I was inoculated with Purple at age 1 when my oldest sister enrolled as a freshman at K-State. Some of my earliest sports memories include watching homecoming football games at Memorial Stadium and listening to WIBW broadcast K-State basketball games. The one fly in the ointment was that my local television station only broadcast basketball featuring the WSU Shockers.

For years I was mad at WSU and the TV station because when I wanted to see Purple, the only color available was Yellow.

Then, as irony would have it, I was hired to teach at WSU, had Shocker athletes in class, and discovered I could cheer for both teams.

One semester, star basketball players Cliff Levingston and Ozell Jones enrolled in my Comm 111 class. Even though they could make dazzling plays in front of screaming fans, the idea of giving speeches made them very uncomfortable.

In fact, Ozell kept telling me he thought he might faint. At 6’11”, Ozell would have wiped out the first row of students if he had carried out his threat.

At the end of that year, Ozell transferred to Cal State Fullerton when he and WSU lost a lawsuit against the NCAA. He left the same time I had baby #2, so I lost track of him until I saw a very small article about him in the Eagle.

Ozell Jones, a 6-foot-11 center who played on the Wichita State basketball team that reached the Elite Eight in 1981, was killed by a gunshot on Thursday in Lancaster, Calif.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported Monday that LA County Sheriff's Department homicide detectives are investigating.

Jones, 45, played two seasons at WSU before being ruled ineligible by the NCAA late in the 1980-81 season because of an irregularity with his high school transcript. He didn't play in the Shockers' 1981 NCAA run, then transferred to Cal State-Fullerton.

Joining the NBA's San Antonio Spurs, he averaged 3.7 points and 3.6 rebounds in the 1984-85 season, then played briefly the next season for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Jones, originally from Long Beach, Calif., ran a big and tall men's clothing store in LA, one of his sisters told the Daily News. He is survived by his wife, Daphney; his mother and three sisters.

For more, check Wednesday's Eagle.

Published in Wichita Eagle on September 12, 2006

While I never learned if the shooter was caught, I did learn that school colors don’t matter—people do.