Ray Graves Interviewer: Julian Pleasants Date: July 15, 1997
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UFA 5 Interviewee: Ray Graves Interviewer: Julian Pleasants Date: July 15, 1997 P: It is the fifteenth of July. This is Julian Pleasants talking with Ray Graves in his home in Tampa. Coach, tell me when and where you were born. G: I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on December 31, 1918. I grew up in Knox County. My father entered the Methodist ministry, and we lived in a lot of parsonages in east Tennessee during the Depression. P: What was Inskip, Tennessee like? G: Inskip was a little suburb of Knoxville. I know Tom McEwen [Tampa Tribune sports editor] has referred to that many times, where is Inskip and what is it? I do not know what it is, but it was home for a while and we enjoyed living there. In fact, after I left pro-ball, we went back to Knoxville. My wife taught school out in Inskip, so that place is a little memory that I will always enjoy. P: And you went to high school there? G: Moving around with my father (the Methodists move around a little bit), who was a pastor of several churches in east Tennessee, I went to high school for two years at Dayton, moved in the middle of my second year to Rockwood where I went to high school for two years, and then moved to Knoxville and finished up at Central High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. I moved from Dayton to Rockwood during the basketball season. I had been on the basketball team in Dayton and then wound up in Rockwood playing against Dayton before the season was over. I guess anybody who has been a Methodist preacher's kid in east Tennessee has had a lot of interesting experiences. I think those experiences helped me later in life and gave me a background to overcome a lot of problems. P: How influential was your father in setting your values and influencing your view of life? G: I do not think there is any question that he had a real influence in my life and gave me faith to step out on the rock sometimes, when I could not feel anything underneath me, and to carry on. He certainly was a dedicated minister and had a great life. He built two churches in the Holston Conference and wound up building the last one, the Beardon Church, there in Knoxville which is one of the biggest in the conference. P: How did you get interested in sports? G: I really got interested because I wanted to get an education, and I knew that the only way I could probably get an education was by receiving a scholarship. Growing up, I was a pretty good football player. When I was in the eighth grade in Dayton, they wanted me to try out for the high school team, and I did that for a while. One time I thought, well, I should concentrate on basketball, and my brother, Edwin, who was the manager of the football team said, no, you are going stay out here and play football. He had a lot of influence on my life at that time and all the way through [my life]. I went on and played football and basketball for the three high schools I attended and that gave me a scholarship opportunity. When I graduated from Central High School, we were claimed to be the high school national champions. We had a good record. We were undefeated and untied. About four of the boys [on that team] got scholarships at major universities, three of them at Tennessee, and I got a scholarship at Tennessee Wesleyan, which at that time was a small junior college in Athens, Tennessee. So I went down there and had a good year. The coach of Duke University at that time, Wallace Wade, said to me, let’s help you with your scholarship, figuring that I would go to Duke, which I had planned to do. So after my first season at Tennessee Wesleyan, I planned on going to Duke until Tennessee found out about that. General Neyland, who was Tennessee’s coach then, said, come on up, I want to talk to you about the University of Tennessee. I felt really obligated to go back to Tennessee Wesleyan, graduate, and go to Duke. But he came out and talked to my father, my brother, and my mother. He even had some friends of the family to talk to me. So I finally [decided] to transfer to Tennessee which made me ineligible for one year because I did not graduate yet from Tennessee Wesleyan. I was red-shirted for my first year there, and then went on to have an interesting and exciting career at the University of Tennessee. I was captain of the 1941 Tennessee team. P: Why in the end did you decide to go to Tennessee rather than Duke? G: It was about family. You have to have some feelings for location and where you grew up. It was a challenge. Of course, I always knew that University of Tennessee had a great football team through those years and continue to have a good team, but Duke was about right up there with them too. I felt some moral obligation [to Duke] because they had helped me out with a scholarship at Tennessee Wesleyan. But Tennessee made that scholarship money up to them. General Neyland was hard to figure out sometimes, but I think that he just did not want me, a local boy, playing for Duke, and maybe coming back and playing against Tennessee. I really got to know a lot of the assistant coaches at Tennessee, especially the line coach, John Barnhill, who became a personal friend of mine. I had a lot of respect for him as wll as a lot of the other assistants at Tennessee. Also a lot of my former teammates were still playing there too. Bob Sufferage, a boy I played with at Central was there, Hodges West was there, and a couple other boys, so I really thought that I made the right decision. P: Do you ever regret not going to Duke? UFA 5 Page 3 G: You never know what will happen. You have to make decisions. Yogi Berra [catcher and later manager of the New York Yankees] was given a doctorate at some university up in Massachusetts just last year, and he was telling the people at the graduation, when you come to the forks in the road in life, take it. [laughter] So I came to the forks in the road several times, in sports, marriage, and all that, but you never know. The one thing I think I have always believed, is you cannot look back. You just have to try to make the right decision. P: What position did you play? G: I played guard in high school [in Dayton] and wound up playing center at Central High School in my last year there. Then I played center at Tennessee Wesleyan and at Tennessee. After graduating from Tennessee, I played center for the Philadelphia Eagles. P: What kind of formations did you run in Tennessee? G: We had the single-wing, and it was a side-saddle T where the blocking back went under the center and never took the ball, but he was over there where he could take it and he did maybe once a year, so he was a threat. There was the Notre Dame shift and the Tennessee side-saddle T. We had a balance single wing which was a pretty good offensive threat. P: Did you ever run the old hook-lateral play? G: Oh, yes. We had all those trick plays to keep everybody honest. P: It was harder though to be subtle in the single wing because most of the time you ran to the strong side. G: That is exactly right. Playing under General Neyland and the army discipline that he demanded was something that helped me out later as a coach. He would have the squad meetings and then we would break down by position into groups. Every player had to go to the board and draw up every play that we ran, and give the assignments of everybody on the team along with the advantages and disadvantages. You had to know everything about the play. So when you got through at Tennessee, you knew their offense. You knew what every position entailed and what the responsibilities were, and what the weakness was of every play. When I played with the Eagles, I realized how fortunate I was because the players in Philadelphia did not have any idea about what a team effort was, which I learned at Tennessee. P: Did you ever play both ways? UFA 5 Page 4 G: Oh, yes. We had to play both ways. I played linebacker and center. P: Which did you prefer? G: I really liked playing linebacker. Of course, when you had to center that ball with your head between your knees and did not know who was going to knock your head off, it was a little different than linebacker. Then I got to play the T up with the Philadelphia Eagles so that was different, and I enjoyed that. P: How much influence do you think Coach Neyland had on your coaching career? G: It is hard to say. His discipline certainly had a real influence on my coaching philosophy. But he had to be a general, and he did not get close with the players.