JACKSON - This was the fall of 1966 and Delta State quarterback Bill Buckner thought he had seen everything when it came to motivational coaching methods.

After all, Buckner had played for the legendary Bull Sullivan in junior college at Scooba. He had watched Sullivan shoot his shotgun in the direction of a low-flying airplane Sullivan claimed carried spies from the archrival. He had seen goal-line drills when Sullivan lined up his defense on the edge of a pond and then told his offense, "OK, now drown 'em!"

Then, at Delta State, Buckner played for the late, great Horace McCool, Sullivan's good friend, who died Tuesday night and will be buried in Cleveland on Saturday.

"Delta State didn't lose many games back then, but I remember we lost one, and Coach McCool told us to show up at practice in our coats and ties," Buckner said. "We didn't know what was going on, and then he brought out this flatbed truck with a coffin. Turns out, he was going to have a funeral and bury the game film. You know, at the time I thought it was crazy, but it worked. We put that game behind us and went on to have a good season.

"Coach McCool was from that old school of coaches like Bear Bryant and Bull Sullivan," Buckner said. "He knew how to handle people. He knew how to motivate, and he knew his football."
Great legacy

McCool, as is the case with most successful coaches, would have been successful in business, or the military or any field he had chosen. Great coaches know people. They know how to teach them. They know how to discipline them. They know how to motivate them, even if it takes a fake funeral.

Boo Ferriss, the man who promoted McCool to head coach at DSU, is one of those same kind of "people" people.

"Horace had some mighty fine teams at Delta State, but he would have been successful at any level," Ferriss said. "I can't begin to tell you all the good he did at Delta State."

McCool, after succeeding Ferriss as the school's athletic director, was the driving force behind reinstating women's basketball at DSU and hiring Margaret Wade as the head coach.

Before long, that program won three national championships.

"Wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Coach McCool," says Langston Rogers, the retiring sports information director at Ole Miss, who was recruited to Delta State as a student sports information worker by McCool himself.

"Coach McCool and Coach Ferriss both cared so much for their players, not just as players but as people," Rogers said. "They made boys into men. They won, but they also built character."
The comeback

McCool's best football team probably was his 1965 ballclub that finished 8-1, the only loss coming by one point when the Deltans missed a late field goal by inches.

Fifteen years ago, the team held a reunion and 45 of 52 players showed up.

Butch Caston had been a starting halfback on that team and later was the DSU Dean of Education. Said Caston, "The most amazing thing to me is how successful nearly every member of that team has been in his chosen field. We've got doctors, teachers, coaches, insurance people, corporate CEOs, and you name it. Everyone's done well."

McCool showed the way, Caston said.

That same 1965 team played Fran Curci's Tampa University team at Tampa. Ferriss, then the athletic director, remembers making the trip and inviting his former Boston Red Sox teammates Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr to come watch the game. Ferriss bragged on the undefeated Statesmen and told his buddies they were in for a treat.

"Well, at halftime, we were down three touchdowns and I went and found Pesky and Doerr and apologized to them," Ferriss said.

He need not have bothered. Delta State rallied to win 33-32.

"Greatest comeback I ever saw," Ferriss says.

And don't we wish we could hear what Horace McCool told his team at halftime.