Jimmy has recently gotten pretty huge attention around Austin and the rest of Texas for just about the last thing you might expect... a football song.  Here's how it happened....

It seems the host of Austin's top sports radio talk show is a big Jimmy fan, and asked him to be a guest on the show the week before Texas played LaFave's home team, Oklahoma.  Mainly he wanted Jimmy to bring his guitar and do a song on the air, and suggested Jimmy do one of his killer ballads.  Well, it seems Jimmy was a little nervous about how that might go over with an audience of Texas football fanatics.  So over lunch with his friend Mark Strain, he threw out the notion of reworking the old Chuck Berry Christmas song, "Run, Run Rudolph" into "Run, Run, Ricky,"

in tribute to Texas' beloved Heismann-bound hero, running back Ricky Williams.

When it came time to do his song on the show, Jimmy decided to go for it, even though some of the lyrics had to be  ad-libbed right there on the air.  The host couldn't have been more surprised, the audience went nuts, and a sensation was underway. 

Pretty soon the University of Texas was on the phone to see if they could use the song as the musical background for their long-planned-big-deal Ricky Williams tribute slated for the stadium Jumbotron TV at the upcoming Texas vs. A & M game Thanksgiving weekend.  Jimmy wasn't quite sure what all this was about, but of course he said OK.  Later that week two of the Austin network news shows picked up on the hard-to-miss buzz around town, and invited Jimmy to come on their evening TV news shows to talk about and sing the song.  Pretty soon folks all over town were saying the words "Run, Run Ricky," most often in reference to Mr. William's certain and iminate capture of the new college record for all-time running yardage.

The big game found LaFave down on the field with the team, hobnobbing with Texas luminaries Tony Dorsett, Earl Campbell and Matthew McConahey.  It also found Ricky breaking the record,  and what seemed like all of Texas singing along with Jimmy's tune at halftime.

All of this because LaFave was briefly worried that one of those love ballads we all dig so much might miss the mark on a sports show.  His spur-of-the-moment alternative seems to have hit just fine, and Texas is a better place for it.