John Bond, the legendary Mississippi State quarterback, is living a Mississippi dream of coaching football here in Madison County.
Bond, 57, is known for leading MSU over No. 1 Alabama in 1980 by a score of 6-3, ending a 28-game win streak at the time. One of Bond’s favorite memories from his playing days is after the game when Bear Bryant entered MSU’s locker room to concede the game, telling they beat Alabama and not to let anyone tell them differently.
“It was fun because we were going nuts and we were really loud, the offense was in the back left corner of the locker room,” Bond said. “Then kind of a hush went over the room and by the time we saw him standing in a folding chair and by the time he got to the end you could hear crickets. He said don’t let anyone fool you, you guys beat us.”
Bond was drafted by the Browns, but did not like the locker room situation there and opted to play a year in the Canadian Football League. His football career did not end there. The Mississippi Fire Dogs, an Arena League team, was holding tryouts and a friend bet him $100 bucks he would not go try out. That team helped him connect with Irvin Favre, the famous Brett Favre’s father.
However, it did not end as well as it could for him. “I ended up getting my ribs cracked when we were playing in North Carolina,” Bond said. “They call out starting line-up and the lights come down and they say ‘starting at defensive end, eight-year all-pro’ and they got like four of them. So I’m like golly we got a quick game tonight, we are going to throw it quick. Got my ribs cracked and said nope I’m done. Made some great friends though.”
Now Bond tries to make every Mississippi State home football game and a couple away games and spends his time preparing game plans in his first year as St. Joseph’s head coach.
At MSU, he tailgates like most fans and while he said he is a rib fan but is a fan of the basics. “Just hamburgers and hotdogs, they are easy to walk and talk with,” Bond said. “Ribs are hard to have a conversation over with licking fingers and everything.”
However, Bond’s path down football was almost for not. Bond did not really like football growing up. He was a point guard on his high school basketball team in Valdosta, Georgia. His coach was also the football coach and seeing his skill asked him to try football.
“It was my eighth-grade year,” Bond said. “My coach said you need to come out and play football, so I did a little that spring and he told me I needed to stick with it.”
He still stuck with basketball some, playing on a semi-pro team in Greenwood with his center Kent Hull while he was at Mississippi State and starts his day with about 30 minutes of shooting at St. Joe’s basketball court as a way to relax.
Outside of football, he spent a lot of his time hunting and fishing, with his family being from the coast. His favorite fishing trips were to Costa Rica and Cabo, Mexico catching marlin and shellfish. But he said he loves the simple fishing he can do out and around Mississippi.
“I love to go out here and catch trout and redfish,” Bond said. “Because you can go out and do that in a matter of a couple hours. You can be out in your boat in 20 minutes and then catch your limit and come on back. It is a ton of fun.”
He said he has been fortunate to hunt on a large part of the land in Greenwood. He said the biggest deer he killed was a 10-point, but his favorite might be a different dear he killed a couple years ago in central Mississippi.
“I killed a palmetto two years ago and I got it back a couple months ago and it is just a beautiful deer,” Bond said. “Just real flat horns and I killed it up between Lexington and Shula and I walked right up on him because it was raining and he could not hear me. I was maybe 50 yards from him.”
Beyond hunting, fishing, and football another passion of Bond’s is mission work. He lost his oldest son, Andrew, in an automobile accident in 2010. His son loved mission trips and had just come back from Southeast Asia. So Bond started a foundation in his son’s name with the goal to send kids on Christian mission trips in memory of his son.
“That is something that will shake your foundation,” Bond said. “We have probably sent 100 kids all over the world. It is fantastic every time we send one.”
