I was recently asked a good question by a former colleague that stretched my memory and stirred up some great flashbacks.
Working on an article for SBNation, an American web-based sports network, William Browning reached out to ask some questions about football in Mississippi and wanted my thoughts on the best game I have ever covered.
It’s so hard to narrow down 21 years of work into just one favorite game, but I tried.
There are a few games that jumped out immediately because of how they ended and/or what the outcome meant for a particular school.
In thinking back and looking through old bound volumes of the Commonwealth, the year 1993 just stood out.
That year Mississippi Delta Community College put the tiny town of Moorhead on the national map.
The Trojans’ 21-20 overtime state championship win over Jones County is the best game I’ve seen.
This game had it all — great players, high stakes and a dramatic ending that left most teary-eyed. Some were tears of joy and others of sadness.
In a 1-vs.-2 matchup, MDCC won on the last play with a defensive stop that sent the top-ranked Trojans on to the national championship game.
Watching all that talent in warm-ups, I remember having goose bumps on a sun-kissed fall afternoon in Moorhead. Both sides were loaded with speed and Division I talent.
Hollywood’s finest screenwriter would have had a hard time bettering how this game unfolded.
MDCC quarterback Stewart Patridge of Morgan City, a Pillow Academy product, spent the previous night in the hospital with flu-like symptoms. He battled through sickness on game day and threw a pair of touchdown passes — the first that tied the game at 14 late in the fourth quarter.
David Lloyd had slipped down on the play but came up with a tipped pass for a 24-yard score.
Then in overtime, Patridge hit Lloyd with a 23-yard scoring strike on a slant rout, and Channing Upchurch booted the PAT for a 21-14 lead.
Jones came right back with a touchdown and then went for the win.
After a two-point run was stuffed a yard short of the goal line, the Trojans were 11-0 and basking in the glory of a spot in the national title game.
It was a mind-blowing experience for a young writer.
The thing I remember most was MDCC head coach James “Wooky” Gray getting choked up in the postgame interview. This was a special one for Gray, who was in the twilight of a great coaching career, after going through heartbreaking losses in the state championship games in 1989 and 1991.
That game led to maybe the second-best game I’ve covered — a national championship showdown with Nassau Community College out of Garden City, N.Y.
The battle of unbeatens took place in a 12,000-seat dome stadium in Pocatello, Idaho, on the campus of Idaho State.
It was one heck of a game.
MDCC trailed 10-3 early but rallied for a hard-fought 20-16 win to finish 12-0 with the school’s first and only national crown.
But I remember this one more for what went on outside the game, which ended with a bench-clearing brawl.
Again, the story line was compelling.
Here was this team, made up mostly of players from small Mississippi Delta towns, facing a team from New York with an enrollment of 22,000.
I flew on the Trojans’ charter flight out of Greenville, and that was quite interesting, too.
The coaches had a hard time getting some of the players on the plane. They had never flown and were scared to death.
Most of them had never been out of the state, much less on a plane. A couple of them wound up wearing their football helmets on the flight.
nContact Bill Burrus at 581-7237 or bburrus@gwcommonwealth.com. Follow on Twitter:@Bill_Burrus.
