Maybe it was too much to ask for Bert Jones to find an Ole Miss friend, but one might think he could find neutrality, at least, in Switzerland.
But that wasn’t how it worked.
The Ole Miss-LSU rivalry wasn’t really on the mind of the former Tigers quarterback when he and his wife were on a business trip about 10 years ago.
It probably wasn’t on Faye King’s mind either until the long-time Ole Miss supporter from Madison ended up seated next to Jones at dinner on a Rhine river cruise.
It was a sneaky introduction.
“She said, ‘You know, I’ll never forget that game at LSU when they cheated us the last second.’ We kept talking, and she said, ‘Now wait a minute, what was your name?’ I said ‘Jones.’ My wife said, ‘He was at that game, and he was playing in it.’ She said, ‘Wait a minute, what’s your first name?’ I said, ‘Bert.’ She looked me square in the eye and said, ‘You broke my heart and then slit my throat. Go to hell, LSU.’”
And with that a friendship was born, although it took a great deal of effort from Jones to make it blossom.
If Jones feels the slightest twinge of guilt for one extra second on the game clock, one extra play from the Rebels’ 10 leading to one extra point and a 17-16 LSU win, he doesn’t admit it.
Ole Miss players and fans are convinced that time should have expired the play before, when only 4 seconds remained at the snap. They don’t believe it’s possible that Jones could take a snap under center, backpedal, stick the ball in the gut of a running back for a play-action fake, then throw incomplete all in 3 seconds.
After all that, “we were convinced we’d won the football game,” said Ole Miss safety Harry Harrison, now a color analyst with the Rebels’ broadcast team. “There’s no way that next to last play could have taken only 3 seconds.”
Whether it did, that’s how history records it.
“I would just say it supports and verifies that I truly did have a quick release,” said Jones, 71, with a suspicious chuckle. He now co-owns and helps operate a family lumber treatment business with his son Tram near his hometown of Ruston, Louisiana.
It’s been 50 years since the clock game, perhaps second only to Billy Cannon’s punt return touchdown in 1959 among most-discussed games in one of the Southeastern Conference’s most discussed rivalries.
“My second cousin once removed did a pretty good job of being slow starting the clock I guess, I don’t know, but it did give us an opportunity to have one more play,” said Jones, with another chuckle.
Clock notwithstanding, the final play had other issues, legality perhaps being one.
LSU lined up with three receivers to the left. Two ran inside routes. Harrison says they held him and Ole Miss cornerback Mickey Fratesi.
The third LSU target was Brad Davis, a noted blocker and runner who was in the game only because of an equipment issue with a teammate. He ran left and was wide open.
Harrison called it the first pick play Ole Miss defensive backs had seen.
“Most of the time those are not legal, but they got away with it,” he said.
The Tigers also got away with Davis’ partial catch. Harrison contends that Davis never fully controlled the ball and that today the Tigers’ winning touchdown would be overturned by replay.
“He was backing over the goal line, and that’s all the official was looking at, down at his feet as they crossed the goal line. Forget the fact that he didn’t have possession of the football,” Harrison said.
Seconds before, Ole Miss fans in Tiger Stadium’s south end zone had come onto the field to celebrate with their players.
Then devastation.
Ole Miss players released a sea of emotions in the visiting locker room. They refused to be consoled even after school officials asked Mississippi Gov. Bill Waller to come in and address the team.
Waller died in 2011.
“He used to tell me if I lost a case, he’d walk in the office and say, ‘You know, you’ve got to practice law year to year and not case to case,’” said his son, Bill Waller Jr. “He probably said, ‘Y’all need to look at the season and not just this one game. Y’all need to learn from it and see what you can do next time.’ He probably mentioned their part of a great institution with great tradition and told them, ‘The worst thing you can do is let this get you down.’”
It wasn’t enough to get Harrison over the hump.
“We felt like we’d been cheated, that we’d won the game,” Harrison said.
No matter how many times Harrison replays the game, the Rebels still end up losing.
And it’s been many times, whether with random fans who have engaged him in conversation, or with his late father — who attended the Billy Cannon game — or with teammates who still meet under tents in the Grove on Ole Miss game days.
Stories are told, plays dissected, what-ifs considered, but the result is always the same.
Fifty years later the game is still discussed, even along one of Europe’s most historic rivers.
Faye King was about to get up from the cruise ship’s dinner table. Reluctantly she sat — but with a stern warning for Jones.
“She said, ‘I can tell you, we will not be friends,’” he said.
Now Jones and King talk every year, and the two expect to visit when No. 7 Ole Miss plays at LSU on Saturday afternoon.
“I’m going to look her up in her seats, and we’re going to have a big laugh.”
Bert Jones wins again.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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