Memphis Grizzlies general manager Chris Wallace is a part of West Virginia's rich athletic history.
He's joined the list of successful state natives in the NBA like Mike D'Antoni, Rod Thorn, Hot Rod Hundley, Jason Williams and, of course, The Logo, Jerry West.
The Mountain State, you may know, almost has an embarrassment of athletic riches. In professional baseball there's been Lew Burdette, John Kruk, Nick Swisher and, now, Jedd Gyorko. In football, Randy Moss and Sam Huff did a little better than OK. Hoops coach Bob Huggins is from here. Olympians? How about Mary Lou Retton.
And then there's that list of college football coaches. Riches? West Virginia is a gold mine. Natives include Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher, Lou Holtz, John McKay, Rich Rodriguez, Ben Schwartzwalder, Fielding Yost...
As well as A.W. "Ace" Mumford. Yes, Ace Mumford.
You might not have heard of him. But you know the aforementioned Wallace? He's not only part of West Virginia's athletic history, he's championing the inclusion of Mumford into the state's consciousness.
For very good reason. Mumford is so respected that Southern University named its football stadium after the former coach. He's so respected the College Football Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001.
And Mumford hailed from Buckhannon, West By God.
"If you came up with a Mount Rushmore of historically black college football figures, Ace would be there right beside Grambling's Eddie Robinson," Wallace said.
It's true. If you research the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) football history, you'll see Robinson, who coached into his late 70s and won nine black national titles. You'll see names like "Big" John Merritt, whose Tennessee State teams won seven titles. You'll see Florida A&M's Jake Gaither. The national championship trophy is named after Gaither and his team won six titles.
Then there's Mumford.
"He and Eddie Robinson would have been like [Bobby] Bowden and [Joe] Paterno," Wallace said. "The accomplishments of Ace were remarkable - and so under-publicized in West Virginia. I grew up in Buckhannon, which was a very sports-oriented town and I'd never heard of him."
That changed to some degree in October of 2016. Buckhannon honored the former coach with a plaque listing all of his accomplishments - five black national championships, 170-60-14 record at Southern, 11 Southwestern Athletic Conference championships and 35 All-America players - at the lot where his childhood home was located.
"Before I got into [NBA management] I had the Blue Ribbon magazine," Wallace said. "Well, I called Southern's sports information department one day and gave them my address at the time. The guy said, 'Buckhannon? That's the home of our legendary coach.'
"Well, a few years ago I finally gave up my Blackberry and updated my phone. I Google everything now and when I looked up Ace I was astounded. It's an unbelievable story."
Indeed, Mumford had to leave Buckhannon when he was just seven years old to get an education. There were simply no schooling opportunities in the town at that time for African Americans. So Mumford's parents sent him to Parkersburg in 1905, where he lived with relatives and attended all-black Sumner High School.
He went on to Wilberforce University in Ohio before starting his amazing coaching journey.
"He had one of the finest minds in football," Eddie Robinson once told the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, according to Marc Spears of The Undefeated. "I learned a lot from him. He was a coach's coach. He was on top of everything. He was very innovative. He worked for perfection."
Mumford overcame much, not only personally, but professionally. He succeeded at three different colleges before making it to Southern. And once he arrived he found no stadium for the school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There were no lights at the fields where games were played. There was no band. But his program grew to the point where Alabama's Bear Bryant and Arkansas' Frank Broyles would visit to talk strategy.
Oh, yeah. He also coached the Jaguars to the 1941 black national basketball championship via the National Invitational Intercollegiate Basketball Tournament. And when he died way too early in 1962 at the age of 63, he was directing a state track meet.
The Dallas newspaper said he died in his cleats.
"His story has just boggled my mind," Wallace said. "From Buckhannon, which has always had a small African-American population, came one of black college football's icons."
Mumford is in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, the West Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame.
One more athletic figure of which West Virginians can be proud.