Jackson Free Press

In 1969, P.W. Underwood, then head football coach at the University of Southern Mississippi, convinced a 6-foot-3-inch lanky kid from Swainsboro, Ga., to come to the University of Southern Mississippi as a free safety and punter. That kid is Ray Guy.

Guy, who averaged 52 yards per punt in high school, did not play his freshman year. But when he stepped on the field as a sophomore—in his first game and on his first kick—he boomed a 77-yard punt.

He had a near mythical career at USM. He intercepted 18 passes during his college career and still holds the USM single-season record for interceptions, with eight his senior year in 1972. Guy, who also played baseball at USM, threw a no-hitter (one of only four in school history) six weeks after knee surgery, and then went to join the football team for spring drills midway through practice.

Once, he kicked a 61-yard field goal (then an NCAA record) in a snowstorm in a 27-21 loss to Utah State.

In his senior year, Guy was a unanimous choice for All American and boomed a 93-yard punt, the sixth longest in NCAA history. The Oakland Raiders drafted Guy in the first round with the 23rd overall pick in the 1973 NFL draft. He's still the only pure punter to be taken in the first round.

Legendary football coach John Madden said that drafting Guy took the least amount of arguing for the Raiders on draft day. "We had a consensus, everyone in the room. Al Davis the owner, Ron Wolfe the director of player personnel, all the coaches—everyone agreed this guy should be the number one pick," Madden said recently in a commentary for FOX News.

The Raiders never won a Super Bowl until Ray Guy arrived and haven't won one since he left. He played 14 seasons for them. He was key member on all three Raiders Super Bowl-winning teams, played in seven Pro Bowls and named first team All-Pro seven times.

In the 1976 Pro Bowl, Guy became the first punter to hit the Louisiana Superdome video screen, after which the Superdome raised the screen 110 feet, from 90 feet to 200 feet. Guy once kicked 619 consecutive punts before having one blocked, the second longest streak in the NFL.

Guy literally changed the way football is played. Before his time, "hang time" (the amount of time the ball stays in the air during punts) and kicks inside the 20-yard line did not matter much to coaches.

But Guy had a hang time of six seconds, an outstanding feat even by today's NFL standards. He also had 210 punts downed inside the 20-yard line, and that doesn't count his first three seasons when the NFL did not keep the statistic. Today, hang time and kicks inside the 20 are punter benchmarks.

Since retiring in 1986, Guy, now 61, has received numerous honors: His No. 44 jersey was the first number ever retired by USM in its 78-year football history; he was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team and the NFL 1970s All-Decade Team; and he's in halls of fame at USM, Georgia and Mississippi. The retired punter even has an award named after him: The Ray Guy award goes to the best punter in college football each year.

For all that, Guy has seen one honor elude him: induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was first nominated in 1994, the first time a pure punter has been so honored, and he reached the semifinal round of voting in this year's ballot.

"I do not think about it anymore, if it happens it happens," Guy told me. "I do care, but I don't."

In truth, Guy does care. He takes pride in his role as NFL punter. Before games, he would study the wind, the weather, the stadium and the team they were playing. He picked spots on all four corners of the stadium to aim at.

"I kept faith in them, and they had faith in me," Guy says. "They knew where I was going to kick (the ball)."

Guy also picked the brains of some of best punters in the NFL, men like Jerrel Wilson, Herman Weaver, Bobby Walston and John Lee, all of whom are, in Guy's opinion, great athletes and deserving of a shot at the hall of fame, too.

He still has a close bond with his teammates and other players, like Hall of Famer Sammy Baugh, a special athlete who played quarterback, defensive back and punter in the NFL. His voice caught when he described seeing Baugh at his ranch in west Texas for his 90th birthday. Guy also keeps a hand in the game, running the Guy Ray Kicking Academy and kicking camps across the nation.

Asked about his kicking style, Guy said he liked to corner a return man on the sideline or kick the ball out of bounds.

"I could kick the ball high and far, but it is results that matter in the end," he says.

So why isn't Guy in the Hall of Fame? "Some coaches and writers do not feel like punter is a position or an athlete," he says. "That irks me."

"If it's meant to be, it's meant to be," Guy added. "Earlier for some and later for others."