Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 1976
Hackney played football on some of Murray’s greatest teams in the late 1940’s. Turner is perhaps the best track athlete ever to perform in the Ohio Valley Conference. Hodges coached basketball from 1948-1954.
Hackney, who grew up in Hopkinsville and played high school football at Hopkinsville High School, was named to the All-Ohio Valley Conference teams of 1948 and 1949. During his sophomore season, 1947, before the OVC began operation, he was named to the All-Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference team. Murray was OVC champion in 1948 and played in the Tangerine Bowl, tying Sul Ross College 21-21. The Racers were KIAC champions in 1947.
A rangy, 6-3, 195-pound defensive tackle, Hackney was described in the ’49 Racer Pressbook, as “without a doubt the toughest piece of humanity that ever put on a football uniform…to spot John on a field during a game, just look where the action is thickest – that big kid with the rolled-up sleeves, right in the middle of it, is Hackney.”
Hackney spent much of his playing time in opponents’ backfields and it was he who made the tackle in the end zone that gave Murray a 9-7 victory over Evansville in the brawling “Battle of Calloway County” in 1948 and sent Murray to the Tangerine Bowl. The 1948 team was 9-1-1, losing only to Eastern Kentucky 6-0. The 1947 team was 6-3. The 1946 Racers lost five of its first six games but won its last four, the final a 55-6 battering of Western Kentucky.
Hackney now lives in Paducah and works for the Atomic Energy Commission. (Murray State Alumnus, 1976)
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| Class of 1976 Left to Right: John Hackney, Harlan Hodges, and Tommy Turner |
