OXFORD — Jake Gibbs thought he was alone.
But it’s hard for college football all-Americans and New York Yankees catchers to really be alone.
Like it is now, anonymity was elusive for some in the 1960s.
Gibbs sat on the hill overlooking the Ole Miss football practice field on an October day in 1965. He was watching the Rebels go through drills and paying particular attention to the quarterbacks, shaking his head at the confusion.
Their mistakes were obvious to Gibbs, who was 23-3-1 as a starting QB at the height for former coach John Vaught’s legendary run with the Rebels.
Gibbs was SEC player of the year and third in the Heisman Trophy balloting in 1960.
One might think such an accomplished college player would be destined for great pro football success. Gibbs in fact was drafted by two leagues — the old AFL and the NFL — but baseball was his dream, and he realized it with the Yankees.
He never had serious talks with the Cleveland Browns or Houston Oilers.
As a child he played baseball with the older boys on Highway 8 east of Grenada and later starred for the high school team.
He was to some degree self-coached by watching semi-pro games, picking out a visiting player who impressed him then mimicking that players’ movements in the front yard.
Football was never his first love, and a stellar college career didn’t sway him.
“I wanted to play baseball. That dream was still there,” Gibbs said.
He accepted the Yankees’ $100,000 offer to sign. After four minor league seasons he joined the Yankees full time in 1965 and was a career .233 hitter with 25 home runs when he retired following the 1971 season.
The Yankees valued Gibbs for his handling of pitchers, and after he was 485-389-8 as the Ole Miss coach from 1972-1990, Gibbs became the Yankees bullpen coach and ultimately managed in their minor league system.
Putting on pinstripes for the first time remains his greatest thrill, Gibbs tells friends.
Jake Gibbs, come on down
The Yankees season had just concluded when Gibbs told his wife he was going to drive up to Oxford from their Grenada home and watch football practice. By himself.
But while Gibbs was watching the players, others were watching him. They saw the solitary figure on the distant rise, and it wasn’t long before Vaught looked up and waved for Gibbs to come down to the practice field.
Now 84, Gibbs recalls that day with amazing clarity.
“I went down and Coach Vaught said, ‘Hey guys, this is one of my former quarterbacks, Jake Gibbs. He was a good one.’ He said, ‘I’m having quarterback problems. Get under center.’ I had on a white shirt, cuff links, street shoes. I was dressed up on that Wednesday. He said, ‘Get under center and show those guys how to run 36 slant.’
I said, ‘Coach, I haven’t thrown a football in five years.’
He said, ‘I don’t give a damn. Get under the center.’
“That’s all it took. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I took my cuff links off and rolled my sleeves up.”
In his non-traditional practice gear, Gibbs completed all eight pass attempts.
More importantly he was also 100 percent on fundamentals and footwork.
Two days later, Vaught’s secretary called and asked if he was coming to Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt. He said he was. She said, “Coach Vaught would like to see you in his office at 11 a.m.”
Vaught asked Gibbs to come on as quarterbacks coach for the salary of $500 a month. For the next six years, he’d return to Grenada when the Yankees finished and commute daily to Oxford, where he taught Vaught’s offense to Archie Manning and many others who soaked in and applied their lessons. At that stage of life he was the coach who was more like an older brother than father. He connected with players.
Manning said it was a “thrill” to be coached by Gibbs after watching Gibbs while growing up in Drew.
“He helped me on the football field. He was the master of the sprint-out pass,” Manning recalled. “He always had my back and became a special friend.”
While he was working for Vaught, Gibbs, not far removed from his own two-sport career at Ole Miss, made sure Manning pursued his baseball career, too.
One reason was he understood Vaught’s passion for fundamentals and footwork by his quarterbacks.
“I said, ‘Archie, I’m glad to see you playing baseball. You stay out there. Coach (Tom) Swayze will take that fungo and he’ll get you in shape … hitting ground balls to your right, ground balls to your left. It’s all footwork and hips. Your hips will improve going to your right and crossing over going to your left. Stick with baseball. You might one day have the opportunity I did to make a choice as to which one you want to go into,’” Gibbs recalled.
He said, “‘Well, it’s probably going to be football.’”
Lots of players have talent, but not all have the skill to teach the game to others. Gibbs’ authenticity set him apart, said former Ole Miss chancellor Robert Khayat, Gibbs’ football and baseball teammate.
“Jake has always been original,” Khayat said. “He’s just straight-up honest. He’s funny. He likes to laugh. When he laughs he laughs from the gut up, but he can be real serious too. Everything about Jake Gibbs is real.”
A two-team race
Gibbs played football at Grenada High School and never let it go in spite of incurring some type of major injury each season.
Finally he had good health as a senior, and a few recruiters took notice, primarily Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
One assistant coach from Tennessee called.
After Gibbs asked him where Tennessee was located and found that it was 400 miles from Grenada, Gibbs told him he didn’t need to call again.
With his choices down to two, Ole Miss took the lead.
Gibbs had developed affection for Vaught’s offenses that featured quarterback bootlegs and sprint-out passing.
He thought the system played to his strengths as one who was fast but not physically imposing.
Gibbs was especially impressed with the Rebels in 1951 when they beat Mississippi State 49-7.
Gibbs had been playing football in the yard of Grenada friend Ray Freeman. When it was time for the kickoff Freeman’s mom said, “C’mon boys,” and they gathered inside to listen on the radio.
Showboat Boykin scored seven touchdowns, further cementing Gibbs’ road to Oxford.
“This guy must be a hell of a football player,” Gibbs told those within earshot.
Boykin scored all seven touchdowns on the same play.
“It was 48 Trap. You turned (right) and met the fullback, and you had this guard pulling,” he said.
Soon Gibbs would be the trigger man for 48 Trap and Vaught’s other plays.
Sometimes he got a little tongue twisted in the huddle.
“We had a play called spread right, swing left, and when he called that play it would come out really funny,” Khayat said.
Vaught’s plays became second nature for Gibbs, but the play made by an LSU player in 1959 came to mark Gibbs’ college football career almost as much as his own touchdowns.
Gibbs was the punter who sent the ball to Billy Cannon and was also the last man to have a chance to tackle Cannon.
It’s a play that’s lived for ages, the Tigers’ 7-3 come-from-behind win discussed more than the Rebels’ 21-0 win over LSU in the Sugar Bowl two months later.
Khayat watched that play from the sideline.
“Jake was the punter, so he probably was the last man to have a shot at him. Several people hit him.”
LSU fans relived the play for years when Gibbs took Ole Miss baseball teams to Baton Rouge.
When he walked to the mound to talk to his pitcher or just coached third base, Cannon’s run was with him.
“One year I was coaching third base, and I noticed down the left field line there were some bleachers. It looked like three or four college kids. They brought one of those big boom boxes. Around the third or fourth inning they turned it on, and it said, ‘Gibbs goes back to punt. He punts the ball, Cannon gets the ball … he runs over Gibbs, and he scores.’ Just blaring. My players didn’t know what was going on. I finally had to tell them it was an old football story. They played that for two or three innings,” Gibbs said.
What the championship means
Gibbs got over the Cannon run. For years, he made trips to Baton Rouge to participate in a big kids’ baseball clinic.
In friendlier surroundings back across the state line, Gibbs’ legend is just as big as Cannon’s is in Baton Rouge.
He can switch from football stories to baseball and back with the ease that he once stepped right and placed the football in the fullback’s gut.
“The foundation was laid long before I got here,” he said. “There are a lot of good players who made good names for themselves.”
Winning teams require more than players with good names. They require toughness and leadership, and Gibbs believes he saw that from himself and Ole Miss teammates.
He helped develop it as quarterbacks coach.
He saw it in 1972 when his Ole Miss baseball team won the SEC and reached the College World Series and again last summer when the Rebels won the national championship.
“You can coach and holler and have meetings, but if you have the right kids like I did in ’72, (Paul) Husband and those guys, they take over. There’s your leadership right there,” Gibbs said. “Coaches talk and talk and it goes in one ear and out the other. The players here had some guts and didn’t give up, and Mike (Bianco) pulled the strings and kept them going. It was one of the greatest turnarounds I’ve seen in college baseball.”
Gibbs takes pride in last year’s national title not only for what it means in Oxford.
“Last year Mississippi State wins it all; this year Ole Miss wins it all. It tells the United States of America there’s good baseball played in the state of Mississippi. That’s what it means.”
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You can help your community
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 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
