STARKVILLE — Mississippi State tight end Brandon Hill’s ritual is the same before every game.
After he goes through the Dawg Walk and pregame warmups and then gets dressed, Hill walks around the corner from his locker at Davis Wade Stadium and finds the framed jersey of former Bulldog Keffer McGee.
That’s where Hill, like McGee a product of West Lowndes High School, drops to his knees and prays. Directly underneath McGee’s No. 21, Hill recites the same prayer faithfully.
“I just go to God every week,” Hill said. “I ask for His protection, for His glory. I ask for Keffer’s strength to go through me. Looking up at that jersey, it reminds me of what I want to be. It reminds me what I play for.”
Hill plays for a legacy. He plays for the hopes and dreams of a community — and he plays to honor the memory of a local legend taken too soon.
McGee rose to prominence at West Lowndes and later at MSU as a humble, hard-working running back who blossomed into one of the Southeastern Conference’s best. The latest in a staggering line of athletic wunderkind from tiny Crawford (joining future NFL legend Jerry Rice, future NBA player Clarence Weatherspoon), McGee rushed for more than 1,000 yards as a sophomore at MSU in 1995 before injuring his knee in the third game of his junior campaign in 1996. McGee never had a chance to have a bounce-back season as a senior in 1997, as he died in a drowning accident on Aug. 5 of that year. The loss stunned MSU and Crawford, where a 6-year-old with a future in football took the news hard.
Seventeen years later, that 6-year-old is a senior leader on the No. 1 team in the country.
“It just showed me you can’t take life for granted, you have to make the most of every day,” Hill said. “He meant so much to everybody in Crawford. Coming from a small town, we all looked up to him growing up.”
Hill, a fifth-year senior at MSU, started his journey to Starkville a little more than five years ago, when he was a junior at West Lowndes High. That’s when Dan Mullen, MSU’s new coach, expressed interest in the 6-foot-3, 220-pound receiver. And after little coaxing, Hill became Mullen’s first commitment in the class of 2010. But to hear Hill tell it, Mullen didn’t have to work very hard to secure Hill’s signature. That’s because Hill already had his eyes on picking up the legacy of McGee.
“Coach Mullen really didn’t have to convince me to come to Mississippi State,” said Hill, who caught his first career touchdown pass three weeks ago in a 45-31 win at Kentucky. “I already had a reason to be here. I wanted to finish Keffer McGee’s story. I wanted to come here and win and be a part of something special. He never got that chance.”
McGee’s death is still felt at West Lowndes. More importantly, so is his life. That’s where Hill gained his love for football and his desire to be great. It also is where he became entranced with the idea of finishing what McGee started.
That’s not uncommon at the small school located just off Highway 82 between Starkville and Columbus, where little boys grow up dreaming of following in the footsteps of the athletic heroes who have come before.
“Keffer was a legend,” said Roosevelt Bridges, who was the principal at West Lowndes for more than 20 years, spanning the high school careers of McGee and Hill. “Brandon grew up hearing about that, wanting to be like that. He is doing a great job of it. Keffer was never a big-time talker. He was such a humble guy. He was hard working, kids loved him, teachers loved him. Brandon Hill is the same way.”
Hill’s hard work has paid off. Not only personally, but also for the Bulldogs, a team made up of under-the-radar, dedicated prospects who have turned the program into one of the nation’s best. At 9-0, MSU is ranked No. 1 in the country for the first time in school history. It will play at No. 4 Alabama at 2:30 p.m. Saturday (WCBI) in one of the program’s biggest games.
For Hill, it’s another opportunity to build on the legacy left behind by McGee.
“I thank God every day for this opportunity,” Hill said. “We are just going to continue working hard and keep grinding.”
That approach isn’t lost on Mullen.
“Brandon Hill is the type of guy you want in your program. We’ve got a lot of them,” Mullen said. “You look at him in high school, he didn’t have a lot of offers. But he works hard, he prepares the right way. He wants to be great. That’s the type of guy we want. Maybe he doesn’t play every snap, but when his number is called at Kentucky, he goes up and makes a great play. That’s a sign of maturity within this team.”
Family ties
Crawford is close-knit. A community of a little more than 500 people, sports are taken seriously, and sporting legends never die. McGee’s impact on Crawford and West Lowndes lives on through Hill, who has nine catches at MSU.
Hill’s desire to live up to the considerable shadow left by McGee isn’t new. It started at West Lowndes.
“When I was coaching him, Brandon would always mention Keffer,” said Todd Stanley, West Lowndes High’s baseball coach who has worked as an assistant football coach. “He always talked about leading a life that would make Keffer proud. I think he’s done a pretty good job.”
Hill’s demeanor and the way he represents West Lowndes hasn’t gone unnoticed by Fred McGee. One of five McGee siblings and Keffer’s older brother, Fred kept statistics for West Lowndes each Friday night during Hill’s standout career, which concluded in the fall of 2009. Even then, Fred McGee knew the latest Crawford product was going to be special.
“They are very similar, he and my brother,” Fred McGee said. “Everybody looked up to Keffer when he was in school, and everybody looked up to Brandon. Hearing he wants to continue my brother’s legacy … it sends chills down my spine. Keffer would be so proud.”
The similarities aren’t confined to the football field, either.
“Brandon and Keffer were two of a kind,” Bridges said. “Looking at a small school, every now and then you get a special kind of young man who has a positive impact on everybody. Keffer McGee was that type of young man, so is Brandon.”
With three-regular season games remaining in his career, Hill’s focus is on winning games and finishing his time in Starkville with a bang. But the veteran tight end also plays for a deeper calling than just wins and losses.
“I want the kids in our community to look up to me the same way I looked up to him,” Hill said. “I want them to know that if you work hard, if you do things the right way, you can make it anywhere you want to go. Making a difference to young kids is a big deal to me.”
It’s already happening. Brogan Purnell is a promising sophomore offensive tackle at West Lowndes. Already 6-2 and more than 200 pounds, Purnell is blessed with size and athletic ability. He also is Hill’s younger brother.
“I consider him my role model,” Purnell said. “He has always tried to show me how real life is, how hard it can be. He once let me go into a store with a dollar to buy something, and I didn’t know anything about taxes. I thought my dollar would be enough. But he watched me do it, then he taught me that lesson. He’s always trying to teach me.”
Purnell isn’t the only West Lowndes student who follows Hill’s example. On the Monday following Hill’s touchdown catch at Kentucky, Stanley said, “The kids were going crazy. All the football players ran up to me, screaming ‘Did you see his catch? Did you see it?’ It was a big deal.”
Hill’s career at MSU will end soon, but his attempts to give McGee’s story a proper ending won’t because continuing McGee’s legacy isn’t about football, it’s about life.
“He was a great person,” Hill said. “That’s what I want to be. I want kids to look at my life and say, ‘I want to be like him.’ Because I wanted to be like Keffer.”
Hill will go through his last dog walk and his last pregame warmups next Saturday prior to the game against Vanderbilt on Senior Day. Just before taking the field, he will find that No. 21 jersey and drop to his knees for the last time, asking for the ability to be like his hero.
“That’s just beautiful,” said Mildred McGee Hendrix, Keffer’s sister. “It’s so beautiful. To think that Brandon thought that much of Keffer … My brother would be so, so proud.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
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