Man, 61, is college football player
A 61-year-old college junior in Alabama said he will become the oldest man to play football with a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics team.
Alan Moore (who will turn 62 in February) said he left school in 1968 to fight in Vietnam and he decided to return to college and try out for football after he recently watched his old team, Jones Community College in Mississippi, play – The Birmingham (Ala.) News reported Friday.
Moore said he found a new school, and a football team, at Holmes Community College, also in Mississippi, and he learned after his sophomore year that he was eligible to play in the NAIA.
Moore transferred to Faulker University in Montgomery, Ala., and he will take to the field as a place kicker for the team when the season starts Sept. 10.
“Faulkner has been – I can’t even explain it – they’ve embraced the whole thing” – Moore said. “You look at it, it’s like, from what I’m told, I’m the oldest person to play. To bring that to Faulkner, doesn’t take just me. It takes coaches (and) the institution.”
Alan Moore.
On Saturday, Moore, affectionately referred to as ‘Pops’ by his Faulkner University teammates, will get his first chance to kick in public for the small Christian school during a squad scrimmage in Montgomery. Four of his five grandchildren will be there to watch.
“I came back to play football” – he told Reuters. “I know I can do it.”
Back in his glory year of 1968, Moore kicked for a national title for Holmes Community College in Goodman, Mississippi. He had taken up the position in high school, thrilling his mother by kicking an extra point. The late Agnes Moore called it “the prettiest play she had ever seen.”
“My momma wanted me to kick a football” – he said.
But Moore’s football career ended early in 1969 with the Vietnam War draft looming over his head. He and a buddy joined the Army thinking they could choose where they served.
Instead, he spent 10 months in a bunker, and his buddy was shot and paralyzed. Moore came home to work and raise a family, with college by then a distant dream.
He started practicing football again after he was laid off in 2009.
“When I walked into Dick’s Sporting Goods store, it was the first football I had touched in 40 years” – Moore said.
While his contemporaries laughed, he gained enough skill to receive interest from three colleges – he said. He chose Faulkner, which gave him a small football scholarship, because “they made me feel like family.” The school has 830 undergraduates in Montgomery as well as a law school and adult students, according to its website.
It wasn’t really the football career Moore said he was looking to finish. Instead, he decided to return to college and the game to inspire young people to never give up.
“It is not about me, it is about we, and I know I can motivate kids” – said Moore, who is taking 12 hours of courses and living in a dormitory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWybEXCmzsM
Some dreams never die, no matter at what age they’re achieved. That holds especially true with one collegiate football player. He’s the oldest man ever to play in his level of college football, and he plays at Faulkner University.
When Alan Moore’s teammates were in diapers, he was serving our country in Vietnam.
When they learned to drive, Moore was learning how to be a grandfather.
Justin Tew is the youngest player on Faulkner’s football team. He says: “I’ve never played with someone quite that old. I don’t even think I’ve had a coach that old.”
But, this year on the football squad, age is just a number.
Head coach, Gregg Baker, says: “Alan came to us in the spring and told us his story, getting out here and showing these kids there is no reason to give up on your dreams and get an education, and that’s what sold me on the whole deal…who am I to stand in the way of a guy’s dream?”
The 61-year old field goal kicker may have an old school style. But to the Eagles, he’s just one of the guys!
Alan Moore says: “I don’t have to run sprints or do all the exercising things they do, but i think they’re keeping up with me pretty good!”
On the field Moore is living his dream, but it’s not just all about football – he’s also serving as a role model, and most importantly he’s getting his education.
“I can go and try to influence these kids here to not give up on their education like I did. The more we educate the less we incarcerate” – Moore tells us.