I’ll warn you. There is a great deal of “stuff” here. Read at your own risk.

Today at my desk at school, as I was eating cubes of turkey, broccoli, and a baked potato, I did something I must say is uncharacteristic of me. I am not ashamed of it. I’m not. Perhaps the whim came for a reason. It was a “dink” lightbulb over the head moment.

I am sad to say that I am of an age where many of the folks that I have known and have made a great impact on my life are no longer with us. For whatever reason, I thought about Bruce Hemphill today. Forty years ago, when I was 17, Coach Hemphill was an important man to me.

The last time I talked to Coach Hemphill was on the phone many years ago when he was working in athletic administration at UNC-Chapel Hill. The Tarheels. This was more than 20 years ago. That was that. I don’t remember the context of the call. No doubt, I needed something.

Fast forward to 2016. I think about Coach Hemphill again and use the mighty power of the internet to find that he is now the athletic director at McNeese State. I wrote him a letter. I like to write letters. They are much more personal than this forum. Less than a month later, I heard back from him.

That was that. Coach Hemphill remembered me. How did remember me? Well, once upon a time he was the receivers coach at Louisiana Tech University and in charge of the peons on the recruiting list.

Don’t get me wrong. It meant the world to me in 1985 when I would get a letter in the mail from him. I remember he sent me a postcard that started “Thinking of you as we are flying to West Texas State…”

I was no great recruit. I was a walk-on. I was a walk-on with connections. My second cousin played for the Woodlawn High School Knights State Championship Football Team in Shreveport in 1968. Seventeen years later, his high coach, A.L. Williams was now the head coach of the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in Ruston. On a visit a week after I played my last high school game, we, my Dad, my cousin, and I were walking through the Tech locker room, and my cousin came upon the Tech Offensive Coordinator. “Billy Laird!” my cousin shouted. Billy Laird said, “Nick Hodge!” They shook hands like it meant something. Billy Laird played quarterback at Woodlawn eight years before my cousin played there. A couple of the quarterbacks that came after Billy Laird at Woodlawn were Terry Bradshaw and Joe Ferguson (on my cousin’s team). There is more than 30 years of NFL experience between them.

That night the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs were playing the Northeast Louisiana Indians led by a quarterback name Bubby Brister. NLU beat Tech 13-9. This was a HUGE rivalry back then.

After the game, Coach Hemphill literally came to see me and my Dad and my cousin at a reception we were attending after the game. I still remember how Coach Hemphill and my cousin talked about the loss and “what it meant”. They understood each other.

My time at Louisiana Tech was short. I spent one season swinging my leg in practice. I doubt there is any proof I was ever there. I do remember smiling when I looked and saw that my name had been added to the team “training table” for the winter quarter. This meant I was approved to eat the team food. All I have are a few memories. And some things I wish could forget.

I enjoy remembering Matt Stover holding a 54-yard poke I put over the goal post and Matt telling me that was a “good ball” or “hell of a kick”. I held his kicks too. When that happened, I knew I was out of my league. He had a pop in his leg I had never heard before. Matt Stover in currently the National Football League’s 6th all-time leading scorer.

My favorite memory of that time was when I got knocked out by a 2nd round draft choice. True story. I heard Coach Mills, the coach of the scout team yell, “I NEED A FULLBACK!” He was just down the hill from me, and I sprinted. I don’t know what got into me. I got down there and said, “I’m your fullback!” Someone said, “Coach, he’s a damn kicker!” Coach Mills grabbed my facemask and gave me look, and said, “Nah, boys, he wants to play football! He don’t even have a mouthpiece!” I got in the huddle and was instructed to play fullback and to break to the right flat and look for the ball. I did just that. I caught the pass. I lowered my helmet, and was met by defensive end, Walter Johnson, and to this day I have never been hit like that. I was out! It didn’t last long. When I came to my feet, Coach Mills said, “Damn son! You held on to that ball. Now get out of here before you get killed!”

Walter Johnson was a 2nd round draft pick of the Houston Oilers. He played in the NFL for a while.

So, all these things came back to me today. I have never written of this stuff before. It was not a good time. My grandfather was dying of lung cancer in Shreveport, and I was just plain out of my head. Nothing made sense. That is why I only lasted one football season there.

In 2019, I caught wind that Coach Hemphill, now the AD at McNeese State University, was in poor health with a heart ailment. I wrote him some words of encouragement right then and there. Not long after that, he wrote me back.

So, I have been avoiding the rest of this. Today, I thought about Coach Hemphill. In a search engine, I typed the following: “F. Bruce Hemphill obituary”. My suspicions were correct. He passed away last year. I wish I would have known. I don’t know why I thought all this. Bruce Hemphill was 68.

From here, my mind wandered. I never stopped kicking the football. As time went on, I started punting the ball as much as I kicked it. I knew an old-fashioned square-toed kicker had no chance in life. My punting was my ticket, I thought. The more I punted, the better I punted. The length of the football field couldn’t hold two of my punts. I remember a hangtime of 6.96 seconds. A few years ago, I was talking to someone who had paid attention while I was in my punting heyday. He said it looked like the ball was dropped from an airplane. These are days I enjoyed, and I like to remember.

I was working in the stock room at Sears in 1990. A lady came looking for me and told me there was a Frank Lauterbur on the phone wanting to talk to me. I told her I didn’t know him. She then said he was an NFL Scout. My attitude changed. My 1966 Mustang had a bag of balls in it. I crossed the Ohio River into Louisville and picked up Coach Frank Lauterbur at a motel and we travelled, in my Mustang, to the practice field at Manual High School. This is where Coach Lauterbur worked me out. Those of you who know me know that I have an audible memory. It has something to do with the songwriting I do. Anyway, I can still hear Coach Lauterbur yelling out, “Hell of a kick!” I can also hear him yelling, “Aw, come on, show me something!”

This is the actual critique sheet that Coach Frank Lauterbur was using that day. He gave me one. This one. He told me I had good numbers. If you look toward the bottom, there is a “Touch To Toe” category. This means how much time it takes the punter to catch the ball and kick it. I did not excel here. I was slow. That was that. The reason Coach Lauterbur gave me this one is because he wanted me to work on it. He told me to call him when I got them all at high marks.

When I drove Coach Lauterbur back to his motel, he asked me to come up to his room to chew the fat. It was discovered that a good friend of his, a legendary NFL Scout, was also my Dad’s high school coach in Shreveport. Coach told me all kinds of stories, including one about Ohio State punter Tom Tupa and how a special teams coach in the NFL has “messed him up.” I assure you I paraphrase.

Coach Lauterbur chewed my butt that night too. He told me to get back into school. He told me I would be a good football coach someday. And so, a friendship was settled.

Over the years, Coach Lauterbur wrote me a few kind letters of reference. Know this… Coach Lauterbur was the head coach of the Toledo Rockets during a time when his 1969 and 1970 teams were a collective 23-0 and winners of back-to-back Tangerine Bowls. He then was hired as the head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes. He didn’t find that kind of success in Iowa City. After the 1973 season, the AD told Coach to fire his defensive coordinator. He refused. The AD then fired the entire coaching staff. Coach Lauterbur went on to long career as an NFL assistant coach. He then transitioned to scouting.

For me, the best of it all is Coach Lauterbur signing this letter, “Your Friend.”

This friendship came in handy in 1996. I was working at a high school that did not have a football program. A school board member came to me and asked if I would be interested in looking into starting a football team there. I called Coach Lauterbur and told him about it. He told me to contact Bill Mallory at Indiana. Coach Lauterbur and Coach Mal coached against each other in the MAC in 1969 and 1970. I can still hear Coach Mal. “Frank? My God, how do you know Frank?”, and away Coach Mallory and I went.

This school’s flirtation with football was short lived. A week after the school board member asked me about coaching the team, the school’s principal found me and told me otherwise in no uncertain terms. Many years later, this school did acquire a football team and I smile when I think about that.

Only recently have I given up on my football coaching dream. I hoped that I would be there when a North Harrison kicker kicked a field goal longer than the one I kicked 40 years ago this coming fall. I saw myself running out to the field and throwing the kid over my shoulder and carrying him to the sideline.

I would have told Coach Hemphill about it.