Only one man has taken Mississippi State teams to two Final Fours, eight College World Series appearances and every bowl game the Bulldogs have played since 1983.
Everett Kennard isn’t in any hall of fame — at least not yet, anyway. But ask anyone associated with MSU athletics, and they will probably tell you he’s contributed as much to the Bulldogs’ cause as the most accomplished coaches or players.
In fact, the basketball, baseball and football teams would hardly have gotten anywhere without Kennard over the last 34 years. After all, he’s their bus driver.
The 68-year-old ex-dairy farmer from the Oktoc community near Starkville shuttled the national runner-up Mississippi State women’s basketball team around Dallas last week, undoubtedly finding the quickest routes between the Hilton Anatole hotel — where the Bulldogs were staying — and their various destinations.
His job also affords him premium access to student-athletes, coaches and memorable, even sometimes historic, moments. For a dyed-in-wool State fan, he said few gigs could possibly be more fulfilling.
“I’ve had the dream job for anyone who loves Bulldog athletics,” he said. “I was on the sidelines for the Southeastern Conference championship game for football in 1998, watched MSU make it to the national championship game in baseball in 2013 and I’ve been to Final Fours with the men (1996) and women. I’ve just been so grateful to the athletic department, coaches and players who bought me in and made me a part of everything.”
Keeping a promise
On Friday afternoon, prior to MSU’s national semifinal matchup against UConn, he was looking for a former Bulldogs coach he has long called a friend — Sharon Fanning-Otis, who led the women’s basketball team from 1995-2012. She had a promise to keep, and Kennard was bent on making sure she did. But she wasn’t answering the phone.
“Where is she?” he muttered as call after call went to voicemail. “She’s got a job to do.”
In 1996, Fanning-Otis was in The Meadowlands to see the men’s team play in the Final Four. When she walked up on Kennard early one morning, he was washing the team bus in front of the team hotel in New Jersey. She then commented, “When the women make the Final Four, we’ll wash the bus together.”
Eventually, the former coach, who led the program to its first Sweet 16 in 2010, did show on Friday, enduring Kennard’s gentle, kind-hearted chiding while cameras captured her scrubbing the right side of the bus with soap and water.
“This will be the cleanest bus you’ll ever see in Dallas, Texas,” she joked.
Fanning-Otis called Kennard a “special individual” with a “servant’s heart.”
“He loves Mississippi State as much as anyone I’ve ever been around,” she said. “And if you need to know how to get somewhere, no matter where it is, he’s the guy to call.”
‘Do this until we find somebody’
The short story of how Kennard started his unlikely second job as a bus driver has about as small-town a ring to it as they come.
According to Kennard, a MSU vice president in 1983 bought a bus to haul sports teams to away games. The first bus broke down one winter day in Knoxville, Tennessee. Because someone else among MSU leadership at the time knew Kennard was a farmer who operated large equipment, he was asked to drive a second university-purchased bus to collect the stranded athletes.
After that, Kennard took the women’s basketball team on two trips. Soon, he was a full-time, certified bus driver working for the university.
“They told me, ‘We just need you to do this until we find somebody,” Kennard said. “Heck, here we are 34 years later, and they still ain’t found anybody.”
Kennard got out of the dairy business in 1998, though he still owns his farmland in Oktoc. He retired from the university, too, in June 2015. But when MSU subsequently contracted its athletic bus service to Ridgeland-based Cline Tours Inc., owner John McCommon summoned Kennard back into service for the Starkville branch.
“He’s an Ole Miss fan,” Kennard said of his new boss. “But he’s still one of the finest people I’ve ever known.”
A team with ‘character’
Kennard’s folksy, blunt manner endears him especially to the players he drives, and particularly with this year’s women’s basketball team. Senior forward Chinwe Okorie calls him “Paw Paw.” Junior guard Victoria Vivians calls him “Pops.”
“I’m a little like an adopted grandfather figure for a lot of them,” he said.
He likes for any of the players to view him thusly, he said, but with the women’s basketball team, it’s even more special — and not just because of what the players have done on the court.
“You can tell whether kids have character by (the condition) they leave the bus, and this team leaves it clean,” he said. “All the trash goes in the bags, and none is left on the floor or in the seats. That’s simple sounding, but it says a lot, not only about how they are coached but also about how they were raised.
“They are just so respectful,” he added. “Every time they get off the bus, they take time to say thank you. And just think about how many times these ladies have gotten off a bus.”
Kennard often tells those who ask about “the greatest” this or that he’s seen over the years. Still, he can sometimes show an undeniable knack for understatement.
After Friday’s 66-64 overtime win against Connecticut — one where 5-foot-5 junior point guard Morgan William hit the game-winning shot at the buzzer to snap the storied Huskies’ 111-game winning streak, Kennard’s tall, lanky frame milled around the edges of the locker room during the time allotted for media to interview the players.
When someone asked him what he thought about what he saw, he slowly nodded and simply said, “It ranks right up there.”
Dealing with egos
Kennard is quick to note that in his business, he deals with egos instead of people. And everyone, including himself he admits, has one.
“My job is all about relationships, especially with coaches,” he said. “Some coaches are nice. Some not so much.”
Women’s basketball head coach Vic Schaefer, whom he called “the classiest” coach he’s ever driven, extended Kennard an unforgettable kindness in Oklahoma City in March. After the Bulldogs beat Baylor in the regional final to advance to the Final Four, Schaefer sent an assistant to bring Kennard to the court of Chesapeake Energy Arena so he, too, could cut down a piece of the net.
“I got down there and Vic said, ‘Get your ass up that ladder,'” Kennard recalled. “The net was almost impossible for me to cut, I was so full of emotion. I’ll cherish that moment forever.”
Not all those types of kindnesses come from MSU coaches, either. In 1989, Eddie Sutton’s last year as head coach for Kentucky men’s basketball, Kennard offered to drive the Wildcats eight hours to Lexington after an extenuating circumstance kept the Wildcats from flying out of Starkville. Days later, a box arrived at Kennard’s home full of Kentucky swag and a baseball legendary Los Angeles Dodgers coach Tommy Lasorda had autographed for Sutton. Beside Lasorda’s autograph, Sutton had signed it to Kennard’s son Keyes, who the coach learned played baseball on the bus trip.
“That impressed me for him to take the time to do that,” Kennard said.
Years later, Kennard picked up Lasorda in Jackson to bring him to Starkville to speak at a banquet. There, the ball came full circle when Lasorda signed it a second time and personalized it for Keyes.
Writing a book?
Fanning-Otis insists Kennard should either write a book or have one ghostwritten about his travels.
Kennard said she’s not the only one who feels that way, but he’d rather not do it.
“If I did, I’d have to go into witness protection,” he said. “I’ve seen and heard a lot of things, and not all of them were good.”
John Cohen, longtime MSU baseball coach who became the school’s athletic director last year, said he’d be both honored and possibly worried at the prospect stories about him might feature in such a book. In any case, he said he’d certainly enjoy reading it.
“He’s an incredible ambassador for our athletic department on so many levels,” Cohen said. “He calls himself a bus driver, but he’s so much more than that. I’m not sure how many bus drivers the commissioner of the SEC knows by name.
“He could tell a great story,” he added. “There’s not a lot he hasn’t seen in intercollegiate athletics.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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