By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Just in time for the biggest LSU football game since the Tigers beat No. 6 Alabama and coach Nick Saban, 32-31, in overtime on Nov. 5, 2022, a documentary on Tigers’ icon Billy Cannon is expected to air on Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) the week leading up to LSU at Ole Miss this Sept. 19.
Cannon was LSU’s first Heisman Trophy winner in 1959 after an historic 89-yard punt return in the fourth quarter – aka the Halloween Run – on Oct. 31 of that season that gave the No. 1 Tigers a 7-3 win over No. 3 Ole Miss and a 7-0 start. He also led the Tigers to their first first national championship in football in the 1958 season with an 11-0 season, including a 7-0 win over Clemson in the Sugar Bowl in which he threw the winning, 9-yard touchdown pass.
New LSU coach Lane Kiffin, who left Ole Miss after the 2025 regular season, returns to Ole Miss on Sept. 19 to play the Rebels, who reached the College Football Playoff for the first time in program history last season before losing in the semifinals. The game will be nationally televised on ABC at 6:30 p.m.
Cannon, a native of Philadelphia, Mississippi, who moved to Baton Rouge and went to Istrouma High, passed away at age 80 on May 20, 2018, in St. Francisville.
“People have no idea what he did for people,” his daughter Bunnie Cannon told Tiger Rag on Monday. “The documentary touches on parts of his life that a lot of people do not know about.”
Cannon, an assistant dean at LSU for Outreach and Strategic Inititatives, will appear on Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday night (6 to 8 p.m. statewide) at 7:30 p.m. to discuss the documentary on her father.
Former LSU baseball and ESPN/SEC Network college baseball commentator Todd Walker will also be on the show to discuss the NCAA Super Regionals and upcoming College World Series. Former Baton Rouge Advocate sports writer Wilson Alexander, who is now a national writer at On3.com will join the show at 6:30 p.m. And former LSU pitcher Ronnie Rantz, who is president of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches, will be on at 6:45 p.m.
LOUISIANA SPORTS HALL OF FAME INDUCTION WEEKEND JUNE 25-27
The Sports Hall of Fame’s induction weekend will be on June 25-27 in Natchitoches. LSU Final Four coach John Brady will be inducted along with LSU women’s basketball and WNBA star Sylvia Fowles, Northwestern State basketball coach Mike McConathy, LSU and Atlanta Falcons center Todd McClure, New Orleans Saints wide receiver Joe Horn, Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle Pat Williams and five-time state champion Florien High girls coach Dewain Strother.
Former LSU baseball player Warren Morris will also be honored with the Louisiana Sports Ambassador Award.
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Cannon’s spectacular LSU football glory days and pro football career with the two-time AFL champion Houston Oilers (1960 and ’61) and the 1967 AFL champion Oakland Raiders, who reached Super Bowl II, is well documented. Cannon, who graduated from LSU in 1959, finished graduate school at Tennessee to be an orthodontist while playing for the Oilers and began a successful dental career in Baton Rouge after his football career ended with the Kansas City Chiefs in 1970. He also had several business and investment interests, including in real estate, and later said he got over-extended.
In 1983, he was arrested by federal agents in Baton Rouge for his involvement with five others in a counterfeiting scheme in which $6 million fake United States $100 bills were priented. Charged with the five others, he served two and a half years of a five-year sentence at a Federal Correctional prison in Texarkana, Arkansas.
After being released in 1986, he returned to his dental practice, but it suffered for years. He later was hired as a dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and later took over the dental program that was in dire straits when he took over. He stayed involved with the dental prison office until his death and was praised for help rehabilitate many prisoners and became friends with them.
“Over about a 10-year period after he was released, he had it pretty rough,” Bunnie Cannon said. “While he was in prison, people he was involved with stole money from him.
BOOK ABOUT BILLY CANNON: “A Long, Long Run” Doesn’t Pull Any Punches
Cannon’s life was detailed in a book by Charles N. deGravelles, a former journalist and minister at Angola who befriended Cannon, in 2015 that was titled “Billy Cannon, A Long, Long Run.”
“That book was not deep enough,” Bunnie Cannon said. “The documentary will dive deep. It goes through a lot that happened in the 1980s and ’90s and why the counterfeiting happened. This is an opportunity to set everything straight.”
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