Behind the title: Athletics Director Pete Boone

The world almost always sees public figures for one particular job or talent they have, but the question remains who these people really are. 

For Pete Boone, being the athletics director for the University of Mississippi puts him in the same light.  So, who is the Pete Boone we don’t hear about in the media?  What is he actually like? What does he do outside of his job as athletics director at Ole Miss?

As Boone sat at his desk wearing a red and blue striped tie to represent the university he loves, he openly talked about his childhood, his family, a novel he wrote and, yes, he talked about how he deals with the criticism from the Ole Miss faithful and the media.    

Boone grew up in the small town of Grenada, describing it as “your Andy Griffith sort of town.” He said his childhood was a pleasant time in his life.  Every day he walked to school, rode his bike a great deal of the time, walked downtown and on some Saturdays, would go to the movie theater.    

“It’d cost a dime to get in, and for a quarter you could get a Coke and one of those sour suckers,” Boone said. “Even in high school, you knew everybody; the sports were fun, you played every sport, and we had Grenada Lake where you’d go skiing. Summers were wonderful, really just kind of an ideal growing up experience.”

Boone’s childhood hero was Jake Gibbs, the All-American quarterback who led the Rebels to two National Championships victories in 1959 and 1960 and also played catcher for the New York Yankees.  Gibbs also happens to be Boone’s second cousin.

At 19, Boone married his high school sweetheart Scottye Howard on Independence Day.  They have two sons, Taylor and Lexie, who are now both married, and they have two granddaughters.

Boone played center for the Ole Miss football team in the early ‘70s. He described his playing days under legendary football coach John Howard “Johnny” Vaught and the tremendous respect he had for him.

“I remember the first day he called my name. I think it was ‘Boone get out of the way,’” he said with a grin. “But I remember it, and just for him to know who I was, I thought ‘I’ve got a chance here,’ and you did not want to do anything that would disappoint him.”

While he was on the team, Boone just happened to play with another Ole Miss icon, Archie Manning. He said Manning had a command of the huddle and talked things out with his players. The Rebels’ offensive line, however, “helped Manning learn how to scramble,” Boone said with a smile.

“Off the field, he was a quiet, nice guy,” Boone said. “We wanted to play for him too, and so we knew somehow we had to get the job done.”

Boone graduated from Ole Miss with a business degree and an emphasis in banking and finance.  

He ended up being the CEO of Sunburst Bank and sold it for $2.9 billion.

It was while the football program was on probation for repeat violations that Boone became the athletics director in 1995.  He stayed until 1998, when he left to start a bank in Baton Rouge with a few of his friends. 

Baton Rouge was also where Boone came up with the idea to write his book, “The Perfect Plan,” which he self-published in 2001. The ideas came to him as he jogged every morning and built up over time.  After a while, Boone realized he could actually write a book on these ideas. He talked about how his Christian faith inspired his writing.

“Well, I think it all began with faith, and it all began with being a Christian,” he said. “And the whole point of the book is God said, ‘Here’s a direction that I want you to take, but it’s your choice,’ and to a certain extent, a lot of mankind’s not going that direction, but it’s about free choice. It’s something God’s given us, a free will to choose, choose wisely and that’s all about faith and it’s all about Christianity, and that’s what that book is about in a modern-day environment.”

The book is a “Good vs Evil,” “God vs Satan” novel where an evil man influenced by Satan has a personal goal of becoming leader of the world.  God leads the good person through life and gives him a vision of what the world will become if it doesn’t change. The novel includes how the United Nations turns into a one-world government with deep thought going into the complication of it how it works. There is the obvious clash of the two forces.

Boone said he also writes other material, like poetry, and plans to write another book when he retires.  

As the topic switched from his faith to another sports question, Boone showed some of his sense of humor.

“So faith doesn’t have anything to do with sports? Don’t worry I’ve prayed a lot,” Boone said laughing. 

From his success with his new bank in Baton Rouge, Boone was asked by then Chancellor Robert Khayat to serve as athletics director again, when the job became vacant in 2002.

When asked about his favorite memory at Ole Miss, he sat and thought for a moment and then came up quite a few of them. Among them included the Rebels defeating Georgia in men’s tennis to win the SEC title and upset wins over Florida in the 2002, 2003 and 2008 football seasons. The baseball team provided some memories with the Super Regionals over the past decade. Boone also recounts Andy Kennedy’s first year as men’s basketball head coach, when the Rebels captured the SEC Western Division championship. 

When it came to memories, it also didn’t take long for him to answer what the most painful loss at Ole Miss was for him.  

“Losing to LSU,” referring back to the 2003 football season when Ole Miss played the LSU Tigers for the Western Division title. 

“I mean it was right there, played them toe-to-toe the whole game and just a matter of a field goal or two, and it’s just right there on your tips of your fingers, and it just didn’t happen.”