Bio

Danny Kelley

Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College (1984-1986) / Football

Danny Kelley set a 20th-century football record that may never be repeated or equaled. He played football for the Bulldogs during two seasons, with a year between them. Both years, the Bulldogs won the state football championship and the East Bowl, with one of those resulting in a national championship.

Kelley was a member of George Sekul’s undefeated (13-0) 1984 South State, state and national championship team. That team was rated No. 1 by the National Junior College Athletic Association when it met the No. 4 Harford (Maryland) Owls in the East Bowl at Harford, Maryland, on December 1, 1984. When they defeated the Harford Owls, the Bulldogs were named 1984 NJCAA national champions by the polling organizations.

The following season, Kelley became a student-coach and saved his second year of play for 1986. In fall 1986, the Bulldogs won the first three games and then dropped two in a row by the same score, 20-10. Then, the Bulldogs defeated the Bobcats, the Pearl River Wildcats, and the Hinds Eagles in succession. With a victory over Holmes in the last regular-season game on November 1, the Bulldogs wound up second in the South, barely winning a slot in the Mississippi Association of Junior Colleges playoffs. On November 8, the Bulldogs defeated Itawamba at Fulton, while the second-ranked Northwest Rangers defeated the Wolves at Wesson. The Rangers, having lost only one game, were ranked No. 6 in the nation on the eve of the November 15 state championship game at Senatobia. Gulf Coast, with three losses, was unranked.

In the third period, with the Rangers out in front 13-7, Kelley hit wide receiver Tyrone Jones of Ruston, Louisiana, with a 14-yard touchdown pass to tie the game. Sekul then sent in 5-foot-6-inch, 130-pound Adethsack “Sock” Chanthavane for the point after touchdown (PAT). In Senatobia that day, Sock’s PAT assured Gulf Coast a state championship trophy and a consequent invitation to the East Bowl.

When the Bulldogs arrived at Conrad Stadium in Boone, N.C, on Nov. 23 to do battle against the Bobcats of undefeated fourth-ranked Lees-McRae College of Banner Elk, they were still unranked. Certainly none of the nearly 2,000 North Carolinians present expected the upstarts from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to shoot down their team’s national championship aspirations. At the end of the fourth quarter, with the clock running down, Lees-McRae had the Bulldogs down 13-7. Kelley hit Jones with a touchdown pass to tie the game at 13-13. With 34 seconds to play, Sekul sent in Sock. With the game riding on his shoulders, Sock kicked the ball straight through the uprights. In an incredible reprise of its performance at Senatobia eight days earlier, the Kelley-Jones-Chanthavane combination had won a bowl game. The mountains of North Carolina echoed to the screams and cheers of excited Gulf Coast fans. MGCCC garnered its last football trophy of the 20th century.