Sporting memories: My father grew up playing football with one of the football greats
I don't really want to talk about the NFL that went on this weekend because for me it was mostly fights this weekend and I wasn't really excited about anything that happened. I suppose watching Kansas City getting humbled a bit was kind of exciting even though I like KC as a team. The Bills were favored going into that game as well and I didn't dig into why that was the case but the pundits were correct! I placed no bets this weekend because my favorite horrible team the Carolina Panthers were not playing but we'll be back on that next week when they play a Chief's team that has something to prove. It will be a bloodbath I am predicting.
I met with my father over the weekend and while we were out eating ribs the KC/Buffalo game was on in the background but I brought up something that he and I haven't spoken about in many years: The fact that he had played in high school at the same time as one of the greatest fullbacks of all time, John Riggins. Some of you might not be old enough to even know who that is but basically if you looked in a football magazine, we was going to be in there. I had one of his Redskins posters on my bedroom wall and one day, as a youth, my dad saw the poster and had some really good stories to tell me.
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My father and John Riggins were born only a few months apart and just by chance they happened to do this in around the same part of rural Kansas. My father was an incredible athlete and according to him, just out of virtue of having nothing else to do in countryside Kansas, he played every single sport that was offered. Obviously, the most manly sport and the most sought after sport was to play football. Because these cities were so small and unpopulated my Dad would regale me about how nearly every player on his tiny team had to play both offense and defense and this was true for every other team in their area as well. My Dad was always a larger than average person, just like I am but a big bigger. In his teenage years my Dad was around 6 foot 2 and 190 lbs. So on his own football team and in most of the games they would play he was a rather dominant player. On offense he would play tight end, some sort of running back, or at times even the quarterback. On defense he tended to play linebacker but would play other positions if the other team had a star player that needed to be marked.
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Here's a neat little chart in case you don't know what any of that means. In a shell, the safeties have a huge responsibility because you aren't just crashing the line or running backwards to try to prevent passes, you are in a position where you have to make a choice about where you are needed to prevent forward movement of the ball and most people that play defense will agree that this is one of the most important positions to have your best defensive players in.
On my father's own team he was considered one of the best on the team and they would have a lot of fun mostly beating up on the teams that they would play against because he was part of a "crew" of other guys that were quite dedicated to excellence in sports, especially football.
But when Centralia High School came to town one year, they first got introduced to John Riggins, who at that time had already earned the nickname of "Diesel."
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People knew of John Riggins and since they were born in the same area and were around the same age, my father and him were friendly but on that day in my father's sophomore year that Riggins was the same age, my father and his team had absolutely no idea that he was THAT good. My father tells the story about how on nearly every play John would get the ball and even though his team knew that John was going to get the ball he would cut through the defense like butter, including my father who was a very well-rounded and extremely strong farm-boy of an athlete. I was told about how nobody's feeling were hurt, but my father's team had to stand back in awe at how with a combination of speed, strength, and ability to make moves at the last second, that John would manage to break through almost any defensive formation despite the fact that the rest of his team was quite average.
My father and John became friends, well as well as you could become friends when both of you have to return home from school every day and pull a full shift of farm work every day, and John quickly became the focus of the entire area and largely, to the entire nation. My father was a great athlete, John Riggins was a generational phenom. John was also 6 foot 2, but even at just 16 years old, he was already weighing out at over 200 lbs of solid, fast as hell, muscle.
Like a lot of the people of rural Kansas, John would do all the sports and one of them was track and field. The details are iffy, but my dad told me that John only halfway took track seriously. He entered in the 100 meter and 200 meter dash, and finished 2nd in the entire state despite almost never training specifically for this sport. Like a lot of people including my father, the other sports were just way to kill time until football season came around. My father told me about the one time that his school fielded him against Riggins (and others) in the 100 meter dash and John would just leave everyone in the dust and then not even appear winded afterwards. This kind of suggests that John could have excelled in that sport, perhaps on some sort of Olympic level, but he just didn't care enough about it to actually train in it. It's a good thing that he didn't, because Diesel went on to become one of the greatest players of the 70's and 80's for the NFL.
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We look at the salaries today and just presume that every NFL player is making bank but when Riggins was drafted by the New York Jets he only got a salary of 63,000 dollars. Despite this pittance of a salary considering his excellence. John went on to dominate with the Jets breaking many records including being the only Jet in history to get 150 yards in a single game in both rushing and receiving. The Jets didn't handle him very well though and it wouldn't be long before he would end up with a really nice contract with the Washington Redskins for a LOT more money. His time with the Skins is where he is remembered most, because that was the only other team he played for.
Apparently John was quite difficult to manage and coach and when he became problematic he was confident enough his own abilities that he would just walk away if he didn't get what he wanted. Riggins though, and was correct, that the teams that were bullying him in his mind, needed him for than he needed them. After taking a year off during a contract dispute, John came back to the Redskins and casually broke 3 records, lead the Skins to a Super Bowl victory, and was named MVP of 1982. John would carry on well beyond his sell-by-date and became the first 35 year old to rush for over 1000 yards in 1984. He would retire a few years later, citing multiple nagging injuries and well, I suppose that is ok when you are near 40 and have been involved in one of the most grueling sports on the planet.
John had achieve god-like status but he always remained humble and gave back to the small Kansas community that he came from and on multiple occasions where he met with many other players including my dad. The football stadium and school in Centralia, Kansas is much larger than it has any business being because of John and their football program is one of the most sought after in that part of the country because of him.
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I enjoy hearing these stories from my father about encountering future greatness on the field in the 60's and even though this was a very very long time ago, it had enough of an impact on my Dad that he remembers tiny details about playing against this football great even now, 60 years later.
I have played with a few people that went on to greatness but nothing like this. The closest I have would be playing with Eddie Pope for one season, and being briefly on an American football team with a guy that ended up going to the NFL and winning a super-bowl ring but he didn't play a single down in that entire season.
I wonder if Riggins realized at such a young age that he was destined for greatness? According to my father John was not a super arrogant teenager, he was just a kid that happened to be a LOT better than those around him and apparently this contributed to him achieving one of the highest honors the sporting world had to offer.
Did you ever play with someone that went on to greatness?