Letter to Jerry Rice

Hello Mr. Rice:

My name is Marc Parrish. I’m a member of the Austin College Athletics “A” Board. I wrote earlier about Austin College’s (Sherman, TX) online celebration of Otis Amy and the 1988 Austin College Kangaroo football team. The team won a conference championship, and lost to the NAIA national champions in the playoffs. Otis ended the season with 280 career receptions, successfully owning the NAIA career record but coming up short in his attempt to match your 301 at Mississippi Valley State. It was an exciting year for all of us in 1988.

We are calling it the “12 Days of Roo Football Christmas”. We are going through the 11 game season over the first 11 days, followed by a final Day on December 12th………….the anniversary of Austin College’s NAIA championship in 1981.

I’ve sent you links below for the “Pregame” and first two days. I’ll continue to send you links as we move through the season.

Pregame: http://bit.ly/2jzUuEd
Day #1: http://bit.ly/2BBceXX
Day #2: http://bit.ly/2Al8RWJ
Day #3: http://bit.ly/2AQtXxq
Day #4: http://bit.ly/2AoYSzK
Day #5: http://bit.ly/2AQcTaz
Day #6: http://bit.ly/2BEepcD

Otis has already begun to write me, as have Austin College coaches and players and players from the national champion opposition. I’ve also mentioned my attempts to ask Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in football history, to offer a few words. It would mean the world to Otis Amy personally, and Austin College fans in particular, if you were to acknowledge his tremendous career. It is absolutely true that after the 1988 season, you were the #1 collegiate receptions leader and Otis was #2. Day #1 above includes a newspaper article that mentions Amy’s chase for Jerry Rice’s collegiate record of 301 catches.

Otis’s story reminds me a bit of yours. He was from a small town in the south, and played for a small college. He participated in the NFL Combine and Draft day, but was frequently undervalued because of biases, especially the bias against small colleges. In spite of an impressive NFL Combine performance and comments from Cowboys VPs & GMs that he might be drafted in later rounds, in the end he went undrafted. Free agency was unsuccessful as well.

Otis is today a public educator and minister. We all celebrate his years at AC, and we’ll be celebrating him and the team over these 12 days. And if you were to join us with your thoughts, however brief, well, all of us (Otis included) would be ecstatic.

As we move through the 1988 season over the “12 Days”, I’m including Jerry Rice highlights of the 1988 San Francisco season. Day #1 included your 77-yard game winning TD against the Giants. Other days will include other Rice highlights. Day #12 will conclude with the 1989 Super Bowl victory over Cincinnati and “the drive” where you hauled in three pivotal catches.

I’ll be sending more “Days” to you as they are written. Thank you for considering this request to write, and I hope you enjoy the read.

Sincerely,

Marc
marc_parrish@hotmail.com