Early Life, Football and Baseball
Phillips was born in West Point, Mississippi. He graduated from Macon High School where he was a football standout and softball player in 1946. He was awarded a football scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi (then Mississippi Southern College) and was a multi-sport athlete. He excelled in baseball and football and began being watched by major league-scouts in 1946. He received "Little All-America" football honors as captain (running back) of the football team his senior year in 1950. While in college he chose a professional baseball career over a football career turning down the San Francisco 49ers of the All-America Football Conference for a contract with the Detroit Tigers organization in 1948.
Read more about this topic: Bubba Phillips
Famous quotes containing the words early, football and/or baseball:
“O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)