he’s a likable guy. But they will never know how good a player Cortez Kennedy was. Never. But in that locker room, we knew. He would do anything it took on the field to win and be an example, did it in high school that way, college, Seattle. That was Cortez. No doubt, one of the best. Ever.”

He has come a long way since his days living in the cotton country of south Mississippi County, but he has never forgotten his roots. He may now live in Florida, but Cortez Kennedy is proud to hail from Arkansas. Not many people who came from this state ever played the game better.

– Rex Nelson

Willie Roaf, Class of 2007

“My dad and I talked about it recently – that she is smiling down from heaven, knowing that I’m being recognized for being one of the best. … She would have preferred that I was a better student, but she wanted the best for me in whatever I chose to do.”

Roaf was born April 18, 1970, in Pine Bluff to dentist Clifton Roaf and attorney Andree Layton Roaf. His mother, who died in July 2009, had made a name for herself by the time her son began playing in the NFL.

Nashville, Tenn., native Andree Layton met Clifton Roaf when both were students at Michigan State University. They married in July 1963, and from 1963-65, Andree Roaf worked as a bacteriologist for the Michigan Department of Health in Lansing. She worked in Washington, D.C., from 1965-69 for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration before moving to Pine Bluff to become a staff assistant for Pine Bluff’s urban renewal agency from 1971-75.

Andree Roaf took a job as a biologist for the National Center for Toxicological Research in 1975 while also attending law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She graduated second in a class of 83 in 1978, taught at the law school for a year after graduation and then went into private practice with the firm of Walker Roaf Campbell Ivory & Dunklin.

In January 1995, she became the first black woman and only the second woman to serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court when she was appointed by Gov. Jim Guy Tucker to replace Justice Steele Hays, who was retiring.

She was not eligible to run for her Supreme Court position when the term ended but was appointed by Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. She later was elected as an appeals court judge and was a 1996 inductee into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.

Willie Roaf is quick to note that his mother would have preferred her son to have been an attorney or doctor. He drew so little interest from college recruiters at Pine Bluff High School that he considered switching from football to basketball. Finally, he decided to play football at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, where his career took off.

For the first time, two past inductees of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the same class.

Roaf was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

Cortez Kennedy, who played high school football at Rivercrest High School at Wilson and was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2005, also will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this August at Canton, Ohio.

Roaf was 6-4, 220 pounds when he went to Louisiana Tech, small for a college offensive lineman.

Former Tech coach Joe Raymond Peace said assistant coach Jerry Baldwin brought film of Roaf playing high school football for Pine Bluff.

“Jerry said he was probably a better basketball player than football player,” Peace told Jimmy Watson of The Times at Shreveport. “I looked at about eight plays, and I could tell he had great feet and hips. At the time of my visit, I believe I was the only head coach to go into the home, although Larry Lacewell would go in later.”

By his sophomore season, Roaf was 6-5, 300 pounds. Louisiana Tech played Alabama, Baylor, South Carolina, Ole Miss, West Virginia and Southern Mississippi during his senior season, allowing professional scouts plenty of opportunities to watch him work.

“I told him that schedule would allow him to become an All-American, and it would make him a lot of money,” Peace said. “The good lord blessed Willie with the talent to be the best in the game, but he really never had a clue about the talent he had. He was always humble. There’s no doubt he’s the best lineman I ever coached, and he deserves all the honors he has received. He’s just a good person.”

Roaf was picked in the first round of the 1993 NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints. He was the eighth selection overall and the first offensive lineman to be drafted.

Roaf will be only the second player who spent the bulk of his career in New Orleans to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Former Saints linebacker Rickey Jackson was part of the Class of 2010. Roaf spent the first nine years of a 13-year NFL career with the Saints.

To acquire Roaf, the Saints had to send former NFL Defensive Player of the Year Pat Swilling to the Detroit Lions for the eighth overall pick. The decision proved to be a wise one. Roaf started 131 games for the Saints and helped the franchise to its first playoff win, a 2000 victory over the defending Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams. A torn ligament in his right knee forced Roaf to miss the second half of the 2001 season. He was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs, where he made the Pro Bowl in each of his four seasons.

Roaf was voted to the Pro Bowl 11 times in his 13 seasons, tied with Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz for the most Pro Bowl appearances by an offensive tackle. He earned a spot on the NFL All-Decade Teams for both the 1990s and the 2000s.

“The Kansas City years were more important (for the Hall of Fame) than the New Orleans years, even though I went to seven Pro Bowls in New Orleans,” Roaf told The Kansas City Star. “I went to Kansas City and played with that great offensive line. … I needed Kansas City more than Kansas City needed me.”

Roaf said his father, a college teammate of former Chiefs star Ed Budde at Michigan State, will introduce him at the induction ceremony in Canton.

“There weren’t many takers for Roaf (coming off the injury at New Orleans), but Chiefs personnel director Bill Kuharich, who was with the Saints when they drafted him, convinced general manager Carl Peterson and coach Dick Vermeil to bring him to Kansas City,” Randy Covitz wrote in The Kansas City Star.

“Knowing what kind of individual he was, knowing what kind of pride and character he had and his passion for the game, certainly a change of scenery wouldn’t hurt,” Kuharich told Covitz. “I didn’t have any doubts he would return to form.”

Roaf had spent his rookie year for the Saints at right tackle before moving to the left side of the line.

Roaf, who was an All-Pro selection four times as a Saint and four times as a Chief, said he will go into the Hall of Fame as a representative of the Saints even though players’ busts in Canton don’t specify teams.

“I played four years with the Chiefs, and those were great, but I’m from Arkansas,” he said. “I went to Louisiana Tech. My history goes more with the Saints than the Chiefs. But believe me, my Chiefs days were very, very special to me, and I will cherish those.”

Roaf helped the Chiefs lead the NFL in scoring with 484 points in 2003 and 467 points in 2004. Quarterback Trent Green joined with running backs Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson to put up franchise-record numbers behind Roaf and the other Kansas City offensive linemen.

Owners of both the Saints and the Chiefs praised Roaf.

“It’s such a deserving honor,” Clark Hunt of the Chiefs said. “To me, Willie is the epitome of what a Hall of Famer is – not only somebody who is individually dominant, but somebody who made everybody who played around him better.”

Saints owner Tom Benson said Roaf “meant a great deal to our team during his career with us. He was the best player on our team during his entire tenure with us, one of the top players in the history of our franchise and one of the NFL’s greatest at his position.”

Roaf was in two playoff games with the Saints, winning one and losing one. The Chiefs lost their only postseason game with Roaf in 2003 to Indianapolis, 38-31, in a game in which neither team had a punt.

“Nothing against our defense, but our offense was putting up numbers against the top defenses in the league when I was in Kansas City,” Roaf told Covitz. “We just needed to slow people down some more.”

Roaf also was inducted into the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2009, he took a job coaching the offensive line at Santa Monica Junior College in Santa Monica, Calif.

Roaf was widely respected by both teammates and opposing players. He once owned a home in Colorado, for instance, with Jerome Bettis.

“They met so many years ago in a hotel suite in Indianapolis and never did two men seem less likely to become best friends,” Les Carpenter wrote for Yahoo! Sports. “Jerome Bettis came from Detroit, talking fast and loud, while Willie Roaf from Arkansas barely said much at all. But there they were, guests of the Washington Redskins at the 1993 NFL scouting combine, two soon-to-be top 10 draft picks, and they were taking a test that made little sense: a personality exam asking how they would react in certain kinds of situations.

“Other than having the same agent, they appeared to have little in common besides that ridiculous Redskins’ test. But somehow that was enough to build a friendship for a lifetime.”

Bettis and Roaf were represented by Lamont Smith, one of the few black agents at the time. Smith lived in Denver and believed his clients should train in Colorado’s thin mountain air. Bettis and Roaf spent $140,000 for a three-bedroom home in the Denver suburb of Aurora. The home only covered 1,600 square feet, but Roaf said it “had a nice yard. It was just nice to have a good place.”

Bettis was named the NFL Rookie of the Year after his first season with the Rams.

“As the years went on, Roaf developed a reputation as one of the NFL’s best offensive linemen,” Carpenter wrote. “Soon Bettis’ Rookie of the Year award was eclipsed by Roaf’s routine trips to the Pro Bowl.”

“We were 22, 23-year-old guys, and we thought we were going to go out and be studs in the NFL,” Bettis told Carpenter. “We talked about it all the time. We were both highly competitive guys, and I was messing with him all the time, telling him how good I was going to be.”

They sold the house after several years, but the friendship lasted. Bettis was at the hospital for the birth of Roaf’s first daughter

Roaf also kept Smith as his agent throughout his career.

Carpenter wrote that Smith urged Roaf “to appear tougher when he was a senior at Louisiana Tech. As the son of a dentist and judge, NFL teams felt Roaf might not be hungry enough or mean enough to play professionally. Before a big game against Alabama, Smith stressed to Roaf’s mother that the lineman needed to act mean. Roaf obliged by flattening an Alabama pass rusher at one point, ripping off the player’s helmet and tossing it away.”

“After that, there were no more questions about his toughness or his meanness,” Smith said.

Off the field, though, Road remained humble and quiet.

When he’s inducted at Canton, he will no doubt be thinking of his mother, also a Hall of Famer due to her induction into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.

“Mom would be very happy to know I achieved the level of being one of the best to do what I did,” Willie Roaf said. “I know she’s looking down proud right now.”

– Rex Nelson

It was announced during the weekend that Arkansas natives Willie Roaf and Cortez Kennedy have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Kennedy, who played high school football at Rivercrest High School at Wilson, was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.

Roaf, who played high school football at Pine Bluff High School, was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

“Those of us at the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame always love to hear good news about our former inductees,” said Andrew Meadors of Little Rock, the president of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. “It’s a huge honor for Willie Roaf and Cortez Kennedy to be chosen for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We’re proud of them and join all Arkansans in offering our congratulations.”

Cortez Kennedy, Class of 2005

Kennedy was one of the best defensive linemen ever to play in the NFL. The Seattle Seahawks selected him in the first round of the 1990 NFL draft (the third selection overall) after he had earned All-American honors at the University of Miami. The Hurricanes won the national championship his senior season. Kennedy had played at Northwest Mississippi Community College before receiving a football scholarship to Miami.

Kennedy was named to the Pro Bowl in just his second season and ended up playing in the game eight times. He had 58 career sacks, an unusually high number for a tackle. He was the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1992 after recording 14 quarterback sacks. Kennedy, whose final season was 2000, was named to the Seahawks Ring of Honor and the Miami Hurricanes Ring of Honor. He also was named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 1990s.

Roaf was lightly recruited out of high school in Pine Bluff. He ended up at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, La. He was picked in the first round of the 1993 NFL draft (the eighth selection overall and the first offensive lineman to be drafted) by the New Orleans Saints. Roaf played nine years for the Saints, participated in seven Pro Bowls while in New Orleans and earned a spot on both the All-Decade Teams for the 1990s and the 2000s. Roaf was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs in March 2002 and played four seasons for the Chiefs. He was selected for the Pro Bowl in each of those four seasons.

Willie Roaf, Class of 2007

Roaf played one season at right tackle and then spent the rest of his career on the left side of the line. He announced his retirement in July 2006.

Other former Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductees who also are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame include:

• Dan Hampton, who was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1992
• Don Hutson, who was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1960
• Bobby Mitchell, who was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1977
• Lance Alworth, who was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1979

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inducted its first class in 1959. The Class of 2012 was inducted Friday night at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock with more than 1,400 people in attendance at the induction banquet.

Ray Tucker is the executive director of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame Museum on the west side of Verizon Arena is open each Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. It includes an 88-seat theater with a video highlighting the careers of Arkansas sports greats along with a touch-screen kiosk with a database of all Hall of Fame inductees.

Members of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame vote each year on inductees. Membership dues are $50 annually. Membership forms can be obtained by going to the organization’s website at www.arksportshalloffame.com.

She’s not a pioneer in the traditional sense of clearing land and homesteading an area. But she’s certainly a pioneer in the sense of advancing women’s sports in Arkansas. Downing became the head women’s basketball coach at what’s now Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia in the fall of 1965, a time when that sport wasn’t on the radar screen of most Arkansans. During her 19 seasons as the head coach of the Riderettes, she became a well-known sports figure in Arkansas.

Downing arrived in the pine woods of far south Arkansas at a school that had been founded in 1909 when the Arkansas Legislature passed Act 100, which authorized the establishment of four district agricultural boarding schools, one in each quadrant of the state. These schools were designed to give rural children access to a better education. Columbia County residents raised the funds necessary to attract one of those four schools to Magnolia.

Buildings were constructed during 1910. In 1911, what was known originally as the Third District Agricultural School opened its doors a mile north of the city. In its early days, the school’s men’s teams made a name for themselves. In 1912, the football team chose the Mulerider name. The football Muleriders had their first unbeaten season in 1919. Dolph Camp, who later would become the school’s president, played center on that team.

A 1925 legislative act changed the name of the two-year junior college to the State Agricultural and Mechanical College. It most commonly was referred to by Arkansans as Magnolia A&M. College student enrollment exceeded that of high school students for the first time in 1931 at Magnolia A&M, and by 1937 the high school classes had been abolished. In 1951, the Legislature renamed what was now a four-year liberal arts college Southern State College. The success of the men’s teams continued as Coach Elmer Smith’s Mulerider football squads won back-to-back Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference championships in 1951-52 and Coach W.T. Watson’s men’s basketball teams won back-to-back AIC basketball championships in 1966-67.

Margaret Downing soon made women’s sports matter in Magnolia.

Her women’s basketball teams would win eight championships during the next two decades, competing at the state level in what was at first the Arkansas Women’s Extramural Sports Association and was later the Arkansas Women’s Intercollegiate Sports Association. Nationally, her teams competed in AAU national tournaments.

By the time Downing retired from coaching, the AIC had added women’s basketball to its roster of sports.

Downing didn’t just coach basketball. She served as the head swimming and diving coach from 1966-68 and again from 1969-73, claiming an AWESA championship in 1967 and an AWISA title in 1969. Her swimming and diving squads finished second in the conference on two other occasions.

Downing also won an AWISA championship in softball in 1980. She coached volleyball for three years from 1973-75, winning an AWISA championship in 1974 and placing second the other two seasons.

In recognition of her accomplishments, Margaret Downing will be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, Feb. 3. Tickets for the annual induction banquet at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

Downing is among 11 individual inductees – six from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category – in the Class of 2012. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 University of Arkansas national championship men’s basketball team.

Downing attended Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) and graduated from there in 1953. One of the people who influenced her the most was Dr. Betty Mae Swift, who was hired in 1949 as a physical education instructor and remained at the Conway school until she retired in 1983. It was Swift, a no-nonsense instructor who demanded that her students and players live up to strict standards in the classroom and in athletics, who coined the name Sugar Bears for the women’s sports teams at the university.

Swift, who died in 2000 at age 78, joined forces in later years with Downing to convince the AIC to add women’s sports in 1983, signifying their acceptance as a full partner with the men’s programs.

Downing says Swift was a mentor who “taught all of us to just roll up our sleeves and do the job ourselves. She definitely was a good adviser, teacher and friend. I will always carry in my heart the numerous things she taught us, both in and outside the classroom, along with the intangibles of loyalty, honor and dedication to duty.”

Swift would spend many hours outside of class preparing students to take tests that would qualify them to officiate various sports even though there was little demand for women’s officials in those days.

Downing, taught to achieve her full potential academically as well as athletically, went on to receive her master’s degree from the University of Tennessee in 1960 and her doctorate from Texas Woman’s University in 1973.

Downing made a number of coaching stops before settling in Magnolia. She coached at the high school level in Monticello, Texarkana, North Little Rock and at the Tennessee School for the Deaf. She coached collegiately at Connecticut College for Women, Central Connecticut State College and Ouachita Baptist University at Arkadelphia. Her Ouachita teams were nationally ranked, laying the foundation for the success experienced by Carolyn Moffatt at Ouachita from 1965-84 as her teams went 213-162. Moffatt was a posthumous inductee last year into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

At Southern Arkansas, Downing’s first basketball team captured an AWESA championship. AWISA was founded in 1969 and her teams won seven of the first eight titles – 1969-70, 1970-71, 1971-72, 1973-74, 1974-75, 1975-76 and 1976-77. Her 1972-73 squad placed second, and the 1976-77 team shared the championship with the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Downing retired from coaching basketball with a record of 223-163 at the school.

The first time AWISA awarded a coach of the year award – following the 1977-78 season – it went to Downing.

Downing was not only known statewide as a leader in the field of women’s athletics but was recognized nationally and internationally. She was the manager of the U.S. women’s basketball teams twice in the Pan-American Games. She also served as the president and treasurer of the U.S. Olympic Committee for Women’s Basketball, as the president of AWISA and as the president of the Southwest Region of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. Downing served at one time or another on the AAU’s national basketball rules committee, the U.S. National Basketball Committee and the International Basketball Committee.

She was just as successful in the classroom as she was as a coach. Downing was named the Southern Arkansas University honor professor for the 1987-88 school year and is remembered fondly by thousands of former students as one of the best instructors to serve the university. When SAU established its Hall of Fame for athletics, she was in the inaugural class of 2003. Downing already had been inducted into the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 1987.

Through the years, the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame has honored several of the pioneers of women’s athletics in the state. For example, Hazel Walker, an 11-time All-American AAU basketball player who later managed and played with her own professional team, was in the first induction class in 1959. A member of the Class of 1966 was Quinnie Hamm Toler, who once scored 114 points in a game at Sparkman and 1,245 points for the season. Joan Crawford of Van Buren, a 13-time AAU All-American basketball star, was a member of the Class of 1978.

Now, Margaret Downing has earned her rightful place with such luminaries of the past – Rex Nelson.

Harry Jones (#23), Class of 2012

And he remembers what the public address announcer said next: “There goes Light Horse Harry Jones.”

“I was told he had never used a nickname for a player before,” Jones now says. “For some reason, he decided to add the ‘Light Horse’ that day. It stuck.”

Arkansas won the game, 28-0.

A local group recorded a song called “The Ballad of Light Horse Harry,” which received play on radio stations across the state. KAAY-AM, 1090, in Little Rock, which could be heard in more than 40 states and several foreign countries at night, was among the stations playing the song.

Jones, mind you, backed up the attention with his performance on the field. In 1965, as the Razorbacks went undefeated during the regular season, Jones led the nation in rushing. He gained 632 yards on 82 carries that season and scored seven touchdowns, including an 83-yard run against North Texas.

Later that season, Jones became the first Razorback to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. A year later, he was one of two Razorbacks to go in the first round of the 1967 NFL draft.

In recognition of his accomplishments, Jones will be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, Feb. 3. Tickets for the annual induction banquet at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

Jones is among 11 individual inductees – six from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category — in the Class of 2012. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 University of Arkansas national championship basketball team.

While growing up in Enid, Okla., Jones attended one of the largest high schools in the state and played all sports – football, basketball, baseball and track. His father worked as a highway patrolman during the week and preached at a rural church each Sunday in the tiny town of Byron, Okla., which is near the Kansas border in the northwestern part of the state.

“I spent a lot of weekends out there with him,” says Jones, who now lives at Lowell. “There were about 60 people and no paved streets, but Dad loved to go. It was quiet, and he could work on his sermons.”

Things weren’t as quiet back in Enid, where Jones was recognized early as a star athlete. During his junior year in high school, he broke his wrist badly when he ran into a wall while playing basketball in Duncan.

“I couldn’t play baseball that summer, and at the time it was my favorite sport,” Jones says. “I was a baseball playing son of a gun. I was on a team that would travel all over the state and play 60 to 80 games a year. I had a cast on my arm most of that summer. When they took it off, they discovered it hadn’t healed correctly. We went to Oklahoma City, and a 10-inch steel pin was inserted. I remember it was the day of the major league baseball All-Star Game because we got home just in time to see the final inning.”

Jones was a quarterback in high school. He says his father “pushed me hard. He had borrowed a bag of footballs from my coach, and the next day after having the pin inserted he wanted to see if I could throw the ball. I dropped the first one I tried to pick up.”

By the fall of 1962, though, Jones was ready. Enid lost two games by one point, unable to win the state championship Jones had hoped to add to his resume. College coaches, however, had taken notice of his abilities. The Arkansas assistant recruiting Jones was Barry Switzer.

“He made a big impression on me,” Jones says of Switzer. “I went down to Fayetteville and loved it from the moment I stepped onto the campus. It was beautiful there.”

Eddie Crowder, the offensive coordinator under head coach Bud Wilkinson at the University of Oklahoma, had shown an interest in Jones but left Oklahoma following the 1962 season to become the head coach at the University of Colorado. The Sooners signed a couple of Enid players, but Jones wasn’t among them.

“There was plenty of heat from people in Enid for Oklahoma to sign me,” Jones says. “My one regret is that I never got to meet Coach Wilkinson. He was a god as far as I was concerned.”

Jones immediately was impressed with Arkansas’ head coach, Frank Broyles. He liked the fact that Arkansas ran an offense that allowed the quarterback to run the ball on a regular basis.

“I was a running quarterback and was attracted to their offense,” Jones says. “Billy Moore led the Southwest Conference in rushing as a quarterback.”

Jones paid visits to Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Wichita State. But after returning from Norman, he called Arkansas assistant coach Jim MacKenzie and committed to the Razorbacks.

“He came over to Enid that day to sign me,” Jones says. “There was a long story in the local newspaper the next day, and everybody in town was mad at me for leaving Oklahoma. I didn’t know anybody on the campus at Arkansas, but I loved it from the first day. The smartest decision I ever made was choosing Arkansas. It was a romance.”

Freshmen weren’t eligible to play in varsity games in those days, but Jones was starting by his sophomore season in 1964. It’s just that it wasn’t as a quarterback or running back. He was in the secondary.

“They needed one more defensive back, and I guess they liked the fact that I was fast,” Jones says. “I hauled hay the entire summer after my freshman year and was in the best shape of my life. Johnny Majors was coaching the secondary in 1964. He came up to me about a week before the opening game, put his arm around me and said, ‘You think you can start against Oklahoma State?’”

Jones returned two interceptions for touchdowns that fall as Arkansas went undefeated and won several versions of the national championship.

During the spring of 1965 and fall drills, Jones practiced at quarterback.

“I felt good coming out of spring practice because I didn’t throw any interceptions and made plenty of long runs,” Jones says. “I’ll admit that Jon Brittenun could throw the ball better than I could. Coach Broyles called me into his office the week before the opener and told me that Jon would be the starting quarterback. I was upset and asked to be moved back to safety. Coach Broyles told me he wanted me to stay on offense and stand next to him during games.

“We were playing Oklahoma State in Little Rock. Coach Broyles sent me in as a wingback, a position I had never played. Jon checked off, and I caught a pass for a first down. On the next play I was in there, he checked off again and I caught another pass for a first down. My third play was a touchdown. I remember thinking, ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a bad move after all.’”

Wingback Jim Lindsey, a 1987 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee, was injured for part of the 1965 season, making Jones’ contributions more important than ever.

As for that Sports Illustrated cover, Jones explains how it came about: “They wanted to take a photo of the entire offense, and Coach Broyles insisted that Jim Lindsey be in the photo. The story I later heard is that a photo editor in New York said, ‘We can’t use that. There are 12 men in it.’ So they chose an action photo of me. That was the biggest shock of my life. I loved Sports Illustrated. I had read it since it started. The attention that cover brought was overwhelming. To this day, I have people send me copies of the magazine to be autographed.”

In the story that accompanied the photo of Jones, legendary sports journalist Dan Jenkins wrote: “Just when the opponent thinks Arkansas will pass, it runs. And how. There will go hurtling Bobby Burnett, jarring Jim Lindsey, both veterans, or Harry Jones, particularly Harry Jones, who is the new ingredient – more so even than Brittenum – that makes Arkansas better than last year. Harry Jones is 6-2, weighs 195 and merely runs a 9.7 dash. He is a high-waisted, long-legged, tough, darting runner who is gone – really gone – when he turns a corner.”

Broyles told Jenkins: “He can cut sharp at top speed, and that’s something else. People are trying to compare him with (Lance) Alworth, and it’s unfair. Lance was great for us, and he’s a great pro. But Harry is bigger, probably faster and can cut. Mainly, though, Harry is on a better team. He’s – well, just fantastic.”

Jenkins went on to call Jones a “good-looking junior from Enid, Okla., who was born in Huntington, W.Va., the son of a Christian minister (Broyles is the first Arkansas coach to recruit successfully outside the state; in fact, five members of the defensive unit are Texans). Last season – it figures – Jones was a regular defensive safety, and even this season he was battling with Brittenum for the quarterback job up until the opening game.”

Only a loss to LSU in the Cotton Bowl prevented Arkansas from winning a second consecutive national championship in 1965. Arkansas finished 8-2 in 1966, and Jones was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round, the 19th overall pick in the NFL draft. He played five seasons for the Eagles at running back, wide receiver and defensive end. He was waived in August 1972.

Jones had spent two offseasons working for Jack Stephens at the Little Rock investment banking firm Stephens Inc. and considered a career in investment banking. Yet he yearned to try his hand at coaching and was hired by Majors in January 1973 when Majors moved from Iowa State to Pittsburgh as head coach. Jones coached with Majors for four seasons at Pitt as the Panthers improved from 6-5-1 to 7-4 to 8-4 to 12-0 and a national championship in 1976 (with Pitt running back Tony Dorsett winning the Heisman Trophy that year).

Majors moved from Pitt to the University of Tennessee following the 1976 season, but Jones didn’t follow him. Instead, he went back to Oklahoma to work with a brother-in-law in the oilfield services business. Jones spent the rest of his career in private business and now finds himself in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

– Rex Nelson

Lee Mayberry, Class of 2012

Way back, in fact.

Mayberry, a Tulsa native, began attending Richardson’s basketball camps at the University of Tulsa when Mayberry was in junior high and Richardson was the Tulsa head coach. Mayberry’s older sister, Kim, was dating Richardson’s son, Nolan III. They later married. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Mayberry went to Arkansas to play basketball for Richardson, though Mayberry is quick to note it wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

Mayberry went on to score 1,940 points during his Razorback career and helped lead Arkansas to the 1990 Final Four in Denver, where the Razorbacks lost to Duke in the semifinals. He was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the 1992 NBA draft, the 23rd overall pick, and played from 1992-96 for the Bucks and from 1996-99 for the Vancouver Grizzlies.

In recognition of his accomplishments, Mayberry will be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, Feb. 3. Tickets for the annual induction banquet at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

Mayberry is among 11 individual inductees – six from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category – in the Class of 2012. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 University of Arkansas national championship basketball team.

Like other residents of Tulsa, Mayberry was thrilled by the exciting brand of basketball Richardson brought to town. Richardson, a 1998 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee, came to Tulsa in 1980 after winning the national junior college championship at Western Texas Junior College. Mayberry was 10 years old at the time but already loved basketball.

Richardson’s first Tulsa team in 1980-81 went 26-7 and won the NIT championship. That was followed by records of 24-6 and a trip to the NCAA Tournament, 19-12 and an NIT bid, 27-4 and an NCAA Tournament bid and 23-8 and yet another NCAA bid.

“He turned that program around,” Mayberry says of Richardson. “It wasn’t hard to get excited about college basketball when Coach Richardson was in Tulsa. I have three brothers, all of whom also played basketball. I remember that we couldn’t wait to watch his television show. Coach Richardson’s style was a fun way to play.”

During his senior season, Mayberry led Will Rogers High School to the 1988 state championship.

Richardson had gone to Arkansas following the 1985 season at Tulsa. His 1985-86 Razorback team was 12-16 followed by records of 19-14 and a 1987 NIT bid and 21-9 and a 1988 NCAA bid.

In November 1990, Mayberry told Hank Hersch of Sports Illustrated that at first he wasn’t keen on following Richardson to Arkansas because “the team wasn’t winning, and the fans there were really dogging Coach Richardson.”

Hersch wrote at the time: “For his part, Richardson wasn’t keen on recruiting this quiet kid who used to play on the living room floor with young members of the two families. ‘I’m a grandfather and his dad’s a grandfather of the same child,’ says Richardson. ‘I really didn’t need all that pressure.’

“But Nolan III, a former assistant coach in the CBA who is a volunteer coach at Arkansas, and Richardson’s other assistants kept insisting that Mayberry was worth the risk. Still, Richardson wasn’t convinced until he watched Mayberry lead undersized Rogers High to the 1988 Class 5A state championship with 26 points and five rebounds in the title game.”

“Whatever Lee had to do, he did,” Richardson said of the state title game. “He was the one head controlling the whole team.”

Mayberry now says his top three college choices coming out of high school were Arkansas, Arizona and Oklahoma.

“All of those programs were having a lot of success,” he says. “I wanted to go to a successful program, but I also wanted to go somewhere I could play right away. Coach Richardson was late in recruiting me. He felt it would put too much pressure on me if he came after me hard and everybody assumed I would choose Arkansas.”

Though he wanted playing time as a freshman, even Mayberry was surprised when Richardson named him a starter. Mayberry was the Southwest Conference Newcomer of the Year as the 1988-89 Razorbacks went 13-3 to win the conference and finished 25-7 overall, advancing to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

It was during Mayberry’s sophomore season that the Razorbacks reached the Final Four, going 14-2 to again win the Southwest Conference and posting a 30-5 overall record.

As Mayberry was beginning his junior season, the November 1990 Sports Illustrated story started this way: “You have descended into the Hades of College Basketball: Barnhill Arena in Fayetteville. This is where the Razorbacks create and perfect the torture sessions that Coach Nolan Richardson fondly calls 40 minutes of hell. Arkansas attacks opponents at both ends of the floor with a two-platoon, perpetual-pressure system that’s as dizzying as Richardson’s polka-dot shirts. Last season that scheme propelled the Hogs into the Final Four; this season, its strength still lies in the dynamic talents of two players who are as tenacious as Cerberus – Lee Mayberry and Todd Day. Mayberry, a 6-2 junior point guard, plays with the grim mien of an undertaker. Don’t be deceived, though, by his quiet manner.”

Arkansas won a third consecutive Southwest Conference title that season, going 15-1 in SWC play, and advanced to the Elite 8, finishing the season with a 34-4 record. The season ended with a 93-81 loss to Kansas.

The Razorbacks were 13-3 as new members of the Southeastern Conference in Mayberry’s senior season, winning the SEC West. Arkansas went 26-8 overall and advanced to the second round of the 1992 NCAA Tournament.

Mayberry says there were too many big games during his four-year college career to single out just one or two. For instance, there was the famous “Strollin’ Nolan” game on Feb. 4, 1990, in the Erwin Center at Austin. Disgusted with the officiating, Richardson left the bench and went to the dressing room with the game still in progress. Mayberry hit a 28-foot shot to send the contest into overtime, prompting Richardson to return to his courtside seat. Arkansas won, 103-96.

“There were a number of games that were big for us,” Mayberry says. “I’ve never had any doubt that I made the right decision by going to Arkansas. It was a special time for me.”

The 1990 semifinal loss to Duke by a final score of 97-83 still smarts. UNLV beat Georgia Tech in the other semifinal game and then blew Duke out in the finals.

“I thought we were as good as any team in the country that year,” Mayberry says. “But, you know, I really think the team that lost to Kansas my junior year was even better. We again felt we had a team that was good enough to win a national championship.”

At Arkansas, Mayberry:

• Was the 1991-92 scoring leader, averaging 15.2 points per game
• Was the 1991-92 steals leader with 75
• Was the 1990-91 steals leader with 100
• Led the team in assists as a sophomore, junior and senior
• Finished his college career with 723 field goals
• Made 78 percent of his free throws
• Made 218 three-point baskets

Richardson won his first NCAA title two years after Mayberry graduated. Mayberry is being inducted into the Hall of Fame on the same night as that 1994 team.

“I know all of those guys,” he says.

Mayberry compiled a remarkable record of playing in 328 consecutive NBA regular season games. He didn’t miss a game until his fifth season in the league.

“I didn’t know what to expect going into the NBA,” Mayberry says. “You just never know how it will turn out. I was lucky early in my career to stay away from injuries.”

Mayberry averaged 5.1 points per game during his NBA career.

He’s back living in Tulsa, scouting for the Golden State Warriors of the NBA.

“It’s a great feeling,” he says of his induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. “I was a skinny kid out of Tulsa who was just happy to have a chance to play at Arkansas.”

Mayberry is being modest, of course. He was much more than that. He was, quite simply, one of the best college basketball players in the state’s history.

– Rex Nelson

U.S. Reed, Class of 2012

If not The Shot, it’s The Call they remember.

It was a four-year college career filled with highlights for the Pine Bluff native, but longtime Razorback fans still recall two memorable moments – one fondly, one not so fondly.

The first occurred in March 1979 during the NCAA Tournament. During Reed’s freshman season the previous year, the famed Triplets – Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer and Marvin Delph – had led Arkansas to the 1978 Final Four. Arkansas finished third, losing to Kentucky in the semifinals and defeating Notre Dame in the consolation game.

Brewer and Delph graduated. As a sophomore, Reed joined forces with Moncrief as Arkansas made it all the way to the NCAA Midwest Regional finals in Cincinnati before losing to an Indiana State team led by Larry Byrd. With the score tied 71-71 – and no shot clock in those days – Arkansas was holding the ball for a final shot. Reed was tripped at the 1:02 mark but was called for traveling on a play that still angers the Razorback faithful. Bob Heaton scored at the horn for a 73-71 Sycamore win. Indiana State lost in the finals that year to a Michigan State team led by Magic Johnson.

“It was not a walk,” Reed now says. “I was tripped by Carl Nicks. That might have been the worst call in the history of the NCAA Tournament. People still bring me T-shirts to sign that say, ‘He was tripped.’’’

Two years after The Call, however, there was The Shot.

It was March, 14, 1981, in Austin in the second round of the NCAA Tournament when Reed launched a shot from 49 feet with one second left on the clock. His basket gave the No. 20 Razorbacks a 74-73 victory over No. 12 Louisville. The Cardinals were the defending national champions. In 2009, Sports Illustrated listed Reed’s shot as the second-most historic event in the history of the NCAA Tournament.

In recognition of his accomplishments, Reed will be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, Feb. 3. Tickets for the annual induction banquet at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

Reed is among 11 individual inductees – six from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category — in the Class of 2012. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 University of Arkansas national championship basketball team.

Reed played on a state championship high school team at Pine Bluff and hoped to be offered a scholarship to Arkansas.

“I idolized the Triplets,” he says. “I wanted to play with them. But it was not as easy as I thought it would be.”

A scholarship offer from Arkansas was not immediately forthcoming. There were offers from other schools such as Louisiana Tech, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and Ouachita Baptist University. Finally in early August – just a few weeks before school began – Arkansas assistant coach Pat Foster visited practices for the annual high school all-star game and offered Reed a scholarship.

“I had visited Fayetteville earlier in the year and played in pickup games with the players there,” Reed said. “I had laryngitis that weekend and couldn’t even talk to anyone. I was probably headed to Louisiana Tech if I had not gotten the late offer from Arkansas.”

Reed was determined to prove himself.

“I had played against older guys all my life,” he says. “When I was in high school, I would take part in pickup games with UAPB players from places like Chicago. I knew I could play at that level.”

Reed came off the bench as a sixth man for that 1977-78 team that went 32-4 and advanced to the Final Four. By his sophomore season, Reed was starting. Arkansas wasn’t expected to return to the Final Four with the loss of Brewer and Delph, but Moncrief, Reed, Scott Hastings and other members of the team overachieved as Arkansas put together a 14-game winning stream late in the season. Indiana State was unbeaten and No. 1 at the time of its game against Arkansas, yet the Hogs might have advanced to the Final Four if not for The Call. As it was, the Razorbacks finished 25-5.

During Reed’s junior season in 1979-80, Arkansas went 13-3 in the Southwest Conference and 21-8 overall, losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. In Reed’s senior season, Arkansas won the Southwest Conference title at 13-3 and finished 24-8 overall. That afternoon in Austin in the second round of the NCAA Tournament is the day people still talk about. Each year at tournament time, The Shot can be seen again on ESPN.

As Arkansas was warming up for its game against Louisville, Reed began taking long shots. His teammates wondered what was going on.

“They all wanted to know what I was doing,” he told Dana O’Neil of ESPN.com. “I had never done that before. Never. It was like I was preparing or being prepared for something big – almost as if I had a premonition.”

“I’m not sure if you asked him to take that shot five times, he’d hit one,” Arkansas head coach Eddie Sutton would later say. “But he hit it when it counted.”

O’Neil wrote: “Some sort of divine intervention might offer the best explanation. There is no logical way a 49-foot, buzzer-beating, game-winning heave goes in. Yet that is exactly what happened for the Razorbacks and Reed on March 14, 1981. It is a shot that remains a classic, right alongside Bryce Drew’s miracle for sheer impossibility. … People don’t forget. In fact, they stop you to tell you where they were that day you made history. ‘I think it’s amazing that people still remember something that happened so many years ago,’ Reed said. Honestly, though, if you saw it, you couldn’t forget it.”

Arkansas, which had led for most of the game, was down by a point with six seconds remaining when Sutton called for time. Louisville’s press had stymied Arkansas down the stretch. Reed was unable to get the ball down low to Hastings.

“Given how little time was on the clock, I knew that I would have to be the one to take the shoot,” Reed says.

“So from two strides behind half court, Reed took his shot,” O’Neil wrote. “Whether it was muscle memory from those crazy pregame shots or sheer happenstance, Reed remembers actually taking the shot like a legit shot. This wasn’t just a heave-ho. He elevated, squared, shot and prayed. Who knows? Maybe at that point the basketball gods decided to do him a favor. Two years earlier, Reed had the ball in a tie game when he fell over Indiana State’s Carl Nicks. He fell to the ground – Sutton and Reed both insist he was fouled – and when he got back up, he was whistled for traveling. … So maybe a little pixie dust came into play.”

Sutton said this of The Shot: “It looked like it was going to at least hit iron. And then when it went in, I thought the Louisville coaches were going to have a heart attack.”

Rather than celebrating with his teammates, Reed came over to press row and began shaking hands with members of the media.

“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “It was a miracle. That was just a reaction on my part to shake hands. I was so happy that I wanted to shake every hand in the arena. It was a moment of gratitude.”

Reed finished the game with 19 points, six assists, three steals and six rebounds. Arkansas lost the next week to LSU but was ranked No. 20 in the final Associated Press poll.

During his senior season, Reed had 416 points and 131 rebounds, becoming the 11th Razorback to score more than 1,000 points in a career. In his college career, Arkansas made the NCAA Tournament four times and posted a record of 102-25.

Reed was selected in the fifth round of the NBA draft by the Kansas City (now Sacramento) Kings. He played for one season in the Continental Basketball Association before an injury ended his playing career.

“I was glad I had my degree,” he says. “I was able to move on with my life after basketball.”

Reed, an ordained minister, lives in Pine Bluff and is involved in the real estate business. He never tires of talking about The Shot. Each spring, he watches the NCAA Tournament on television, enjoying games that end with last-second shots.

“I know exactly how they feel – how everything slows down in that moment and then when it goes in, everything speeds up again,” he told O’Neil. “It’s one of those moments where you feel like the whole world is watching you. Those are moments that come around very few times for very few people. I wish I could tell those kids, ‘Cherish it. Just cherish it’.”

– Rex Nelson.

Bob Ford, Class of 2012

Brooks was a guard and defensive tackle at the University of Arkansas and was selected to All-America teams in 1954 by The Associated Press, the American Football Coaches Association, the Football Writers Association of America and the Walter Camp Foundation.

The center on that 1950 Wynne team was Bob Ford.

“I waited until the last minute to make a decision on where I would go to college,” says Ford, who has practiced law in Wynne for the past four decades. “I looked at the University of Tennessee, Ole Miss and Mississippi State. I made a visit to the University of Arkansas, but they didn’t take me. I had a friend from Augusta who talked me into going over to Memphis and trying out. He didn’t end up going there. I did.”

Ford’s father worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, which meant family members could ride the train for free. One late summer day in 1951, Ford left his home at 5:30 a.m. and caught the train to Memphis.

“Later that day, Coach George Cole from the University of Arkansas knocked on our door and told my mother he wanted to take me to Fayetteville to play football,” Ford says. “She told him it was too late, that I had left for Memphis before daylight.”

Things worked out well. Playing for head coach Ralph Hatley, Ford lettered as a center and end from 1951-54. Following graduation from what was then known as Memphis State College (now the University of Memphis), Ford began a college coaching career that lasted for more than a decade. After returning to Wynne in 1970 to practice law, he worked as a part-time scout for the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL for another two decades.

In recognition of his accomplishments as a player, coach and scout, Ford will be inducted Feb. 3 into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Tickets for the annual induction banquet are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

Ford is among 11 individual inductees – six from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category – in the Hall of Fame Class of 2012. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 University of Arkansas national championship basketball team.

Ford received his bachelor’s degree in 1955 and his master’s degree in 1956 from Memphis. While working on his master’s degree, he helped coached the Memphis freshman team. Ford was inducted into the Army in June 1956 at Fort Chaffee in Fort Smith. He served in Korea from February 1957 until June 1958, even coaching an Army football team there in 1957.

Ford knew Dr. Eugene Lambert, who had been the head basketball coach at Memphis and Arkansas. Lambert had gone to the University of Alabama in the fall of 1956 to take over the Crimson Tide basketball program. Ford had a request that summer day in 1958: Would Lambert ask the school’s new football coach, Arkansas native Paul “Bear” Bryant, if he would be interested in letting Ford serve as a graduate assistant coach?

“I wanted to be a graduate assistant at one of three places – Oklahoma, Army or Alabama,” Ford says. “Dr. Lambert asked, and Coach Bryant said for me to give him a call. When I called him, Coach Bryant said to me: ‘You need to come down here. I want to see if you look like a football coach.’ So I drove to Tuscaloosa.”

Bryant agreed to let Ford help out.

“I wasn’t taking any classes,” Ford says. “But I wasn’t a full-time assistant, either. All I wanted to do was coach. I helped out with the centers and linebackers. I also scouted future opponents. At the end of the 1958 season, Coach Bryant told me, ‘I’ll either find a way to pay you here or get you a full-time job somewhere else.”

Just before Christmas in 1958, Bryant called Ford into his office. Ford was about to head to Arkansas for the holidays.

“He gave me a personal check for $1,000,” Ford says. “He said, ‘I thought this might help before you go back to Wynne.’ He knew I didn’t have a dime to my name.”

Bryant gave Ford a paid position for the 1959 and 1960 seasons at Alabama. The Tide consistently improved in Bryant’s first three years as head coach, going from 5-4-1 in 1958 to 7-2-2 in 1959 to 8-1-2 in 1960.

At the University of Georgia, meanwhile, Wally Butts left coaching in late 1960 to become the school’s athletic director after having compiled a 140-86-9 record as the Bulldogs’ head football coach. His replacement, Johnny Griffith, offered Ford a job paying three times as much as he was making at Alabama. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Georgia went 3-7 in 1961. Back at Alabama, the Crimson Tide went 11-0 and won the national championship.

After one year at Georgia, Ford was offered the position of defensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky under new head coach Charlie Bradshaw, who had been an assistant on Bryant’s staff at Alabama from 1959-61. Ford says he “wasn’t looking to leave Georgia, but Coach Bryant urged me to take the job. He said Charlie needed to quickly put together a staff.”

Ford says the coaching staff at Kentucky was criticized by some people for being too tough. A number of players quit the team, and the Wildcats went 3-5-2. Though he didn’t agree with the criticism, Ford felt it was a good time to leave coaching. He returned to Wynne and worked during the 1963 season as a Dallas Cowboys scout. Bradshaw, however, urged Ford to return to Lexington. So Ford was back on the staff for the 1964 and 1965 seasons as the Wildcats went 5-5 and 6-4.

Ford joined Paul Davis’ coaching staff at Mississippi State University for the 1966 season. The Bulldogs went 2-8, and both Davis and athletic director Wade Walker were dismissed in December of that year. Having had enough of the constant moves and pressure that are a part of being a major college football coach, Ford decided to enter law school at Arkansas.

“I first was going to go back to Wynne and scout for the Cowboys again,” he says. “But Coach Broyles allowed me to work my way through law school by coaching the freshmen. I had a wife and three young kids, and we moved into Carlton Terrace on the Arkansas campus. I helped coach the freshmen for three seasons and scouted future opponents.”

He even scouted Texas prior to the Big Shootout of 1969, which the Longhorns won 15-14. After obtaining his law degree and moving back to Wynne to practice law in 1970, Ford hooked back up with the Cowboys. For the next two decades, he would find free agents for the team’s director of player personnel, Gil Brandt, and head coach Tom Landry.

“Gil Brandt was a scouting genius,” Ford says.

Ford remained involved with the sport he loves in other ways. In 1971, for instance, he went on a European scouting tour for the Cowboys, finding Austrian kicker Toni Fritsch in the process. Bryant would occasionally ask Ford to attend Alabama games and act as if he were a scout, reporting back to Bryant on any weaknesses he detected in the Crimson Tide offense, defense or kicking game. In 1983, Ford was inducted into the University of Memphis M Club Hall of Fame.

“Coach Bryant, Coach Broyles and Coach Landry never stopped helping me,” Ford says. “They were a blessing to me.”

Football – college and professional – is a thread that has run through Bob Ford’s life.

– Rex Nelson.

“B was the first player I recruited to play football for the Razorbacks when I came to Arkansas,” Broyles says. “I had been told that he was, by far, the best athlete in the state. So for my first recruiting trip, I got in my car and drove to Forrest City to recruit B to play for the Razorbacks. Immediately upon meeting him, I offered a full scholarship. His credentials as a four-sport athlete in high school were so impressive that I could envision him forming the foundation of the Razorback backfield corps.”

Lindsey never played a down for the Razorbacks.

Instead, he signed a baseball contract with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Broyles had faced a similar situation a year earlier when he was the head coach at the University of Missouri. He was hoping to build his team around Mike Shannon, who had starred in multiple sports at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis. Shannon was the first person to be named the Missouri Prep Player of the Year in both basketball and football. Shannon headed to the University of Missouri but soon signed a baseball contract with the Cardinals. Broyles later said he believed Shannon might have won the Heisman Trophy had he stayed in school.

Lindsey would end up playing baseball for Memphis in the Southern Association for part of the 1960 season with the likes of Shannon and Tim McCarver.

“Coach Broyles spoke at our football banquet after the 1957 season at Forrest City, but there was never a question where I was going to school,” says Lindsey, who now operates family farming and cotton ginning operations in east Arkansas. “Coach Broyles later sent Coach George Cole down to visit with me, and I told him just that. I was going to Arkansas.”

Then came the baseball contract from the Cardinals.

For years, Lindsey wouldn’t talk about the size of his signing bonus. He didn’t want it to sound like he was bragging. It was believed to have been more than $50,000, the most ever offered to an Arkansas player to that point.

“It was $60,000 over five years plus $1,200 a month guaranteed for three years,” Lindsey now says. “My dad always loved baseball. He had been a pretty good baseball player himself. He said to me, ‘You would be crazy not to do this.’ I agreed and signed the contract. It would have been nice to see how it would have turned out if I had played football at Arkansas, but I couldn’t do both.”

In recognition of his accomplishments, Lindsey will be inducted Feb. 3 into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Tickets for the annual induction banquet are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

Lindsey is among 11 individual inductees – six from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category – in the Hall of Fame Class of 2012. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 University of Arkansas national championship basketball team.

Lindsey’s younger brother, Jim, was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1987 for his football accomplishments at the University of Arkansas. He played for the 1964 national championship team at Arkansas and played in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings from 1966-72.

“B weighed 188 pounds, had 10-flat speed and could cut on a dime,” Jim Lindsey says of his brother. “It has been said by the thousands who watched him play that he was the best high school halfback they had ever seen in Arkansas. … When my time came along , I was not in B’s shadow because the difference between his talent and mine would have been like comparing me to Gayle Sayers or Jim Brown.

“His baseball skills were overshadowed by his football talent. His baseball skills earned him a ‘bonus baby’ contract, and he went on to play in Tulsa and Memphis. … But his football skills far exceeded his baseball talent.”

B Lindsey says his first love as a child was baseball as he participated each summer in the Little League program at Forrest City. His father raised cattle and cotton at Caldwell and would drive him into Forrest City for practice. Beginning in the seventh grade, however, football began to capture his heart.

“I was fortunate enough to be the fastest person in the sixth grade,” says Lindsey, who had three older sisters, a younger sister and a younger brother (Jim). “But I didn’t think I would go out for football in the seventh grade. I was more interested in getting on the bus back to Caldwell so I could fish and hunt. I was watching seventh grade practice one day, though, and decided to give it a try. They gave me a uniform that didn’t fit.”

Lindsey ended up playing football in high school on teams that lost only two games in three years – to DeWitt Dragon teams led by Harold Horton, a 1989 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee. DeWitt won 13-0 in 1955 at Forrest City and 14-13 in 1956 on its home field. Horton scored both of DeWitt’s touchdowns in the 1956 game.

“Every time I talk around Harold about how good we were, he says, ‘You never beat us,’’’ Lindsey says.

By Lindsey’s senior year in high school, Horton was a freshman at Arkansas. Forrest City went undefeated in 1957. DeWitt fell, 21-0, marking Forrest City’s first win over the Dragons since 1951. Lindsey scored 22 touchdowns that season despite having a broken bone just behind his thumb.

“I broke it in a scrimmage the Friday before the season opener against Conway,” he says.

His father took him to the famed Campbell Clinic at Memphis, which had opened in 1909 and is today recognized as a world leader in sports medicine. Doctors there put a cast on his hand.

Returning to school with the cast, Lindsey went to the principal’s office to get a slip to be admitted to class. Seeing the cast, the principal told Lindsey to go to the office of the Mustang head football coach, Jim DeVazier.

DeVazier would coach from 1954-64 at Forrest City, compiling a 77-36-7 record with five conference championships and two undefeated seasons.

“Coach DeVazier looked at that cast,” Lindsey remembers. “He didn’t even ask me how I felt. He just said, ‘You can’t play in that.’”

Lindsey went back to the doctor, who replaced the plaster cast with a lace-up leather cast to wear in practice. In games, he wore a sponge pad that the officials would check before each contest.

“I only had one fumble that season,” Lindsey says. “I also returned punts.”

With Sonny Holmes at quarterback and Lindsey as the main running back, the Mustangs scored 351 points.

Largely because of Lindsey’s talents, Forrest City began a high school baseball team his senior year. The summer before his senior year, Lindsey had attracted the attention of numerous pro scouts during the state American Legion baseball tournament in Fort Smith. He played in the outfield, at shortstop, pitched and was even the catcher at times. In that first year of high school baseball in the spring of 1958, the Mustangs advanced to the finals of the state tournament at Lamar Porter Field in Little Rock before losing to Mountainburg.

“If I had come along a bit earlier, I don’t think I would have ever been signed to a baseball contract,” Lindsey says. “If you received a signing bonus of more than $4,000, you had to stay on the roster of the big league club for two years. I wasn’t good enough for them to have me on that roster. But they changed the rule in 1958.”

The bonus rule had been instituted by major league baseball in 1947. Any team that failed to comply with the rule requiring that a player signed to a contract in excess of $4,000 be assigned to the 40-man roster would lose the rights to that player’s contract.

Lindsey played at Keokuk, Iowa, in the Midwest League in 1958. He was in Hobbs, N.M., in 1959 and then played at Memphis; Winston-Salem, N.C.; and Columbia, S.C., during the 1960 season. Lindsey was in Billings, Mont., in 1961 and played for Tulsa of the Texas League for two seasons before retiring from baseball at the conclusion of the 1963 season.

“The Cardinals gave me every opportunity,” he says. “My fielding was never an issue. My hitting was the problem. I’ve always been told that you can tell after about five years whether you’re going to make it to the big leagues or not. I knew it was time to hang it up after six years.”

Lindsey remains a Cardinal fan, going to games several times each season. After his retirement from baseball, he took over the farm that had been operated by his father and three uncles. In 1987, Lindsey began a farming partnership with his younger brother. He raises about 4,000 acres of cotton and operates two gins.

“While I never had the privilege of coaching B because of his decision to play professional baseball after high school, I had the utmost admiration and respect for him as an athlete and as a person,” Broyles says. “He had all the qualities of leadership I looked for in a member of our team. He was and is a man of character and integrity, a born leader.”

– Rex Nelson

The Star of Tomorrow Award will be presented each year during the Hall of Fame’s induction banquet.

The inaugural award will be announced during the induction banquet for the Hall of Fame Class of 2012 on Friday, Feb. 3, at the Verizon Arena in North Little Rock. The award will be for accomplishments during the 2011 calendar year.

“We’re very excited about this award,” said Ray Tucker, the Hall of Fame’s executive director. “We plan for it to be one of the most significant awards in Arkansas sports.”

Larry Crain of the Crain Automotive Team said Arkansas is “known for producing world-class athletes. We want to develop something that will recognize the best college athlete each year. In a sense, we want this to be seen as the Heisman Trophy of Arkansas sports.”

Athletes from all intercollegiate sports – male and female – will be eiligible for the award.

“We believe we will be identifying many of the future inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame with this award,” Crain said. “This is something that will be coveted by Arkansas athletes.”

Crain is a longtime supporter of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and a member of the Hall of Fame Foundation Advisory Board.

“We appreciate Larry and the Crain Automotive Team for stepping up to sponsor the Star of Tomorrow Award,” Tucker said. “With the Crain Team involved, you know it will be done right.”

Sports information directors at colleges and universities will nominate athletes for the award. The number of nominees per school will be determined by the full-time enrollment at the school. Colleges and universities with fewer than 5,000 students may nominate two athletes. The numbers increase to four athletes for schools with between 5,000 and 10,000 students; six athletes for schools with between 10,000 and 15,000 students; eight athletes for schools with between 15,000 and 20,000 students; and 10 athletes for schools with more than 20,000 students.

A panel of media representatives will determine the 10 finalists. The selection of each nominee will be weighted as follows: 60 percent based on athletic performance, 20 percent based on academic performance and 20 percent based on community involvement.

Once the 10 finalists are selected, the winner will be determined by the following formula: 25 percent based on a public vote, 25 percent based on a vote by dues-paying members of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, 25 percent based on a vote by members of the Arkansas sports media and 25 percent based on a vote by Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductees.

Members of the Hall of Fame get to vote each year on inductees. Membership dues are $50 annually. Membership forms can be obtained by going to the organization’s website at www.arksportshalloffame.com.

The Hall of Fame inducted its first class in 1959. Andrew Meadors of Little Rock is the organization’s president.

The Hall of Fame Class of 2012 will consist of six people from the regular category, three from the senior category and two from the posthumous category. The Hall of Fame also will induct the 1994 national championship basketball team from the University of Arkansas. This is the second time in its history for the Hall of Fame to induct a team. The 1964 national championship Razorback football team was inducted in 2010.

Those being inducted from the regular category are former Razorback basketball player Lee Mayberry, former Oaklawn Park track announcer Terry Wallace, former Newport High School head football coach Bill Keedy, former Razorback basketball player U.S. Reed, former Razorback football player “Light Horse” Harry Jones and Little Rock native and former Oklahoma State University head football coach Pat Jones.

Those being inducted from the senior category are former Forrest City star athlete Elmer “B” Lindsey, former college coach and NFL scout Bob Ford of Wynne and former Southern Arkansas University women’s basketball coach Margaret Downing.

Those being inducted from the posthumous category are former University of Central Arkansas head football and track coach Raymond Bright and 1892 Kentucky Derby winning jockey Alonzo “Lonnie” Clayton.

Tickets for the Feb. 3 induction banquet are $100 each and may be obtained by calling Jennifer Smith at (501) 663-4328 or Catherine Johnson at (501) 821-1021.

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame Museum on the west side of Verizon Arena is open each Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. It includes an 88-seat theater with a video highlighting the careers of Arkansas sports greats and a touch-screen kiosk with a database of all Hall of Fame inductees.