Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 19, 2010
Are we there yet?
The kid from Philadelphia
Jay Edwards
Marcus Dupree was an athlete, but even more than that he was a running back. You may remember Dupree, if you watched college football back in the early eighties. If you do remember, but even if you don’t, you should catch his story on ESPN called “The best that never was.” It is one of the two-hour shows in the “30 for 30,” series on the sports network.
Dupree was born in 1965 in Philadelphia, Miss., which in those days was a racially divided and hate-filled town; about which the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “This is a terrible town, the worst I’ve seen.”
King spoke those words in June of 1966, on the second anniversary of the murders of three civil rights workers, who were killed one month after Marcus Dupree was born.
At Philadelphia High School in 1978, racial segregation had been lifted, making Dupree’s graduating class the first integrated class for the entire 12 years he went to school.
One of his teammates and friends was a white boy named Cecil Price Jr. Price’s dad, Cecil senior, had been indicted in 1965 with seventeen other men, for conspiring in a Ku Klux Klan plot to murder those same three young civil rights workers Dr. King remembered. Price was the deputy sheriff in Neshoba County and the man who arrested the boys for speeding. He later turned them over to other Klansmen.
Price served four and a half years of his six-year sentence, at the Sandstone Federal Penitentiary in Minnesota. Fol-lowing his release in 1974, he returned to Philadelphia where he worked as a surveyor, oil company driver, and as a watchmaker in a jewelry shop. He was never charged with the murders of the three men.
This was the atmosphere Dupree grew up in. His single mother raised him, along with his handicapped younger brother. The family didn’t have much.
As a freshman in 1978, young Marcus ran a 4.4, in the 40-yard dash. On his first high school play the coach put him in to return the opening kickoff. He ran it back 75-yards for a touchdown.
That same season he scored five touchdowns rushing and receiving and scored seven more via kick and punt returns. He would leave Philadelphia High four years later having rushed for 7,355 yards and 87 touchdowns, a high school record, breaking Herschel Walker’s mark of 86 touchdowns. When he broke the record, Sid Salter of Supertalk Radio was in the stands. Salter looked over and saw Cecil Price, Sr., who was ... “jumping up and down and cheering as hard as anyone.”
The recruiting of Dupree, by every major college in the country, had come down to Texas, Oklahoma and Southern Mississippi. Texas and OU had their top recruiting coaches living in a Philadelphia hotel. On a visit to Austin, Dupree told head coach Fred Akers he was ready to commit to the Longhorns. Akers, wanting him to be sure, took the 19-year old into his office where they called his mama. She told him if that was his decision then she supported it. Marcus left Austin and a smiling Akers and headed back to Mississippi. In the ESPN program Akers said, “Marcus Dupree is the only high school player I have seen that belongs in the same sentence with Earl Campbell at that level.”
But OU recruiter Lucius Selmon didn’t give up; he just couldn’t. The first time Selmon had seen Dupree play he called back to Norman to tell them he’d just watched a game that had the best running back he’d ever seen.
The day before high school players signed their letters of intent, Dupree called Selmon in his hotel room. After some chit chat the coach asked if he would be smiling or frowning tomorrow.
“I think you’ll be smiling coach.” The next day Sooner fans everywhere were smiling. Akers, in the documentary said he didn’t know what happened and hated to speculate.
They ran the wishbone at OU and Dupree didn’t play much at all until the fourth game of the season, when Switzer dropped the wishbone for the I formation, with Dupree as the tailback. He scored his first college touchdown against Texas, 63-yards on a fake reverse.
The offense and OU began rolling with Dupree. But he wasn’t happy, feeling that Switzer was constantly riding him.
Despite not starting until the seventh game of the season, Marcus finished with 1,144 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns. He was named second team All-American, first team all-Big Eight Conference, and Big Eight Newcomer of the Year.
The team was invited to play in the Fiesta Bowl to face Arizona State on New Year’s Day. They were given ten days off for Christmas and Marcus headed to Philadelphia for some of mama’s home cooking.
To be continued.
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