It’s been 37 years since Texas Tech played in the Independence Bowl and you’ll have to forgive former Red Raiders quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver if he doesn’t remember much about it.
Which isn’t surprising since it was, to be sure, a pretty forgettable game.
“What was the final score?” he asks.
Ole Miss scored the first 17 points and went on to win 20-17. “We must have rallied then,” Tolliver says. “It was a pretty decent game except their quarterback threw for about 8,000 yards and mostly to one guy. I think his name was Ambrose.”
That would be J.R. Ambrose, who caught eight passes for 102 yards. And Tolliver, who has never been known to hold back on his exaggerations, will be happy to know that Ole Miss quarterback Mark Young threw for a little less than 8,000 yards, but it was an Independence Bowl record 343 yards that would remain a bowl record for years.
“Ole Miss was better than us,” Tolliver says. “They had some really good players across the board. I remember that. We had good players but we were really young.”
You might be curious as to how Tolliver did in the game. “I’ll betcha there was something I did that cost us the game,” he says.
Judge for yourself, but when a quarterback throws for “about 8,000 yards,” the defense might need to be held accountable.
Tolliver was 17 of 40 for 181 yards and one interception. More bad news – his interception in the final minute sealed the game for the Rebels.
However, he had almost pulled off a miracle with a 51-yard pass in the fourth quarter … that was called back by a holding call.
Here’s how long ago that game was – there wasn’t even a corporate sponsor. That wouldn’t happen for another four years.
“The stadium was fantastic, the people were great,” Tolliver says. “Ole Miss brought a lot of people and we brought a lot of people. It was a great atmosphere.”
The game against Ole Miss was Tolliver’s first trip to Shreveport, but it certainly wouldn’t be his last. He was brought back as a quarterback in 1995 for Shreveport’s entry in the CFL and stayed for 25 years. (He recently moved to the Baton Rouge area.)
His time as a Shreveport Pirate was in between two stints in the NFL, but when he came to Shreveport in 1986, he was just a sophomore quarterback on a 7-5 team that had just lost its coach when David McWilliams bolted for the University of Texas after the final regular season game.
Spike Dykes, whose son Sonny would later become the head coach at Louisiana Tech and is now at TCU, was named as the interim head coach before the Red Raiders came to the I-Bowl.
“We wanted to win that game so bad for Spike because we wanted him to get the head coaching job,” Tolliver said. “We all loved him, but we spit the bit for him, I guess.”
(Dykes would get the head coaching job and stayed for 13 years.)
Tolliver recovered nicely, becoming a second-round pick in the 1989 NFL Draft. He played 11 seasons for six different teams, wrapped around the 1995 season when he was in Shreveport with the CFL.
“We liked it so much (in Shreveport), we just stayed,” he says.
He still keeps up with his alma mater and is planning to be at this year’s appearance by the Red Raiders in the Independence Bowl.
“My wife told me I had to go to the bowl game this year and get her a sweatshirt because hers is worn out from 1986,” he says.
Tolliver was well known as a top amateur player in the local golf community during his years in Shreveport, but made the move to south Louisiana a few years ago.
“My wife told my daughter that if she would try one more time for a boy, we would move to Baton Rouge and help with the kids,” he says. “I came back from a golf tournament on a Tuesday and she was standing on the front porch and told me the moving truck was coming Thursday. “‘You can stay or you can go.’”
Now, he runs a Smalls Sliders franchise in Prairieville, where apparently his life has turned into a community-fulfilling prophecy from decades ago.
“I left Boyd, about 40 years ago to go out to Texas Tech,” he says. “There’s 800 people in my hometown and half of them said that I would be flipping burgers in no time.
“Forty years later,” he adds, “that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com