Saturday at Noon Neil White will be signing Mississippi’s 100 Greatest Football Players with Kayo Dottley.
Neil tells the story in this Lemuria guest post:
Kayo Dottley ran a 9.7 second 100-yard dash in 1946. Two college coaches attended his high school graduation — Bear Bryant and Johnny Vaught. Both were desperate to sign Dottley. His father wanted him to sign with Bryant; his mother, Vaught. Kayo did what his mother said.
In 1948 at Ole Miss, Dottley rushed for 1000. But he and Vaught had a scare the following summer. Dottley’s name came up for the draft. Vaught wasn’t going to hear of his top running back going off to Korea. So the legendary coach let Dottley borrow his car so he could go sign up for the National Guard in his hometown — and stay in the U.S. for the following season. Once at the National Guard recruiting center, the officer in charge of physical fitness tests asked Dottley to do a deep knee bend. He bent down, winced with pain and let out a yelp (he’d injured his knee in practice).
When Dottley returned to Oxford, Vaught asked, “Did you get signed up?”
“No,” Dottley told him, “they said I was unfit for service.”
The following fall, Dottley rushed for 1,312 yards — still a single-season Ole Miss record.
As a rookie running back in the NFL, Dottley led the Chicago Bears in rushing. It’s a little-known fact that he was the first rookie ever asked to play in the Pro Bowl.
Kayo Dottley might very well be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame but for a freak accident on a windy Chicago night. As Dottley was waiting for his car outside a Chicago hotel, a drunken valet ran a car up on the curb and pinned Dottley’s legs between two cars.
George Halas, certain Dottley’s career was over, wrote that he was the finest running back he had ever coached.
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Meet the legend at noon on Saturday at Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson.
He’ll be signing Mississippi’s 100 Greatest Football Players of All Time (Nautilus: $45).
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