Dye lauds Auburn trio of Jackson, Barkley, Thomas

By David Paschall August 22, 2014 3 min read

SEC Network

The SEC Network on Thursday night featured the 1980s Auburn athletic trio of Bo Jackson, Charles Barkley and Frank Thomas. Barkley was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006, and Thomas was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this summer.

Former Auburn football coach Pat Dye, who recruited Jackson and Thomas, was a guest Thursday afternoon on “Press Row” on Chattanooga’s ESPN 105.1 The Zone.

Q: Had Frank Thomas stayed with football, how good could he have been?

A: “He would have been All-Pro. There has never been a better tight end prospect than Frank. He was 6-4 and 250 with great hand-eye coordination. He had no fear, and he could run a 4.6 [40-yard dash]. He was just a great, great athlete.”

Q: What kind of football player could Barkley have been?

David Paschall

David Paschall has covered sports at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since 1999 and wrote for the Chattanooga Free Press in the nine years before that. David has mostly covered college athletics, with a focus on the University of Georgia from 2000 to 2019 and the University of Tennessee since 2020. He grew up in Chattanooga and is a graduate of the Baylor School and Auburn University. David has received multiple writing awards and has served as a Heisman Trophy voter since 2003. He has also worked in radio in Chattanooga and has been on the SEC Network's "Classic Rewind" series since 2014. David and his wife, Kelly, have three children — Conner, Emily and Spencer.

Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.