Montgomery was named first-team All-State and Beard, Linder and tackle Bobby Ricks received honorable mention.

But Beard says there were no true standouts on the team.

“If anybody should be in the Hall of Fame, it should be the whole team,” he said. “I really feel that.”

Beard also played linebacker on defense and ran track at Moultrie High. He walked on at the University of Georgia, but gave up football after three weeks.

“I was too small and too slow,” he said.

Beard went on to graduate from the University of Georgia with a degree and marketing and joined the U.S. Army.

His days playing football for the Packers helped him deal with Officer Candidate School, jump school and Ranger training.

“They weren’t anything compared to summer camp at Moultrie High School,” he said.

After he left the Army, Beard worked for C&S and then joined the Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign and, when Carter defeated Gerald Ford, joined the White House staff as an assistant to Hamilton Jordan.

After leaving the White House in 1980, Beard worked for Stephens Inc. in Little Rock, Ark., and then for Smith Barney.

In late 1996, Beard and partners Read Morton and Nelson Bowers joined forces with M&M Mars to form MB2 Motorsports and enter a team in NASCAR’s top circuit.

Beard enlisted his friend Rick Hendrick to build the team’s engines and became the team’s most visible partner and was a regular at the team’s races.

In 1997, Cope, a former Daytona 500 winner, drove the No. 36 Skittles Pontiac in the team’s first season of competition and finished 27th in points standings.

Veteran Ernie Irvan took over in 1998. Beard says that Irvan’s winning of the pole for the Brickyard 400 that year was one of the highlights of his time as a team owner.

Irvan also won the pole at Michigan and Martinsville that season and had 11 top-10 finishes.