OXFORD, Miss. – Is it a fair assessment that when this country had its beginnings, college towns sprang up where there was no cost for the land and that with agriculture being prominent in the curriculum, that land was needed for the ag school to grow and farm for teaching purposes and to provide food for the table?
A strong bent has always been for liberal arts and science, medicine, and engineering.
Whatever, the evolution of the development of our institutions of higher education has largely resulted in cozy oases nestled into the landscape.
Oxford, Mississippi, is one of them.
Like Athens, Georgia; Eugene, Oregon; Auburn and Tuscaloosa, Alabama; College Station, Texas; Iowa City, Iowa; Clemson, South Carolina, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.
These acclaimed institutions conduct cutting-edge research and host games, such as college football. It is not uncommon for a university to produce Rhodes scholars and Heisman Trophy winners.
Ole Miss, once a dominant power in the Southeastern Conference, had not enjoyed the championship success that they became accustomed to when Johnny Vaught was their coach.
Lane Kiffin has given them reason to be optimistic in the last couple of years. He has made a living via the transfer portal. That may or may not be the best route to success, but it seems to work for the current coach.
Not every hometown hero lives out his life where he was a Saturday star. Jake Gibbs is the one who did. You may see him about town doing as all locals do. Shop for groceries, fill the car with gas, and dine out at a familiar restaurant.
Jake can be seen at Ole Miss football, basketball, and baseball games. He settled in Oxford for that laidback lifestyle and would not trade it for any locale anywhere.
He made All-America in both football and baseball, becoming a bonus pick by the New York Yankees, where he played as a platoon catcher from 1962 to 1971. Later, he coached and managed in the Yankee organization but has called Oxford home since he retired from the Yankees after a decade with the team.
Former teammates and friends often look him up when they come to town, and he played a lot of golf over the years. He mostly enjoyed being retired in one of the most pleasant places.
He is often interviewed about the 1959 Ole Miss-LSU game in Baton Rouge. On a damp and misty night, Halloween, Cannon returned a Gibbs punt 89 yards for one of the most celebrated touchdowns in SEC history.
That TD was big for the Georgia football team, although nobody thought the Bulldogs would be a great beneficiary of Ole Miss’ defeat.
As the season played out, Georgia finished undefeated and claimed the title. The next weekend in Knoxville, Tenn., LSU was upset by the Volunteers when Tennessee’s opportunistic defense stopped Billy Cannon on a two-point conversion attempt.
Two of the three powerhouse teams had lost a game, and when Georgia upset Auburn in Athens the week before Thanksgiving, the Bulldogs became conference champions.
Ole Miss got revenge in the Sugar Bowl by defeating LSU 21-0. The Rebels were declared national champions in a few polls. Still, it remained a bittersweet circumstance for the Rebels, owning to the bitter disappointment brought about by Cannon’s legendary punt return.
Most of Jake Gibbs’ memories are good ones, and he is often asked about his memorable career as he moves about a town where his legend is widely known, almost as much as that of author William Faulkner.