Valley’s Prophet gave it his all
Let’s go back almost 25 years to the fall of 1983. In Itta Bena, Mississippi Valley State sophomore Willie Totten was throwing passes and junior Jerry Rice was catching them, and, slowly but surely, the college football nation was beginning to pay attention.
Chuck Prophet, the busiest man in sports, worked 18 to 20 hours a day making sure the news got out.
One Saturday, Totten and Rice hooked up 24 times in one game against Southern University. It was an NCAA record. Prophet sent the statistics to Steve Boda, who kept such records for the NCAA.
Boda called him back on Sunday morning and told him to re-check the statistics. “That can’t be right,” Boda told him.
So Prophet dutifully went back over the play-by-play of the game again, checked and triple-checked the arithmetic and called Boda back.
clarionledger.com
6/26/08
