Remembering when Steve McNair took college football by storm

WHEN ALCORN STATE quarterback Steve McNair and his teammates would walk from their dorms to Jack Spinks Stadium for home games, they’d always hear students and fans tailgating. They’d smell barbecue. On that walk, fans would clamor to get close to their heroes in purple and gold. McNair and his teammates would take time to snap quick pictures or sign autographs for their supporters.

But on Oct. 22, 1994, when the Braves were set to take on Southern, with McNair poised to break Ty Detmer’s NCAA career total offense record, the walk out to the stadium was different.

“No pictures. No barbecue. No nothing,” said Donald Ray Ross, who played wide receiver at Alcorn with McNair.

That week, fans started their tailgating on Thursday because everybody wanted to make sure they had a good seat inside the stadium to watch McNair make history.

During McNair’s senior season, he threw for 5,377 yards and 47 touchdowns and rushed for 904 yards and nine more scores. He became the first player from a historically Black college or university to land an invite to the Heisman Trophy ceremony (he finished third) and eventually became the highest drafted HBCU offensive player ever when he was taken with the third pick in the 1995 NFL draft. He had a 13-year NFL career that saw him make three Pro Bowls and win co-MVP in 2003, and famously nearly won Super Bowl XXXIV with Tennessee. He died in 2009, at the age of 36, the victim of a homicide.

But McNair’s magical season of 1994 went beyond the numbers and comeback victories. He made tiny Lorman, Mississippi, a destination for NFL scouts and national media. He played in front of beyond-capacity crowds and landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The hype was real, and it followed the team everywhere.

“You know how people talk about Caitlin Clark now?” said Mike Ellis, an offensive lineman and McNair’s teammate. “If we were to come to your venue, we was gonna sell your venue out because people wanted to see the show.”

Thirty years later, those who were there for the show can still hardly believe it.

“He was a prolific passer. He was a very, very good runner. He was strong, he was agile, and he was so smart,” McNair’s head coach Cardell Jones said. “I don’t care what the score was … I still figured that we had a chance to win [any] ballgame.”

STEVE MCNAIR WAS born in Mount Olive, Mississippi. He and his four brothers — Fred, Jason, Michael and Tim — were raised by their mother, Lucille McNair. Fred, the oldest, was the first to be given the “Air McNair” nickname. He was five years older than Steve and played quarterback at Alcorn State in the 1980s.

Steve McNair was a standout high school player, but most colleges recruited him as a defensive back. He set the Mississippi high school records for interceptions in a career with 30, had 15 picks in his senior season and was named to the Mississippi Sports Writers Association All-State football team as a defensive back. Miami, Notre Dame, Florida State and Florida all wanted McNair on their defenses, but he had other ideas.

“I could have handled defensive back in the SEC or Big Ten,” he told The Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon in 1992. “But Alcorn gave me the chance to play quarterback and I’m glad I made the choice.”

Because of his brother, McNair ended up being referred to as “Air II” in Lorman, but there quickly became no doubt that he was one of one. “The first scrimmage we put him in, he was just unreal,” Jones said. “I said there’s no way that we’re gonna be able to keep him on the bench.”

Alcorn opened the 1991 season against Grambling — which it hadn’t beaten since 1987 — in the Red River Classic in Shreveport, Louisiana. With his team down 12-7, Jones put McNair into the game in place of the starter, Reginald Martin. “The quarterback that we had during the time, it wasn’t that he was a bad quarterback,” Jones said. “Steve was just that good.”

Ross, who played all four years with McNair, said, “All Steve wanted was an opportunity. We knew it was going to happen. We didn’t know it was going to happen that soon, in that game, in that early part of the season.”

McNair came out hot, completing 7 of 11 passes for 111 yards in the first half. He finished the game having completed 11 of his 25 passes for 229 yards and three touchdowns in a 27-22 victory.

“I knew that the rest would be history from there,” Jones said.

“EVEN AS AN offensive lineman that blocked for him, I ain’t ever tell my coach this, but I’d catch myself watching,” said Ellis, who was a three-time All-SWAC selection during the McNair era.

Ellis wasn’t the only one who couldn’t help but gawk at McNair’s performances. Former Alcorn running back Harry Brown recalled a play during a game against Texas Southern. McNair had run one in for a score, and Brown got chewed out when he got back to the sideline.

“I didn’t realize until we watched film [that] I didn’t move. When the ball was snapped, in my mind I said, ‘Well, let me just see it.'” Brown said he had zoned out and never even left his stance. “Just standing there, watching him run to the left, back to the right and dive into the end zone. I threw my hands up. ‘Touchdown!’

“I didn’t realize that was my guy that I was supposed to block that was chasing him,” he said. “It was just like a football movie the whole time, my whole experience playing with him.”

Ross added, “It’s several times we got chewed out, but we lookin’ like, ‘Hey, we want to see it too!'”

McNair wasn’t just known as a great player on the field — he was also a kind teammate and a glue guy in the locker room. “He made everybody feel like they were somebody,” Brown said. “We didn’t have any problem that way as far as like, jealousy or anything like that. He broke down all those barriers.”

Ellis said, “Steve never separated himself from us. Most guys with his stature and stardom [think], ‘I’m that dude, I’m that guy.’ It’s David Ruffin and the Temptations. But he was Steve to us.”

With McNair leading the way, Alcorn finished the 1991 season 7-2-1 overall and 4-2-1 in the SWAC. In 1992, he led the team to a SWAC championship, with a perfect 7-0 record in the conference, before going on to lose in the first round of the Division I-AA playoffs to No. 2 Northeast Louisiana.

The Braves’ only loss in the SWAC in 1993 came to No. 16 Southern, who knocked off Alcorn 47-31 in front of a packed house at A.W. Mumford Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That year, the NFL created a draft advisory board to assist college football players who were deciding whether to continue playing collegiately or enter the NFL draft.

The board told McNair he would likely be a first- or second-round pick if he decided to leave Alcorn.

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Steve McNair dazzled at Alcorn State

Look back at Steve McNair’s historic 1994 season at Alcorn State.

LUCILLE MCNAIR AND JONES both had conversations with McNair about his future, but it was his mother’s advice that got him to return for one last season. “I told him to please himself and not worry about pleasing anybody else,” she told the Clarion-Ledger in 1994. “I told him not to worry about pleasing his brothers, his coaches, his friends or anybody else, including me.

“We haven’t had that much all these years, but we can surely wait another year,” she continued. “I told him that God has blessed us all these years and He’ll bless us one more.”

Lucille wasn’t wrong about that. According to Jones, scouts were going well out of their way to see McNair every day in 1994. “You don’t just happen to drive by to go to Alcorn,” Jones said. “You have to really be going there for a reason, it was just that far out of the way.”

The Braves’ opener against Grambling in 1994 was both a testament to why coaches were going so far — 70 miles southwest of Jackson and 110 miles north of Baton Rouge — out of their way to see No. 9, and a sign of what was to come that season.

Alcorn scored to open the game, and Grambling quickly followed. With the score tied 35-35 at the half, McNair, who had passed for 268 yards already, stood up and told the team, “We’re gonna win this one. I’m going to go; y’all just come with me.”

Down 62-56, Alcorn got the ball on its 37-yard line with 1:39 left. McNair drove his team down to Grambling’s 11-yard line in five plays. With 10 seconds left, McNair hit Percy Singleton in the hands with a pass that would have given McNair a career sweep of Grambling. But Singleton dropped it, and McNair floated the next pass out of the end zone, which ended the game.

McNair finished 27-of-52 for 534 yards and five touchdowns, adding 99 yards on the ground to give him a total of 633 yards, 10 shy of the Division I-AA record.

“He’s a great athlete,” legendary Grambling coach Eddie Robinson said after the game. “It’s a bittersweet win for us.”

After blowout wins at Chattanooga (where McNair ended up getting the total yards record with 647) and Alabama State, Robinson said McNair “not only is the best quarterback but the best player in the country.”

McNair began to get that kind of recognition from others, too. His spotlight grew nationally, and he was put on the cover of Sports Illustrated, with the cover line: “Hand Him the Heisman.”

Charles Edmond, who has been Alcorn’s radio play-by-play announcer since McNair’s freshman season in 1991, said, “When the Heisman hype really took off, it seemed like every day on campus, you had ESPN one day you had ABC, CBS, Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, The New York Times. It seemed like every week, you had two or three media types on campus to see what this hype was about and follow him.”

“For us on campus, that was a special time,” said Emanuel Barnes, the public address announcer for Alcorn. “That was just a different year. You couldn’t turn around on campus, no matter what you did, because there were so many people there.”

Ellis recalled McNair’s dorm being on the third floor and said, “He never turned anybody away for an autograph. You didn’t know who was going to show up. People were literally pulling up on campus parking their cars and waiting in line on the staircase for him to sign an autograph.”

That week, the Braves filled up Bowers Stadium in Huntsville, Texas, as they took on Sam Houston State in a regionally televised game on ABC. Alcorn lost that game 48-23, and McNair left the game early with a Grade 1 shoulder separation.

After the game, McNair needed treatment on his shoulder and was going to go to a local hospital in Huntsville. Edmond recalled Alcorn thinking twice about that decision.

“Well, after discussion, they decided they wanted to get him back to Mississippi to get him to Vicksburg to get him to a hospital close to campus to get him treated,” he said. “They didn’t want Steve getting treated in enemy territory.”

So McNair was put in the back of the highway patrol car driven by one of the team’s escorts, and Edmond trailed them in an Aerostar van that he typically rode in with other Alcorn staff. “He had his lights on, and I’m trailing behind him doing 100 miles an hour, trying to get back to Mississippi,” Edmond said.

McNair would get things on track in the few weeks after that, with wins over Mississippi Valley State (where he became the Division I-AA total offense leader) and Texas Southern and then a 69-14 trouncing of Prairie View A&M in which McNair had eight total touchdowns.

The most important game of the season was on Oct. 22, when Alcorn welcomed Southern and its top-ranked defense to Lorman. McNair was 264 yards from passing former BYU quarterback Ty Detmer (14,665 yards) to become the NCAA career leader in total offense, and Southern had been Alcorn’s most consistent challenger in the Air II Era.

It created a scene at Jack Spinks Stadium that hadn’t been seen before, with fans even flooding the sidelines trying to get a look at McNair as he made history. “Everyone wanted to witness him breaking that record,” Ross said.

“Everyone” was an estimated crowd of 26,500 in a stadium that holds 21,000. And in the second quarter, McNair broke the record with the improvisational style he had used to lead the Braves all season. With the ball on its 40-yard line, Alcorn was facing a third-and-21 with 1:26 left in the second quarter. McNair lined up in the shotgun with three wide to his left and one to the right. On a designed pass play, McNair rolled to his right, evaded a rusher and went 22 yards to get the first down and break Detmer’s record.

But there was still a game to be won. Trailing 37-34, Alcorn faced a second-and-40 at its 25-yard line with 40 seconds left. McNair hit Marcus Hinton with a 57-yard deep ball to set up his game-winning 1-yard touchdown run with 10 seconds left. It was the quintessential McNair performance: He broke another record, and he led another fourth-quarter comeback. He finished the game with 649 total yards.

“If there’s a better player in this country, I don’t know where he is,” Jones said after the game.

If the spectacle of the Southern game didn’t have everyone convinced McNair had taken the team to unimaginable heights, when they arrived in Birmingham for their next game against Samford, Mike Ellis said, there was a sure sign they had made it.

“I ain’t even trying to be crazy, but it was so many white folks in the lobby waiting on us!” Ellis said with a laugh. “We walked in that lobby like, ‘What do they want?’ And as soon as they saw Steve, they brought out their cameras, they had their autographs, they had their shirts and stuff ready for him to sign.

“Our offensive line coach said, ‘Y’all know we famous. We in Birmingham? Y’all know we famous.'”

After leading his team to a comeback tie at Samford (Alcorn was down 42-13 with 7:00 left in the third quarter) and a comeback victory over No. 6 Troy State, the icing on the 1994 regular season was McNair leading Alcorn to a fourth consecutive victory over rival Jackson State.

Brown said, “At that particular time — I know this is going to make some people mad — but at that time, playing with Steve, we didn’t seem to even worry about Jackson State.

“It’s different when you go in there and you know you got ‘the man’ with you.”

McNair finished the game 29-of-54 with 533 yards and five touchdowns in a 52-34 win.

Alcorn played in the FCS playoffs at the end of the season, facing No. 1 Youngstown State led by coach Jim Tressel. Alcorn lost 63-20, and yet, McNair’s performance still seemed like a miracle.

“He was operating at about 60% capacity, but he was still effective,” Jones said.

McNair’s left hamstring — which he had injured in the first half of the Jackson State game — wouldn’t allow him to run, so he had to throw the ball more than usual into a defense that knew what was coming. Still, McNair finished the game 52-of-82 for 514 yards and three touchdowns, with three interceptions. His 52 completions was an FCS playoff record, and he fell short of the yardage record by just 4 yards.

“HAND HIM THE Heisman” was more than just a line on a Sports Illustrated cover. It became the hook for a rap promoting McNair’s Heisman candidacy.

A pair of Alcorn seniors, Lamumba Moses and John Jackson, were driving back to school from Port Gibson, Mississippi, a few weeks before the Jackson State game and were freestyling in the car trying to come up with a song about McNair. By the time they got back to Lorman, they had a full set of lyrics written down. Once in Lorman, they raised $150 from Alcorn students, faculty and alumni to get studio time, then recorded the anthem. It was set to McNair’s highlights and served as McNair’s unofficial campaign video.

It wasn’t enough to put McNair over the top, however, as Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam, who had rushed for more than 2,000 yards, took home the trophy. The 1995 No. 1 NFL draft pick, Penn State running back Ki-Jana Carter, finished second. McNair was third, with 111 first-place votes.

Even though McNair didn’t come away with the Heisman, his decision to come back to Alcorn for the 1994 season lifted not just himself but everyone he played with. “I’m going to hate leaving here,” he told Thomas George of The New York Times before the start of the 1994 season. “But I know I have to in order to experience what is in store for me. I want to make the best of it.

“I had a high school coach tell me something a long time ago that I believe: ‘It’s not where you come from or where you go — it’s what you do when you get there.'”

Nothing that happened at the Heisman ceremony was going to change the legacy that Steve McNair built at Alcorn. In the four years before arrival, the Braves were 21-17 overall and 16-11 in the SWAC. In the McNair era, Alcorn went 30-11-2 overall and 23-4-1 in the conference.

“For people that never saw him play,” Ellis said, “Just understand that at the time, it was something different.”