George Jones has been a fixture in Alabama high school athletics since the 1950s, but almost nobody knows him by that name. He’s much better known as Snoozy, and yes, the Montgomery native and Over the Mountain resident remembers exactly how he earned his memorable nickname.
“I was the youngest of six kids,” Jones recalled when contacted last week. “I was delivered by a midwife. But since there were six kids, she stayed around and helped raise us.
“I must have slept a lot, because she called me Snoozy. My four brothers weren’t going to let that go, and people have called me that ever since.”
Jones’ name may have suggested a proclivity for sleep, but he didn’t do much of it during a four decade career as a coach, a game official and an entrepreneur. His years of service will be recognized March 19, when he will be among a group of 12 inducted into the Alabama High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
“It’s a real honor and one I didn’t expect,” said Jones. “But it’s really a tribute to all the great people I worked with and the wonderful kids that I was blessed to be able to coach. I’m thrilled.”
Jones’ path to the Hall of Fame began at Sidney Lanier High School, where he was a standout in football and counted future National Football League legend Bart Starr as a teammate.
He was good enough to earn a scholarship to Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Tech), which was coached by Frank Moseley, a protégé of Paul Bryant. After graduating from college, Jones returned to Montgomery to coach and teach at the junior high school level before returning to Lanier in 1961.
Jones’ first assignment at his alma mater put him in charge of the Poets’ track and field team, and he worked as an assistant in football and basketball. For years, track had been a stepchild in the athletic pecking order at Lanier, but Jones was determined to bring the program up to the level of the other sports.
“The most important thing was to have a coach that was really interested in track and not just drawing a supplement check,” Jones said. “I thought if the coach showed interest, more kids would come out for track and we could get the numbers up.”
The new philosophy paid dividends, as Lanier’s track program soon became one of the best in the Montgomery area.
“We put a lot of emphasis on events like the broad jump, the triple jump and the high jump, where we could teach technique,” Jones said. “That way, even if we didn’t have the fastest kids, we could still be competitive by getting points in all the events.”
Under Jones’ leadership, Lanier produced many stars, but one stood out above all others in the mid-1960s. The Poets’ Richmond Flowers, who later starred in football at the University of Tennessee and in the NFL, became the national high school record-holder in the high hurdles.
Jones’ influence was felt on the Lanier football and basketball teams as well. In a time when Montgomery and the Poets’ rivalry with crosstown rival Robert E. Lee was the epicenter of power in Alabama high school athletics, Jones helped his school win five football championships and four basketball state titles.
“I was just an assistant coach, but I think what I did was important,” he said.
Jones also taught American and world history during his years at Lanier.
“I really enjoyed that because it gave me an opportunity to reach a different type of kids, the types that weren’t athletes,” he said. “I wanted to help build kids into adults who would be good spouses, good parents and good members of society.”
In 1969, Jones left coaching to pursue a career in the sales of athletic wear to high schools across the state. During that time, he became interested in officiating, and he founded the Mid-State Alabama Officials Association.
“At that time, there was a need for better training for officials at the high school level,” said Jones. “We worked to hold more clinics to improve the overall quality of the officials. It was a great thing for the kids who were playing and for the officials themselves.”
During that period, Jones worked to become a college football official and worked as an umpire for Southeastern Conference games in the 1970s and 1980s.
“As a native of Alabama, I couldn’t work Alabama or Auburn,” he said. “But I called a lot of LSU, Tennessee and Georgia games.” Jones also officiated a number of games between smaller colleges.
Ironically, Jones’ only serious confrontation with a coach came not against one of the giants of the SEC, but rather with Shirley Majors, the longtime coach of the University of the South, also known as Sewanee.
“I was calling one of their games, and Sewanee had a few players I had known at Lanier,” Jones said. “So I was talking to them between plays. We were joking and laughing about old times.
“Coach Majors saw me laughing and was furious. He was upset because he thought I was laughing at the way his team played football. I had to explain to him why I was laughing.”
In the 1980s, Jones also entered the retail business. He and his son George Jr. opened Snoozy’s Bookstore on the UAB campus in 1983.
Later Jones helped George Jr. open a gift shop in Mountain Brook’s Crestline Village.
“George always loved Christmas,” said Jones. “Now he gets to sell toys.”
Jones said that Alabama high school athletics has changed greatly since he first began coaching in the early 1960s.
“Mainly the equipment is better,” he said. “And the coaches get paid a lot better, too.”
Jones will get his ultimate payment when he enters the high school Hall of Fame. That’s quite an accomplishment for a guy the world knows as Snoozy.
