Lionel James and the ASHOF

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http://www.al.com/auburnfootball/birmingha...2100.xml&coll=2

HoF inductee James 'kept a rollin' for AU

Thursday, May 18, 2006

DOUG SEGREST

News staff writer

Pat Dye wasn't impressed.

Just named the Auburn football coach after the 1980 season, Dye arrived to meet his team at Sewell Hall, the school's athletic dormitory, where he found a packed house in search of inspiration.

Spotting freshman running back Lionel James, he said, "What's your name?" recalled James. "And I told him. Then he ordered me to stand up."

They stood - eye to Adam's apple - and Dye realized the team's top returning running back was vertically challenged. Dye wanted to know how tall James was, how much he weighed and what darn-fool assistant coach signed him.

James fired off the answers: 5-foot-7, 150 pounds and Alex Gibbs.

``Gosh almighty," Dye said, turning to the rest of the team, ``That's what's wrong with this program."

It marked one time Dye was dead wrong.

The diminutive James, nicknamed ``Little Train" for his stature and style, became one of Auburn's all-time greats on the gridiron, and continued that success with a stellar NFL career.

Sunday night at the Sheraton BJCC Ballroom, James will be inducted into the 2006 class of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

Now a mild-mannered Hayes High School calculus teacher - and even though he earned legendary status as a Tiger - James wanted to play point guard for Georgia basketball coach Hugh Durham coming out of high school

``I had more letters in basketball, and we'd played in the state championship game three years," said the Albany, Ga., native.

As Auburn's luck would have it, James lacked patience. The football signing period preceded basketball's. So James signed and headed to The Plain, where he became a potential successor to similarly undersized running back James Brooks.

The Tigers struggled during James' freshman season, prompting the school to make a chance from Doug Barfield to Dye. After playing sparingly his first year, James led the Tigers in rushing and total offense as a sophomore, as well as to a hard-fought 28-17 loss to Alabama in the Iron Bowl.

``That was Coach (Paul) Bryant's 315th win," James said. ``In the locker room, Coach Dye said, `They outmanned us today. But next year, damnit, they won't do that.'

``Little did I know he was going to sign Bo."

Enter Bo Jackson, part of a crop of running backs that included Tim Jessie, Collis Campbell and the state's top prospect, Alan Evans.

In one fell recruiting coup, Dye had upgraded talent and size. But when the 1982 season rolled around, James was still a starter at one halfback. And Jackson quickly became the other halfback - the yin to James' yang in a potent wishbone attack.

And just as Dye had predicted a year earlier, Alabama fell in the Iron Bowl. Auburn's 23-22 victory ended a nine-year losing streak to its biggest rival.

``At the end of the (postgame) prayer, Coach Dye started crying," said James. "He was a man's man, and here he was bawling. Finally, he told us to go out on the field and tell Auburn people what they meant to us."

Out they went. No sooner had James stepped onto the field than some teammate swooped him up and passed him overhead to a line of celebrating fans.

``I was passed, hand to hand, to the top of Legion Field," James said. ``I was terrified of heights."

Only as a senior, when James and Jackson combined to lead Auburn to an SEC title and Sugar Bowl appearance against Michigan, did Little Train realize he could play in the NFL. Blocking the likes of Florida's Wilbur Marshall and Alabama's Mike Pitts, a pair of first-round NFL defensive picks, told him everything he needed to know.

A fifth-round draft choice of the San Diego Chargers, James quickly proved his versatility. He ran, caught passes and returned kicks, replacing the same James Brooks he had succeeded in the Auburn backfield.

In 1985 he totaled 345 all-purpose yards in one game, the second-best mark in NFL history, earned All-AFC honors as a punt returner and club MVP accolades despite torn cartilage in his knee.

The defining moment of the season came that year against the Raiders, the team he had always idolized.

``The game goes into overtime and I ended the game on a 14-yard touchdown run," James said. ``Lester Hayes, who was one of my favorite players, wimped out on me. He had a shot and I was ready to take him on. Instead, he laid out and I ran right past him."

James' post-playing career included a tenure as an Auburn assistant under Terry Bowden and a season with the Kansas City Chiefs.

It nearly ended tragically.

On the day head coach Marty Schottenheimer was fired, James showed up at Arrowhead Stadium, feeling something didn't feel right. During a staff meeting, he turned to fellow assistant Mike Solari.

``I told him to keep an eye on me. Then, `Bam!' a pain I can't describe hit me smack dab in the middle."

James drove immediately to the hospital, passing out in the emergency room. He did not wake up for three weeks.

A pancreatic infection, costing him 90 percent of the organ, nearly killed him. At one point, while in a coma, James remembered hearing a conversation between his mother and the doctor, who warned her, ``If he makes it through the night, he just might make it."

Doctors also feared James' heart, forced to work overtime, would give out. When he emerged from the coma, friends and family were there. And so was his ex-teammate.

The yang to his yin, Bo Jackson.

``The first thing Bo did was grab my hand, put it on the (trachea tube) valve and say, `Now, talk,'" James said.

James, who ended his professional coaching career with stints in the XFL and af2, will return to the sideline next fall as a Hayes assistant.

He gave up a well-paying job selling pharmaceuticals to return to the classroom, allowing him to spend more time with his family - wife Kesha, son Lionel, 6, and daughter Kasey, 2. 

``I've come full circle. My first teaching job in 1994 was at Woodlawn, four blocks away," James said. ``It's rewarding for me. I'm home with my family. But I feel I can reach these kids, too."

Lionel was my physics lab partner for a year at There is no quit in the man. He did not cut corners. he did the work, and made the grades under one of the biggest jerks in the physics dept. Latimore cut us no slack ever.

Of all the things I remember about my time at Auburn, being his lab partner was one of the Top 5 things that happened to me. When I walked into the lab, he was there with a smile and a great attitude. None of the big head you might expect. Lionel is one class guy.

BTW, the day Lionel left the Bowden coaching staff, I knew there was something big time wrong there. Lionel is the kind of guy you seek out in a crowd, a friend and just a genuinely good man. The guy I know would never have left those kids on the team unless he was convinced the problems down there were unfixable and were possibly damaging to him and his family as well.

[WAR EAGLE!!! 0]

David...I will be at the ASHOF dinner Sat. night...want me to tell him hello for you if I get a chance to talk to him? Would he know you? Let me know...

He was one of my heros growing up. I was always a small kid and I really looked up to the "little train"!

[DKW 86 7,423]

David...I will be at the ASHOF dinner Sat. night...want me to tell him hello for you if I get a chance to talk to him? Would he know you? Let me know...

He was one of my heros growing up. I was always a small kid and I really looked up to the "little train"!

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I cant be there but yes, ask him if he remembers me. Tell him to check out the site please.

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