It was the day every football player dreams of. The date was Jan. 26, 1997, and Little Rock native Keith Jackson was playing tight end for the Green Bay Packers against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI. The Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans was packed, and Jackson was on top of his game. In his final season, Jackson had 40 receptions for 505 yards and a career-high 10 touchdowns; in that historic Super Bowl game, he helped the Packers defeat the Patriots 35-21, the team’s first Super Bowl victory since Super Bowl II.

“[The Super Bowl is] the Mecca if you’re a football player,” Jackson said. “In ’96, we had a great team: Reggie White, Brett Favre, Coach [Mike] Holmgren. Basically, we had a great run with 16 wins and three losses…”

The Super Bowl win marked the end of Jackson’s football career, a decision he made. “I came in with a bang and went out with a bang,” he chuckled, “and I was happy about it.” Jackson knew he had “bigger fish to fry,” as we say in the South.

“Football is what I did; it never defined who I was,” he said, his voice taking on a more introspective tone. “I had several years left to play, but I didn’t want to play anymore. I wanted to come home to Arkansas and fulfill the vision that God gave me, called P.A.R.K. There was more pull for me to do that than to go out and catch balls on the field,” he said.

Born in Little Rock in 1965, Jackson grew up in a single-parent home with his mother, Gladys Jackson, who was a nurse at Baptist Health, a brother, Byron, and a sister, Gwen.

And believe it or not, football wasn’t one of his interests — at least not at first. “There was a neighborhood little league team called the Sunset Tigers. They were really good and led by a coach named Ed Johnson,” Jackson said. “He hardly ever lost, so everyone wanted to play for Coach Ed” — everyone except Jackson, that is.

“I was a little afraid to go out there and get hit,” Jackson admitted. “But when the game was over, I would go down and play when they weren’t hitting anyone. Coach Ed saw me and told me I ought to play for him, but I said no.” Jackson’s older brother Byron played for the Tigers, but Keith was more interested in other pursuits at the time.

“The ice cream truck came by, and Coach Ed saw me staring at that ice cream truck and he said, ‘Now if you’ll play for me, I’ll buy you ice cream.’ And I said, ‘If you’ll buy me two of ‘em, I’ll play.’ So basically, that’s how it all got cranked up,” Jackson chuckled. He was 9 years old at the time.

He went on to play football at Horace Mann Middle School and at Parkview High School. “When it came to football, I just always had that talent and ability,” he said. “And I wasn’t that big at first; I was a skinny little kid. But over one summer, I put on 4 inches and 40 pounds, while maintaining the same speed and agility that I had when I was smaller.”

Jackson played college football at the University of Oklahoma under Coach Barry Switzer, where he was named consensus All-America as a tight end in 1986 and 1987. He was also named to the Big Eight All-Conference team three times. He finished his collegiate career with 62 pass receptions for 1,470 yards and 14 touchdowns, averaging 23.7 yards per catch and helped the Sooners to a 42-5-1 record and the 1985 national championship. He was also named a Big Eight All-Academic four times, earning his bachelor’s degree in communications in less than four years.

He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1988. “Buddy Ryan was the coach of the Eagles, and he said, ‘I don’t think you’ll be there when we pick at the 13th pick, but if you are, you’re gonna be an Eagle.’ I was there at 13th pick, I became an Eagle and instantly started hating the Cowboys,” Jackson joked.

Jackson played nine seasons in the National Football League with the Eagles, Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers. When he finished his career in 1997, he had accumulated 441 catches for 5,283 yards and 49 touchdowns.

In his second year in the NFL, Jackson said the vision for Positive Atmosphere Reaches Kids (P.A.R.K.) came to him, and he knew his future would unfold in The Natural State. “I wanted to do something to impact my community, where I was raised,” he said. “There’s a Bible verse that says, ‘To him that much is given, much is required.’ I’ve been blessed so much with the lifestyle I lead, not only with the NFL, but coming from a single-parent home and being able to go to the University of Oklahoma and study communications. We all have our niche where we can make our difference, and mine is with youth,” said Jackson who has a wife, Melanie, and three sons, Keith Jr., 27, Kenyon, 14 and Koilan, 12.

Founded by Jackson in 1993, P.A.R.K. is an after-school and summer program in Little Rock whose mission is to provide students who are at risk of dropping out of school the opportunity to further their education by completing high school and attending college. The program provides tutoring, recreation, community service and summer programs to “high risk” students who enter the program as rising eighth-graders and graduate from it five years later, coinciding with high school graduation.

“The big gap is education,” Jackson explained. “If we can educate our kids, we can close the gap. It will take care of crime, poverty — everything.”

P.A.R.K. works with the Little Rock and Pulaski County public school districts to identify and nominate academically challenged students for the program. “We tackle their deficiencies, raise GPAs and give them the opportunity to walk onto a college campus and be competitive. A large percentage of these kids will be first-generation college students,” Jackson said.

Parents also play a key role in this equation. “In the end, the parents have to pick up the nomination forms, fill them out and turn them in,” Jackson said. “And they’ve got to come to P.A.R.K. and interview. You tell a parent, ‘I’m going to help your child academically, they’re going to make a great ACT score and we’re going to get them on a college campus in Arkansas,’ and that’s the sell. They want this for their kids; they want a better life for them.”

In addition to his work with P.A.R.K., Jackson is also the current radio broadcast color analyst for the University of Arkansas (he has worked for TNT, Oklahoma Network and Fox Sports in the past), so he spends much of football season traveling with the Razorbacks. He couldn’t be happier doing that.

“Arkansas is home to me, and I’ve always been proud to be from Arkansas,” he said. “Unlike any other state, there’s about two degrees of separation in Arkansas. If you’re talking to someone from South Arkansas and you’re from central Arkansas, you are going to know someone in common. Everybody knows everybody and there’s a relationship there. That’s what I really like. Wherever you go, you feel like you’re at home.”

Supporting Source: EncyclopediaOfArkansas.net