I heard an interview with Marcus Dupree the other day – part of the promotional effort for a documentary on the Mississippi football phenomenon who was projected to turn the game upside down, but instead disappeared.
In later years, he popped up occasionally at the professional level, but never lived up to the early hype.
Now it turns out, Dupree may have been more victim than overrated underachiever.
SI Documents Dupree-Switzer Clashes
“The Best That Never Was” by director Jonathan Hock aired Tuesday night on ESPN as part of their “30 for 30” series. The documentary filmmaker incorporated high school footage that validates Dupree’s innate ability and uses interviews to explain the “whatever-happened-to” aspect of the running back’s past.
Everybody wanted Dupree. A book was written about the circus that was his recruitment by U.S. colleges. Billy Sims flew in by plane to encourage Depree to attend Oklahoma, and it must have made an impression. He enrolled.
When Dupree disappeared after the OU loss to Texas in which he suffered a terrible collision with a UT defender, I was working at a Tulsa radio station with minimal news committment and a non-existant sports department. Still, Marcus Dupree disappearing was news.
I picked up the telephone and dialed information for Philadelphia, Mississippi, asking for the number of the Dupree household. I don’t know if there was more than one, but the one I dialed was the home of Marcus Dupree’s mama. I asked to speak to Marcus.
She replied that he was away at school up in Oklahoma. When I told her that Marcus was missing from campus and that the coach had said as much, she told me she didn’t know anything about that. He was up in Oklahoma.
The Associated Press carried our news story that Mrs. Dupree was unaware that her son had left the University of Oklahoma, and as it turned out, college football.
When I heard him interviewed the other day, it was somewhat akin to seeing the far side of the moon. Dupree’s position back then had never entered my mind. He had just bailed on the team.
A couple of years ago I tried to track him down, hoping to have him autograph a first edition copy of the book written about him: The Courting of Marcus Dupree. I found tracks of him, working here and there, minor-league management or something. Couldn’t catch up with his current location without expending more effort. I sold the book without his autograph.
His interview made me wonder, what if?
Except for a hard hit that knocked him out of the Texas game, and a series of misunderstandings with Barry Switzer, Dupree might have been a Heisman winner – maybe multiple times. National championships?
If you’re playing “what if,” why not?
