Marcus Dupree

High school

Philadelphia High School

College

University of Oklahoma

Pro team(s)

Los Angeles Rams, Portland Thunder (USFL)

Marcus Dupree was born on May 22, 1964, in Philadelphia, Mississippi (Neshoba County), and attended Philadelphia High School, where he became what recruiting analysts of the early 1980s described as the most physically gifted running back prospect in the history of American high school football. His combination of 6-foot-2, 228-pound size with genuine 4.38 speed in the 40-yard dash made him a generational athletic phenomenon — a player who seemed to exist in a physical category separate from everyone else on the field. He received over 300 scholarship offers from colleges across the country before choosing the University of Oklahoma, where he was immediately spectacular before a falling-out with coach Barry Switzer and a serious knee injury ended his time in Norman. He eventually played in the USFL and briefly in the NFL, but his professional career never fully recovered from the physical and organizational difficulties of his college years. His story was immortalized in Willie Morris's 1983 book "The Courting of Marcus Dupree," an exploration of Mississippi, race, sport, and the crushing weight of expectation. Marcus Dupree remains one of the most fascinating figures in the history of Mississippi sports — a player whose combination of gifts and circumstances made him simultaneously the greatest recruit who ever came out of the state and one of football's great what-ifs. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi.