[04/12/02]In 1958, LSU completed a perfect 11-0 season by winning the Sugar Bowl and capturing the national championship.

About two hours northeast of there, another national championship-caliber team sat and wondered, “what if?”

Mississippi Southern College, now the University of Southern Mississippi, also had a perfect season and notched wins over Atlantic Coast Conference champion North Carolina State and VPI, now Virginia Tech.

To bowl organizers, though, Hattiesburg was little more than a blip in the middle of the South Mississippi pine forests, certainly no competition for mighty LSU of the Southeastern Conference.

Well, maybe not, but no one will ever know for sure.

“We thought we should have been playing in the Sugar Bowl,” said the quarterback of that team, an undersized junior college transfer named George Sekul. “It would have been interesting because we played our best ball against the best competition.”

The Sekul-led Southerners had to settle for the “other” national championship the United Press International small college title.

It marked the first in a long line of playing and coaching championships that Sekul went on to win as head coach of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. On April 19, he will be enshrined in his eighth hall of fame when he enters the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame at a banquet at the Vicksburg Convention Center.

“He’s just a great guy,” Bob Yencho said from his Vero Beach, Fla., home. “He’s a great representative of Mississippi.”

Yencho and Sekul roomed together in the 1957-58 seasons and teamed on the gridiron. Yencho was an end while Sekul a quarterback and punter.

Sekul, a 6-foot, 170-pounder, threw for 592 yards and ran for 241 more in the 1958 season. He also punted 21 times for a 32.9 yard average.

“I remember the VPI game when they brought the leading quarterback in the country (Billy Holsclaw) down,” said Yencho of the Nov. 15, 1958 game. “And we beat them 41-0.”

After beating North Carolina State, Lee Baker of the Jackson Daily News wrote: “George Sekul, 6 feet tall with 170 pounds distributed on a not overly hefty frame, loomed larger than life as the big man in Mississippi Southern’s 26-14 win over North Carolina State. … (Which) could help prove beyond question that there is nothing small about Southern, particularly the slender quarterback who operates with such precision.”

After graduating together, Mississippi Southern coach Thad “Pie” Vann convinced the two to become the freshman team coaches.

They scouted opponents and took the freshman team to Florida State, where they upended the Seminoles’ freshman team and a young coach named Burt Reynolds, Yencho said.

“Of course we didn’t recognize the name until much later,” he added with a chuckle.

Yencho went into the Army before moving to Vero Beach and Sekul spent six months in the service, then tried out for a pair of Canadian Football League teams and the Boston Patriots of the American Football League.

He settled in Biloxi to be closer to his family and started one of the most successful coaching careers ever at any level.

At age 28, he took over at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. His record is unsurpassed in the junior college ranks, but it was his off-the-field contributions that made the most lasting impact.

In 1960s segregated Mississippi, Sekul blazed a trail across the Gulf Coast recruiting black athletes Josh Wells, Glen Larkin and Morris Richardson.

“I knew there were some outstanding African-American athletes on the Gulf Coast that deserved a shot,” Sekul said. “It was a great move and gave us a big edge.”

The move did not come without protests. Prank phone calls were the norm and at one game, the state national guard had to be called.

He won’t say where the Perks, now Bulldogs, were playing because, “that’s water under the bridge.”

“All we were doing was looking for the best players,” Sekul said.

It took several years for the other state jucos to catch on, but by then, Sekul was well on his way to a career that spanned 26 years all at Gulf Coast.

His accolades are seemingly endless:

Two national juco championships.

Eight Mississippi juco titles and seven runner-up finishes.

Ten South Division championships.

His teams were ranked in the Top 20 for 19 seasons.

Coached the South in the state juco all-star game six times and earned Region XXIII Coach of the Year four times.

His overall record of 204-77-5 is tops in Mississippi and he was the first juco coach in America to reach 200 wins.

Sekul said he is most proud of the 1971 team that went 11-0. The Bulldogs beat Fort Scott (Kansas) Junior College, 22-13, at the Shrine Bowl in Savannah, Ga.

“It was a long road trip and we went by bus,” Sekul said. “At that time, we didn’t have any out-of-state players, either and we beat the defending national champions that game.”

Thirteen years later, he led Gulf Coast to its second national championship with a win over Harford, Md., 21-7.

Sekul became the school’s athletic director in 1985 and continued coaching through the 1991 season.

“He had a great coaching career and won a couple national championships,” said Yencho, who coached high school in Florida for five seasons.

Although Sekul doesn’t roam the sidelines anymore “my wife won’t let me,” he said with a laugh Sekul didn’t stay retired for long.

He started working in the family seafood business and still works there today.

“My grandfather came to this country in 1903 and built a few boats,” said Sekul, whose family immigrated from Yugoslavia. “My dad followed and I inherited the business.”

He gets to about two or three Southern Miss games a season and was on hand in October when the university unveiled its all-century team. His former roommate was being honored.

“It was a good time,” Yencho said. “We reminisced a lot.”

Sekul is married and has three grown daughters. He was inducted into the USM Sports Hall of Fame in 1968 and said he still misses game day.

“I think about it a lot,” he said.