It’s quickly approaching 40 years now since Chucky Mullins first made his mark on the football world, but thanks to a group of Russellville Middle School students, his legacy is still being shared.
Mullins was a Russellville football legend, helping lead the Golden Tigers to the 1987 state championship game, before signing to play for the Ole Miss Rebels.
Well on his way to becoming a household name in the SEC, Mullins was paralyzed in the Rebels’ 1989 game against Vanderbilt. He became known across the country over the next year and half as he faced his injuries with the same passion and grace that defined his life.
Sadly, Mullins passed away in 1991, leaving a void in many lives across the nation, particularly here in Russellville.
His story has been told many times through the years, but now, a new generation of Russellville students are sharing the message about one of the Golden Tiger greats.
Alana Parker, an English/Language Arts teacher at RMS, and the school’s library media specialist, Lauren Archer, are student fellow teacher leads for the school’s Ed Farm program. Ed Farm is a Birmingham-based organization that works with school systems to help close digital skills gaps. This semester the students were tasked with creating a student-led podcast.
“We asked the students to brainstorm and think about something that they were interested in and passionate about,” Parker said. “Of course, it was sports related. So we asked them
to narrow it down and find something that was important to Russellville. Chucky was the perfect topic to discuss.”
The students conducted interviews with people who knew and loved Chucky Mullins, including former Russellville coaching great Don Cox. One of the students involved, Porter Bragwell, is the grandson of former longtime Russellville assistant and head coach Ted Ikerd, who was on Cox’s staff while Mullins played for the Golden Tigers.
“It became personal to the students,” Parker said. “The more they learned about Chucky and his importance to Russellville, you could really see the students’ interest grow.”
The title of the podcast, “The Golden Playbook,” took on special meaning as well as the students looked into people who built the Russellville tradition. Archer said 24 students take part in the program, which includes an audio team, content, marketing, podcasters, and project managers.
“The students really put in a lot of work and learn a lot of various roles,” Archer said. “The class changes each semester but we hope we are able to keep the podcast going.” The students will be competing against schools from Montgomery and Birmingham to see who receives the most listeners between now and April 29. “It is exciting to be competing against schools in larger areas,” Archer said. “We believe our students have done a tremendous job and the podcast turned out really well, so we hope the community goes online to listen to it and help these students win the competition part of it.” You can check out the podcast on several platforms, including:
thehuddlepodcast.podbean.com
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thehuddlepodcasts-podcast/id1802215375 open.spotify.com/show/2x0Pfu2bM9stcHH9dg5Keq
music.amazon.com/podcasts/8ac98b4c-7164-44f0-8202-9f38c52ef050/thethehuddlepodcast’s-podcast
