1984 Week: Jerry Rice At Mississippi Valley State
How did the greatest wide receiver of all-time play at a tiny school in Mississippi and what can it tell us about today's game
Thanks for checking out our newsletter. Ball Through The Ages is a newsletter and a podcast covering sports history with a focus on College Football, the NBA, and women’s basketball. This week is 1984 week! We’ll be talking about the 1984 FBS season on the podcast and potentially in another newsletter this week. But first, it’s time to talk about the great Jerry Rice.
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Jerry Rice is the best wide receiver to ever catch a football. There are no modifiers to that sentence. Rice retired in 2005 after a NFL career that spanned two decades. Despite football becoming more open and offensive since he retired, Rice still holds the NFL records for total touchdowns, yards from scrimmage, and receptions. In 2010, NFL Network named him as the league’s greatest player.
You would expect the NFL’s GOAT to come from one of College Football’s bluebloods like Ohio State, USC, or Alabama. Or at least, a school you’ve heard of like Washington, Oklahoma State, maybe even Arkansas. Yet, Jerry Rice attended a school most football fans would never know about if not for him: Mississippi Valley State. A little over 2,000 students attend MVSU and it’s located just outside Itta Bena, a town of around 2,500 people.
By 1984, Rice was in his senior year for the Delta Devils and put Itta Bena on the football map. Rice’s magnificent career at MVSU is notable in itself. But I also want to examine how he ended up at the tiny historically black university and what his story means for the future of HBCU football.
MVSU’s Satellite Express offense was as unique as it was potent
MVSU Head Coach Archie “The Gunslinger” Cooley was a mad scientist. He took over the program in 1980 as football was starting to truly utilize the passing game. Teams like Stanford, BYU, and Miami all threw the ball more than anyone had before. Yet, those teams still mainly used two-back “pro” sets and only rarely used one-back sets. Some teams, namely Mouse Davis’s Portland State squads, were experimenting with a run-and-shoot system with the quarterback in the shotgun and 3 receivers out wide.
Cooley, however, did things differently from any of them. He created an offense dubbed “the Satellite Express” in which the quarterback would be under center often with no running backs or tight-ends. Having 5 wide receivers on the field was largely unheard of then. Even crazier for the time, MVSU never used a huddle and lined up with 4 receivers on one side of the field.
When Rice got to MVSU in 1981, the system took advantage of his talents. He got the amazing nickname “World” for his ability to catch any ball in the world as quarterback Willie “Satellite” Totten threw him touchdown pass after touchdown pass.
The Satellite Express was diabolical, even by today’s standards, and MVSU put up impossible numbers in 1984.
The ‘84 Delta Devils had the best season in program history by going 9-2 and finishing 6th in the D-1AA (now FCS) polls. They beat powerhouse Grambling State for the first time in school history. More importantly, MVSU scored 60.9 points per game! That is still a Division 1 record. They scored 70 or more points in 4 of their 10 games in 1984, including an 86-0 win against Kentucky State to open the season. Willie Totten threw for 300 or more yards in all 10 games and averaged 455.7 yards per game, which are both current FCS records.
For his part, Jerry Rice had one of the greatest seasons in college football history. He broke records for receptions and receiving yards, which he set the previous year. He scored 27 touchdowns, which is tied for the overall Division 1 record. The twist is Rice only had 10 games to do it where Troy Edwards of La Tech caught 27 TDs in 12 games. Rice’s average of 2.7 touchdowns per game is a D-1 record and he also averaged a FCS-record 168.2 yards per game. Rice finished 9th in the Heisman Trophy race, the best finish ever by an HBCU player until Steve McNair finished 3rd in 1994.
How did Jerry Rice end up at Mississippi Valley State?
By 1984, Rice was no longer under-the-radar. The San Fransisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys both desperately wanted his services in the NFL Draft. The 49ers ended up trading up for Rice and the rest was history. But the idea that Jerry Rice was ever under-the-radar is a bit flawed. He talked about his college decision in the video below.
Hypothetically, Rice could have gone to any of the big schools if he wanted to. Notre Dame, USC, and others saw the talent. But, only one coach, Archie Cooley, came to actually meet him because white coaches just didn’t go recruiting in black neighborhoods in the early 80s. Therefore, HBCUs had a huge headstart on getting some of the best athletes in the country until Miami broke through for a title with a team mostly recruited from black neighborhoods in 1983.
I think that line of thinking diminishes Coach Cooley’s effect, though. Jerry Rice seems like a very logical person, someone who is going to do what is in his best interest, not just what feels right. Cooley’s fast-paced, pass-happy scheme highlighted Rice’s talent and gave MVSU a leg up over other schools. The uniqueness of the Satellite Express ensured that Rice would get the attention he needed because it perfectly highlighted his talent and was such a spectacle.
MVSU was not Jerry Rice’s only option. It was just his best option because the coach cared enough to visit him, had the perfect system for him, and provided him a path to the pros. Basically, Rice ended up at MVSU for the same reasons that top recruits end up at Alabama, Clemson or any big school now.
How can HBCUs attract talents like Rice now?
Much smarter people than I, such as Tyler Tynes and Jemele Hill, have written extensively about this. Hill believes that more top black recruits should consider HBCUs while Tynes points out that “[e]xploitation by black hands instead of white ones would not dramatically shift the paradigm of college athletics or bring much-needed state and federal dollars to black colleges.”
They certainly can tell you more about the realities of the situation more than I can. But I do think that HBCUs could end up attracting a star athlete that could rock the college football world, not just a great player that falls through the cracks (which is increasingly unlikely as schools get better at recruiting).
The process has already started in basketball. Makur Maker, a top recruit, will suit up for Howard University this season and more basketball players are considering the HBCU path. Maker said that he just more comfortable at Howard than he did at other schools. The school’s location in a major media market (DC) and the promise of nationally televised games wherever he went likely also played a factor.
Football is different because one star football player can’t command attention like one star basketball player can. However, HBCUs still field top-level programs led by NC A&T and compete for national TV eyes as much as any FCS programs do. While players may have to sacrifice immediately, success at the FCS level still leads to national attention like North Dakota State’s Trey Lance is proving.
To me, the real hurdle for HBCUs is marketing and innovation. Schools need to capitalize on the attention gained after the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests and celebrities talking about them. HBCUs have the opportunity that Cooley had with Jerry Rice in that the player has a special interest in the school. For Cooley, it was the fact that only he visited Rice. For HBCUs now, coaches can point to the real social benefits of going to a primarily black school as many on social media have.
But, there is also the on-the-field aspect. Winning is important but winning with style is even better. Cooley sold Rice on a perfect scheme for him. Similarly, I think innovative coaches who are experimenting with football (such as former Howard Offensive Coordinator Brennan Marion and his Go-Go offense) could push these schools over the top with some recruits.
There will never be another Jerry Rice. We may never even see his records topped. But HBCUs may be able to attract top talent and grab the attention of the football world again.
Thanks for sticking with us for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been pretty scatterbrained and lacking motivation to write due to*waves arms wildly to every thing happening.* We’ll be getting back on track this week, but may pull back to one newsletter and one podcast a week because I’ll be busy writing about Women’s College Basketball for Her Hoop Stats! As always, please let us know if you have any story ideas or comments to make us better by tweeting at us (@gabe_ibrahim, @alexlange3, or @ballthroughages) or emailing us at ballthroughtheages@gmail.com.