A Nashville resident has been elected to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
J.B. Grimes, whose coaching career began in Nashville in 1978 under Coach Ronnie Kerr and ended with the second of two terms at Auburn University, retired from coaching and moved back to Nashville with his wife, the former Jennifer Graves.
Grimes will join an elite class to be formally inducted into the Hall of Fame at the annual Induction Banquet in Hot Springs in April 2025.
Joining him in the 2025 class will be former Razorback footballers Felix Jones and Clint Stoerner, and Hog basketballer Oliver Miller. Other inductees include former UA sports administrator Bev Lewis, former pro golfer Jack O’Keefe, along with Arkansas sports notables Mel Collazo, Greg Hatcher, OBU Coach Todd Knight and Bill Shimek.
Grimes was an all-state high school football player at Clarendon, and went on to play in the offensive line for the Henderson Reddies where he has been named to the Reddie Football Hall of Fame.
His first college coaching job was at Northeast Louisiana University where his team won a national title. He has also been named to the Hall of Fame at that school — now University of Louisiana-Monroe.
He has been a career offensive line coach. His coaching stops have
been at Arkansas, Missouri, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, East Carolina, Cincinnati, Arkansas State and two times at Auburn.
According to Sports Editor Wally Hall’s column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 80 of his former players have played pro ball. In his career his teams have won conference championships at Northeast Louisiana, Arkansas, Arkansas State, and Auburn. Again according to Hall’s column, Grimes was part of seven championship teams in six conferences. He has coached in 20 bowl games including Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, Gator, Alamo, Liberty, Go Daddy, Music City, Outback, Birmingham and Gallery Furniture Bowl. He has coached with Lou Holtz, Ken Hatfield, Gus Malzahn and Tommy Tuberville.
He and his wife, Jennifer, have four grown children who live in other states. One son, Nick, is an assistant coach at Arkansas State.
