Friday Features: Tragic loss chills Mississippi College football coach
By Maurice Patton
As hard as it could be to lose a player, the recent death of a recruit hit John Bland even harder.
The third-year Mississippi College football coach received the call no one wants to get on May 1, when he was informed that Eli Grow, an incoming quarterback from Tullahoma, Tenn., had died in a two-truck crash the previous day.
The call took Bland back nearly 30 years – to 1986, when as a college student, he lost his older brother, Mike, in a car accident near Tullahoma.
John’s father, Dan, was a longtime Tennessee high school football coach and spent five years at Tullahoma High School, located between Nashville and Chattanooga. He had moved on, but both John and Mike spent time in the town during summers between college classes.
“I was a freshman at Arkansas; Mike was a junior and attending Tennessee,” John recalled. “We’d visit from time to time. We were both there. He was going to visit with some friends, I was going to go stay with my grandmother for a week. He and a friend were killed coming back from Murfreesboro.
“I called the Grows that Sunday, and I was afraid to call. I knew how tough it was to lose somebody.”
The connection to Mike’s death deepened, as Tullahoma coach John Olive had to contact the younger Bland through his dad.
“I’d had a number for John, but it was from his old job (at the University of the Cumberlands, in Kentucky),” Olive said. “I had to call a family friend to get Dan’s number. When he got the call on a Sunday morning, he’s an old coach. He knew something was up.”
Bland had a player die during his eight years at the University of the Cumberlands as well, though under different circumstances.
“He was from a rough neighborhood in Miami, had been in some trouble,” Bland recalled. “He’d been out (of the program) a year when he got shot.
“We’ve had some tough ones.”
The family ties and familiar surroundings made this one a bit more impactful, though.
“My dad was so strong – such a great coach and great person,” Bland said of Mike’s death. “To see (my parents’ reaction), how it affected them was tough. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
“Eli was a great kid, made good decisions. He’s going to be in a better place. But here on Earth, it’s going to be tough. They’re going to miss him. No matter what I said, no matter how many people visit and comfort them, it’s still going to be hard. I knew that more than most people because of what I’d been through.”
The son of Tony and Cassy Grow, Eli wasn’t the Choctaws’ only quarterback signee in the incoming class. Olive said that was no concern for him.
“He just wanted that opportunity,” Olive said. “It didn’t matter if there were three or seven in place. He just wanted that opportunity to go compete.
“He wasn’t a great athlete by any means, but I’ve had one other young man that was focused like Eli – Jamil Northcutt, who wanted to play in the SEC (Southeastern Conference) from the time I met him and wound up at Ole Miss. That work ethic, that focus that ‘this is my goal and I’m going to spend every day trying to reach it’, that’s what they did.”
Even though he never actually coached Grow, Bland saw that.
“Because he was from Tullahoma, I had a little more invested in Eli than a lot of kids,” he said. “When his parents came in, we talked about where I lived and about Tullahoma. We were in spring ball a few weeks ago and he was down here in his MC gear and his parents were here. He was so ready, so excited about the opportunity to come here. His mom told me when we called – when we stopped crying enough to talk – that he was so excited to come. That meant a lot.
“I hate I didn’t get the chance to coach him.”
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