This is the fourth in a series profiling the inductees to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

As a junior college football coach, Bobby Ray Franklin sees a lot of athletes gifted on the field but needing help in the classroom.

He usually gives them the same speech when they arrive on the Northwest Community College campus.

“I was not the best student,” Franklin said. “On our report cards, we had ‘P’ for poor. I tell our players that I P’d all over my report card.

“I want to get through to them that they have to do well in the classroom if they want to move on in football.”

Although he admittedly never excelled in academics, Franklin always had football. On Friday, he will be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in a banquet at the Vicksburg Convention Center. He said he didn’t know whether he would be enshrined as a coach or a player, and that it didn’t matter.

“I was shocked,” he said when he got the call that he had been chosen along with seven others to join the Hall of Fame.

Franklin’s career has taken him from standout player at Clarksdale High, MVP of the Sugar Bowl as quarterback at Ole Miss, the NFL’s Cleveland Browns and finally one of the most successful junior college coaches in the country.

It all started with an early Christmas present when Franklin was a boy.

He had wanted a real football for a long time and had asked his mother for one. She worked and Franklin had time to himself after school. He found the football hidden in a closet and began playing with it.

“I would always make sure I put it back in the box before she got home,” he said with a chuckle.

His mother never caught on, but Franklin’s love for the game was immediate and instant.

He played at Ole Miss during the Rebels’ glory years of the late 1950s. He quarterbacked the team to a 29-3-2 record in three seasons and earned Most Valuable Player honors in the 1958 Gator Bowl and 1960 Sugar Bowl.

“We nicknamed him ‘Waxie,'” said former Ole Miss teammate Larry Grantham, who went on to star with the New York Jets. “He had his hair slicked back kind of bushwacked and it looked like he waxed his head.

“He would get into the huddle and start mumbling something then say ‘on two, break.’ The guys would head toward the line and he would call us back and give us the real play.”

At 5-foot, 11-inches tall, Franklin gave up his quarterbacking dreams to become a defensive back in the NFL. Drafted by both San Diego of the newly former American Football League and the Cleveland Browns on the NFL, he chose the latter.

His first game, he recalled, came a day after playing in the college all-star game in Chicago.

“The game was in Detroit and I had just gotten there,” Franklin said. “Coach Paul Brown told me to get back there (at safety). I was nervous. I didn’t know any of the plays.”

He is still tied with 21 other players for most interception returns for touchdowns in a game with two, which he did in 1960.

“He had the best job in the NFL,” Grantham said. “He was the third-string quarterback, sixth on the defensive back list, the backup punter and kicker and he held for Lou Groza.”

His football career lasted until 1966 when he went into coaching as an assistant with Georgia Tech. He learned under legendary coach Bobby Dodd for one season, then coached under Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys for five seasons, and helped coach the team to its first Super Bowl championship in 1972 in Super Bowl V.

One more season of coaching followed under Howard Schnellenberger and the Baltimore Colts before he went into private business.

He returned to the sidelines in 1979 when Ray Poole was hired to coach Northwest Community College.

“We were great friends and they kept calling, wanting to know if I wanted to help coach,” Franklin said.

Since 1979, he has been coaching in Senatobia where he has guided the Rangers to a 194-54-6 record and 24 consecutive winning seasons.

“We competed and had a lot of battles on and off the field, coaching and recruiting,” former Hinds coach Gene Murphy said. “We had some battles on the field and he won more than I want to admit to. He was a hard worker and you knew when you went to play against his team, you were going to have to work.”

Franklin also has won two junior college national championships, six state championships and coached 65 players who went on to play professional football.

He retired after last season in part to spend time with his ailing daughter.

He said he’ll miss coaching, but still has ties to the Northwest family.

Each day on his way to work, Franklin stops in at the McDonald’s in Senatobia and sits down with a group of men to talk Ranger football. The group started small and has grown to about 18 members.

“They are a great group of guys,” said Franklin, who still drops by to talk football. “Every one of them an armchair quarterback.”

Grantham will be among many to attend the banquet to honor his longtime friend.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Grantham said. “This is overdue for sure. He is certainly deserving of this honor.”