WWU

Willis makes history with award

Patrick, of course, is one of our post-custody kids


By BOB HEIST
bheist@jacksonsun.com

                

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - There are unions in life that just click. A great example is Patrick Willis and Ole Miss. When other major colleges backed off the Class 1A Mr. Football at Bruceton because of struggles attaining the necessary ACT score, the Rebels were in Willis' corner. He's repaid the program with one of the school's greatest careers. The crowning achievement came Thursday night when Willis was awarded the Butkus Award as college football's top linebacker. A national audience watched on ESPN during the broadcast from the Atlantic Dance Hall at Walt Disney World. He's the first player from a Mississippi college to win the award. He's only the second player in Ole Miss history to win a major honor - the other was Eli Manning, who won the 2003 Maxwell Award, symbolic of the nation's best all-around player.

Clarion-Ledger: Willis Takes the Conerly in Mississippi

Ole Miss linebacker Patrick Willis won the Cellular South Conerly Trophy tonight, capping a senior season in which he led the Southeastern Conference in tackles for the second consecutive year.

The Conerly, chosen by a vote of 60 media members from around the state, honors the top football player from Mississippi’s 10 four-year schools. Willis was presented with the trophy in a ceremony that ended about an hour ago at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame & Museum in Jackson.

“I’m thankful and I'm blessed,” Willis said. “Right now I still can't believe it. Just to be in this with guys like Eli Manning and Jerious Norwood is an incredible thing.”

Full link here to Clarion-Ledger article

Willis is one of DCS's more celebrated post-custody young men . . .

NYT Magazine: The Ballad of Big Mike

He was 16, more or less homeless, headed for worse. Two years later, football minds were calling the Memphis teen one of the best prospects at left offensive tackle they’d ever seen — that good, $8-million-a-year good.

Read the book excerpt here. (registration required.)