http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060204/SPORTS030103/60204003/0/SPORTS Ole Miss legend Vaught dies at 96 By Rick Cleveland [email protected] John Howard Vaught, a transplanted Texan who became the most successful coach in Mississippi sports history, died Friday night at his home in Oxford. He was 96 and lived 36 years after heart problems ended his coaching career prematurely. Funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time. Coleman's Funeral Home in Oxford is handling the services. Vaught's University of Mississippi football teams won six Southeastern Conference championships. The NCAA record book lists three of Vaught's teams - 1959, 1960 and 1962 - as having won at least a share of the national championship. He coached 18 All Americans and was named SEC Coach of the Year six times. Archie Manning, one of Vaught's most celebrated players, said Vaught was so successful because "he was so very intelligent, and because he just flat-out hated to lose." In a statement released by the school, Ole Miss chancellor Robert Khayat, who played football for Vaught in the 1950s, called his former coach "an epic figure of 20th Century college football." Added Khayat: "Universally recognized as one of the great coaches in American football history, he brought dignity, intellect, creativity and vision to the game. "The University of Mississippi has been shaped and influenced by Coach Vaught and we are a better place as a result of his leadership. His players admired and respected him, University administrators and faculty appreciated his commitment to academic excellence and football fans loved him. His was a life well-lived. He will be missed." During Vaught's tenure, Ole Miss achieved the SEC's best record. Alabama, coached by Bear Bryant for much of that period, was second, Tennessee third and LSU fourth. Vaught's teams won 190 games, lost 61 and tied 12. He was voted into the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame in 1979, and in 1993 he was the unanimous choice of fans for Ole Miss Coach of the Century. Vaught's record against some of the most legendary coaches in history is remarkable. Only Bryant owned a winning record against Vaught, barely: seven victories, six defeats and one tie. Vaught was 6-0 against Arkansas' Frank Broyles, 6-2-1 against LSU's Charles McClendon, 3-2 against Georgia's Vince Dooley and 4-3-1 against LSU's Paul Dietzel. Khayat, an outstanding lineman and placekicker under Vaught, was once asked why he thought Vaught was so successful. "No. 1, Coach Vaught has extraordinary leadership skills," Khayat answered. "He would have been a huge success in business, in the military, in education - or anything else he chose. He was a natural leader. "No. 2," Khayat continued, "as all great leaders do, he surrounded himself with the best people he could and he kept them. . . . No. 3, he had complete and utter focus on the task at hand. . . . No. 4, he recruited and trained outstanding players who could perform within his expectations and focus. . . . "We didn't do that many things, but what we did we did all the time and we did it well," Khayat said. "Coach Vaught believed in the basics, blocking and tackling and kicking. I guess we had about eight running plays and 12 passing plays, but we perfected those. He was a perfectionist." Vaught had much in common with Bryant. Both were small-town boys who grew up on farms and ranches. Vaught was one of 11 children; Bryant was one of 13. Both worked hard as youths to help their families make it. Bryant rode a mule to school; Vaught rode a horse. Neither played football until high school. Vaught was born May 6, 1909, in Young County, Texas, 100 miles northwest of Fort Worth. He was the sixth of 11 children born to Rufus and Sally Harris Vaught. Vaught's father was a tall, reserved man of Viking ancestry. His mother was English. They were ranchers with 640 acres of land spotted with mesquite trees, cactus and scarcely enough grass for the cattle. "I guess we were what would be considered poor, but I never realized it then," Vaught once said. Vaught first saw a football game at age 14. At 15, Vaught moved to Fort Worth where he lived with a grandmother. There, he tried out for high school football and immediately became one of the better players. He also excelled in the classroom, earning class valedictorian honors his senior year. He was recruited to play football at TCU and became an All-American lineman. Vaught majored in business and graduated with honors in three and a half years. Upon graduation, he worked for three years in business in Fort Worth until he received a call from Raymond "Bear" Wolf, his line coach at TCU. Wolf had become the head football coach at North Carolina and wanted Vaught to coach his linemen. Vaught took the coaching job, then joined U.S. Navy during World War II and continued to coach football in the Navy's pre-flight program. Following the war, Vaught received coaching offers from coast to coast. Vaught had coached with Harold "Red" Drew in the Navy, and Drew had taken the job as head coach at Ole Miss. In 1946, Drew hired Vaught to coach the Ole Miss line. Vaught said he chose Ole Miss over offers in Florida and California "because it was closest to Texas, and because Red Drew was a good friend." At first, Vaught thought he had made a huge mistake. "Mississippi State was getting most of the good Mississippi boys back then," Vaught would say. "Our facilites at Ole Miss were just awful. We used to have our coaches meetings in our cars." Drew's 1946 Rebels won only two games and he left for Alabama after one season. Ole Miss offered Vaught the head coaching job and he took it for $12,000 a year. With essentially the same players who won two games in 1946, Vaught won nine and the SEC Championship in 1947. "Vaught was years and years ahead of most other coaches," the late Charlie Conerly, the star of that '47 team, once said. "He was so organized, so detailed." "There was nothing in the world we wouldn't have done for that man," said Billy Mustin, a halfback on Vaught's first Ole Miss team and one of his closest friends in later years. "(Vaught) has that knack about him. You just wanted to please him." Vaught surrounded himself with loyal, knowledgeable coaches, people such as James "Buster" Poole, Johnny Cain, Junie Hovious, Wobble Davidson, Edward Stone and Bruiser Kinard. Other coaches, inclduing Mustin, Roland Dale, Eddie Crawford, Ray Poole and Bob Tyler would join Vaught along the way. Trainer Doc Knight was a trusted aide. "You always knew who the boss was, but he let his coaches coach," Mustin said. One of Vaught's best hires was that of recruiter Tom Swayze, who helped Ole Miss dominate recruiting in Mississippi. Vaught's first priority was speed. He often recruited quarterbacks and fullbacks and turned them into ends, guards and tackles. "I don't give a damn how big a player is if he can't run," Vaught said. "If he doesn't have some quickness and speed, he can't be effective." Vaught wasn't afraid of making changes. After his first team won the SEC Championship, Vaught switched offensive systems from the Notre Dame Box to the Split-T. With the Split-T and using a 5-foot-8-inch quarterback named Farley (Fish) Salmon, Ole Miss won eight of nine games in 1948. The big breakthrough on a national scale came on Nov. 15, 1952, when crafty quarterback Jimmy Lear helped Ole Miss stun No. 3-ranked and undefeated Maryland 21-14. Ole Miss won nine games and the SEC title in 1954, 10 games and another league title in 1955, seven more in 1956 - and the Rebels were just getting started. They won nine games in 1957, whipping Texas 37-7 in the Sugar Bowl, then nine more, including the Gator Bowl, in 1958. Over the next four seasons - 1959-62 - Ole Miss won 39 games lost three and tied one. The Rebels were one of the top three or four teams in the country each year. The 1959 team outscored opponents 350-21. Jake Gibbs, the starting quarterback, said Ole Miss had to be the nation's most prepared team. "Coach Vaught was a perfectionist," Gibbs said. "It was nothing for us to run the same play over and over, 10 or 12 times, until we got it right." Vaught often said his 1962 team was his favorite. That Ole Miss team often practiced in front of hundreds of federal troops on campus to quell rioting and ensure the safety of James Meredith, the university's first black student. The practice field was often used as a staging area for Army helicopters, and practices were moved to the stadium where the troops would watch. Home games were moved off-campus to Jackson. Vaught, himself, received a call from the White House and Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, asking him to do what he could to calm the situation. Vaught said he told Kennedy he would do anything he could. That Ole Miss team, despite all the obstacles, won nine straight regular season games, another SEC Championship, and beat Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl. It remains the only undefeated, untied team in Ole Miss history. "When Ole Miss needed to survive and build a new image as it surely did in 1962, a great football team stepped forward," Vaught would say. "I will always rate that 1962 football team as the most courageous in history." Vaught's 1963 Rebels won another SEC Championship. His later teams weren't as successful, although his 1968, 1969 and 1970 teams, led by quarterback Archie Manning, won huge victories. "He was not only my coach but was very much a father figure to me," Manning said. "He was great coach, a great gentleman." The 1970 team was ranked No. 3 in the nation before losing to the University of Southern Mississippi on homecoming. The following Tuesday, Vaught was taken to the hospital with chest pains and missed the rest of the season. The following January, on orders from his doctors, Vaught retired. Vaught triumphantly returned to the sidelines briefly in 1973, leading Ole Miss to five victories (against three defeats) after his successor, Billy Kinard, was fired. Vaught declined an offer to stay on as head coach, but did stay on as the athletic director until 1978 when he retired. Vaught was an avid golfer, who lived his later years on a ranch just west of Oxford. Well into his 90s, Vaught played golf two or three times a week and would hit 200 to 300 practice balls a day, aiming at haystacks around his ranch. — [FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-2]MORE DETAILS AS THEY DEVELOP AND TOMORROW IN PRINT AND ONLINE EDITIONS[/SIZE][/FONT]
man damn ya'll must not pay attention much. he was at every one of their games. sad day for the ole miss family and the sec as a whole.
He lived a long, good life, and I'm sure that friends of Ole Miss will want to celebrate his great life, rather than mourn his death.
My condolences to the Vaught family. Coach Vaught directly contributed in no small part to the mystique that is LSU, Death Valley, and SEC football. Though I'm sure Coach Vaught looks down from Glory, the rest of Ole Miss can Go to Hell!
