January 1, 2021
In 1981, when the Jefferson Prep Patriots won the Class A State football championship with a 14-7 win over Lewisville, one of the biggest, strongest, toughest players on the team was a lineman named Buck James.
“I thought I was strong,” he recalled recently. “I thought I was tough. But I found out I wasn’t.”
James explained, “When I went to high school, the weight room was not a priority. When I went to college to play (at the University of Arkansas at Monticello), I thought the world was blue or green when I was on the football field because I was either looking at the sky or the ground. Because I got whipped. Because I wasn’t physically strong as those guys that came from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and came from good programs.