OXFORD, Miss. – Is it a fair assessment that when this country had its beginnings that college towns sprang up where there was no cost for the land and that with agriculture being prominent in the curriculum, that land was needed for the ag school to grow and farm for teaching purposes and to provide food for the table?

There has always been a strong bent for liberal arts and science; medicine and engineering.

Whatever, the evolution of the development of our institutions of higher education brought about, for the most part, cozy oases, nestled into the landscape.

Oxford, Mississippi is one of them.  Like Athens, Georgia; Eugene, Oregon; Auburn and Tuscaloosa, Alabama; College Station, Texas; Iowa City, Iowa; Clemson, South Carolina, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Cutting edge research takes place in these acclaimed institutions.  Games are played there, too, such as college football. It is not uncommon for a university to turn out Rhodes scholars as well as Heisman trophy winners.

Ole Miss, once a dominant power in the Southeastern Conference, has not enjoyed the championship success that they became accustomed to when Johnny Vaught was their coach.

Lane Kiffin has given them reason to be optimistic in the last couple of years.   He has made a living via the transfer portal.  That may or may not be the best route to success, but it seems to be working for the current coach.

Not every hometown hero lives out his life where he was a Saturday star.  Jake Gibbs is one who did.  You may see him about town doing as all locals do.  Shop for groceries, fill up the car with gas and dine out at a familiar restaurant.

Jake can be seen at Ole Miss football, basketball and baseball games.  He settled in Oxford for that laidback lifestyle and would not trade it for any locale anywhere.

He made All-America in both football and baseball, becoming a bonus pick by the New York Yankees where he played as a platoon catcher, 1962-1971.  Later he coached and managed in the Yankee organization but has called Oxford home since he retired from the Yankees after a decade with the team.

Former teammates and friends often look him up when they come to town, and he played a lot of golf over the years.  Mostly, he just enjoyed being retired in one of the most pleasant places.

He is often interviewed about the 1959 Ole Miss-LSU game in Baton Rouge.  On a damp and misty night, Halloween, Cannon returned a Gibbs punt 89 yards for a touchdown in one of the most celebrated touchdowns in SEC history.

` That TD was big for the Georgia football team although nobody had the thought that the Bulldogs would wind up being a great beneficiary of Ole Miss’ defeat.

As the season played out, Georgia finished undefeated and claimed the title.  The next weekend in Knoxville, Tenn. LSU was upset by the Volunteers when Cannon on a two point conversion attempt was stopped  by Tennessee’s opportunistic defense.

Two of the three powerhouse teams had lost a game, and when Georgia upset Auburn in Athens the week before Thanksgiving, the Bulldogs became conference champions.

  Ole Miss got revenge in the Sugar Bowl by defeating LSU 21-0.  The Rebels were declared national champions in a few polls, but it remained a bittersweet circumstance for the Rebels, owning to the bitter disappointment brought about by Cannon’s legendary punt return.

Most of Jake Gibbs’ memories are good ones, and he is often asked about his memorable career as he moves about a town where his legend is as widely known almost as much as that of author William Faulkner.