He has seen every football game that Texas Southern has ever played since 1952. That's 36 years of football. That's a lot of years and a lot of games.

Mr. Rodney Evans, instructor of photographer in the School of Technology, began filming Tiger football games as a favor for Coach Alexander Durley in 1952. However, he has followed the games since TSU's first team took the field in 1947 against Southern University.
 
“TSU's first team members were all friends of mine and even though I enrolled at Southern I made every game to watch them play."

But Mr. Evans does more than film the games for the Tiger ballers. He's a friend, a cheerleader and a shoulder to lean on (sometimes pretty hard) when the team is away from home.

"I really enjoy filming the games," Mr. Evans admits, "but more than that I'm proud of TSU athletics. I have been around during up times and down times."
 
He offers this advice to the TSU family, "we should support our team(s) -win or lose - because our team represents us. You can't give up on a team when the scores or wins are down. We've got to stick with them all the way!"

Mr. Evans has been with the Tigers during the high times... the Audrey Fords, Kenny Burroughs', William Glossons, Harold Harts and Alexander Durleys, as he called off names of some Tiger superstars.

"Our team today lacks experience in some skilled positions right now but soon they will develop and be all right. We've got to support them, that's the key," he says.

Mr. Evans, who was promoted to assistant professor in 1988, believes "the real benefits and joys of teaching are to see products of yours do well. Some of the best photographers in the area received their degrees from TSU."

Not only are the students making great strides, but so are the teachers. Mr. Evans' photographic works have been featured in local as well as out-of-town newspapers, books and journals. One accomplishment he is extremely proud of is the fact that one of his photographs was selected to be apart of the permanent collection at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. The portrait is a shot Mr. Evans took while visiting Africa.

Since joining the TSU faculty, Mr. Evans also brags on the fact that he worked 33 years before missing a day of work. He had the flu…for a day.