D.D. Lewis: 'What's the fuss?'

D.D. Lewis, one of the greatest players in Misissippi State football history, laughs when asked his favorite Egg Bowl memory.
Says D.D., “I don’t really have one.”
“We played ’em three times, lost to ’em three times,” D.D. says. “You want to know what I remember about Ole Miss. Here’s what I remember: They all had big ol’ legs, big ol’ shoulders and small waists. They were fast and they were good. They reminded me of LSU. They were really, really good.”
So was D.D. Lewis. Lewis, you should know, might have been the best player ever on some of the worst teams in college football history. He played linebacker and sometimes it seemed he made every tackle.
“The best linebacker in America,” Bear Bryant said of D.D. Lewis.
But in his three games against Ole Miss, his team never crossed the goal line. In his three varsity seasons at State, the Bulldogs won seven games. They were 1-9 his senior year and Lewis made first team All-American.
“We almost got ’em my senior year,” D.D. says.
That was 1967. Ole Miss won 10-3. “Tackle by D.D. Lewis,” the Scott Field announcer droned all day.
“You know what’s funny,” D.D. says. “the Ole Miss game was never that big a deal to me, no bigger than any other game. I was from Knoxville, so I didn’t grow up on the rivalry. I would have been much more excited about playing Tennessee. I just couldn’t work up a good hate for Ole Miss.”
D.D. Lewis, a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, won the admiration of football fans everywhere, even Ole Miss fans.
Lewis was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001. Archie Manning, an Ole Miss man, was one of the Hall of Famers who championed Lewis’s cause.