As an Ole Miss Rebel, he was the MVP of both the Gator and Sugar Bowls. As an NFL rookie, he intercepted eight passes and returned two for touchdowns. As a coach, he won two national championships and two Super Bowl rings. He played for coaching legends John Vaught and Paul Brown, coached with the legendary Tom Landry. He is a member of seven different halls of fame.

And all that doesn’t even begin to tell the story of Clarksdale native and Ole Miss great Bobby Ray Franklin, a gentleman and a winner, who died Wednesday in his adopted hometown of Senatobia. He was 88.

When writing the life story of Franklin, there’s just so much to cover. Where to begin? Let’s start with this: He was the son of a barber and was given the nickname “Waxie” because of all the butch wax he wore in his crew cut hair as a young man.

Says former Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat, an Ole Miss teammate of Franklin’s and a friend for more than six decades, “From the time we stepped onto the campus in August of 1956, Waxie was the best athlete on our football team. He was a terrific quarterback and defensive back, but he was so much more than that. He was fast, he was smart, he was funny. He could run it, pass it, kick it, punt it, catch it and tackle whoever had the ball. He was a leader. There was nothing Bobby Ray Franklin couldn’t do. And everything he did, he did first class.”

Franklin was funny, indeed. One example: The 1959 Ole Miss team was one of the greatest in college football history, out-scoring opponents 349-21 in 11 games. In a September game at Kentucky, Franklin, the Rebels quarterback, was running with the football toward the Rebels’ bench, when three Kentucky players slammed him at the sideline, across the bench and into a brick wall. Franklin went down hard and stayed down. “Frightening,” Khayat called it. Doc Knight, the Ole Miss trainer, raced toward Franklin, yelling “Waxie! Waxie! Are you OK, Waxie?” Finally, Franklin looked up, grinned and said, ”I’m fine, Doc, but how are my fans taking it?”

Knight doubled as the Ole Miss track and field coach, and Franklin was one of his sprinters. Once , at practice, Knight was at the finish line timing Franklin in the 100-yard dash. Franklin finished and Knight started yelling. “He just ran a 9.6 100-yard dash!” There was plenty reason for his excitement, because the world record at the time, held by a German, was 9.76 seconds. Turns out, unbeknownst to Knight, Waxie had moved up five yards from the starting line. He may still hold the world record in the 95-yard dash.

Back to that Kentucky game in 1959 and the injury: Franklin’s head was OK, but his left leg was not. He was stepped on with cleat marks on his left calf, resulting in a blood clot. Hospitalized for three weeks, he lost his starting quarterback job to the great Jake Gibbs, who was backed by Doug Elmore. Franklin played only sparingly for the remainder of the regular season, including the 7-3 defeat to LSU that ruined an otherwise perfect season. Healthy for the first time since September, Franklin came back for the Sugar Bowl rematch with LSU to complete 10 of 15 passes, two for touchdowns, in the 21-0 Ole Miss victory. Franklin was voted the game’s MVP, just as he had been in the 1958 Gator Bowl victory over Florida.

At 5 feet, 11 inches, Franklin was not a prime NFL prospect. The Cleveland Browns got him in the 11th round, and, boy, did they get a bargain. Franklin became an instant starter as a ball-hawking safety and kick returner. He also was the team’s backup punter and placekicker and held for the extra points and field goals of Browns kicking star Lou “The Toe” Groza, a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Franklin once told this sports writer, laughing: “I always told Lou he wouldn’t have been worth a damn without me as his holder.”

Franklin also had been the holder for Khayat’s kicks at Ole Miss. Said Khayat, “The thing was, Waxie was as good a kicker as I was. Great punter, too.”

Franklin retired as a player after seven seasons with the Browns and immediately joined Bud Carson’s coaching staff at Georgia Tech. Among his first recruits to Tech was Meridian’s Smylie Gebhart, who became an All American. Landry, the Hall of Fame coach of the Dallas Cowboys, hired Franklin away from Tech for a five-year run that included two Super Bowl victories. Franklin left Dallas to join Howard Schnellenberger’s staff in Baltimore, but that staff was fired after one season.

His career at a crossroads, Franklin joined his older brother in a private business in Mississippi. That lasted five years before Franklin went back to coaching. Ray Poole, a long-time friend and former Ole Miss coach, had taken the job as head coach at Northwest Community College in Senatobia and offered Franklin a job as offensive coordinator. This was 1979. A guy who had won an NFL championship as a player and two Super Bowl rings as a coach, was asked to be a junior college assistant coach. Franklin once told a sports writer, “I knew what people were thinking. What a comedown: from Super Bowls to junior college. Why would he do that? I didn’t care what people thought. I loved football. I wanted back.”

Two years later, he became the Northwest head coach. Two years after that, Franklin’s Northwest Rangers won the national junior college championship. Ten years after that, they would duplicate the feat. In 2004, Franklin retired having won 201 games, while losing only 57. Thirty-five of his players went on to play professionally.

Speaking by phone Thursday morning of his nearly life-long friend, Khayat said, “One of the most endearing things about Waxie is how emotional, how quick to cry, he was. He would even cry about happy things. When he went into the Coaches Hall of Fame, he started talking about his former players and coaches and he started crying, I mean, really sobbing. I didn’t know if he would even finish, and then he slapped himself in the face. I mean, slapped himself hard, and he said, ‘Come on, Franklin, stop being a crying fool.’ And then he was fine after that. Gave a great speech.”

When you know that about Franklin, it makes what follows all the more impressive. This was Aug. 7, 2007, in Canton, Ohio. Gene Hickerson, the great Ole Miss and Cleveland Browns lineman, was being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Hickerson, stricken with Alzheimer’s, was in a wheelchair and seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. Hickerson’s family had asked Franklin to be his presenter that night.

It remains one of the most poignant moments experienced in my nearly six decades of sports writing. Jim Brown, Leroy Kelly and Bobby Mitchell, the three Browns running backs Hickerson helped block into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, pushed Hickerson’s wheelchair onto the stage and Bobby Ray Franklin, at the podium, took a moment to gather himself. Then, he congratulated the other honorees, said what an honor it was to present his friend of 52 years, and continued: “Gene’s son, Bob Hickerson, called me and asked me if I would present Gene. The fact that Gene has been ill for the last several years, I was a little hesitant because being as close as we  were, it’s a tough thing for me to do, as you can see right here, today. I’ve got to make myself tough when I start talking about Gene…”

Franklin paused again, gathered himself again, and spoke thoughtfully and eloquently, saying what he imagined Hickerson would have said if he were capable of saying anything at all. And then he said this: “Gene finished his entire career as a member of the Cleveland Browns, a fact he was extremely proud of. He quietly did his job as well as anyone ever in NFL history. If not for the circumstances, I would be almost to the point of introducing my good friend to you. Gene would then step to the podium, tell you how thrilled he is to receive this honor today, and crack a joke or two.

“Unfortunately he won’t be doing that, as my friend will not be able to speak to you even though he is here, I love Gene Hickerson as if he were my brother. … Borrowing these words from another Hall of Famer, Gale Sayers, I would like to ask you all to love Gene Hickerson, too.”

Bobby Ray Franklin might have been the only person among thousands there that evening who did not cry. His speech was on-point, splendid even – as was his life.