Abe Mickal

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1970

University: LSU

Induction Year: 1970

When you say Abe Mickal came from a tough neighborhood, you’re not necessarily talking about McComb, Miss.

His original name was Ibrahim Khalil Mickal Abu-Haidar, and he spent the first seven years of his life in Lebanon before his father made arrangements to bring the family to the United States.

An old family photograph shows two young women holding rifles, with bandoliers draped around their shoulders. Abe, who was then four years old, was also wearing a bandolier of cartridges. In the village of Talia, each family took care of its own security.

Lebanon was involved in a tug-o’-war between the Turks and French during World War I. The French dispatched Moroccan troops to protect their interests – at the expense of the Lebanese. Mickal remembers walking through field with his mother and an aunt, looking for dead relatives. He saw an uncle killed. It was 70 years ago, but he still carries the scar from a head injury he suffered when he fell off an artillery caisson. “America,” he recalled many years later, “seemed far away.”

The family spent two weeks at Ellis Island because passports had not been validated. During the train ride to New Orleans, they were given a basketball of fruit. Abe, who was seven years, had never seen a banana. He ate one without peeling it.

His father, Khalil Mickal, opened a general merchandise store across the street from the railroad station in McComb, Miss., and expected his son to follow the Lebanese custom of taking over the business. He didn’t even know Abe was playing football until the boy was late for work on day. When the elder Mickal found him at McComb High game, he marched onto the field and led his son away. “No more play,” he ordered. “You work, like everyone else.”

He relented when he learned that his customers took sports seriously, and expected the storekeeper’s talented son to lay for McComb High (he would earn 12 letters in four sports). But the elder Mickal didn’t close his store to watch his son play until his final high school game.

Abe was recruited by LSU and Notre Dame, but the death of Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne in an airplane crash and the friendship that LSU assistant coach Ben Enis developed with Khalil Mickal sent him to Baton Rouge – where he was practically adopted by Huey P. Long.

A triple threat tailback, Mickal was considered the greatest passer to play for LSU up to that point. Long visited him often, helping him pull off his jersey after workouts. In return, Abe showed the U.S. Senator how he gripped the ball when he threw it, and gave him other coaching tips.

Their relationship received national publicity in 1934, when Long – in the process of railroading a package of 44 bills through the Louisiana legislature – proposed that Mickal be appointed a de facto state senator, much to the dismay of LSU head coach “Biff” Jones.

When Athletic Director T.P. “Skipper” Heard relayed Jones’ concerns that the move would be bad for team morale, Long’s response was typical. “Hell, Red, I’ll make ‘em all senators.”

On his radio show, Will Rogers reported that they were trying to make senators out for their football players in Louisiana. “Maybe,” Rogers suggested, “they ought to try to make something out of their senators.”

Long finally abandoned the project when it was pointed out that Mickal was a citizen of Mississippi, and paying the players as senators would jeopardize their eligibility.

The 1934 season ended with the infamous locker room confrontation between Long and Jones, and Mickal finished his collegiate career under Coach Bernie Moore as the Tigers won their first Southeastern Conference championship, outscoring their last nine regular-season opponents 214-28 after a 10-7 loss to Rice in the opener.

LSU made its first bowl appearance at the end of that season, dropping a 3-2 decision to TCU in the Sugar Bowl. The following August, one week after the Detroit Lions rallied in the final quarter to tie the College All-Stars 7-7 at Chicago’s Soldier Field, Mickal played on another All-Star team called the Centennial All-Stars in a game with the Chicago Bears at Dallas. Mickal’s touchdown after an interception return by Jim Lee Howell helped the collegians score a 7-6 victory. It was the first time an NFL team was defeated by collegians.

In Mickal’s three seasons at LSU, the Tigers were 23-4-5. His career highlight included a touchdown pass to Pete Burge in a 7-7 tie with Tulane in 1933 and a pass that sailed 65 yards in the air before Walter Sullivan pulled it in for the tying touchdown in the final minutes of a 14-14 tie with SMU a year later. In another 1934 game, he rifled a 50-yard strike to Jeff Barrett for a 12-7 lead over Tulane but the Green Wave rallied to win the game.

“Biff” Jones called Mickal “the greatest passer I ever saw or coached,” but his accomplishments on the football field were only a small part of his success story. He was on the Dean’s List, president of the student body, winner of the Golden Sabre as the top cadet in ROTC and a varsity debater.

He earned an M.D. degree in 1940, and joined the Army Air Corps for the duration of World War II. He entered the private practice of obstetrics and gynecology and returned to the LUS Med School four years later to serve as department chairmen in obstetrics gynecology. He traveled all over the world as a member of professional societies, including a sentimental journey to the country where he had searched for the bodies of dead relatives before he found out about the United States, bananas and Huey Long.

In 1967, the man who coached the Kingfish and almost became a state senator at the age of 21 was inducted into the National Football League.