The Kingsport Kid Who Bested Steve Spurrier

 

"Boby" Prater in 1961 D-B yearbook

Boby grew up in tough circumstances, raised on Myrtle Street by a single mom who worked two and three jobs to support him and his little brother Michael.

But he had a gift, an incredible right leg that could boom punts and nail field goals.

And on one November night in 1960 he turned the heads of University of Tennessee football scouts who had come to the Science Hill-Dobyns-Bennett game to check out a young Science Hill punter named Steve Spurrier and instead left shaking their heads over the amazing punting skills of one Roy “Boby” Prater.

Boby Prater died last week at the age of 78.

But when he was a teenager he was a key contributor on two D-B state championship football teams.

 

1960 D-B vs. Science Hill football program (from the Jim Beck football program collection)

 

I wrote about Boby – pronounced BO-bee - in an Oct. 27, 2006 column:

 

If you’ve ever wondered why Steve Spurrier, the Science Hill football star, didn’t stay in the Volunteer state and play for University of Tennessee, I have the answer, or at least part of it. (The other part was that UT ran a passing unfriendly offense back then called the single wing.)

Why didn’t Spurrier go to UT?

Boby Prater.

In the late fifties Boby was a football star at D-B and a punter extraordinaire.

Headline from Nov. 1960

Let’s let Boby pick up the story from here. “UT was looking for a punter. The week before they had seen Steve. They came and watched us both the next week.”

UT’s football scouts at the time thought Boby was their man. “They said they’d rather have me as Steve so they didn’t offer Steve a scholarship.”

So Steve Spurrier left the state for the University of Florida and has never really been back, except to torment Phil Fulmer.

As it turned out Boby didn’t punt for UT either. Boby dropped out of school after his junior year in 1961 to join the Navy. “That was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

Why did he abandon a promising football career? “I haven’t really told this much before but I had a younger brother. It was just my mother and younger brother and me. She was working two and three jobs to keep us in school. It was a struggle for her. I was too young to work and make any money. So I joined the service. She signed for me at 17 to join up.”

It turned out Boby didn’t give up football, just football in east Tennessee.

He spent his four years in the Navy playing football. “I played on the Navy team. We’d play around San Diego and then when that season was over we’d go over to Japan and play in a service league there.”

This was in the early sixties just after the American Football League had formed and placed a team nearby, the San Diego Chargers. “I tried out for (Chargers coach and general manager) Sid Gilman and made the team as a punter. They tried to get me out of the service on a hardship but the Navy wouldn’t let them. I had a spot to go back to the next year when I got out but I got married instead. That was my other big mistake.”

Boby got out of the service before he was even 21. “I wasn’t even old enough to drink.”

He came back to Kingsport for one year but ended up going back to California. He lived there and in Arizona 1995 when he moved back home.

He started a catering business, then expanded to a barbecue concession stand on Jonesborough’s main street. And on Oct. 31, 2006 he opened a full-scale barbecue restaurant, Boby’s Boogie Pig Bar-B-Q, on Highway 126 in Blountville.

Boby won’t make tonight’s D-B-Science Hill game. He’s got too much work renovating the barbecue building. But he still remembers that long ago game when the scouts compared him to Steve Spurrier and picked him.

 

Boby Prater 1942-2021

Here’s how the Kingsport Times-News' Frank Creasy described the Spurrier-Prater punting duel in that 1960 game:

“Aside from the running of D-B’s Charles Sproles and Science Hill’s Bill Bailey, the fans thrilled to the spectacular punts of Boby Prater and Steve Spurrier.

“With D-B in a situation of fourth down and three yards to go from its own 14 with two minutes left Prater boomed a spiral 60 yards downfield to seal the 'Toppers fate. The lanky Tribe junior toed another 47 yards in a crucial fourth-period situation and averaged 41 yards for five kicks in the game.

“Spurrier was only a shade behind with seven punts for 35.6 yard average, including one which was reduced to 10 yards by a bounce into the end zone.”

 

Boby also played halfback and here he is carrying the ball  against Knox Fulton in 1960

As for Boby’s Blountville barbecue joint, it lasted a couple of years – the restaurant business is a tough business – and Boby went back to his Jonesborough concession stand.

He told me in 2006, “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Dobyns-Bennett football.”

 

1960 D-B team photo: Jerry Beck, Boby Prater, Johnny Shipley

There are other stories about why Steve Spurrier went to the University of Florida instead of the University of Tennessee and I’ve heard them, too. But I like this one the best.