MSM Feature – Ray Guy

Six seconds. That doesn’t seem very long at all. A mere wisp of time.
But in man’s battle against gravity, six seconds is the equivalent of batting .400 or rushing for 2,000 yards. It is a benchmark few can reach.
Ray Guy was a six-second man during his football playing career at Southern Mississippi and later with the NFL’s Oakland Raiders. He was a punting phenomenon, a lanky country-boy from rural Georgia who didn’t know anything about the proper techniques of kicking the ball. He just knew how to create sonic booms with the swing of his leg.
Guy set several NCAA records while playing at Southern Miss from 1970-72, and then became the first pure punter taken in the opening round of the NFL draft (by Madden’s Raiders). There he became a seven-time Pro Bowler, and arguably the greatest punter the game has ever seen.
“He’s the first punter you could look at and say, ‘He won games,’ ” Pro Football Hall of Fame historian Joe Horrigan has been quoted as saying.
But ask Guy today about his achievements, and he shrugs them off as no big deal. He was just playing a game he loved, and trying to do his best.
“I didn’t have any individual needs,” Guy said. “When I was out there, I was just being a part of that play. A part of that time and that game. Everything I did through my career at Southern Miss and with the Raiders, it was just an action to a situation. That’s all it was.”
Only it was much more than that. Guy actually was creating history, six seconds at a time.

One Second

Guy maintained a home in Hattiesburg while he played in the NFL, before returning to Georgia in 1990 following the death of his father. But even when he was gone, Hattiesburg and Southern Miss remained nearby in his heart.
“I hadn’t really left Hattiesburg,” Guy said. “I just moved back over to Georgia for awhile. I still claim Hattiesburg as my home.”
About two years ago, Guy was approached with an offer to return to Hattiesburg to work with the school in public relations and marketing as a special projects manager. “Sort of an ambassador for the university,” according to Guy.
Currently, one of his primary responsibilities is to help plan activities for the school’s Centennial Celebration next year. Southern Miss received its charter on March 30, 1910, though the university did not officially open its doors until 1912.
Guy is focusing on the history of Southern Miss athletics, a project that includes vast amounts of research.
“I’ve probably done more studying in the last year than I had all four years at Southern,” he said with a laugh. “It’s amazing what you can learn when you go to the library.”
Guy wants there to be some sort of historical presentation before the first home game of each Southern Miss sport in 2010. So he is researching the history of USM athletics, dating to the inaugural football game on Oct. 13, 1912 (a rousing 30-0 victory over the Hattiesburg Boy Scouts, which doesn’t seem like a fair fight). The head coach for that first team was Ronald J. Slay, who also was a professor in the Southern Miss science department.
Those types of tidbits are easy to learn when it comes to football and men’s basketball. Tracking down the history of many of the other sports, however, is much more difficult.
“We’re going to need a lot of help from the community and former graduates, to find out (information) through their family members who attended Southern Miss way back when,” Guy said. “I’d also like to get people to donate a lot of memorabilia from the history of Southern Miss, and we’ll set it up in a room and display it.”
In addition, Guy said he is hoping to coordinate a parade for the 2010 homecoming that would be a living look at the history of the university.
“We’re looking at having a homecoming parade downtown where they used to have it,” Guy said, “and maybe get the fraternities and sororities involved where each one can work on one decade.
“We’ll start in 1910 and go to the modern-day times. Find the clothing they wore back then to signify that particular decade. That way, as each part of the parade comes through, everybody can see how Southern Miss changed from 1910 all the way through to 2010.
“What I’m doing is trying to bring forth all of that history.”
And an important part of that history is none other than one William Ray Guy.

Two Seconds

A native of Swainsboro, Ga., Guy was recruited to play for Southern Miss as a free safety and kicker. He would partake in all the drills with the defense, and then retreat to a nearby hillside to work for an hour on his kicking game, with only a manager and a ball boy accompanying him.
“He had averaged about 44 yards (per punt) in high school,” recalled P.W. Underwood, who was Guy’s head football coach at Southern Miss and who still lives in Hattiesburg. “I told all our assistants, ‘I don’t want to catch anybody coaching him. If we can just maintain his average in high school, that’s good enough.’ If he had any bad habits, I just wanted them to leave him alone.”
The only habit Guy seemed to have was to work hard and do whatever was asked of him. Underwood said Guy was a natural athlete and an extremely easy player to coach.
“That rascal would work, but it wasn’t work to him. It was fun,” Underwood said. “He never lost his focus on being an athlete. I’ve never seen a fellow who would give you the time like he would. When you told him we needed to do something, he didn’t ask any questions. He just went right to work.
“But we never gave him a format to follow when he went up on that hill (for kicking practice). I said, ‘He knows more about this stuff than I do. What am I going to tell him?’ He had a ritual that he went through, and he enjoyed doing it.”
Guy admits that when it came to punting, he simply was going on instinct. He said kicking a football as high and as far as possible was an easy game to play in the wide-open farm land of his youth.
“That was just something to do to entertain yourself,” Guy said. “I had no clue what the hell I was doing. I just knew I could do it.”

Three Seconds

Oh, he could kick the ball all right. Long, high floating kicks that formed beautiful rainbow arcs.
In his very first game as a sophomore (freshmen were ineligible to play at that time), Guy set the tone for his career by booming a 77-yard punt. He wound up averaging 44.7 yards per punt during his three playing seasons, including an NCAA-leading 46.2-yard average as a senior in 1972. He was a unanimous All-America selection that season.
Guy’s career highlights include a then-record 61-yard field goal in the snow at Utah, and a 93-yard punt that remains the sixth-longest in NCAA history.
But don’t expect Guy to go into great detail about either kick. He considers both plays to be nothing more that a situation where 11 players all did their job.
“If it wasn’t for the 10 guys up front, I wouldn’t have gotten off either kick, because they had to block,” Guy said. “All I had to worry about was doing my job, and that’s what I did.
“I wasn’t trying to overpower it. I wasn’t trying to go beyond my ability. I was just trying to keep everything on the same tempo and rhythm, and all of a sudden that sucker just kept going. It just happened.”
For somebody who could achieve such literal heights, Guy comes across as being remarkably down to earth. Underwood said that is Guy’s true personality. He recalled a moment when Guy, who also played baseball at Southern Miss, pitched a no-hitter and then joined the football team for spring drills midway through practice.
“After practice, we went in to get dressed, and that’s when I found out he had just pitched a no-hitter,” Underwood said. “He never mentioned it. He just came out and practiced as hard as you’d want him to. That’s the kind of kid he was.”

Four Seconds

The Oakland Raiders obviously saw something special in Guy, because they chose him in the first round of the 1973 NFL draft (and the 23rd player taken overall). Never had a punter been picked so high.
“They all thought (team owner) Al Davis and the Raiders were crazy,” Guy said.
But never had a punter been able to boom the ball so high. The NFL began instituting “hang time” as an official statistic in large part due to Guy’s kicking ability.
Still, Underwood said even the Raiders didn’t fully appreciate what type of athlete they had drafted, because they insisted on using him as only a punter, and not for field goals and kickoffs.
“They said that to punt and to placekick, you have to lock your ankle two different ways,” Underwood recalled. “I said, ‘Well, if you don’t tell him, he won’t know that.’ ”
Indeed, there were quite a few things about professional football that Guy did not understand. Beginning with the identity of his new team.
Remember, this was in the pre-ESPN and pre-Internet days, before information was readily available to the masses. In addition, the Raiders had joined the NFL from the AFL only a few years earlier, and Guy had grown up following the traditional NFL teams.
“The phone rang (on draft day) and it was Coach Madden,” Guy said. “I talked with him for a long time. Then when I got off, I asked, ‘Where the hell are the Raiders.’ I didn’t know hardly anything about them.”
Guy eventually discovered that he had joined the perfect team for him. Led by quarterback and Alabama native Kenny Stabler, the 1970s Raiders were a fun-loving team that worked hard and played hard. Guy said he quickly felt at home.
“I felt relaxed, because those guys were just like me,” Guy said. “They were from different backgrounds in life, but they were good ol’ boys playing a game they loved to play and they were having fun.
“We all had a lot of fun. We had bets going on during practice and things like that. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation than to be with an organization like the Raiders, especially with the coaches and players who were there. Because they were like the kind of guys I grew up with.”

Five seconds

The Raiders’ gamble on Guy paid off easily. Guy never missed a game during 14 seasons in the NFL, playing in 207 in a row. He finished with a career punting average of 42.4 yards. He had 619 consecutive punts without a block, which is the second-longest streak in NFL history, and he never had a punt returned for a touchdown.
The Sporting News magazine proclaimed Guy to be, “the finest punter in the history of the world.” And while Guy would never praise himself to that degree, he does acknowledge his place in football lore with a personalized car tag that reads, “Hangtime.”
All of which makes Guy’s exclusion from the Pro Football Hall of Fame somewhat puzzling. The hall obviously doesn’t hold kickers in very high regard. Only one fulltime placekicker, Jan Stenerud, has been inducted, and no punters have made it. Yet somehow, former supervisor of officials Hugh (Shorty) Ray is in the Hall of Fame.
Guy admits that the snub “kind of hurts,” particularly because he believes many Hall of Fame voters simply do not respect kickers as being true athletes.
“I’m known as a punter only, but when I grew up I was a fulltime player who also punted,” Guy said. “The phrase that a punter is not an athlete, that just frosts me to no end. How do you know they’re not athletes?
“Physically, a punter has to be an athlete. You have to have the physical attributes to be one, or you can’t do it. And you have to be an athlete from a mental standpoint. You may only get on the field one or two times, but that one little part is still an intricate part of the outcome of a game. It should be respected. It should be noticed. And it should be recognized that this is a player.”

Six Seconds

In the end, no matter how high or far Guy kicked the ball, it always ended up back where it started. On the ground.
So it is with Guy, who has returned to where his college playing career started. On the campus that he loves, in the town that he affectionately calls home.
“Once I stepped on the campus in 1969, there was no doubt I was going to Southern,” Guy said. “I fell in love with Southern Miss and the community. It was like that was my hometown.
“I came back here with the vision of giving back to the university more than what they gave me. I go and do whatever’s needed from a fundraising standpoint. I speak to civic clubs, youth groups, alumni dinners, Eagle Club deals. Whatever it takes and wherever I need to go, that’s where I go. I do what I do best. I run my mouth.”
Outside of his numerous speaking engagements Guy’s focus for the next 12 months will be on USM’s Centennial Celebration. But he sees his relationship with the university extending far beyond that.
Guy said Southern Miss has barely tapped into its potential, and he wants to help lead the way to growth and improvement at the university as it enters its next 100 years.
“I want to make this thing bigger and better,” Guy said. “I know it’s going to be bigger and better. I know what Southern Miss can do. And I want to be a part of that and contribute to that any way I can.”
Nearly 40 years later, Ray Guy remains a team player. – MSM