By GLENN GUILBEAU
Tiger Rag Editor
One of the most anticipated games in the history of the storied LSU-Ole Miss football rivalry will play out a week from tonight on Saturday, Sept. 19 (ABC, 6:30 p.m.), from Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi.
New LSU coach Lane Kiffin will return to the site of his previous job as coach of Ole Miss and that state’s Public Enemy No. 1 since he left for LSU last Nov. 30.
It remains to be seen, though, if that game will be as good as a documentary also dramatically intertwined between LSU and Ole Miss that premieres five nights before next Saturday’s LSU-Ole Miss Crusades on Monday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. on Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) statewide. In New Orleans, the documentary will air twice on Monday – at 7 p.m. on WLAE-TV and at 9 p.m. on WYES.
The two-hour documentary will be repeated on LPB on at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, and at 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 19. It will also be available for free streaming from Sept. 14-28 on LPB Passport and then on demand as an LPB Passport member benefit.
For more information on the documentary, go to – https://www.lpb.org/programs/billy-cannon/
Watch the trailer by hitting the white arrow in the red box below.
“Circles: The Life Of Billy Cannon” is sure to keep LSU and Ole Miss fans and all football fans and history buffs securely in their seats. Cannon, LSU’s first Heisman Trophy winner in 1959 who was born in 1937 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, remains the matinee idol of LSU.
Cannon, who passed away on May 20, 2018, at age 80, returned a punt 89 yards for a touchdown in the fourth quarter to give the No. 1 and the defending national champion Tigers a 7-3 victory over No. 3 Ole Miss on Halloween Night, 1959. The loss ruined one of Ole Miss’ greatest seasons as the Rebels finished 10-1, just missing a national championship after beating LSU, 21-0, in a Sugar Bowl rematch that season.
Kiffin gave Ole Miss its first-ever 10-win regular season in 2021 at 10-2 and did it again in 2023 at 10-2 before breaking that record with an 11-1 regular season last year and putting the Rebels in the College Football Playoff for the first time before going to LSU.
“Any sports fan is going to enjoy the videos that they’ve never seen before of Billy,” co-executive producer Jay Dardenne told Tiger Rag.
Dardenne, the former Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State of Louisiana, previously produced “Why Louisiana Ain’t Mississippi” on LPB in 2022.
Linda Midgett, an Emmy Award winning producer, is co-producing the fascinating documentary with Dardenne.
“There is so much that people haven’t seen in this show,” Dardenne said.
Such as film of Cannon playing at Istrouma High in Baton Rouge, where his family moved when he was young.
“Some of the behind-the-scenes discussions and listening to Billy’s teammates talk about the 1958-59 seasons are special,” Dardenne, 72 and a LSU and Baton Rouge High graduate, said. “The casual observer who may not be a football fan will really enjoy the redemption story, which is really what it is.”
Cannon was the first player picked in the first round of the 1960 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams, but had secretly signed a $100,000 deal with the AFL Houston Oilers and ended up playing there for four seasons. He was the AFL MVP in 1960 and 61 as the Oilers won the AFL title both seasons. He played with the Oakland Raiders from 1964-69, winning another AFL title in 1967 and played in the Super Bowl II loss to Green Bay. He played in 1970 for Kansas City before retiring.
Cannon became an orthodontist in Baton Rouge and was very successful in various businesses before he was arrested for his involvement in a major counterfeiting ring in 1983. He served more than two years in federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, before his release in 1986. Cannon then returned to his dentistry career in Baton Rouge. Later, he became the dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and helped prisoners for years before passing away in 2018.
“Why and how Billy became involved in counterfeiting is a major part of the documentary and how he came back from all of that,” Dardenne said. “Billy said that his life was circular.”
This is where the title of the documentary originated.
“He said his mind worked in circles, and sometimes that criminal mind came back,” Dardenne said. “That’s really picked up on in the doc.”
Cannon speaking in the documentary came from interviews he did with Charles N. deGravelles, author of “Billy Cannon – A Long, Long Run” that was published in 2015. Other interviews are with Louisiana Radio Network/Tiger Rag President Jim Engster on his daily statewide “Talk Louisiana” radio show airing in Baton Rouge from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday on WRKF, 89.3 FM in Baton Rouge and is repeated at 9 p.m.
“People know bits and pieces of the Billy Cannon story. This documentary will provide the whole story,” Midgett said. “The Cannon family trusted LPB to tell the full story fairly and sensitively. They gave us total editorial control of the project, and all family members are participating. That says a lot and adds so much depth to the storytelling. Billy’s story of football, fame and redemption is about as Louisiana as it gets, and as Louisiana’s storyteller, LPB is uniquely positioned to share it.”
Billy’s youngest child, Bunnie Cannon, worked painstakingly on getting this project done for years.
“My father was a complicated man who made mistakes, paid a tremendous price for them and then spent the rest of his life working to become a better person,” she said. “His story is one of extraordinary achievement, very public failure, personal accountability, redemption and the opportunity to rebuild a life with purpose.”
Bunnie Cannon discussed the documentary on a recent Tiger Rag Radio appearance.
“This is going to be the only family-sanctioned documentary on my dad,” Bunnie told Tiger Rag Radio. “And I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, because there are a lot of people who don’t really understand what made my dad tick and what he went through in certain periods of time.”
Bunnie Cannon said people need to remember what her father did later in life.
“Everybody knows about the football greatness and the first Heisman Trophy winner at LSU and all that,” she said. “But what they have failed to recognize is what happened after football. To me, what’s most important is who he truly was and what happened when he became the medical director at Angola. He was able to turn people’s lives around and do some really good things that needed to be done there. I’m looking forward to telling the story. This tells the whole story. It’ll show you where he came from and what happened to him as a child and how that impacted his life.”
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