As the game clock ticked down on a cold, gray Saturday afternoon, I tried to describe the scene at Carpenter-Haygood Stadium in Arkadelphia to those listening to my broadcast of the 88th Battle of the Ravine. For the previous 30 minutes--ever since it had become evident that Ouachita Baptist University would beat Henderson State University to go 10-0 for the first time in school history--the messages had been flooding my phone. They came from ecstatic Ouachita graduates across the country who were listening online.
Henderson had become the Goliath among NCAA Division II football programs in the state, going undefeated during the 2012 and 2013 regular seasons and winning the four previous Battles of the Ravine. The Reddies were 30-1 in regular-season games since the start of the 2012 campaign, having lost only to a talented Harding University squad in the final minute of play earlier this season. Ouachita trailed 17-7 in the first quarter, and it appeared the Reddies were poised to blow the Tigers out. I thought about something the late Buddy Benson, the head coach at Ouachita for 31 seasons, would tell his team before each game: "If at first the game or breaks go against you, don't get shook or rattled. Put on more steam."
The Tigers indeed put on more steam, outscoring the powerful Reddies the rest of the way to win 41-20. I counted down the final seconds on the radio and looked at the Ouachita fans pouring from the stands. That's when the tears came. Silly, you say, for a 55-year-old man to cry at the end of an athletic contest. It's only a game, you say. I'm sorry, but it's more than a game for me. Ouachita football has been one of my passions since birth.
I grew up a block from Ouachita's football stadium in Arkadelphia, the son of a former Tiger quarterback and a former Ouachitonian beauty. Like most boys who grew up in Arkansas, I rooted for the Razorbacks. Unlike most boys, Arkansas was never my main team. Ouachita was. We didn't often go to Hog games in Fayetteville or Little Rock. We were too busy following the Tigers. My fondest childhood memories are of trips back from places like Searcy, Conway, Russellville, Magnolia and Monticello in the back of my father's Oldsmobile after Ouachita games.
My father, who died in March 2011, would have enjoyed this undefeated season. Following his high school graduation in 1942, he took a job with the Chicago Bridge & Iron Co., which was building an aluminum plant in Saline County. Dad was paid union wages and found himself making more than his father. He told his parents that he would stay with the company rather than go to college.
My father was offered a football scholarship to Ouachita, and my grandmother was insistent that he attend college, something neither she nor my grandfather had done. She called Ouachita head coach Bill Walton and ordered him not to let my father come home. The 1942 Ouachita team went 9-1, losing only to Union University in Jackson, Tenn. Dad joined the Army Air Corps the following spring and served for two years. He returned to Ouachita after the war and played on the 1945-47 teams. He met a pretty young lady named Carolyn Caskey from Des Arc and married her prior to graduation.
My sister recently was cleaning out the house we grew up in and found the program from the Battle of the Ravine that was played Thanksgiving Day 1947. My father is listed as starting quarterback. She gave me the program, which is now among my most cherished possessions.
I also thought of Benson, a childhood hero. He had been one of the nation's most highly recruited players coming out of high school at De Queen. He threw the famous Powder River pass when the Razorbacks beat nationally ranked Ole Miss at War Memorial Stadium in 1954. Benson died on Good Friday in 2011, just weeks after I lost my dad. And I thought of a Crossett native named Mac Sisson, the longtime Ouachita sports information director who gave me the chance as an untested freshman in 1979 to begin broadcasting Ouachita games. Mac is also gone.
My wish for you this Thanksgiving is that you also have one or more great passions in life. It might be a passion for music, acting or writing. It has to do with finding something you care about deeply throughout your life. It's even more special if you've suffered setbacks along the way so you can more fully appreciate the high points. I know defeat. Ouachita didn't have a winning season from 1991 until 2008, and yet I continued to broadcast games all those years. The fact that it's now the only college program in the state with seven consecutive winning seasons makes the accomplishment sweeter.
As the tears rolled down my cheeks, my mind wandered. On this cold November day, I was transported back in time. I was a kid again, marveling at my good fortune: the good fortune of one who grew up in a small town in the South and attended a small college where people call you by your name and care about you; a place where people give you opportunities. Once again, I was in the back seat of the Olds-mobile, fighting to keep my eyes open as Dad drove us through the autumn Arkansas night after a Ouachita game. Once again, Buddy Benson was on the sideline in his starched shirt and tie, and Mac Sisson was in the press box. Once again, my beloved Tigers were on top and the future was limitless.
I'm blessed; blessed beyond description as another Thanksgiving arrives.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 11/26/2014