Forty years after delivering his last surgical strike as one of the most accurate quarterbacks who ever lived, Bengals Ring of Honor member Ken Anderson has finally become a doctor.

"After I come back, you may address me as Dr. Anderson," Kenny Anderson is saying before he heads to his alma mater to give Saturday's commencement address.

That's when the good people of Augustana College award him an honorary doctorate of humanities. The first Academic All-America athlete in school history plans to tell the more than 500 graduates that while he couldn't be at his own commencement 55 years ago in Rock Island, Ill., and they weren't nearly born when he retired from the NFL, he's glad to be with them now.

"The message?" Anderson is asked. "The theme of the talk is you may leave Augustana, but Augustana never leaves you."

No surprise there that one of the most prolific and best raconteurs of Bengals history has some punchy one-liners on his hip. But, Anderson says, this isn't like one of those yarns he unspools so easily about PB's genius, Isaac's speed, Trumpy's hands, meeting with Forrest, or rooming with Lap.

"This is totally different," Anderson says. "At an event, I'm trying to be entertaining, and I'm telling stories. I don't need a script to go out and talk for an hour. I could just go up there and start telling stories, and I'll be fine.

"But you're trying to deliver a message, and so I'm talking about success, I'm talking about leadership. I'm trying to get the font big enough so I don't have to wear my glasses, and when I look up from the page I can go down and find out where I'm at, because I'm having to read a lot of this."

Still, he's jotting down plenty about his Bengals days. Adversity. Fortune. He'll talk about how his 1981 MVP season began with an Opening Day benching and how his career could have ended right there.

"Being a small college kid and being able to come to a situation with Paul Brown and Bill Walsh meant everything to me," Anderson says. "If the Bengals don't draft me, I probably go to Atlanta. I'm cut in training camp, and I'm back in school by that fall. I think it's just the perfect situation for me where they were looking and saw enough in me to give me a chance."

Anderson, a math major, had it figured out. He'd teach math and coach high school football and basketball. But his arm had other ideas. After he dropped out of school following the football season, he returned in 1972 to get that math degree and then took the Bengals to the playoffs the following year.

No matter how far Anderson has gone, (he also became a sports broadcaster as well as a player who also coached in a Super Bowl), he comes back to Augustana every year for the lettermen's dinner and the football game.

It was during one of those reunions where he was sitting on the patio of one of his best buddies and college wide receiver Dave Markward. By this time, Markward was the superintendent of the Rock Island schools, and over a few beers they decided that the only structure on campus that bordered on ugly was the football stadium.

They attacked the idea so relentlessly that they got two prominent Cincinnatians, Charlie Lindberg and Dutch Knowlton, involved in their stadium project. When one of the finest Division III football facilities in the country opened in 2013, Bengals president Mike Brown accompanied Anderson to midfield.

Part of the project was the Ken Anderson Academic All-America Club, an 80-person hub of game day activity with picture-window views, as well as Vikings memorabilia lining the walls.

And, Anderson will send the crowd out the doors of the Vibrant Arena in nearby Moline with his story about the one hangup they worked through with the president of the college.

"I'm honored, but if my name's going to be on the door, we're going to serve beer," Anderson told him. "He went to the Board of Trustees and says, Kenny says if we don't serve beer in the Academic All American Club, we lose the money for the stadium. So they serve beer in the Ken Anderson Academic All-American Club."

But, if he sounds at ease, after 50 years of public speaking, Anderson, 77, says he'll still be nervous.

"I think any time you're out of your element, you get nervous," Anderson says.

Super Bowl butterflies?

"No," Anderson says. "It's not that big."

But big enough to bring a life well-lived full circle. Maybe this was his first speech when the introduction got a little salty.

"When I first got to Cincinnati, there was no ESPN. Who the hell is this quarterback from Augustana College? Where the hell is that?" Anderson recalls.

"When I came to speak for the first time, the MC of the event got up to start off by saying, 'They say this young man needs no introduction,' and I certainly hope so because I never heard of him before.'"

No problem Saturday. Because Augustana never left Dr. Kenny Anderson.