College hall of fame honors Mayes, Curtis
By college football standards, Rueben Mayes came to prominence out of nowhere. Now he’s never going back.
Washington State’s all-time leading rusher took that last big step Tuesday night with his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame during the National Football Foundation’s annual awards banquet in New York City.
Mayes was part of a star-studded class of 13 players and two coaches – including LSU great Billy Cannon, who celebrated his induction as the only person elected to the hall twice.
The NFF also inducted a 15-player scholar-athlete class and distributed a half dozen other awards – including the Chris Schenkel Award for broadcasting that went to long-time University of Idaho play-by-play announcer Bob Curtis.
At a morning press conference, Mayes was humbled by his inclusion with the likes of Cannon, UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman, Oklahoma State running back Thurman Thomas, as well as coaching greats Lou Holtz and John Cooper.
“I think of one word – legacy,” Mayes said.
He meant the one left by the more than 900 previous inductees – though he could have included his own, as an unheralded recruit out of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, when he arrived on the WSU campus in 1982.
“I came from Canada,” he said. “If I can do it, anyone can.”
After seeing spot duty his first two years, Mayes emerged as the focal point of the Cougars’ offense as a junior. He rushed for 1,637 yards – narrowly losing the national title to Ohio State’s Keith Byars – but left his mark with a then-NCAA record 357-yard performance in a 50-41 shootout win over the University of Oregon in Eugene.
“All the fans in the stands were yelling, ‘Watch the draw!’ ” recalled his coach, Jim Walden, earlier this year. “Then we’d run it and he would make 8, 10, 20 yards. We just kept running the same play, and when the day was over he had 357 yards.”
Mayes followed that with a 1,236-yard senior season, and his total of 3,519 career yards remains the school record – one of five rushing or all-purpose yardage records he still holds. Tenth in the Heisman Trophy balloting that year, he was the 1986 NFC Rookie of the Year for the New Orleans Saints, the highlight of an injury-abbreviated pro career.
“I think of all the great opportunities that have been afforded to me, and all the great people who have guided and instructed me, like Jim Walden,” Mayes said. “When I sign things for kids, I tell them to reach for the stars and follow your dreams. Anything is possible.”
Mayes is the third Cougars player to join the hall, following Mel Hein and Glen “Turk” Edwards. Former WSU coaches Babe Hollingbery and Forest Evashevski are also enshrined.
Curtis had Cougars roots, too – he’s a Washington State graduate who began calling Pacific Coast Conference games on the Tidewater Oil network in the 1940s. But after a 10-year affiliation with Tidewater, he was all Vandal.
Idaho hired him as its play-by-play broadcaster in 1958 and for the next 47 years he was the “Voice of the Vandals,” calling 540 consecutive football games until his retirement in 2004.
He shares the 2008 Schenkel award with the late Dick Galiette, a fixture in the Ivy League as the voice of Yale games for more than 30 years.
The remaining Hall of Fame class inducted included Jim Dombrowski (Virginia), Pat Fitzgerald (Northwestern), Wilber Marshall (Florida), Randall McDaniel (Arizona State), Don McPherson (Syracuse), Jay Novacek (Wyoming), Dave Parks (Texas Tech), Ron Simmons (Florida State) and Arnold Tucker (Army).
Cannon’s induction was notable in that he’d been first elected to the hall in 1983 for his electrifying career at LSU. But the honor was rescinded after he was arrested on federal counterfeiting charges. Cannon pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison in 1983, serving half of that.
Twenty-two years after being released from prison and 11 since he was unemployed and broke, Cannon’s life is in order and his greatest accomplishments are being celebrated.
“It’s the old penthouse, outhouse story,” Cannon said.
He said he was angry at first when the Hall turned it’s back on him, but never held a grudge and never “lost sleep” wondering if he would get another chance.
But he said, “I’m very happy that it happened.
“I thank the people who voted for me the first time. And I tremendously thank the people who voted me in the second time.”
The Hall of Fame induction comes less than a month after Cannon received an honor that just might trump it. During the LSU-Mississippi game in Baton Rouge, Cannon’s No. 20 was unveiled on the facade of an upper deck during a ceremony honoring the ’58 championship team. The jersey number had already been retired, but now it was a part of the stadium Cannon, who grew up in Baton Rouge, had been going to for 60 years.
“Until they dropped the drape in the stadium, I didn’t know it. It was a shock to me,” Cannon said.
He received a thunderous ovation from more than 90,000 at Tiger Stadium that day.
“The people of Louisiana are very quick to love and also very quick to forgive,” he said.
Also honored by the NFF were former Senator and astronaut John Glenn, recipient of the NFF’s Gold Medal, and billionaire philanthropist and oilman T. Boone Pickens, given the Distinguished American Award.
Even Cannon couldn’t help but find the irony of his inclusion on the dais with such a group.
“You heard all about guidance, leadership, doing the right thing, and there’s a convicted felon sitting in the middle of them,” Cannon said. “One of the reasons I’m here today: I did the crime, I did the time, and I haven’t had a problem since. Not even a speeding ticket.”
Cannon did declare for bankruptcy in 1995. Out of work in 1997, he returned to the place he served his time – the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
He’s been working as a dentist there since, fixing teeth and acting as a positive example for the inmates.
“I get to talk to them all when they come in and when they leave,” he said. “I say, ‘You know you can make it.’ And they say, ‘You made it Doc. We got a shot, don’t we?’
“I say, ‘Don’t waste it.’ ”