John Flowers was a tackling machine from 1973-76

MARION, Ill. — Sitting at a Krispy Kreme on a hot summer morning in southern Illinois, John Flowers’ voice is filled with excitement. He’s come up from Memphis to reconnect with some old friends at a golf outing. It’s been nearly 50 years since he played football at SIU, but the memories of his career as a Saluki come pouring out rapid-fire.

Flowers was a tackling machine for Southern from 1973-76. If not for the fact that all defensive stats from his sophomore season were lost, his career mark of 208 tackles would be much higher. Not included in that total is his record-setting 19-tackle performance at Central Michigan in 1974.

Here’s the story of a small-town kid who left farming to play football at Southern and went on to have not just an amazing on-field career, but a highly successful coaching and administrative career afterward. It’s a story of resiliency, self-confidence and determination.

John Flowers

How did you end up at SIU from Fillmore, Illinois, population currently 298?

I was a farm boy. My dad was a Baptist preacher, but he got paid $8 a month to preach at the Baptist Church. We made our living farming. It was the spring of my junior year and we'd had a frost and the last chore I had to do that day was milk that stupid cow. Every morning, I felt like I was in the Olympics for milking. I got my hat on backwards and I'm sitting in that stool, that bucket of milk had steam rolling out. I'm squeezing like crazy, and I guess I squeezed too hard because she hit me with her tail with all that manure in it right between my hat and my coat. I hit her in the gut as hard as I could, and she stuck her foot in the bucket and got me with two and a half gallons of milk. And so that was when I decided I'm going to college somewhere. I'm going to play football, and I'm going to do something other than farming.

I had a visit-offer to Colorado State, which was way too far from home. And I went on the trip to Monmouth, and the coach met with me and he said, “we don't play freshman ever.” I said, “well, I ain't coming here. I'm going play.” When (SIU’s) Bill Dodd called and said he wanted me to come down and visit, man, I was so excited. It was two and a half hours from my house, and I'd be close to my girlfriend, my high school sweetheart, who I'm still married to. I came down, met with Dick Towers, and he told me however good they thought I was, is whether or not I would get a scholarship.

What was your first training camp like?

I'm not absolutely sure of how many freshmen were there, but there was over 100. We had three halls filled in Snyder Hall. I remember the first night I didn't sleep all night because people were sliding suitcases down the hallway. We practiced three times a day. Forty people left the first day. Forty more left after the second day. And I was one of 15 or so that made it. It was not easy.

You started your career as a linebacker, moved to safety and then ended up at defensive end?

I ate like crazy, but I couldn't gain weight. My summer job was welding, and it was 120 degrees in that place every day, and we didn't really have a true weight program then. And so I worked on the farm and worked in a welding shop. And I did play as a freshman at safety. We played a JV game at Purdue and I had two tackles on kickoff. The next week was my first varsity game at Oklahoma State and I made two tackles on kickoffs in that game. So that's how I started on special teams. My sophomore year, I was the starting safety.

Your media guide bio says “likes to hit and enjoys an aggressive game.” You set the school record for tackles in a game with 19 at Central Michigan in 1974. What do you remember about that game and was that description of you accurate?

Rey Dempsey said when John Flowers hit you, you got hit, and you stayed hit. And I enjoyed hitting. I love the physical aspect of football, and as a safety, I didn't get to hit anybody every time. But as a defensive end, I hit somebody every time.

At Central Michigan, it was minus-12 wind chill. It was freezing. But yeah, I had 19 tackles in that game, and I think I had an interception. So Doug Weaver decided that since I'm making a lot of tackles, let's move him up the line of scrimmage so he can make them sooner. So that's how I got moved. He told me I had a choice, because we ran the wishbone. He said, "I'm either gonna move you to quarterback or a defensive end.” And I said, "Well, I can’t do quarterback, and I'd rather be on defense.”

Rich Solomon was my position coach and he taught me the cha cha, and everybody looks at me just like you did. Cha, cha, cha. Those are the steps that he taught us to play defensive end and not to get knocked off the line of scrimmage and to play with leverage. Just three short steps, cha cha, you use your hands and forearms, always keep your outside free and never let them get the corner. You got the quarterback until they pitch it to the running back, and then you gotta race to the sideline. I could handle that. No problem. I was six-foot in my junior year about 198 pounds. I'm against a lot of guys a lot bigger than I was.

What was it like playing for the legendary Rey Dempsey and winning seven games your senior year in 1976?

They fired Doug Weaver and Rey came in and put the fear of God in everybody, literally. I'll never forget that first meeting. Everybody was kind of sitting in there, kicked back in the auditorium. Doug introduced him, and Rey said, “you can leave now." He kicked Doug out of the room.

I can't tell you what he told us. You talk about a football team setting up in their chairs. This ain't gonna be easy, boys. We're gonna be like our freshman year again. They're gonna kill us. In the spring, they told me I had a separated shoulder, and Rey said, “I thought I could count on you to be my team leader.” I went and told Doc (Spackman), “wrap it up, I'm practicing. I'll show him.”

I wanted to win. I was sick and tired of losing. And we had some great guys that were sick and tired of losing — Tommy Ippolito and Rodney Sherrill and Carlton Spain, Joe Hosman and Matt Bailey. I mean, on defense, we just said, that's it. No more.

We went to Drake and I remember walking in to Rey's office, which nobody just walked in Rey's office, and I said, “coach, mark it down. We are winning this weekend.” I turned around and walked out. We went up there and whipped their tails. We were so excited, man, and it just turned into a bunch of fun. The Northern Illinois game, we won that game 54 to nothing after we got killed by them the year before. Andre (Herrera) got UPI Back of the Week for breaking Mercury Morris’ rushing record. I was nominated for defensive linemen of the week. A guy from Notre Dame got it.

We were going to have a winning season, and I remember going into Marshall, landing there and seeing that plaque on the wall, where the plane had crashed six years earlier. We were 6-4 at that time, and I'll never forget what Rey said. He said, "Man, 7-4 sounds a lot better than 6-5.” We just wore them out. And it was such a relief. I literally kissed the ground when I got home.

How did you get into coaching after SIU?

I had an opportunity to go play in the NFL and know in my heart I would have made it, just like I made this team, but I was so in love, and I wanted to start teaching and coaching. And so that's what I did. Got married and went to Lincoln High School, coached football, basketball and track for six years, the last two as head coach. In 1985, I lost my job at Lincoln. They cut seven teachers, and without seniority, I lost my job.

So I called Rey, who was at Memphis, looking for a job. He said, "I'm not going to hire you on my football staff." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Cause you don't know the inside and outside of football yet." He said, "I'm gonna hire you as my administrative assistant, director of football operations.” And so we took the job and this was Rey's second year in Memphis. And I went down in July, and we got fired the day before Thanksgiving.

You were able to stay at Memphis with the new staff, though.

Yes. They hired Charlie Bailey on December 24th. We had gone back to Lincoln, Illinois to visit friends, and I get a phone call to come back and interview with Charlie. Rey had told me to write down everything that I did, what my responsibilities were with football. I typed it single spaced, and it was a page and a half. Charlie said, “You do all that? What's anybody else do?" He asked me, “can you get me a tuxedo?" I said, "What size you wear? We'll pick it up on the way to the hotel where you're staying." He said, “my boy's car just blew up in Florida. I need to rent a car." I said, "How old is he?" He said, "He's 17.” I said, "I'll call a guy at Avis, see what we can get done." We got him a car.

How did you get into facility management at Memphis?

I'd been there for a long time. I had been with four different head coaches, and then we hired Tommy West, and that kind of led into the next phase of my career at Memphis because Tommy said, "We're gonna have to improve our facilities if we're ever going to continue to win. You call all your operations guys. Find out how many practice fields they've got, how many strength coaches they got, how many academic people they got, what kind of a nutritional program do they have. I got all the information from all of them, and I put it together, and we were second from the bottom.

Ultimately, Tommy got fired and they hired Larry Porter, and we weren’t on the same page with what my role would be, so I stepped aside. That was 25 years in football.

John Flowers with wife, LuAnn, has a brick outside Saluki Stadium

How did you end up staying at Memphis as a facility management specialist?

This was 2009 and I was 50 years old. My family had grown up there, and to be honest with you, I wanted to stay. I met so many people there that were good people. Bill Lofton, the associate athletic director, set me up with an interview with Jim Hellums, the vice president of facilities. So I went over to the physical plant and Jim said, “The physical plant hates athletics. Athletics hates the physical plant. You're going to be the go-between.” So for short period of time, I oversaw all the things that needed to be done, whether it was windows, doors, roofs, leaks, or whatever it was. Well, a lot of the things, growing up on the farm, I knew how to do. I carried a tool box with me. And if it was bigger than that, if I needed the carpenter shop, I needed a plumbing shop, electrical shop, I got to know all those guys. I'd go have coffee with them every morning, and so, I felt a great relationship with all those people, and it worked out great.

Well, they did some cutbacks again and they cut Athletics and I got fired again. This is a sixth time I lost my job. But they didn't want me to be gone because they found out that I was pretty valuable. So they created a position in the planning and design department, and I became the facility management specialist. Well, my very first project was to build a weight room for football. And we got that done. And that turned into a renovation for girls' basketball and volleyball. In the basement of the field house where Elvis Presley played racquetball, I tore his racquetball courts out and made a weight room, and re-did all of women's basketball and volleyball and spent $6 million. The architect got an award for the design. It was first class. They needed a new soccer field, and so we built a new soccer field inside their brand new track. Then they started a basketball facility that was 58,000 square feet. And while they were doing that, they started a parking garage. Then we started on football. I built the new offices on south campus, two-story building with Hall of Fame and memorabilia, meeting rooms upstairs, all new offices, and I put an indoor facility attached to the offices where you can see into the indoor facilities, a recruiting lounge. I either renovated or built every athletics facility that touched the Memphis campus. I spent $250 million in 10 years doing that, and then I retired.

You have stayed active in your support of your alma mater. You came back this summer to play in a golf outing. Why is it important to you to stay involved with SIU and Saluki Football?

Well, I'm a Dawg. I mean, I'll always be a Dawg. I may spend 35 years as a Tiger and always talked about how I got blue blood, but I'm wearing maroon today. I'll always be a Dawg. There's a place in my heart for Southern Illinois. I grew up in Illinois. I still talk to my teammates a lot. And I just I love my teammates, and we all start texting sometimes. It gets a little wild. I brought a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this place.