Nobody Wants a Charlie in the Box

Or

Concrete Shoes Charlie

Or

Ground Chuck

Chuck Bednarik, star of the last Philadelphia Eagles team to win a championship, has died at the age of 89. The last two-way star of the NFL, his bad assery was legendary, and despite playing on both offense as center and defense as a linebacker for much of his career, he missed just 3 games in 14 seasons – two of those games in his rookie season. In an exhibition game, his bicep tore away from the bone, falling into his forearm. He pulled it back into place and used tape to hold it in place. In a 1960 game, he hit Frank Gifford so hard he missed the rest of the season and the entire 1961 season, and was never the same player. That was also the year the Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers for the NFL Championship – the only title game that Vince Lombardi ever lost. At 35, Bednarilk was the oldest player on either team, but was on the field for 139 of the total 142 plays – 58 of the game’s 60 minutes – and made the game-saving tackle on Packer’s fullback Jim Taylor at the 9-yard-line, holding him on the ground as time expired, before telling Taylor “You can get up now, this fucking game is over.” Bednarik had worked in steel mills growing up, then flew bombing missions over Germany in World War II. Putting the GI Bill to use, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he excelled as a center, linebacker and occasional punter, earning All American honors twice, finishing 3rd in the 1948 Heisman trophy voting and winning the Maxwell Award, en route to being the top pick in the 1949 draft. Bednarik was elected to both the College Football and Pro Football Halls of Fame, and he is the namesake for the award given to the Best Collegiate Defensive Player. By extension, he was also the most accomplished concrete salesman in Pennsylvania, his offseason job throughout his time with the Eagles, earning him the nickname Concrete Charlie. Bednarik had little regard for modern NFL players, calling them “pussyfoots” (in his more generous moments), who "suck air after five plays." When Deion Sanders earned comparisons to Bednarik because he played offense and defense as wide receiver and cornerback, Bednarik was incensed and said that he "couldn't tackle my wife Emma." While earning him a bit of a “get these kids off my lawn” reputation, such blunt talk endeared him all the more to Philadelphia fans.

Ace in the Hole

Ace Parker, who played football in the days of leather helmets and two-way players on the gridiron for 60 minutes at a stretch and never whined about concussions – at least that he remembered – has died at the age of 101. After a career at Duke University that would earn him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame, back when Duke won more than 3 games a year, Parker embarked on a path to Canton. Until recently the oldest living member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Parker was one of the last tailback stars in the single wing, the predecessor to the T formation, which relied heavily on the run. Befitting the era, he also passed, received, punted, place-kicked, blocked and played defensive back, starring for the NFL’s Brooklyn Dodgers  when franchise naming was still too complex to have more than one team name per city. He was the NFL MVP in 1940, despite wearing a 10-pound brace on his injured ankle for part of the season. After World War II, Parker played a season with the Boston Yanks, then the New York Yankees of the All-American Football Conference. Before settling for a lesser sport, Parker signed with the Philadelphia Athletics out of college, and played under the legendary Connie Mack. He hit a pinch-hit homer in his first major league plate appearance in 1937, but for his career hit just .179 in 94 games. He was one of two players still alive who had shared the field with Lou Gehrig, leaving Bobby Doerr as the last living larrupee. 

Turn out the lights, the Pardee’s over

Jack Pardee, the Don King of NFL head coaches, has died of gall bladder cancer at the age of 76. Pardee started in Coach Bear Bryant’s infamous “Junction Boys” camp at Texas A&M and after being one of only 35 (from 100 who entered) to survive the 10 days of brutal drills in oppressive heat, he emerged as a College Football Hall of Fame linebacker and fullback. After a 13-year pro career that included 2 All-Pro seasons, he had stints coaching the Chicago Bears, returning the Bears to the playoffs for the first time since George Halas, and Washington Redskins, where he won Coach of the Year honors, but never made the playoffs. He returned to the college game as a coach at the University of Houston, employing a Run and Shoot offense that netted Andre Ware a Heisman Trophy. In the NFL, he made the playoffs 4 years in a row with the Houston Oilers, making Warren Moon a star, but is probably best remembered for arranging sideline fisticuffs by putting Buddy Ryan and Kevin Gilbride on the same coaching staff. In addition to the NCAA and NFL, Pardee also was a head coach in the USFL (1984-85 Houston Gamblers, 1986 New Jersey Generals), World Football League (1974 Washington Ambassadors/Virginia Ambassadors/Florida Blazers) and the Canadian Football League (1995 Birmingham Barracudas), making him the only man to get second-guessed in such a varied collection of sports leagues.

Beano Before, But They’ll Beano After

Cranky college football analyst Beano Cook has died of some combination of diabetes, heart disease, other ailments and being 81. Dubbed “the country’s leading authority on college football,” in 1982 by Sports Illustrated, Cook headlined ESPN’s Saturday studio shows for more than 20 decades, managing to be informative and amusing without ever donning a gladiator helmet or gator head. A football fanatic from childhood, as a teen Cook hitchhiked to New York to see the Army-Michigan game and to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game. He spent a decade as Pitt’s sports publicist where he was the one honest man in the business, who proclaimed “I won’t even lie for Pitt.” He had a brilliant idea of posing Pitt’s star basketball player alongside Jonas Salk, who had developed his polio vaccine at Pitt with the proposed caption: “The world’s two greatest shot makers,” but Salk was better at making medicine than making jokes and refused to go along. One of Cook’s most enduring contributions was during a short stint with CBS where he devised the NFL map that determines what regions see what games on television. At the time network executives simply looked at the standings and picked the teams with the best records, ignoring the schadenfreude for football fans watching their archrivals lose. So Packers fans got to watch the Bears and vice versa. The Redskins were broadcast throughout the South because no one cared about the Falcons. When a team was on the rise, they got more air time, like Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers. For neutral regions, Cook would call local sportswriters or even random fans to get an idea on what games to program. And when all else failed, they went with the Cowboys, making CBS’ two biggest stars Larry Hagman and Tom Landry. The strategy worked as CBS’s NFL ratings, and the resultant ad dollars, exploded. 

Mongo No Longer Pawn in Game of Life

Alex Karras, best remembered as the cock-fighting oil rigger in When Time Ran Out, has died of kidney disease, heart disease and stomach cancer at the age of 77. This marks the first time that Karras has ever assisted the NFL, as the league has one fewer plaintiff trying to claim he had no idea that running full speed and slamming his head against helmeted, padded men every Sunday would have negative health consequences. After an All-America career at Iowa, including finishing second in the Heisman balloting in 1957, he embarked on a semi-pro career with the Detroit Lions. He emerged as one of the league’s most feared defensive lineman, earning Pro Bowl honors 4 times and making the NFL All-1960s team, despite missing a season when commissioner Pete Rozelle decided that betting on 6 NFL games a year represented a slap at the integrity of the game and suspended him for the 1963 season. He appeared in 1968’s Paper Lion, based on George Plimpton’s story of his training camp experiences as a QB, which opened his second career in Hollywood. A series of guest spots, including a Marine devoted to saving Hawkeye on MASH, and his horse-punching, ox-riding stint as Mongo in Blazing Saddles earned him a starring role in The Diff’rent Strokes rip-off Webster as Emmanuel Lewis’ adoptive father.

He Lies… in State

Or

Seamy Valley

Former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85 of complications from lung cancer, 3 months after he could have gone out a legend. Fittingly, he died on a Sunday, because we know how much he hated to inconvenience anyone on a Saturday. Terry Gilliam films had better endings than Paterno’s life. On Oct. 29, 2011, he won his 409th game to become the all-time winningest coach in Division I college football history. On Nov. 5, his long-time defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was revealed to be a pedophile in good standing, and that it had been reported to Paterno, and that he had essentially left a Post-it Note on his boss’ desk saying: “Jerry. Shower. Kids.” and forgotten about it. Then he got fired (by a phone call, the gutless bastards), got cancer, broke his hip and died. Prior to giving enabling a bad name, Paterno had established a football factory in the insignificant town of State College, Pennsylvania. Passing up a scholarship to Boston University School of Law, Paterno moved to Happy Valley in 1950 to become quarterbacks coach before taking over as head coach in 1966, where he implemented an offense as conservative as his horn-rimmed glasses, rolled up pants and white socks. In his record-setting 46-year career, he led 2 national champions, 5 unbeaten teams and finished in the top 5 11 other times, and made 37 bowl games, winning 24 of them – both records for any head coach. And doing so all the while with no recruiting scandals and with some of the highest graduation rates among major college programs.

Sooner Later

Lee Roy Selmon, Don Nee’s real father, has died of complications following a stroke at the age of 56. Selmon and his brothers Dewey and Lucious dominated on the Oklahoma Sooners defense en route to back to back national championships in 1974 and 1975. His reward – being the first player ever drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he would lose his first 26 games as a professional, and probably would have lost to Oklahoma, if given the chance. It would have been much worse without him, as he racked up 78 ½ sacks in 9 seasons, earning 6 Pro Bowl selections and entry in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, to go along with selection in the College Football Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame and the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.

Bubba Dumped

Bubba Smith, Dick Butkus’ life partner, has died at the age of 66. After a career at Michigan State that earned him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame, the 6-foot-8, 300-lb Smith spent 9 seasons in the NFL, making two Pro Bowl teams and helping the Baltimore Colts to throw Super Bowl III to the New York Jets. Part of the All-Star lineup of the Miller Lite ads of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Smith quickly found himself stereotyped as intimidating black man for comic relief, most notably as florist turned cop Moses Hightower in Police Academy and too many of its too many sequels. Other gigs included Blue Thunder, co-starring Butkus; MacGyver, co-starring Butkus; Half Nelson, co-starring Butkus; Superdome, co-starring Butkus and as Tony’s duck-loving boxing coach on Taxi, 3 years after Butkus’ cameo.

The Doctor is Out

Doc Blanchard, who won the 1945 Heisman Trophy as Mr. Inside, has died at the age of 84. In the era before the service academies existed to help Notre Dame make the Outback Bowl, Blanchard and his Army backfield mate Mr. Outside Glenn Davis led the Cadets to a three-year record of 27-0-1 and national titles in 1944 and 1945. Blanchard racked up 38 TDs, and 1,908 yards in three seasons. Drafted by the Steelers in 1946, Blanchard opted to tie instead of losing and served as a fighter pilot in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, retiring as a colonel in 1971.

Mr. Outside the Ethereal Plane

Heisman Trophy winner Glenn Davis has died at the age of 80. As Mr. Outside paired with Doc Blanchard’s Mr. Inside in the days when it took Army a season, rather than a decade, to win 10 games, Davis led the Cadets to national championships in 1944, 1945 and a shared title in 1946. Davis finished his time at West Point with 59 touchdowns and 4,129 yards, winning the Heisman Award in 1946 after finishing second in 1944 and 1945. Davis also helped the Los Angeles Rams to the NFL title in 1951 before a knee injury ended his career in 1952.

Holy Roller Crossed Off

(props to Chris)
Dan Allen, 48, former football coach for the likes of Holy Cross and Boston University, passed away from the effects of multiple chemical sensitivity. His success at BU - earning the team an unparalleled record of 11-0 in 1993 - can entirely be attributed to Rob Dougherty.
(Monty on special assignment)

Elroy ‘Crazy Legs’ Hearse

Or
Badgers, We Don’t Need No Stinking Badgers
(Honorifics to Mark for the alternate epitaph)
NFL Hall of Famer and long-time fixture at the University of Wisconsin Elroy ‘Crazy Legs’ Hirsch died Wednesday at the age of 80. As a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, Hirsch was described as looking like a ''demented duck whose crazy legs were gyrating in six different directions all at the same time.'' Thankfully for posterity, ‘Crazy Legs’ rather than ‘Demented Duck’ was the nickname that stuck. In his lone season with the Badgers, he ran for 786 yards as the team finished 8-1-1, then bailed for the University of Michigan, but Wisconsites desperate for a link to greatness retired his Number 40 anyway. He returned in 1969 and served as athletic director for 18 years. After college, he starred for the Los Angeles Rams from 1949-1957 as part of the Rams' revolutionary "three-end" offense. His best season was 1951, when he led the NFL with 66 catches, 1,495 yards receiving and 17 touchdowns. He also took a shot at the silver screen, playing himself in the biography "Crazy Legs, All American," and went on to star in the movie "Unchained" in 1955 and "Zero Hour" in 1957. He also appeared in an episode of The Munsters as himself as Herman was showing off his athletic prowess.

Kicked off for good

or:
Mr. Inside the coffin

or: "The really sad thing is, the Downtown Athletic Club lost another dues paying member," Allison, noting the financial troubles of the Heisman home.

Jay Berwanger, the first player to win the Heisman Award, joined a different kind of fantasy football team this morning at the age of 88 (that's +12 in Dead Pool Years). Tom was the only one to have him, giving him 3 corpses and 23 points, for third place.

The leaderboard:
1st: Ryan 3 dead, 73 points
2nd: Me 3 dead, 41 points
3rd: Tom 3 dead, 23 points
4th: Me again 2 dead, 68 points
5th: Mark 2 dead, 41 points
(tie) Keith 2 dead, 41 points

Joan-Marie, Joy, Jennifer, have you at least thought about bumping off someone on your list to get in the game?