Hail to the Chief: the Eddie Brundidge Story
For all the incredible running backs that have been part of Troy’s ground game over the years, no player dominated another team like Eddie Brundidge. He was the first Trojan to pick up 200 yards in a single game—and he did it in back-to-back games.
No other Trojan has done it more than once.
In 1977, Sullivan Walker ran for 198 yards in a 49-28 explosion over Northern Michigan. Five years later, Dwayne Thompson met that mark in a 54-10 rout against UT-Martin, the highlight of a 2-win season.
Enter Chan Gailey.
The turnaround under the new head coach was immediate. The backfield picked up a thousand yards more from 1982 to 1983–then again the following season.
That 1984 year was massive for Troy’s run game, as we covered on Tuesday. It was also the sophomore season for Eddie Brundidge, a student from Dozier, just 40 miles to the southwest.
That year Ted Horstead became the school’s first thousand-yard rusher, and quarterback Mike Turk picked up half that. Brundidge ran for 90 yards on 22 carries.
The next year, Troy split the load. Horstead only ran for 840 yards, but eight players ran for more than 100 yards—including Brundidge with 165.
Horstead started the year with a bang—rushing for 158 yards in a close week two loss to Nicholls State. He got halfway to 500 yards before an injury in the game against Mississippi College put him on the sideline.
That’s when Brundidge took over. He picked up 122 yards in the 10-0 win. Four weeks later he ran for another 112 yards and three touchdowns against UT-Martin. The Trojans won that one 50-30, and Eddie Brundidge mathematically made the difference.
With two games left in the season, the guy everyone jokingly called “Chief” was just getting started.
The 8-1 Trojans traveled up to rival Jacksonville State, who was in the middle of a 3-6-1 season. The Gamecocks ignored the awful season they were having and matched Troy’s offense pound for pound.
The difference? Brundidge was on the field. He shredded the Jax State defense for 226 yards and four scores.
The Trojans won an instant classic 45-43, adding to the legacy of that historically-intense rivalry.
Eddie Brundidge was on top. No Trojan had ever broken the 200-yard mark in a single game, and no one would for another 18 years.
How did he follow up on this record-breaking feat? Rushing for even more yards.
Troy State wrapped up its regular season by hosting Virginia Union, the college where NBA star and Central-Hayneville alum Ben Wallace later played. The Trojans won 31-7, but the story lies in the stats.
Eddie Brundidge ran for 244 yards and a touchdown. He touched the ball 32 times, adding up to an average of 7.6 yards per rush.
Since then, only four other Trojans have rushed for 200 yards in one game—Brundidge has them all beat by at least ten yards. The Jacksonville State game is No. 4 on the all-time list.
These two games also have the dinstinctive of the most rushes by one person until Troy moved up to Division I. Only DeWhitt Betterson, Jordan Chunn and LeBarron Black got the ball as much as Eddie did.
He’s also tied with Walker and Thad Buttone for most points in a game by a running back (or anyone not named Danny Grant.)
The Trojans’ incredible run ended the next week with a loss at South Dakota in the first round of the playoffs. Brundidge finished the season 13 yards shy of the thousand-yard mark, but it was more than enough to lead the team.
Brundidge graduated and became a high school coach, bouncing between Jackson High School and T.R. Miller High School in Brewton. He worked under legendary high school coach Jamie Riggs, following him to Houston Academy in 2018 and taking over when Riggs retired last year.
Other Trojan legends have since joined Brundidge in the 200-yard club, but no one has added a second entry. Even if that happens, it will be hard to match the month he had in November 1986.
For that, Brundidge will always be The Chief when it comes to Troy football.