*** Basil Shabazz 5 TD state championship game video****

[kingoftherapids]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cyLBt_dvEM

just found it on youtube!!!!

[clifflee4mvp]

wow! what could've been..........

[Boarcephus]

Did not realize Mike Cherry was the QB for Texarkana. 

[IronHog]

People talk about Shabaz like he is a combo of Earl Campbell and D-Mac. I think NOT. Let him rest or go do a story and see what he's doing today?

Did you not watch the video?


That's not Dyer running into a mob of slow small kids and busting out the other side for 80 or DMac tearing up a bunch of 5-9 kids at Oak Grove.


Texarkana that year had one of the best D's in Arkansas HS history and look like a small college team.  Shabazz rips them up like they are nothing.

[intoxhog]

Did you not watch the video?


That's not Dyer running into a mob of slow small kids and busting out the other side for 80 or DMac tearing up a bunch of 5-9 kids at Oak Grove.


Texarkana that year had one of the best D's in Arkansas HS history and look like a small college team.  Shabazz rips them up like they are nothing.

^this^

My question though is WTH has happend to Pine Bluff Football over the last 20 years? They used to have great athletes year in and year out. Now, rarely do they make any noise nor do they produse any 4 to 5 star athletes.

[Pig Latin]

From the video i liked when Shabazz made that amazing cutback touchdown and a texarkana guy gave him high five, and tori hunter scored at the end(the play with the penalty)

[dasheets12]

If you watched it all the way to the end, you saw a much younger Mike Huckabee.

[OLDHOG]

I believe he's coaching a football team in texas somewhere that's being funded by Tori Hunter. That's what I heard, anyway. That's what happens when you don't get your grades.

[Amityvillehogger]

Would you guys get over it. I have never heard the amount of crap over a guy that couldn't qualify. What do you think he is doing today?

Why don't you give it a rest !?!  People talk about this guy because he's arguably the best athlete this state has ever produced and we never got to see him play above the HS level.  Sorry we aren't so chained to earth like yourself.

[Tejano Jawg]

I'm fascinated by the stories about Shabazz. I remember reading about him for the first time 3 years ago here on Hogville. People talk about him in a mythical way.

That's why I enjoy these videos that started surfacing lately. I can see what all the talk is about. And he is unbelievable.

[intoxhog]

I'm fascinated by the stories about Shabazz. I remember reading about him for the first time 3 years ago here on Hogville. People talk about him in a mythical way.

That's why I enjoy these videos that started surfacing lately. I can see what all the talk is about. And he is unbelievable.

When I think of "What could have been" there is always two names that come to mind. Basil Shabazz, and Kinko Logan. Logan ran three strait 80 yard TD sweeps against Tulsa Union Folks(and they new it was coming), that kid was the real deal too. To be honest i don't believe there was that much difference in raw talent between the two.

[intoxhog]

They don't even worship Earl Campbell or Billy Sims in Texas like you worship Shabaz and both of those men won The Heisman Trophy. You guys should look Shabaz up and make a movie about his greatness!

Maybe not here but they do at Texas and OU respectively. I tell you guys who i believe is the biggest "what could have been player, Marcus Dupree.

I know he didn't have any Arkansas ties but I would have loved to have watched him in the NFL had he kept his head on strait.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg2bHHY3d84

[IronHog]

Maybe not here but they do at Texas and OU respectively. I tell you guys who i believe is the biggest "what could have been player, Marcus Dupree.

I know he didn't have any Arkansas ties but I would have loved to have watched him in the NFL had he kept his head on strait.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg2bHHY3d84

1.  That dude was REALLY good

2.  I don't want to hear another word about how bad the SWC was.

[IronHog]

^this^

My question though is WTH has happend to Pine Bluff Football over the last 20 years? They used to have great athletes year in and year out. Now, rarely do they make any noise nor do they produse any 4 to 5 star athletes.

Things are far different at Pine Bluff High than in 1991.

After Coach Glover left Pine Bluff went through a serious decline.  They now have a new coach who is trying hard to get his athletes eligible and on the field.  If he sticks around I think you will see more college players coming from Pine Bluff.  The once powerful jr. high system has been allowed to decline and that will need to be addressed in some way.

However, Pine Bluff both as a town and school district is in serious decline so the long term prognosis is not good.  Pine Bluff always had a bad "rep" but it had a serious economic base and strong middle class.  That is now gone and Pine Bluff is fast becoming a small third world country.  Most of the kids left in the Pine Bluff district are those who either can't or simply do not care enough to move to a better situation.

[heavyhog]

Thanks for posting the video.  He played around the same time I did(I was at a much smaller school).  I remember watching the news every week just to see what he had done that night.  Great talent that never got to get out there.  You kids do your dang homework!

[MikeCapshaw]

Shabazz was the subject of our "Where are they now?" in the 2008 VYPE Arkansas Football Preview:

By Nate Olson
Basil Shabazz's freakish athleticism and four-sport prowess made national headlines in 1991. The Pine Bluff senior rushed for five touchdowns in the Zebras' state title win over Texarkana. It was the beginning of all-state honors in four different sports. College scholarships poured in and pro scouts and shoe company execs drooled. 
"I haven't seen an athlete dominate so many sports," said Carlos James, Shabazz's high school football teammate and head baseball coach at Arkansas-Monticello. "There have been other guys that have broken some his records and comparisons have been made, but there hasn't been all-around athlete like (Shabazz). That guy hasn't come through, yet."
Shabazz never made millions playing pro sports or ran in the Olympics, but he found fulfillment helping others and raising a family.
"I have no regrets," Shabazz said. "I played the hand I was dealt. I did the best I could in the situation I was in. I'm not blaming anyone, but there were reasons I didn't make it."
Shabazz split his early years between Little Rock and California before settling in Pine Bluff. It didn't take the 12-year-old long to get "Pine Bluff cut" (street smart). Drug dealers lurked and gang bangers patrolled the Plum Street neighborhood. According to Shabazz, he and his brothers, coped with poverty and no electricity while what little money the family had often went to pay his mother's gambling debts.
Sports became his refuge. He played pickup basketball and sand lot football with his friends James and future big-leaguer Torii Hunter. He even invented a form of street cross training, chasing rabbits on his dirt road.
"I caught a few of them," Shabazz said. "I figured out if I could get them to the asphalt they didn't have enough traction. When I ran the ball (in high school) I was known for how I changed directions so well. I developed that chasing rabbits."
He also swam laps but not in chlorine-filled pool.
"Behind Safeway the loading docks where the big trucks unloaded, there would sometimes be six feet of water there," he said. "That helped with my endurance."
Shabazz dunked a basketball by the sixth grade. But it wasn't until he took the field with the Falcons pee-wee football team he knew he had a special ability. After the third game "people realized I was a different breed than the other kids. It made me work harder," Shabazz said.
Shabazz earned all-state honors in football, started on the basketball team and scorched the track. His 4x100-meter team set a record (40.9 seconds that still stands). Recruiting letters from football powers flowed in, setting the stage for a tumultuous senior year.
However, college athletics were not an option because Shabazz was unable to score the required 17 on the ACT.
Football did open a door, though. Legendary late Zebra baseball coach Billy Bock also assisted with the football team. Before the 1990 title game, he promised if Shabazz scored four touchdowns, he could play baseball that spring. Bock ran a tight ship, and didn't want players that didn't start the program as sophomores. Shabazz opted to run track. He took Bock's challenge and ran for five touchdowns in a 33-13 romp over Texarkana.
"(Bock) said, 'I'll have a jersey waiting for you. That was the most amazing thing I have ever seen,'" Shabazz said.
Shabazz only played half his senior baseball season but hit .351. That was good enough for the Cardinals to draft him in the third round and offer a $150,000 signing bonus. However, Shabazz's career hit a tailspin. He and Hunter were arrested on a visit to the University of Central Arkansas.  Hunter had visited a dorm room, while Shabazz rested in the truck. Shabazz awoke to a thumping on the window. The police were outside of the truck with guns drawn.
Police searched the truck and found a "beat up" marijuana cigarette under the back seat and Shabazz's registered handgun.
"They said, 'Look what we have here,' when they found the joint," Shabazz said. "When they called it in on the radio they said, 'Basil Shabazz of the St. Louis Cardinals and Torii Hutner of the Minnesota Twins.'" Shabazz said.
The friends spent then night in jail and faced misdemeanor drug charges and Shabazz dealt with a charge of possession of a weapon on a college campus. All charges were later dropped. The Twins stuck by Hunter, but the Cardinals released Shabazz.
"That ruined my career," Shabazz said. "(The Cardinals) didn't even wait to see if I was innocent. I wasn't even charged, and my career was over."
Milwaukee signed Shabazz, and he played in AA El Paso before his release after that season. Later in the year Nasa, 25, was mysteriously murdered in New Orleans while at a nightclub with acquaintances.
Shabazz had one last hope. He enrolled at Arkansas-Pine Bluff and played during the 1996 and 1997 seasons. UAPB had a starting tailback in Ray Neely, relegating Shabazz to cornerback. His college football career ended when he broke bones in his neck covering a kickoff against Southern.
But his experience at UAPB rewarded him in another way.  Shabazz met the love of his life, Reca, an all-American track athlete. In 1998, the two decided to head for Reca's native Texas to avoid potential pitfalls in Pine Bluff.
"I knew I had to find a job, but there wasn't any money in Pine Bluff," Shabazz said. "I had to leave."
Shabazz's career began to take a different path, one that inspired him to help others. He worked with troubled boys for two years in Waco and volunteered with the Special Olympics. Later, he worked at a home for mentally disabled adults. He attended culinary arts school for two years.  He now teaches private lessons at a Dallas-area baseball academy and coaches Hunter's traveling team that features 13-year-old, Torii Hunter, Jr.
"He is a good coach," Hunter said. "They go all over the country and win tournaments. He also tells (the players) about where we came from and what we went through. They really listen and can learn from us."
Shabazz and Reca were married in 1999 and have three children, a daughter, Brazil, 9, and two sons, Degrate, 8, and Isaiah, 5. Shabazz became a born-again Christian three years ago and helps teach Sunday school.
"I'm blessed," he said. "I want to be God-like, and I want to center everything around my kids and my family. I didn't have that. Being a dad is important to me."
"I'm proud of him," Hunter said. "I played football and baseball with guys that are dead or in prison. He could have sold drugs and been on the streets. He moved away, and he has made a better life for his kids. That's what I have done with my kids, but I take them back to Pine Bluff to show them what it was like. I am so proud of (Shabazz), anything I get I want to share it with him - just like I do with my five brothers. He is just like one of them."
Seventeen years after he ran his last high school track meet, Arkansas sports fans still buzz about Shabazz. A thread on a Razorback message board this spring proves his legend is alive and well. Anyone that saw him play can't forget him, and future Natural State athletes are measured by his greatness.
"When I was at the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, I saw these guys that broke records and did this and that. (Shabazz) should be in there," said Hunter, who was inducted in February. "He was football all-American, a great basketball player, set track records and played minor league baseball. That's pretty impressive."

[old hog]

Thank you, Mike. +1 to ya on a very good writeup. Chased and caught rabbits?? I see why players had such a hard time catching him.

[DeltaBoy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cyLBt_dvEM

just found it on youtube!!!!

As Elmer Keith used to write as his by line " HELL I WAS THERE!"

[Amityvillehogger]

Video was removed. Anyone found another?

[IronHog]

Video was removed. Anyone found another?

stchane put it up.

Youtube shut his videos down.

[DeltaBoy]

Boo Hiss Basil was Bad to the Bone in HS   I had Mike Cherry and several AHS guys in my group at Super Summer Arkansas the summer before that game. 

[lonehog]

?

[Jeff "hogfanintx" Anderson]

Would you guys get over it. I have never heard the amount of crap over a guy that couldn't qualify. What do you think he is doing today?

Couldn't qualify?  Hell Earl Campbell still can't read and the horns found a way to keep him on the field.

[Jeff "hogfanintx" Anderson]

video gone that blows.

[Ahog4life]

Hopefully he has some kids that are getting college age. I mean the genes are there from both sides.

[Johnny America]

Did you not watch the video?


That's not Dyer running into a mob of slow small kids and busting out the other side for 80 or DMac tearing up a bunch of 5-9 kids at Oak Grove.


Texarkana that year had one of the best D's in Arkansas HS history and look like a small college team.  Shabazz rips them up like they are nothing.

In defense of those 5'9 kids that Dmac played, he really did not tear them up. haha

[Johnny America]

Would you guys get over it. I have never heard the amount of crap over a guy that couldn't qualify. What do you think he is doing today?

I can not believe the lack of respect that you are showing for a guy that was really really good in high school athletics 20 years ago...

[IronHog]

In defense of those 5'9 kids that Dmac played, he really did not tear them up. haha

Dmac got his 10-15 carries in, the game was over for the most part, and he'd make a few dominate plays from safety.


The best of the best have low carries totals in HS.

[Johnny America]

Dmac got his 10-15 carries in, the game was over for the most part, and he'd make a few dominate plays from safety.


The best of the best have low carries totals in HS.

Then his team just ran over everyone since he was the best of the best? I was only able to watch him once. It was against Alma and he was a nonfactor.

[IronHog]

Then his team just ran over everyone since he was the best of the best? I was only able to watch him once. It was against Alma and he was a nonfactor.

Pretty much.

McFadden would normally carry a few times and he'd be done running the ball.  Check his stats vs. Dyer who has a ton of miles on the tires.

[DeltaBoy]

Neither one could carry Shabazz's waterbottle.

[Johnny America]

Neither one could carry Shabazz's waterbottle.

Dmac could pay someone to carry it for Shabazz though...

[IronHog]

Neither one could carry Shabazz's waterbottle.

Man for man McFadden would have nocked Shabazz into next week.

Shabazz was 10-15 years ahead of his time.  There are kids like him all over nowadays.

[kingoftherapids]

Man for man McFadden would have nocked Shabazz into next week.

Shabazz was 10-15 years ahead of his time.  There are kids like him all over nowadays.

no, no, no, no i graduated in 05 and played against mcfadden. he was a great great high school player but he was an even better player in college. shabazz did things that mcfadden couldnt do. ie miss all of the calls at the meet of champs 200 then run across the field with sweats on when the runners are down in the starting blocks. no warming up or anything except running across the field while throwing his sweats off. he then breaks the 200 meter record.

[IronHog]

no, no, no, no i graduated in 05 and played against mcfadden. he was a great great high school player but he was an even better player in college. shabazz did things that mcfadden couldnt do. ie miss all of the calls at the meet of champs 200 then run across the field with sweats on when the runners are down in the starting blocks. no warming up or anything except running across the field while throwing his sweats off. he then breaks the 200 meter record.

McFadden was as scary at safety as Shabazz was at RB.


You've got to remember Shabazz played at around 6' 190lbs.

[DeltaBoy]

McFadden was as scary at safety as Shabazz was at RB.


You've got to remember Shabazz played at around 6' 190lbs.

And was as elusive as a greased pig.

[pipehog]

Shabazz played at safety as well. I seen him light up a 270 lb Springdale TE

[IronHog]

Shabazz played at safety as well. I seen him light up a 270 lb Springdale TE

Shabazz wasn't the defender that McFadden was.


I'll always claim Nutt wasted the greatest safety prospect in recent history.  I don't care how well he did running the ball.......

[Kadub31]

I was looking for some old Pine Bluff High info and crossed this....

For those who were able to see a chunk of the better part of Arkansas sports (80-98') some of the finiest athletes and teams were on display....
Playing sports in Texas and Arkansas growing up I got the chance to see some great athletes.....but hands down, the greatest athlete I've ever had the chance to watch and play with was BASIL SHABAZZ (Pine Bluff High, Zebras)....

Eric Mitchell was great in football (hands down and even proved how great he was when he got on the field at Oklahoma) but Basil was a freak of nature that only a few got to witness.....

Football, Basketball, Baseball and Track.....if but for a little more focus in the class room I am certain he would have been at a minimum spectacular in college and really good in the Pros.....

And yes he is in Waco, TX these days making a difference working with the youth there....trying to keep them from making the same mistakes he did....

[DeltaBoy]

BASIL and Veron Hicks were the best I saw running the rock.

And please someone get that game back on YouTube

[XX]

BASIL and Veron Hicks were the best I saw running the rock.

And please someone get that game back on YouTube

[BigSexyHog]

He is/was the best ever.... No doubt in my mind.

[Hog_Fink]

he deserves a 30 for 30 i feel like.

[DeltaBoy]

Yes he needs a 30-30 for sure.

[kingoftherapids]

who has vid of shabazz?

[Danny J]

He is/was the best ever.... No doubt in my mind.

[MRPRFCT]

He was the best track athlete I've ever seen, but not the best football player I've ever seen.

[Albert Einswine]

1.  That dude was REALLY good

2.  I don't want to hear another word about how bad the SWC was.

Just now seeing this thread and that video nearly 4 years after the fact.  I don't see how a video filled with Big 8 highlights and 1 play where Dupree runs wild on Texas validates the quality of the SWC.

[Ethan2010]

Does anyone have the video?  I've never seen it but all people do is talk about it.

[kingoftherapids]

it was  on youtube a couple of years ago but has since been taken down