The Story of Chucky Mullins, Brad Gaines, and the Sigma Nu Charity Bowl

For our "Shop Talk" series, Coach Bill Courtney shares the story of an unlikely hero who inspired the largest collegiate philanthropy event in the country.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks,
and welcome to Shop Talk two of two. I hope
you enjoyed the first one, and I hope you enjoy
this one. Today we're going to talk about something that's
really near and dear to my heart, and it's the
story of Chucky Mullins and Bride Gains and the signa

(00:25):
new charity ball. And we'll dive into that right after
these brief messages from our Tenner sponsors. Welcome back, everybody.
Most of you should know. I'm an Old Miss guy,
and I want to tell you about maybe one of
the most formative experiences I had in college that really

(00:46):
had nothing to do with me. On October twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty nine, during Ole Miss's homecoming game against Vanderbilt,
a guy named Chucky Mullins, playing safety, came up to
break a pass. He put his head in the back
of Brad Gains. Brad Gaines was a full back for
Vanderbilt and he was definitely going to be a top

(01:07):
three pick, a top three round pick. He was their stud.
Chucky smoked him right on about the five or six
yard line and the ball came loose bought. Hemingway went
nuts because it broke up a big path at a
critical juncture. Everybody started going back to their huddles and
we were ready for the next play. Except Chucky didn't

(01:30):
get up. He laid there. I was on the sideline
that day, I was not in the stands, and I
remember thinking, Wow, he's knocked out cold because as he
lay on his back, his elbow was still on the ground,
but his forearm was perpendicular to the ground, and when
his arm fell to the ground, it just fell without

(01:54):
any resistance. And so I knew this guy was just
out cold. And I'd seen that before football two times,
and it's scary, but you know, it's unfortunately part of
the game. Roy Lee Mullins Chucky was laying there, and
ironically the UH the head trainer for miss back then

(02:15):
was Leeroy Mullins, and mister Mullins ran out to him
like they always do when somebody's hurt, and when he
got there, you could tell it was more than just
passed out. He frantically was waving arms and the team
dot came off the sideline. In a matter of instance,
there was ten people around Chuck e Chuckie was a freshman,
number thirty eight, and to be honest with you, not

(02:38):
many of us even knew the kid's name. He was
a second string guy, and he was in on a
Nickel package about ten minutes later. And you know how
it is when somebody gets hurt, you can tell it's serious.
In a football stadium, it goes from wild and reverently
loud to you can hear pendrop. There's fifty thousand people

(03:00):
sitting there trying to figure out what's going on. And
they roll out the back. Then they didn't have like
the motorized cater cars. They just rolled a stretcher out
onto the five yard line and put them up on it.
And they actually passed me. And when they passed me, obviously,
I'm gawking like any kid would. And they'd clipped Chucky's

(03:23):
face mask at the jaw clip, but kept the clips
on the top forehead part of his helmet, So they
basically clipped the clips off and folded his face mask
like he would the hood of a car, and had
them all taped down, and so he couldn't move, and
his face was so swollen that his cheeks had protruded

(03:47):
outside the plastic shell of the helmet. It was awful,
and I knew, like everybody else in the stadium knew
that this was probably a neck injury. Plavor Zoom little
by little gets louder. People forget it and keep playing,

(04:08):
and then like twelve minutes later, from the other end
zone outside the stadium, the helicopter picks up and wheels
north toward Memphis, and it was like a second hush
fell over because everybody knew then you know, this is bad.
The next day we found out that this kid, CHUCKI. Mullins,

(04:31):
had literally disintegrated the top four vertebrae in his neck
and he was a quadriplegic. The university and the lums
and students really rallied around him, and in very short
order in nineteen eighty nine, there was well over a
million dollars raised. The university bought theom house, built it

(04:55):
off campus, and his rehab was a years years and
a half long rehab and Brad Gaines, this big, burly,
badass football player, went to Baptist Hospital Memphis and actually
slept in his car in the parking lot for two
nights keeping vigil over. Chucky Bride says He'll never forget

(05:19):
the day he went to visit him, and he was
wearing his Vanderbilt letter jacket, and the elevator doors parted
and his bride walked into the hallway to go down
to see Chucky. It was just filled with Old Miss
people and it's just like he could, you know, everybody
talking in the hallway over coffee, and it just was
a hush, and Chucky could barely talk. He was on

(05:40):
a ventilator, but he could put his hand over a
button on the ventilator and say very short words. And
Brad knelt down and prayed for him and with him,
and then came up and with tears in his eyes,
told him, I'm sorry he was and Chucky pushed his
button and whispered in a guardly fashion and not your fault,

(06:02):
you go play ball, And that's kind of what Chucky was.
At the same time, Old Miss was struggling with some problems.
The student body always rave Confederate flags, the band played
Dixie about nineteen times a game, and the university was

(06:24):
struggling with we're not a racist university, but what we're
portraying can can certainly be used against people to say
we're racist. In recruiting and other things. But are we
really portraying who we are as university? And at this
weird time where we're struggling all that, here's this black

(06:45):
kid from Russellville, Arkansas, who doesn't have two nicols drubbed together,
that the entire university is bracing as their favorite son.
Next to Archie Manning. There's no bigger name at the
University of the Old Miss than Chuck him my own.
And it happened overnight. And it wasn't just because this
kid got hurt. It was because his attitude about being

(07:07):
hurt and his courage. Later that year, Ole Miss played
in the Liberty Bowl against air Force and they had
a quarterback named Dee Dallas who was number two in
the Heisman balloting, and air Force was favored by sixteen points.
And right before the game, to everybody's surprise, Chucky rolled

(07:27):
in in a wheelchair into the locker room. And there
wasn't a man in there that didn't have tears streaming
down his face. And he had this infectious smile. And
he rolled in and he looked at the team, and
he put his hand over his little thing and he
said as loud as he could it's time. Ole miss

(07:51):
beat the crap out of Air Force that night, and
Billy Brewer, the coach at that time, said there wasn't
a team in the country that could have beat those
kids that day. After Chucky rolled in and told him
it's time, there was just so much inspiration from his
courage and his attitude. Shortly after Chucky got hurt, there

(08:13):
was this kid in Lauderdale, Mississippi named Alan Moore, a
high school kid, a junior, who actually had the exact
same injury that Chucky did, but it was from a
very poor high school, again in Lauderdale, and he had
no money. They didn't even have enough money for a
wheelchair for him, couldn't build a ramp on his house.
And we were sitting around in the fraternity house one
day with a friend of mine, John Quak, and some

(08:36):
other guys and read that story of the day of
the Mississippian and John said, you know, we should do something,
you know, an army of normal folks, we should do
something for this kid. And so I went to Coach
Brewer because I had a relationship with them. I went
to Sparky Bear and the Dinas students at the time
who got me in front of the chancellor, and we

(08:57):
came up with the idea of playing what this thing
was going to be called was a charity ball, which
is our fraternity in a full pat of football game
against another fraternity and celtickets and raise money and give
it to this kid named Alan Moore in honor of
Chucky Mullins. And so I actually got to meet with
Chucky and I told him the plan. I said, I
don't want you to feel disrespected that we're raising money

(09:18):
for somebody else. And he looked at me and he
said it's time. Chills ran through me when he said
that big smile. He wanted us to go raise money
for someone else because he knew he was taken care of.
It's just kind of guy was So we put to

(09:39):
go this football game. Long story short, my Afternity run
the football game and we raised fifteen thousand dollars. That
was in nineteen eighty nine. Today they still play that
game called the Charity Ball once a year and it
has grown to be the largest Greek philanthropy project in
the entire United States and is today israe over three

(10:01):
and a half million dollars for quadriplegics who had no
hope of good care and wheelchairs and ramps and wheelchair
accessible vehicles, all in the honor of a kid named
Chucky Mullins. Why am I telling you the story? Why

(10:23):
is this shop talk one? It doesn't matter who you are,
or what happens to you, or what challenges you have
in the world. If you keep a positive attitude and
have the temerity to face all obstacles with courage, you

(10:46):
can change people's lives. Chucky changed an entire generation of
lives of people at Ole Miss because of his courage,
because of his inspiration, because of his generosity, and because
of his spirit. To this very day, every ol Miss
football team, when they run out of the tunnel at

(11:07):
Vald Hemingway Stadium, run their head over a copper bust
of Chucky's head, and underneath it it just says, never
give up. I think we should always think about the
story of Chucky Mullins and Brad Gaines and the kids
at Old Miss who've raised three and a half million dollars,

(11:27):
all who took a horrible incident and turned it into
a massive outpouring of generosity and inspiration, all because of
a guy named Chucky Mullins. Who showed that even as
a quadriplegic, you can inspire, you can encourage, and you

(11:50):
can evoke change. Ole miss does not wave the Confederate
flag anymore, and it no longer plays Dixie with its band.
It got rid of Colonel rebb as it's Scott and
it's because the university, through the inspiration of a guy
like Chucky, had the courage to look at itself and say,

(12:13):
we need to portray who we are, not what the
past says about us. Chucky's inspiration and courage changed the university,
changed a perception, changed an approach, and through his generosity

(12:34):
and inspiration, has changed the lives of thirty six people
that have had the same type injury he has that
have come behind him. Even in his death, because Chucky
died two and a half three years later, his body
just couldn't function anymore, but his legacy lives on because
of courage and inspiration. So when you wake up tomorrow

(12:58):
and you think about all of the things that are
going around in your community and your society, and you're like, man,
I'd sure like to help, but I don't know how
If a quadriplegic who doesn't have two Nickels drubbed together,
came through his courage and inspiration, change an entire university
and enrich the lives of other quadriplegics, even thirty years

(13:21):
after his own death. You need to look at yourself
in the mirror. You need to have some courage, you
need to be inspired, and you need to understand the
only thing that's going to fix us is an army
of normal folks. And it really does start with you.
But you've got to have the temerity and the courage
to do it. We'll see you next week.