Jackson, MS: Mississippi Sports Council (August 2024)

Hardback. Signed.

New in dust jacket.

Beloved football coach and math instructor Bill Raphael, who died in 2013, devoted decades of his life to tiny St. Joseph Catholic School in Jackson, Mississippi, and shaped the lives of thousands of his students through love, faith, hard work, and the fervent belief that all of us are capable of more than we ever dreamed possible.

Coaching football a whopping 41 seasons, Raphael won well over 200 games at St. Joe and was elected to the Mississippi Association of Coaches Hall of Fame in 1984. While perhaps best known for St Joe’s stunning upset over Jackson Murrah in the 1972 Capital Bowl, the enduring legacy of the man simply known as Coach has just as much to do with the life lessons he passed on to his students and the impact he still has on them.

Seen through the eyes of his family and former players, students, assistant coaches, and fellow instructors, Raphael’s Men is a timeless story of a humble man who never stopped teaching, whether getting the most out of his charges during sweltering two-a-day football practices or digging deep into polynomials, coefficients, and the quadratic formula in the classroom. He’s a true Mississippi legend who will never be forgotten.

A graduate of Mississippi State University, Joe Lee is originally from Jackson, Mississippi, and grew up in Starkville. He has a background in radio, television, and journalism, and has written nine suspense novels and over 1,000 news and feature stories for several Mississippi newspapers and magazines. Raphael’s Men is his second book-length work of non-fiction. He lives in Brandon, Mississippi, with his wife Leslie.