Patient and persistent football career pays dividends for Khayat
Published 12:00 am Thursday, April 1, 2004
[3/31/04]Eddie Khayat has never been a big believer in doing things the easy way.
He went to three different schools before he got his first shot at big-time college football. He overcame a lack of size and notoriety to spend 10 years in the NFL as a player, then bounced around the league for another 25 years as a coach. Finally, he turned to a fledgling football league an became a success once again.
Along the way, Khayat has knocked down opponents and been knocked down. He’s been praised, relocated and fired. And on Friday, he’ll enjoy one of the final stops on his long tour of the sports world when he’s inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
“If you look at the people that are in there, that’ll tell you what a great honor it is. A lot of my heroes are in there,” said Khayat, who will join his brother Robert to form the fourth brother combination in the MSHOF.
When Eddie Khayat was a skinny defensive end for Moss Point High School in the early 1950s, he didn’t look anything like a hero, or a future hall of famer.
Weighing 177 pounds, Khayat was passed over for football scholarships by Ole Miss and Mississippi State and walked on at Millsaps in 1953. He played there for only one season before heading to Gulf Coast Junior College, where he again walked on and played football and basketball.
“He was tall, but very thin, and neither of us were blessed with speed,” Robert Khayat said. “But he was so determined. He fought through so many obstacles.”
One of the obstacles was the practices of Gulf Coast coach Harold T. White. Although Eddie Khayat praised White and loved his coaching style, his workouts were among the toughest Khayat had ever encountered.
“He was a very fine Christian gentleman, and didn’t believe in working on Sunday. But he didn’t believe running was working,” Khayat said with a laugh, before adding matter-of-factly, “We loved every moment of it. We loved him.”
While at Gulf Coast, Khayat finally caught a break.
The football team played a game against the Tulane freshman team, and the Green Wave coaching staff took a liking to the young defensive end. Khayat was offered a scholarship at Tulane, and he was a starter for the next two seasons.
He helped the Green Wave to its first winning season in five years in 1955, 5-4-1, and got some revenge against the schools who had snubbed him by beating Ole Miss and Mississippi State in 1956.
When the time came to head for the NFL, though, Khayat was overlooked once again. Although the NFL draft was nearly 30 rounds long in those days, no teams wanted him.
His pro prospects were bleak, but another Tulane connection came to the rescue. Green Wave assistant coach John Mazur knew some people in the NFL, and landed Khayat a tryout with the Washington Redskins in 1957.