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Saturday, September 1, 2007
Hogs Banked On Rutledge
Western Arkansas, AR
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Thousands of Arkansas high school football players dream about being summoned to practice and then play on the field with 60,000 rabid fans calling the Hogs.
It happened to John Rutledge and forever ensured his place in Arkansas football lore.
Graduating from Searcy High, Rutledge was encouraged to walk-on as a quarterback at the University of Arkansas by then-quarterbacks coach Joe Ferguson. Of course, the life-long Razorbacks fan did, holding his own against highly-recruited All-Americans and others in the recruiting class of 1997.
Rutledge redshirted that first year, played a little on defense in 1998 and then did some special teams work in 1999. At the end of 1999, Rutledge found himself among eight quarterbacks on the depth chart and started hungering for life outside of football. That’s when he left the team.
“I found out what a social life was, found out there was such a thing as a Christmas break and began enjoying being a college student and playing intramural sports,” Rutledge said.
The following fall, Rutledge attended football games, hung out with all his friends who were on the team and was quarterbacking a pretty fair flag football intramural team while the Razorbacks quarterback crew had dwindled to three.
Then the injuries hit. Robby Hampton went down with a dislocated shoulder, Jared McBride was knocked out with an anterior cruciate ligament injury and Zak Clark suffered a high ankle sprain.
Monday night before the Ole Miss game, Rutledge’s phone rang at 11 p.m., asking if he could come and meet with Coaches Ferguson and Houston Nutt the following morning. He met with them after class at 11 a.m. Tuesday and was in uniform, on the field taking snaps and running the first-team offense by that afternoon.
“Coach Ferguson and Coach Nutt told me I might not get a game snap — in fact they hoped I wouldn’t — but they needed me to get ready in case,” Rutledge remembers. “Well, Zak started and it wasn’t long before they rolled his ankle on a tackle and Coach Nutt looks at me and says, “3rd and 11 — Get in there and make the conversion.’
“So I went in, looked around in the huddle and saw all my old friends from the last four years and we converted the third down on a sideline pass. Eventually we went down and scored and then Zak came back in after he had been re-taped.
“In the end, Deuce McAllister was too much and we lost.
Rutledge also saw action the following weeks against Tennessee and Mississippi State and stayed with the squad all the way through the Las Vegas Bowl.
“When the regular season was finished, I was in Coach Ferguson’s office when Coach Nutt came in and told me he wanted me to go with the team to the Las Vegas Bowl. He asked what I was going to do after I graduated and I told him I was going to work a little bit and then come back for graduate school. He told me that when I did, to let him know and the tuition for my MBA would be paid.
‘It’s our way of thanking you for helping us, and you can consider it the scholarship you never had,’ he told me, and when I went back, he was true to his word.”
Nowadays, Rutledge is a vice president with First Security Bank and recently moved from Springdale to Little Rock. He’s married to former Lady Razorback golfer Melissa Murray and he’s the face on many of the First Security Bank television commercials.
Razorbacks fans might not recognize the face — but they will always know John Rutledge as the quarterback who was summoned from the intramural field to do what he could to help his fellow teammates when needed.
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