Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / Legendary Mississippi High School Football Coach Bobby Hall discusses his induction into the MAAA Hall of Fame

Transcript

Legendary Mississippi High School Football Coach Bobby Hall discusses his induction into the MAAA Hall of Fame · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

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  Kind enough to give some time. M TRIPAA Hall of Fame Inductee twenty twenty
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  four, Bobby Hall, Coach Hall. It's an honored be sent across from
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  me. How you, sir, I'm doing great, Thank you, and
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  it's an honor for me to be here. Hey, congratulations on the Hall
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  of Fame induction. You know, when you say Mississippi high school football,
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  You're one of the first names that come to mind. Obviously you got South
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  Padola, you got the big programs that have come through. But when you
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  talk coaches, you talk to other coaches that have come after you, they
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  all reference your life, your career, what you have done for Mississippi High
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  school football, and that shows up here today with the Hall of Fame.
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  Well, thank you. I'm honored that you would say that. I'm somewhat
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  humble that you would say that I did it for forty years something the only
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  thing I ever wanted to do, as when I was fourteen years old,
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  I knew what I wanted to do, and so you know, I had
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  great passion for it and consequently now I'll put a whole lot into it.
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  And God gave me a gift to be able to get people to do what
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  I want him to do, and he gave me great passion. So you
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  know, it worked out good and we had a lot of success, and
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  I'm grateful. Take us back to the beginning. You know, like you
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  said, you wanted to do this when you were fourteen, fourteen years old.
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  I know exactly where I want to be. I know where God wants
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  me to be, and this is what I'm gonna do. The game has
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  changed so much. Talk about that, and you know, we saw this
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  with Nick Saban last week when he retired and talking a little bit about the
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  evolution of football having to adjust and do that's that's something that always happens with
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  football, isn't it? Okay? The you know, college football. I'll
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  start out with it. College football in the very near future under the current
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  setup. And I'm not an astrodomus by any stretch of imagination, but under
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  the current setup, it won't be long before college football will evolve to just
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  the people that have a lot of money, because it's all about money now
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  and there's no cap, there's no you know, it's actually professional sports at
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  the college level, and so and it's not I mean, there's certain schools
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  that obviously just have more money than other schools, and it's always been that
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  way. So it's as on even a playing field right now as it's even
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  more on even, I think, than it was back in the sixties and
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  seventies when Oklahoma and Alabama and people like that were signing one hundred and fifty
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  people or whatever they were serving. They signed as many as they wanted to,
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  and that created a very on even playing field. If you'll remember,
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  the NCAA reduced the scholarships until they eventually got it down to eighty five and
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  it even things back up again. So you know, hopefully something will be
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  done about it, and if they don't, we'll all move on and live
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  and be happy and live our lives and roll on with it. Bobby Hall
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  on your Radio, twenty twenty four, inducted to the MTRIPA Hall of Fame,
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  talking college football and of course football and his career coach. When you
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  look at the high school ranks, I don't know that we envisioned this,
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  but you know, you can go back. I graduated high school in nineteen
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  ninety four, MHSA guy down in rankin county, and I can remember it
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  was interesting just to see your name in the paper if you just scored a
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  touchdown or something. Now we've got live streams, we've got radio coverage,
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  we've got events like this where administrators and coaches get together. High school footballs
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  come a long way in the state. It's unbelievable the way, you know,
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  the things that you know, when I received my award just a few
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  moments ago, when I talked about, you know, some of all sports
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  trophies that we wanted different schools, and one year at Amory High School,
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  we were a three A school and they didn't have the different classifications then and
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  Amory finished third in the state behind Tupelo and Madison Central. There's Madison Central,
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  Tupelo, and US and so you know that they didn't even But now
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  you know, we do just a much better job today with almost every aspect
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  of coaching, especially with the safety, with the teaching and all those things
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  that we do. Is just made it all, I think, a much
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  better game. No, I would agree with you. Take us back through
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  some of your teams, some of your plays, you know, coaches where
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  you coached obviously, some of those memories that kind of highlight and I know
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  it's not fair to try to say this team was better than this team or
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  these players, but just to kind of take us through that well won.
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  We won four state championships, had two runner ups, went to the Semis
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  twelve times. In nineteen eighty seven, we broke Rosedale's forty game win streak
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  and we went on went to the finals that year and lost to mending Hall.
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  That that game was a one of one of the biggest games I thought.
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  I thought it kind of put Amory High School on the maup at the
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  time because they had one back to back state titles and forty games in a
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  row, and it was pretty much a given that, you know, nobody
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  in three A was gonna beat them. We beat them. Excuse me,
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  We beat them twenty nine to twenty eight and overtime. And I've said this
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  many times. We could have played them ten more times. I don't think
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  we would have beat them a time. But we beat them that night and
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  that was all that mattered. So that was big, and you know,
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  all of the team, you know, we had some teams that didn't win
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  at all that I thought was just as good as some of the teams that
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  didn't win it all. So that ninety five team, it's been rated as
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  one of the best high school football teams of all time in the state of
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  Mississippi. And some people say, yeah, well, you wasn't five A,
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  you wasn't six there or whatever. But I would say this, go
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  back and research how many people that we had all of that team that signed
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  Power five scholarships. And then you go back and you look also on that
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  team, the guys that signed scholarships that wasn't Power five for some reason.
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  Amory just went through a phenomenal amount of talent that time, and it was
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  a great, great football team. I tell people that team was so talented.
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  All I did was gas the bus and their the balls. I remember
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  that team well because I was just a year out of high school and everybody
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  was talking about Amriy and what Amiry was doing, what you guys were doing
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  up there, And you're right. I mean, you could say pound for
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  pound, if you could put it in some sort of a video game where're
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  kind of you're playing eras, that team would be one of the best in
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  the Mississippi at got the best. An article came out Time Gets Away from
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  Us fifteen years ago, twenty years ago or whatever. The Claire and Ledger
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  back when we aw still used to read the newspaper and they rated the ten
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  best teams the history of the state, and Amory was in that conversation.
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  So I was proud of that. Bobby Hall joining us for a few minutes
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  today, m TRIPAA Hall of Fame induct E twenty twenty four coach. Obviously,
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  you look at some of the coaches that you had a chance to bring
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  up under you, from Marcus Balls to several others. Talk a little bit
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  about that and kind of the Bobby Hall coaching tree that is out there.
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  It is real wow. That coaching tree is. I was the second winning
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  this public school coach in history of the state, behind a gentleman by the
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  name of Jim Drury from Boonville. And then the next winning, this guy
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  is Marcus Boys, and he's going to pass me pretty soon, and quite
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  frankly, I'm perfectly fine with that. When I went to Raleigh in nineteen
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  eighty, me and Will Hall's mother when we went down there, I was
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  twenty five. It was my first head job. She was twenty four.
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  Will Haws ten weeks old. Marcus Boys was a ninth grader. I always
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  can keep up with his age because I was twenty five and he was fifteen,
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  and so I coached him all four of his years there and he's become
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  one of the greatest high school football coach in history of this state. You
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  got Toby Collum that's at Madison Central now. I gave him his first job
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  at Wayne County. And you can just go on and on and on the
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  amount of people that are out there that either played for me or coached with
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  me that have gone on to be high school coaches that are having success.
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  I think all of them is doing good. I can't think of anybody that
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  that's not doing good. No, I would agree with that. And then
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  you know Mississippi and I say this a lot. You know, especially when
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  we have the state championships, we get a chance to work the kind of
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  the red carpet there and talk in between games and stuff. Is the history
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  of mississipp high school football is so special. From just what you reference,
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  like your coaching tree, your teams, you get into, you know,
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  the communities like Lewisville, Starkville, even now what's going on in Metro Jackson
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  with Brandon and Madison Central, and you know all these teams. Missisippi high
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  school football just continues to grow in the best of ways, and a lot
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  of that is credit to what you guys did. Yeah, well, you
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  know, thank you for that. Uh And Brandon and Madison Central Life two
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  of the great programs in this state. And ironically I got to say this.
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  Brandon's offensive line coach. His dad was Ed Stanley, who was my
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  defensive coordinator for seven years, and I gave him his first job. And
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  of course he went on in one state idols you know, at at the
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  South Pinola and took Meridian to the finals. A very very dear friend of
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  mine. So uh, just I love this state. I love Mississippi.
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  I think we're very well kept secret. I'm very very fond of the quality
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  of football we play in this state. We don't have the tax dollars,
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  we don't have the population two point nine million people, but per capita,
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  we're as good as anybody in the country. Agree, Bobby Hall m TRIPLEA
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  Hall of Fame inducty today. Coach Hall again, congratulations and thank you for
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  taking some time of us today. Thank you for asking me. God bless you.