Something will happen at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2025 induction banquet Saturday night that may never have happened before. That is, a player and one of his coaches will be inducted, together, on the same night.

That’s right: Former Ole Miss football hero Dexter McCluster will be inducted, along with former Southern Miss football hero Derrick Nix, who was McCluster’s position coach in Oxford.

Said Nix, “When I found out I was going into the hall of fame with Dexter, I thought to myself that this can’t be anything but a God thing. … Dexter is one of my favorites. Going in with Dexter is a privilege and an honor.”

Most fans will know that Nix and McCluster are two of the most productive backs in Mississippi football history. What many might not know is that they had two of the biggest hearts. With both, you got the best they had to give every Saturday. And both had to overcome very different obstacles to become the Hall of Famers they are.

You should also know this: They are a two-man mutual admiration society. McCluster calls Nix one of “my favorite ever coaches because of the way he loved and respected the game. He coached with so much energy and passion. He was always going to put you in a position to be the best player you could be.”

Says Nix of McCluster, “He might have been a little guy, but he had a heart as big as Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.”

Nix, despite severe health issues, ran for 3,584 yards and 30 touchdowns over approximately three full seasons at Southern Miss at the turn of the century. McCluster, often the tiniest man on the field, produced 3,698 yards and 22 touchdowns running and receiving over four seasons (2006-2009) at Ole Miss.

They were two starkly different backs. At 220 sculpted pounds, Nix was a big, strapping, powerful runner who could run over you or around you. McCluster was a scatback who played much of his Rebel career at just under 160 pounds. I remember the late Carl Torbush, then the defensive coordinator at Mississippi State, talking about McCluster after the 2009 Egg Bowl: “He’s the fastest man I’ve ever seen in a football suit. There may be faster runners on a track, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a faster man in pads. If he gets a step on you he’s gone.” 

McCluster went on to play seven years in the NFL, making the Pro Bowl in 2013. Nix never got that chance, although had he been healthy, he surely would have been an NFL star.

Said Dan Rooney, a Pittsburgh Steelers personnel director and longtime executive: “Derrick Nix had it all. He reminded me a lot of Deuce McAllister. He had a gliding style, but he also had great running ability. He could break tackles with power, but he also had good enough feet that he could be elusive in open space. And once he broke loose, he could finish a run. He was a can’t-miss prospect, the kind any NFL team would love to have.”

Nix, one of the most highly recruited players in USM history, surpassed 1,000 yards rushing in both his freshmen and sophomore seasons before severe kidney problems stopped him as a junior in 2000. With Nix, USM won five of its first six games, losing only a 19-17 heartbreaker to Tennessee and beating both Alabama and Oklahoma State by three touchdowns. Without Nix, the Golden Eagles lost three of their last five.

But then, after sitting out the entire 2001 season, Nix came back to rush for 1,194 yards as a senior, including a 202-yard effort against defending Big 10 champion Illinois. In that one, he ran for a 50-yard touchdown and then collapsed in the end zone, throwing up from exhaustion. Turns out, he had been playing with about 10% of his normal kidney function. Nix received a kidney transplant from an older brother shortly after that season and remains healthy and robust at 45. He just never could play football again.

“Sometimes, I wonder what would I could have done if I had remained healthy,” said Nix, now the offensive coordinator at Auburn after 16 years in Oxford. “You can’t help but wonder, but I can’t complain about the way things turned out.”

This will tell you something about Nix: McCluster never knew that about his coach until interviewed for this piece.

“I knew he had been a great player but he never talked about it,” McCluster said. “I never knew about the kidneys, the illness and all that, but that just shows how much he loves football and how much the game meant to him. I do know that much. I knew that the first time I met with him.”

McCluster now lives in Brentwood, Tennessee, where he works as a personal trainer and part-time high school football coach. “My real job is I’m a girl dad. We have five beautiful daughters,” McCluster says.

Nix is a girl dad himself with one daughter he dotes on.

Both men call this Saturday’s induction a career highlight, made all the more special because they will experience it together.