Johnny Parker always asked questions when he didn’t know the answer. He worked hard to make everyone around him better — in the classroom and on whatever sports field he was on. The Shaw native and legend has a trophy case filled with accolades from state high school championships to Super Bowl rings. And now he’s been honored as one of the best of the best in Mississippi as a member of the 2026 Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
“It's a great honor and I’m thrilled and I’m humbled by that. For an old cotton picker from Shaw, Mississippi to be in there, it’s a great honor,” Coach Parker said. “This is something that Walter Payton and Jerry Rice are in.”
Coach Bill McGuire worked with Coach Parker in the early days at IA.
“Johnny Parker’s story is a remarkable one. I’m pretty sure that there are only a few of us that really know from where he began to where he now finds himself,” Coach McGuire said. “The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame is well deserved and is another one of his accomplishments! I look forward to being at his induction ceremony in August! And make no mistake, Indianola holds a special place in Coach’s heart!”
Coach Parker graduated from the University of Mississippi and returned home to start his coaching career at Indianola Academy in 1969, where he also taught Mississippi History.
In a previous interview, Coach Parker said of his success, “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support of a few good men — (the late) Jim Lear and Peter Jernberg supported me and gave me a chance when nobody else did,”
Even though he made it to the pinnacle of the NFL world with three Super Bowl Rings — two with the New York Giants and one with the Tampa Bay Bucs (he had another Super Bowl appearance with the New England Patriots) — his early years of coaching were tough.
“I was the seventh and eighth grade girls’ basketball coach,” he says. “I knew nothing about basketball. And didn’t try to learn.”
But that all changed when he gave Cindy Courtney and other players a ride home after practice. She had asked him to drop her off last and he pulled into the driveway and saw a brand new basketball goal.
“Mama and Daddy gave that to me as an early Christmas present. I come home and practice every day until it gets dark.” Parker says she then broke into inconsolable tears and through her sobbing said, “I want to be good at basketball so bad, but you never work with me.”
The message came through loud and clear and the rookie coach made a vow that no other athlete would ever say that to him again.
“I decided that if I was going to demand their best then I had to be the best that I could be.”
As the linebacker coach at IA, he pushed his players to discover their capabilities and worked just as hard on himself, traveling the world to learn the latest techniques in weightlifting to pass on to his players.
Those players would go on to win state high school championships and more. Some players went into coaching and would win championships and be inducted into Hall of Fames themselves. One of those was David Sykes, a starting IA quarterback and later a coach at Washington School and Jackson Academy.
“He used to stay on me all the time,” Sykes says. “I played all the sports, but he was on me as much as possible to be in the weight room. I did the minimum rather than the maximum. He is the most intense person I’ve ever been around. An exceptional motivator, there’s no doubt he’s the reason I’m in this profession.”
The late Mike “Bama” Anderson played for Coach Parker and hung on every word.
“Because of his influence, we went five straight years playing for the AAA State championship. We only lost two games in five years. That was a direct effect from his weightlifting program. He is the most motivational person I have ever met in my life, and he is a winner wherever he goes,” Anderson said.
Former player Robert Van Poindexter who went onto to Mississippi State to play football on scholarship explained the importance of Coach Parker in his life.
“I have two people in my life that were the most influential people — Coach McGuire was one of those. Coach Parker was the other,” Poindexter said. “They shaped my life basically to where through my business and through the way I raised my kids and how I was a husband — everything came from them. That’s how important they are to me.”
The men who brought him to IA remember the impact Parker made. “He was an excellent history teacher,” former principal and headmaster Peter Jernberg explained. “He could lecture for an hour and never look at a note. He would read three to four books a week. He had a great quest for knowledge in academics and athletics.”
Former administrator Jimmy Lear and Ole Miss quarterback from 1950-1953 adds that Parker’s enthusiasm sometimes got the best of him. “We had long talks on how to do things a little differently and get the same results,” Lear says. “Ninety-nine percent of what he did was to make the kids a better person.”
Former IA Head Football Coach Bill McGuire says Parker wasn’t afraid to ask questions. “What he didn’t know, he made it a point to find out,” McGuire says. “There’s no doubt he made an influence on our team.”
From a 6-5 year in 1972 to 10-1 in 1973 and 11-0 in 1974 (with a 33-0 shellacking of rival Jackson Prep), Parker’s devotion to excellence paid the players and coaches with an AAA State Championship.
Parker’s success stretches from high school to college and into the NFL as a strength and conditioning coach, winning Super Bowls with Bill Parcells and New York Giants and New England Patriots and in Tampa Bay with Jon Gruden. Following a two-year hiatus where he “spent time on his back porch reading,” Parker joined up with the 49ers in February of 2005.
CBS NFL football commentator and former New York Giant quarterback Phil Simms says that Parker’s influence helped shaped the Super Bowl Champions. “The first off-season I trained with him I did things I’ve never done before,” Simms says. “Johnny was one of the best coaches and best people I’ve ever met. He had a good way about him and he worked us hard. There was plenty of razzing between us [players] and him. He always made me feel good about myself when he worked out with us. He helped my confidence, he never finished in front of me.”
Simms became a Parker disciple and said that the coach brought weight training to the forefront of the Giants NFL training room. “He was a tremendous influence on me,” Simms says. “I didn’t want to disappoint him. He was simple and dedicated. The NFL wasn’t into weightlifting. His weightlifting was more power-oriented so that our performance increased and we stayed healthier. The year we won the Super Bowl we had very few injuries. Everyone on the offense was in his program daily. I think only Lawrence Taylor would come every other day. If you weren’t working out, he’d always say ‘you’re cheating your family, cheating your wife, cheating yourself.’”
The only regret Simms lists about his time with Coach Parker is simply, “I should have listened to him more.”
Even when Coach Parker was at the height of his career in the NFL, he always thought of his roots.
“I think of my kids back at IA. I want to repay them and be the best I can be.”
And now as a 2026 Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Coach Johnny Parker keeps paying back.
In his humble self-deprecating humor, Coach Parker said, “I guess they had one more slot to fill.”
