Hugh Mitchell (1994) - Southern Miss M-Club Hall of Fame

Hugh Mitchell

Induction:
1994

J. Hugh Mitchell is best remembered as one of the outstanding tackles to ever play at Southern Mississippi and his contributions during the 1953 and 1954 football seasons made those teams some of the school’s best.
    He was an outstanding prep standout at Picayune High School before joining the Army. Then it was off to Pearl River Community College where he played on a team that shared a state championship. He also earned all-state junior college honors.
He came to USM in 1953 when men his size, 6-5, 220-plus, were sadly lacking. As an offensive tackle he help block for an offense in 1953 that rushed for 2,854 yards, the fifth highest total in school history. That team averaged 285.6 yards per game, the third best ever at USM. As a defensive tackle he was a part of a squad that allowed only 155.2 yards per game, a mark bettered by only two other USM squads. That same team allowed its opponents only 86 first downs all season long.
    That 1953 team finished with a 9-2 record that included wins over Alabama and Georgia. As a regular in 1954 the team won four of its first six games that season including another win over Alabama, but a knee injury against UT-Chattanooga ended J. Hugh’s career and the team won two and lost two the rest of the way.
    Ask those who played with J. Hugh Mitchell and they will tell you about one of the toughest, hard-nosed players they ever played with or against. His trademark was what one former teammate called “the boniest, hardest elbows I have ever seen”. And J. Hugh used those elbows to his advantage and as he says “the rules were a little more liberal back then.
    The best story that I believe will tell you the type of heart and the type of effort that J. Hugh put forth was the Alabama game, the season opener in 1954. He had a severe case of pneumonia the week before the game, but being the type of player he was, he wasn’t about to let that keep him from playing the following week. The pneumonia turned into the flu and battling the effects of that ailment, J. Hugh lined up against the Crimson Tide. He played his heart out that day and early in the game he began coughing and wheezing and almost couldn’t breathe. He literally crawled off the field to make it to the Golden Eagle sidelines. But it wasn’t but a few plays later that he trotted back on the field to lead the team to victory.
    Football players are made of a lot of different ingredients, but to be one of the best one thing is a most and J. Hugh Mitchell had and has one of the biggest. If McElroy and Pepper were the legs of those football teams that beat Alabama and many others, and Jarrell and Davenport were the arms, few would argue that J. Hugh Mitchell was one of the guys that had to be considered the heart of those teams.