This is the seventh in a series profiling the 2003 inductees into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in a banquet Friday in Vicksburg. Friday: Jackie Slater.

[4/3/03]Journalism and sports runs in the Murphy family. My dad was a newspaperman, my godfather was the sports editor of our hometown paper and my mom, although she never worked for a paper, is a writer herself.

We’re also sports fans, and my mom is the football junkie in our family.

In 1983, when she got started, she was in search of a team to support. She scrolled through the standings and saw that the Buffalo Bills had won one game that season. She’s from upstate New York. The Bills are from upstate New York. The connection was instant.

She bought Buffalo Bills cards and watched them every time she could. As the team got better signing stars Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Bruce Smith mom’s allegiance grew.

Every Sunday they played on TV, mom would dress the dog in a Bills sweater (the dog would mysteriously disappear on Saturday nights only to be found on Sunday morning). She cooked her famous Buffalo wings and even bought a Jim Kelly No. 12 jersey.

For four straight seasons from 1990-’93, mom suffered immensely as the Bills advanced to Super Bowl after Super Bowl only to walk away losers.

Every year since on Super Bowl Sunday, she’ll put in a tape of the famous 1991 game against the New York Giants Scott Norwood’s missed field goal that would have won the game in the closing seconds and suffer some more.

“One day, maybe the kick will be good,” she said when asked why she tormented herself.

Today, the Bills are bad, but her love of the team is as fresh as the first day she became a fan. She’s cashed in her Kelly jersey for one of Doug Flutie’s, even though he plays for San Diego now.

So when I told her that Kent Hull, a former Mississippi State standout, was being elected to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, she was ecstatic.

Hull played in 189 games as a center for the Buffalo Bills, including those Super Bowl losses. Already a member of the Mississippi State Hall of Fame, Hull tends to a cattle farm north of Vaiden these days.

It’s his off-the-field charity work that separates him, though. He spearheaded the Make-A-Wish Foundation and still works with local hospitals to visit kids as often as he can.

“I just left (a children’s hospital) in Jackson and you see these kids with no hair on their heads and they are smiling and running around,” Hull said.

Hull remembered a story about a very ill child in Buffalo, and the child could have asked for anything. “If they wanted to go to the moon, you knew you couldn’t do it, but you’d better call NASA,” Hull said.

This one particular boy wanted a Power Ranger doll, but Hull couldn’t find the one he wanted. Hull called Mattel Corp. in Los Angeles and got the doll delivered by one of the Power Rangers himself.

“It’s all about keeping kids happy,” Hull said.

When asked if he’d let my mom do an interview with him, he was more than willing, that is after I told him of the dog, the sweater and the wings.

I did the asking, but these are mom’s questions:

Mom: How did you like living in Buffalo?

Hull: “I loved every minute of it. I spent the first three years of my career in New Jersey (in the old USFL) and got kind of spooked because it was so busy. I thought Western New York was just like New Jersey, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t have picked a better place to have lived.”

Mom: What was it like to play for coach Marv Levy?

Hull: “He was more of an administrator than a coach. He was a very articulate guy who stressed details. If he called a 7:30 a.m. meeting, you better be there by 7:28.

Mom: What was the comeback against the Houston Oilers really like?

Hull: “We were down three touchdowns at halftime, we’re playing without Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Bruce Smith and we come out in the second half and the first pass we throw is returned for a touchdown.

“Half the stadium left, and it holds 80,000. We started onside kicking in the third quarter and started to come back. People were scaling the fences outside trying to get back in. I swear I have talked to 200,000 people who were at that game.”

Mom: Do you cringe when you hear “wide right” (in reference to Norwood’s missed field goal)?

Hull: “No I don’t. Every game I was the first one in the lockerroom and the last one to leave. On that day, I looked over and Scott Norwood was sitting on the bench, still fully dressed in his uniform, and he was weeping.

“I told him I wasn’t leaving until he left, and that it wasn’t his fault. That was a 47-yard field goal on grass for someone used to kicking on turf. It was a very tough kick.

“I told him, If I had done a better job, then maybe it would have been a 37-yarder, now get in the shower.'”

As if we’d expected any other answer from this gracious mountain of humanity.

Thanks, Kent, and welcome to the Hall of Fame.