Rolled Snake Eyes

Ken Stabler, who preferred Birmingham to Oakland, has died of colon cancer at the age of 69. Recruited by Bear Bryant, Stabler had a unique career at the University of Alabama, watching from the bench as Joe Namath and Steve Sloan led the Crimson Tide to consecutive national championships in 1964 and 1965. Given his chance, he led the Tide to another undefeated season, capped by a blowout in the Sugar Bowl, but voters apparently had Tide fatigue and Alabama finished 3^rd. Senior year saw a disappointing 8-2-1 finish, with Stabler briefly kicked off the team, but highlighted by his 53-yard TD scamper in the rain to beat Auburn, a play known in Iron Bowl lore as the “Run in the Mud.” Drafted by the Oakland Raiders, Stabler was again a late bloomer, doing little for 3 seasons, until a late TD run in the 1972 AFC Divisional Playoff would have made him a hero, but he who lives by the fancy named play dies by the fancy named play, and Franco Harris’ Immaculate Reception ended the Raiders season. With Hall of Famers Fred Biletnikoff and Dave Casper and Hall of Fame finalist Cliff Branch catching passes, Stabler was AFC player of the year in 1974 and 1976 and led the Raiders to their first Super Bowl title in 1977. The Raiders traded the franchise leader in passing yards and TD passes after the 1979 season, as the Houston Oilers thought that adding past their prime stars like Stabler and Casper to a still ambulatory Earl Campbell was the ticket to the Super Bowl. It was not. Stabler moved on to bring the Saints within a game of their first playoff appearance in 1983, then retired in the middle of the 1984 season. Stabler set the record for fewest games to reach 100 wins as a starting quarterback (150) and still remains the 4^th fastest. In 1974, Stabler was one of several NFL stars who signed contracts to join the World Football League after their current contracts expired in 1976, and he proudly declared his intent to bring pro football to the South as a member of the Birmingham Americans. The WFL folded in 1975, and Stabler stayed a Raider. Stabler was as celebrated for his prowess off the field as on, and there has been some speculation that his hard-partying may have kept him out of that bastion of decorum in Canton. Stabler decorated his hotel suite in training camp with the underwear of his conquests, and bragged that he studied his playbook by the light of a jukebox. In-huddle belches that carried the distinct aroma of the remnants of amber liquid from the previous evening, which had invariably stretched into game day morning, were not uncommon.

Noll Set

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Grounded Chuck

(Props to Mark)

Chuck Noll, the man who stuck football fans everywhere with that moron Terry Bradshaw by building an idiot-proof system en route to 4 Super Bowl wins as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has died at the age of 82. In 1969, with Joe Paterno firmly committed as an enabler at Penn State, the woeful Steelers tapped the 1968 NFL Champion Baltimore Colts’ defensive coordinator as their next head coach. The team responded by losing 13 of 14 in his first year. The Steelers’ draft positions put the team in position to rebuild, and every year the Steelers’ draft was a preview of Induction Weekend at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, starting with Joe Greene as Noll’s first pick, and including Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Jack Ham, and the unprecedented or repeated 1974 draft that produced 4 Hall of Famers: Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Jack Lambert and Mike Webster. Despite his success and unmatched 4 Super Bowl titles, Noll didn’t win Coach of the Year honors until 1989 when he took a team that lost its first 2 games by a combined score of 92-10 to the playoffs, winning its first game.

Hey Buffalo Bills, Who Did You Kill?

Ralph Wilson, the last member of the Foolish Club who founded the American Football League at $25,000 a pop, has died at the age of 95. While his fellow fools opted to establish their sports empires in sunny climes like San Diego or great cities like Boston, Wilson opted to make a name for himself in the godforsaken tundra of Buffalo, embracing the 9 months of lake-effect snow a year in the hopes that taking up in a town no visiting team wanted to visit would give him an unbeatable homefield advantage. The strategy met with some success, with back-to-back AFL titles in 1964 and 1965, and an NFL record 4 straight Super Bowl appearances, each of which ended as miserably as a February day in Buffalo. Despite being the 3rd most worthless franchise in the NFL, valued at a scant $870 million, Wilson kept the tiny market of Buffalo in the major league fraternity for more than 50 years. Other highlights included keeping O.J. Simpson off the streets for more than a decade, and ensuring that football fans everywhere would suffer through a half century of Al Davis by floating him a $400,000 loan in 1962 to keep the team afloat. 

Commitment to Permanent Wave

In what passes for good news for the NFL these days, a somewhat recently retired star has died of something other than a concussion, suicide, or hazing, as former Oakland Raider Todd Christensen has died of complications of liver surgery at the age of 57. In one of the odder pairings in NFL history, the teetotaling, goodie-two shoes Mormon ended up with league’s biggest renegade teams, to the benefit of both. The well-coiffed tight end made 5 straight All Pro Teams and won 2 Super Bowl rings with the Raiders, twice setting records for receptions in a season by a tight end. Unlike many of his Raiders teammates, who could rely on drinking and drugs to wreck their livers, Christensen’s troubles stemmed from a botched gall bladder operation.

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. 

The Grass Is Always be on Greenwood

Steel Curtains for another member of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ vaunted defense, as defensive end LC Greenwood has died of kidney failure at the age of 67. A 10th round pick out of nowhere (Arkansas AM&N, now Arkansas-Pine Bluff ), within 2 years he was a starter, and an All-Pro in 5. The 6-time Pro Bowler, 5-time All-AFC and 4-time champion, resplendent in his gold shoes, was nonetheless overshadowed by his teammates, and was denied twice as a finalist for the Hall of Fame.

Donovan’s Grief

Art Donovan, the oral historian of Baltimore Colts football, has died of a respiratory ailment at the age of 89. The only member of the worst defense in NFL history to make the Hall of Fame, Donovan spent 12 years in pro football, then spent the rest of his life telling people about it with tales of gridiron glory from the time when concussions were cool and not Exhibits A-XYZ and the NFL was populated by "oversized coal miners and West Texas psychopaths." Donovan’s grandfather, Mike, was a world middleweight champion who gave boxing lessons to Teddy Roosevelt, his father, Arthur Sr, was a referee inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and Donovan got shot in the ass on Okinawa during World War II, so he had a lifetime of stories even before he sacked a drunken Bobby Layne in the middle of a game. Each of the first 3 pro teams Donovan played for folded before he found a permanent home in 1953 in Baltimore, where he was All-NFL for four straight years, played in five consecutive Pro Bowls and helped win consecutive world championships in 1958 and 1959.

Sacked

Deacon Jones, who helped inspire the series Glee by defending Peter against some bullies who almost goaded him into quitting the glee club, has died at the age of 74. As a member of the Fearsome Foursome, the collection of giant All-Pros on the Los Angeles Rams defensive line, Jones was credited with coining the term sack, and was retroactively credited with 194.5 of them, as it wasn’t recorded as an official statistic until 1982. His unofficial totals of 26 in 1967 and 24 in 1968, both in 14-game seasons, both surpass Michael Strahan’s NFL record, and he did it without having Brett Favre going down easier than Lindsay Lohan. 

School’s Out for Summerall

Pat Summerall, who overcame being born with a backward leg, toy NFL kicker helmets and alcoholism only to spend 21 years covered with John Madden’s spittle, has died of cardiac arrest at the age of 82. With the New York Giants, Summerall played in 3 NFL title games in 4 years – all losses. His personal highlight came in 1958 when he hit a late 49-yard field goal in a snowstorm at Yankee Stadium that beat the Cleveland Browns in the season finale and forced the two teams into a playoff for the Eastern Conference title. The Giants also won that game before losing the Greatest Game Ever Played to the Baltimore Colts. Summerall was the rare ex-player who ended up as a play-by-play man rather than a color commentator, but his style seemed more suited to the golf tournaments he broadcast in the offseason than the gridiron. His sedate style worked well in his teaming with Madden, largely because his broadcaster partner tended to use up all the oxygen in the room, as well as large chunks of nitrogen and argon. In his career, he brought the same hushed tones to the NBA Finals in 1974 and was the man to let Bobby Orr’s father know his son had won the Stanley Cup for the Bruins in 1970. After stints covering the NFL for NBC, CBS and Fox he retired, making it a semi-retirement when he began broadcasting Cowboys home games and the Cotton Bowl in his hometown of Dallas.

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.

Art Modell - Gone to Hell. Man he screwed the NFL.

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Moved the Ravens: Everwhore

Or

Art Modell. Gone to hell? Will he bring the NFL?

(Props to Mark)
The Dog Pound has a new place to take a dump. Art Modell, who showed LeBron James, Ernest Byner, John Elway and Michael Jordan what it really means to tear out a city’s sports heart and show it to them while it’s still beating, has died at the age of 87. One of the game’s visionary owners, Modell was instrumental in expanding the NFL’s presence in television and convinced Dick Ebersol that Monday night was a great night for football. Then in 1995, after nearly a half-century of Browns football in Cleveland including more than 30 years under his ownership, Modell decided he wasn’t getting spit at enough and moved the Browns from the Mistake by the Lake to the City that Bleeds. In the process, he displaced a successful and popular CFL franchise, rekindled memories of the Baltimore Colts’ flight to Indianapolis, ignored his own history as a Brooklyn Dodger fan, broke repeated promises that he would not move the team and pretty much derailed any chance he had for induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Baltimore Ravens plan a moment of silence before their first game of the season this weekend. The Cleveland Browns plan a 10-minute standing ovation. Interment will be in Baltimore, with the body being relocated to Los Angeles in the offseason.

Van-ished

Steve Van Buren, the greatest Honduras-born player in NFL, has died of pneumonia at the age of 91. The power running back was the last member of the Philadelphia Eagles first championship, a 7-0 triumph in the 1948 NFL title game, played in one of the worst blizzards Philadelphia had ever seen. Van Buren had to walk to Shibe Park because the snowfall shut down the city’s mass transit options, then scored the lone touchdown of the game on a 5-yard run after the Chicago Cardinals had fumbled at their own 17-yard line, as best as anyone could tell, as the snow obscured yard markers, late in the 4th quarter. In warmer, though not much better weather conditions, Van Buren racked up 196 yards in the rain and mud as the Eagles repeated as NFL champions in 1949. When the Hall of Fame back retired after the 1951 season, he was the NFL’s all-time leader in rushing yards with 5,860, rushing attempts at 1,320 and touchdowns with 69.

Say Ow

Tiana Baul “Junior” Seau has become the 4th defensive player from the 1992 Pro Bowl and the 8th member of the San Diego Chargers lone Super Bowl Team of 1994 to die, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest at age 43. Much like a Boy Named Sue, a boy named Tiana had to be able to handle himself, and Seau emerged as one of the premier defenders of his generation and greatest linebackers of all time, beginning his career with 12 straight Pro Bowl appearances and making the NFL all-decade team for the 1990s.

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.

Turn Out the Lights, The Party’s Over

Don Meredith, the crooning former Cowboy quarterback in the Monday Night Football broadcast booth, has died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 72. Meredith was a star at SMU, then got drafted by the dreadful expansion Cowboys team and led them from an 0-11-1 season in 1960 to title game losses in 1966 and 1967, the latter aka the Ice Bowl. Meredith’s easy humor even softened hardass coach Tom Landry. Before the 1966 title game, Meredith showed up in the locker room with a heavily stitched face and said he had tripped into a plate glass window and couldn’t play. Landry walked in. The locker room fell silent as he walked to his star quarterback. And erupted in laughter when Landry peeled off the mask applied by a make-up artist. Even better story if Meredith hadn’t sealed the loss with a late interception. A year after retiring, he provided humor to balance stolid block of wood Frank Gifford and a folksy counterpoint to blowhard Howard Cosell on Monday nights. He explained: “I’d just wait for Howard to make a mistake. Didn’t usually take too long.” With many tuning in for the broadcasters as much as for the games, Meredith gave a reason to stick around in blow-outs: when a camera found a solitary Oiler fan during a loss to the Raiders who promptly gave the finger, Meredith offered, “He thinks they’re No. 1;” in a game where the Cowboys were getting stomped and the crowd had started chanting “We want Meredith,” he assured viewers, “No way you’re getting me down there.” He later became the Lipton Tea shill and missed a throw on King of the Hill that cost Hank $100,000.

A Commitment to Expiration

Former Oakland Raiders placekicker and quarterback George Blanda, who retired more often than Brett Favre, has died at the age of 83, thwarting his planned comeback to dig the Raiders out of their current 2-4 hole. Blanda played 26 years– the longest career in pro football history. Starting his career at left bench with George Halas’ Chicago Bears in 1949, Blanda did not get along with the coaching legend. In one game with the Bears getting stomped, fans in the stands starting chanting “We want Blanda.” Halas told Blanda to come off the bench. After putting on his helmet and running to the sideline, Halas motioned to the stands and told him, “Get up there. They’re calling for you.” Tiring of being relegated to kicking, he retired after the 1958 season, but a year later, the American Football League came calling, and he led the Houston Oilers to the league’s first two championships, winning player of the year honors in 1961, before the Oilers decided he should retire in 1967. Instead, he went to the Raiders and played 9 more seasons. Though not known for his arm strength, passing accuracy, agility or foot speed, he nonetheless had a knack for clutch performances - in one 5-game stretch in 1970 replacing the Raiders injured quarterback, the 43-year-old Blanda guided the team to 5 4th quarter comebacks with his passing and kicking. Elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981, he was the first QB with 7 TD passes in a game, set the record for TDs in a season with 36 that stood for 23 seasons, still holds the record for interceptions in a season with 42, held the record for career interceptions until Brett Favre surpassed him, and finally retired in 1976 with more points scored and games played than anyone in pro football history.

Assassinated

Jack Tatum, the man who made Darryl Stingley famous, has died of a heart attack at the age of 61. The former Oakland Raiders defensive back helped cement the renegade image of the Raiders and earned himself the nickname the Assassin for his brutal tackles, especially the hit in 1978 preseason game that left Stingley, a New England Patriots wide receiver, a quadriplegic. Although Tatum was not penalized by referees or the league office, he was reviled for his lack of public remorse, and for only reaching out to Stingley in an attempt to sell his biography. Tatum frequently had his actions narrated by John Facenda, including a hit in Super Bowl XI that knocked Vikings wide-out Sammy White’s helmet off, and the hit on Pittsburgh receiver Frenchy Fuqua in the 1972 divisional playoff that allowed Franco Harris to make the Immaculate Reception.

The Air Down There

Don Coryell, aggravator of defensive coaches both foreign and domestic, has died at the age of 85. As the head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, and even more so with the San Diego Chargers, Coryell helped usher in the wide-open passing offense in the NFL with his brand known as Air Coryell. With Hall of Famers Dan Fouts at quarterback, Charlie Joiner at wide receiver and Kellen Winslow at tight end, the Chargers made the postseason 4 times, twice reaching the AFC Championship game, in Coryell’s 8-year tenure. Coryell’s passing game then indirectly changed defenses, increasing substitutions with nickel and dime backs, situational blitzes and forcing an overall focus on speed in the secondary. Coryell also built the San Diego State football program, and was the first coach to win 100 games in the pros and in college, making the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999, but failing to get the credit for his innovations by pro football voters.

Not Quite so Fearsome Anymore

(Huzzah for Mark)

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In Lieu of Donations, Send Flowers, Like a Lovely FTD “In Memoriam” Arrangement

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The Family Murphy Has Lost Their Father...
(Kudos to Terrence Walsh)

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No Farther, Murphy
(More Merit for Mark)
Merlin Olsen, terrorizer of quarterbacks, raiser of barns, friend of Ron Burgundy, hawker of flowers, has died at the age of 69 of mesothelioma, in yet another case for the law offices of James Sokolove. After a stellar career at Utah State that included appearances in the Sun Bowl and the Gotham Bowl, he was drafted 3rd overall by the LA Rams in 1962. Joined by Rosey Grier, Lamar Lundy and Deacon Jones on the defensive line, Olsen anchored the 4th, but arguably best known, group to be known as the Fearsome Foursome. After a Hall of Fame career that included 14 Pro Bowl appearances in 15 years, Olsen moved smoothly to the broadcast booth alongside Dick Enberg on NBC’s coverage of the AFC, while also putting in a cameo as a bodyguard in the later-to-be MSTied Joe Don Baker vehicle Mitchell. He traded his fearsomeness for giant gentility as lumberjack Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie, a frontiersman masquerading as a priest to shelter orphans on Father Murphy and then as an Amish farmer who loaded up his kin and moved to Beverly in a mid-life rumspringa to take care of the woman his son knocked up before getting killed in a surfing accident in Aaron’s Way, a series that made the Amish grateful they didn’t have televisions.