It was still dark outside on that fall Saturday morning in 1978 when the phone rang in my dorm room. I was a freshman at Ouachita Baptist University while also holding down jobs as sports editor of the Daily Siftings Herald at Arkadelphia and sports director of radio stations KVRC-AM and KDEL-FM.
On the other end of the line was Glen Hoggard, who handled the radio play-by-play of Ouachita football games. I was his color analyst. It was hard to hear Hoggard as he explained that he was stuck out of town and that I would need to do the play-by-play of Ouachita's game that night against Arkansas Tech in Russellville.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Saudi Arabia," he replied.
I asked again to make sure I had heard him correctly. Glen was working for the Ward School Bus Manufacturing Co. of Conway, which had entered into a contract with the Saudi government to supply the buses that would haul Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. That night, as I did college play-by-play for the first time, Ouachita running back William Miller broke a long touchdown run to propel the Tigers to victory. It was the first of many big plays I would call in a college broadcasting career that continues more than four decades later.
Miller died of cancer on Jan. 3, his 62nd birthday. The Rison product was one of the best running backs in the history of the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference. In a college career that went from 1975-78, Miller set school records for rushing touchdowns and scoring. During that 1978 season, he rushed for 1,668 yards, which also set a school record. Miller led the NAIA nationally in rushing and scoring.
After having been signed by the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League, Miller joined the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League for the 1980 season. He was the CFL's rookie of the year as he ran for 1,053 yards. Miller rushed for 684 yards in 1981 and 1,076 yards in 1982. He then moved to the USFL and played for the Pittsburgh Maulers and Orlando Renegades. Miller returned to the CFL in 1986 and finished his football career with the Toronto Argonauts.
Miller's death came just one day after the death of Jim Bailey, who covered the AIC for decades for the Arkansas Gazette. Bailey was among the most talented writers to ever grace the pages of an Arkansas newspaper. I was raised in an AIC town. I loved AIC sports, and I loved newspapers. The first thing I did each morning was to grab the Gazette from the driveway while still in my pajamas. The first stories I read were those by Bailey. It's fair to say that I grew up wanting to be like him.
When Bailey came to town, you knew it was a big game. Bailey, who rarely drove, would take the bus to Arkadelphia for games at Ouachita and Henderson State University. Coaches would send managers to pick him up at the bus station and then take him back after games.
In 1979, one of the state high school basketball tournaments was held at Henderson. I skipped most of my classes that week since I was stringing for newspapers across the state. The money was too good to pass up as I called in stories to newspapers in Texarkana, Pine Bluff, Jonesboro and elsewhere. I also had picked up the assignment from the Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat at a time when the newspaper war was heating up. I would change the lead game and some of the sentences so the stories wouldn't resemble each other. Late in the tournament, a game went into overtime, and both Little Rock newspapers decided to give me a byline for the first time all week. The bylines read "By Rex Nelson, Special to the Democrat" and "By Rex Nelson, Special to the Gazette."
I called the Gazette the day those stories ran to dictate a new article. Bailey answered the phone, and I identified myself. With his trademark wit, he said: "By the way, we have you a new byline format. It's 'By Rex Nelson, Not So Special to the Gazette.'"
Losing Miller and Bailey in the same week has me thinking about the AIC and what a joy it was to watch and cover its games until the conference's demise in the spring of 1995. The conference was formed in 1928 as the Arkansas Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Most of the state's colleges were AIC members at one time or another. The schools that are now Arkansas State University at Jonesboro and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock were among the original members.
Cliff Shaw of Little Rock, who officiated major college football games for 35 years, became the unpaid AIC commissioner in 1956 (his main job was at Coleman Dairy in Little Rock) and served in that position until 1971. Under Shaw's direction, the AIC became known for having the finest officiating corps of any small college conference in the country. The AIC began sanctioning women's sports the 1983-84 school year.
At Bailey's funeral, longtime Gazette sports staffer James Thompson showed me an autographed copy of the book Bailey wrote with Orville Henry in 1973 to chronicle the history of football at the University of Arkansas. When he signed the book, Bailey noted that Thompson understood not only the Razorbacks but also the Henderson Reddies and the Dardanelle High School Sand Lizards.
It was vintage Bailey. He always treated high school and AIC games with the same respect he treated the Razorbacks.
It's a reminder to all of us in the media that there's a big state out there filled with Wonder Boys, Muleriders and Boll Weevils; a state populated by Arkansans who are interested not just in the Razorbacks but also in the exploits of their local teams.
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 01/16/2019