Winning coach's swan song fits a hero's tune to cap inaugural Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic
By HUDSON OLD
Journal Publisher
Cinderella is real.
America watched on network TV as a soon-to-be unemployed coach who moonlights as a business consultant came from behind with an underdog team to defeat the nation's third ranked junior college in the first Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic.
For Coach Jeff Scurran, a dream came true in Mt. Pleasant.
"I've always wanted to coach in Texas," said Coach Scurran, citing the names of Texas high schools that have turned him down over the years. "I love the passion Texans have for the game."
After wrangling $23,000 from an "anonymous donor" to jet his team to its first college bowl appearance, Coach Scurran's Pima Storm returned to Tucson, Arizona to find fans lining the terminal. They waved sports section fronts from the Tucson Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star, both leading with the classic shot of the victorious coach riding off the field on the shoulders of his team.
"It's been wild," said the coach the next day, speaking via cell phone between television interviews.
After losing two of its last three regular season games, the Storm came to Texas to meet the National Junior College Association's number three ranked Kilgore Rangers, a team whose heritage includes 53 All Americans, 22 conference championships, two national championships and 16 bowl appearances.
Besides the team, the Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic featured the Kilgore Rangerettes. Five years after the school began its football program, the Rangerettes became the first American drill team, taking the field in 1940. They've performed on three continents, represented Texas at President Bush's first inaugural ball, and been the showcase act of every Cotton Bowl since 1951.
Football caused Pima College to need cheerleaders four years ago.
The team has no home field.
Every game's on the road.
There's no field house either, which lends itself to a one-liner delivered to potential recruits wanting to know where the team suits up for practice.
"What kind of car do you have?" answer veterans.
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The history of Mt. Pleasant's first bowl game goes back to last spring, when school superintendent Dr. Ken English heard the sucking sound of the plug being pulled on the Red River Bowl, a Texas game annually featuring Titans of the nation's junior colleges.
Think back, old timers, to March, 2001's $6 million bond issue for construction of Sam Parker Field, and proponents' pitch of new commerce for the town and a revenue stream for the school, leasing the facility for post season playoff games. The facility drew 18 playoff teams its first year.
"The Saturday that we had three playoff games, several restaurants literally ran out of food," said the school's Dr. Judi Saxton.
Last year there were seven post-season games, and let's not forget this year's 70 marching bands attending three contests at the stadium.
FOX Sports coverage of the bowl game was the coup d gras, beginning with the demise of the Red River Bowl not slipping un-noticed past Dr. English.
He passed the word to school trustee Clint Rivers, an exec with the only Fortune 500 corporation in neighboring Camp County.
One of the great moments early on was a meeting between Dr. English and Marc McDaniel, director of athletics.
"About the time we were deciding we didn't know much about creating and promoting a bowl package, Pilgrim's Pride showed up with a savvy group of marketing people," Dr. English said.
Within days of Pilgrim's coming on board, the idea was real, spinning a web that pulled together resources from the school and Pilgrim's Pride. On both ends of that marriage, everybody involved is passing credit, saying nobody could have pulled it all together without everybody else's help.
Anybody wondering how a football game in Mt. Pleasant became the only junior college bowl game in the nation on TV just needed to count the Pilgrim's Pride commercials in those three hours of FOX Sports programming.
"If you look at the national trend in recent years, corporate backing has become the critical element in bowl games," Dr. English said. "We're just lucky to have Pilgrim's in the back yard." Pilgrim's Dallas office handled the TV stuff, a package that included a half-time interview with company founder Bo Pilgrim, embarrassing local elite by wearing his Pilgrim hat on national television, warming the hearts of local masses with his praise of their town.
People at the chamber got goose bumps.
"Have you heard how many times he said 'Mt. Pleasant?'" asks chamber commander Pat Carr, who - like half the town - taped this for posterity.
In the weeks before game day, marching bands, students of dancing schools, drill teams and cheerleader troops were recruited. They booked parachuters, booked singers, got approval for the sky to be ripped to shreds with an F-16 fly-over and took care of business down to booking Baptists to feed the Arizona team.
"Ken English is a prince and Mt. Pleasant treated us like their own children," said Coach Scurran, whose afternoon at Sam Parker Field didn't begin well.
As was expected, Coach Jim Rieves Kilgore team took it to the Storm, marching straight down field to a 7-0 lead with their first possession. Coach Scurran's upstarts answered with a field goal before the game settled into trench warfare.
The Rangerettes looked chipper at the half, but cast as the giant in this game, Kilgore was staggering. Even so, with two missed field goals and a fumble lost at the goal line, all they had to do was hold on until the bell when Pima quarterback Royal Gill broke their hearts with a 21-yard scoring pass to Brian Hernandez, taking a 10-7 lead with just over three minutes left.
If you wanna see how much class a coach has got, stick a microphone in his face after he's lost the big one.
"We came to town with a conference championship ring," said Kilgore's Coach Rieves. "They came to win a football game. Coach Scurran had his guys ready."
The Arizona coach was just as honest, lending credit to fate.
"I know now why it didn't seem like we got a break all season," he said. "The football gods act in strange ways, and they saved up everything we had to have so we could win today."
Beyond the game, the Arizona team seemed to win the hearts of their hosts.
Clearly on their company manners, while stretching travel funds eating meals furnished by Baptists and chamber members, players penned thank you notes they left on the table. In celebrating victory they swarmed not only their coach, but Bo Pilgrim, thanking him for whatever it was he had done.
Which was unleashing corporate on a community idea.
As for Coach Scurran, he flew home knowing his last day as coach would be December 17. Disenchanted with his administration's lack of commitment to basics - a field house and a stadium come to mind - he resigned before his final season began.
It's not his first time to be on the job market.
"I've got a great thing going for myself," he said. "I've always been willing to take the jobs nobody else wants."
Maybe this time, he'll get his job in Texas.
"Maybe," he said, "I'll get a job at a school that has a stadium and a press box. I've never had a home field with a press box."
Until then, he's going on the road, preaching organization and team work to whatever businesses buy into his deal.
The winning coach of the first Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic says he'll take time too, visiting family.
Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic slideshow
(for those who had the misfortune to miss the excitement)
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Pilgrim's cast joins school district with orders
to
'have some fun' in production of bowl game
The last time Daily Tribune Publisher Bob Palmer "moved" a picture on the Associated Press wire service, 60's pop icon Ricky Nelson had just died in a plane crash in the Sulphur River bottom. Then came the Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic.
By halftime, AP had two of the veteran newsman's photos, followed by a game story written by sports editor Bryan Giguere, an account not sagely edited, he reports.
"I promise, I didn't submit it with the Mt. Enterprise dateline that went out on the wire," Mr. Giguere reports.
Oops.
Conversely, FOX Sports network coverage from the press box to company founder Bo Pilgrim's halftime interview peppered a television audience with glowing references to Mt. Pleasant.
There's more afoot here than football, says Pilgrim's Pride Vice President of Marketing Dan Emery.
As he prepared for the bowl committee debriefing, the corporate marketing guru's vision focused beyond the game.
"It's all about exposure. That's the payout for the company. It's one thing for 5,000 fans to be in the stadium - 25 million potential television viewers made it a whole different game," says a man who's been around the media block. Network television, radio, national print media accounts - that's Mr. Emery's thing. Marketing.
"We're sponsoring a bowl game," Bo Pilgrim said when Mr. Emery was pulled into the loop. "Have fun with it."
As for instruction, that was about it, Mr. Emery said..
Television is one of his many ways of having fun, as evidenced by "Get Along Little Doggie," the Pilgrim's spot with Bo out on the range, playing the part of the cook at the cowboys' chuck wagon. There's "Jumping In," where Bo and a flock of chickens parachute from a plane. Both were among a series Pilgrim's Pride spots aired during the game, generating the ad revenue that covered the network's production cost and made the deal real.
Fox was on board as soon as Pilgrim's Pride committed. With his company on board, Mr. Emery managed to spread the cost, tapping company vendors International Paper and Aramark as fellow sponsors.
As bowl plans took shape, coordinated between the suites of Pilgrim's Vice President of Corporate Communications Sondra Fowler and school offices, advance news releases were jointly produced by the school's Dr. Judi Saxton and Pilgrim's Partner Communication Manager Goldie Harwell.
High school Assistant Principal Terry Giddens organized pre-game and halftime pomp and pageantry, shows involving some 400 drill team, band, cheerleader and dance school members. Drill teams from Gladewater and Pleasant Grove learned routines from film sent by Mt. Pleasant's dance-line director, Kim Musgrove.
When organizers discovered the Arizona team didn't have a band, they created one. Band members from Mt. Pleasant, Daingerfield and Como-Pickton found out what music the team wanted, then learned it. Local cheerleader sponsor and math teacher Ginger Holt recruited high school cheerleaders from New Boston, Pittsburg, Daingerfield, Tom Bean and Paris, putting together a cast of 60 to ring the field.
"I'm not used to that," said the Arizona coach. "The excitement in that stadium was incredible. The bands put together for us were great."
Meanwhile, back at Dallas corporate offices, all of that sets the stage for Mr. Emery to generate more corporate backing next year.
"This was the 'Show Me' year," said Mr. Emery, whose association with Fox Sports goes back to local programming he put together in Chicago in the 90's. "Before we could really generate the interest of other corporate sponsors for future games, we had to demonstrate our ability to pull together a good show. The thinking and the attention to detail at the local level made it an event that worked."
There were plenty of pre-game butterflies, said Assistant Principal Giddens, as television schedules sharpened the focus on time of pre-game ceremonies counting down to kickoff.
"Dan Emery was probably the only guy there who'd had experience with television," Mr. Giddens said. "Everything from band and drill team performances, the sky divers coming into the stadium and the introduction of the teams was down minute by minute on paper and it had to happen exactly that way to hit the 12:37 kickoff time."
It did.
In charge of making the big picture connections, Mr. Emery turned to detail work to maximize the game's value for his company.
"I don't think he left anything out," said the superintendent. "One day he was at the field studying the sidelines, working on the layout arrangement for 30 bowl banners with the Pilgrim's Pride logo so that he had maximum exposure of the company logo from every conceivable camera angle."
The fun he was instructed to have came in the form of satisfaction.
"With the end of the half time show, the rest was up to the pros with Fox," Mr. Emery said. "All you have to do to know that they delivered is watch a play back of the game."
With his first bowl game under his belt, Mr. Emery's thinking of ways to tweak the show to get that maximum exposure for corporate sponsors.
"I can't wait for next year," he said.