What if I told you that you and a few of your buddies were going to the biggest game of the year or maybe of a lifetime and you didn’t have a ticket. Heck, it’s not even a guarantee you will even get in. What do you do? Well if you are like Jackson, MS native Bill Rogers, you would have a trick or two up your sleeve. Ironically, a trick that would earn Rogers a spot in the LSU / Ole Miss history books.
Rick Cleveland, of the Clarion-Ledger, wrote a story on this and it was passed to me by a LSU fan. In all of my life, I never knew about this story and oh what a story it is. I have copied the article written by Cleveland along with a clip and attached it below. Enjoy the story…simply amazing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIHdlAg4Uic At about the 1:18 mark, notice the ref who came off of the side line around the 23 and ran along side Cannon to the endzone. Guess who…
Jacksonian crashed 1959 LSU-UM game in referee’s garb
RICK CLEVELAND COLUMNIST THE CLARION-LEDGER You just thought you’d heard about Halloween Night, 1959, from every possible angle.
You’ve heard Billy Cannon describe his 89- yard, fourth-quarter punt return. You’ve heard Jake Gibbs, soon to be a Hall of Famer, describe how he just missed a last-gasp tackle.
You know about Doug Elmore’s driving the Ole Miss Rebels down to a last-minute chance to score at the LSU goal line. And you’ve read how Cannon, the Heisman Trophy winner, helped make the game-saving tackle of Elmore.
You’ve seen the replay of Cannon’s run countless times. You thought you’d heard LSU’s storied, 7-3 victory described from every possible angle by every participant.
But you haven’t heard this one. Here we go . . .
It’s Halloween day, 1959. Jackson native Bill Rogers, 29, a diehard football fan if ever there was one, boards the Illinois Central train in Jackson headed for Baton Rouge.
Duffel bag holds togs of deceit
Rogers travels with his buddies Earl Frazer and Emory Oxford. Frazer and Oxford have tickets for the long sold-out game; Rogers doesn’t. But Rogers has money to try and buy a ticket from a scalper. And, if that doesn’t work, Rogers has a duffel bag, and a plan.
The train reaches Baton Rouge and Rogers heads for the stadium to find a ticket. Problem is, nobody’s selling. A ticket to this game is like a pound of gold.
Understand, this is the game. LSU is unbeaten and ranked No. 1 in the country. Ole Miss is unbeaten and ranked No. 3.
A full three hours before the 8 p.m. kickoff, thousands are lined up outside the gates waiting to get in. That’s about the time Rogers decides his search for a ticket is futile. It’s time for Plan B.
So Rogers takes his duffel bag and finds a bathroom. A high school referee, Rogers has brought along his uniform just in case. He dons the white pants, the striped shirt, and the white cap with the black bill. He puts on his spiked shoes and pulls the whistle and chain over his head.
And then, with the jaunty air of a man in charge and with the audacity of a thief, Rogers clickedy-clops up the walkway to the gate.
Rogers doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. The attendant just opens the gate, and in Bill Rogers walks. But he doesn’t stop there. No, he heads straight down to the field and plops down on the Ole Miss bench.
Funny thing happens when the real officials arrive. “Who the hell are you?” the referee asks.
Fake official visible on fabled run
Bill Rogers, now 65 and a car salesman at Van-Trow Oldsmobile, laughs as he tells the rest of the story.
“There was nothing I could do but tell the man the truth,” Rogers says. “When I told him, he just laughed and laughed and then he told me to enjoy the game. He said, if anybody asks you what you’re doing, just tell them you’re a back-up in case one of us gets hurt.”
Rogers did just that, walking up and down the sidelines, following the play up close and personal in what was surely one of the greatest games in college football history.
Up in the stands, Oxford and Frazer couldn’t believe it. There was their buddy, so close he could smell the sweat. Well, actually, Frazer could believe it.
“You gotta know Billy,” Frazer says. “He’s the only person I know with the guts to do something like that.”
And where was Rogers during the fabled run?
Rogers plugs a videotape into his VCR. There, in living black and white, Cannon fields the punt at his 11 and heads down the sideline. At about the 30, a rangy man in a striped shirt steps up just outside the sideline and starts following Cannon. He follows Cannon past the Ole Miss bench and all the way to the end zone and then lifts his hands.. Touchdown.
“I really was for Ole Miss,” still-rangy Bill Rogers says, smiling. “That was just my referee’s instincts.”
relativesports
Relativesports's Blog 