Current Biography Excerpts: Football

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AIKMAN, TROY
ALLEN, MARCUS
CAMPBELL, EARL
CUNNINGHAM, RANDALL
DAVIS, AL
DITKA, MIKE
ELWAY, JOHN
ESIASON, BOOMER
FLUTIE, DOUG
GIBBS, JOE
GIFFORD, FRANK
HOLTZ, LOU
HUIZENGA, H. WAYNE
JACKSON, BO
JOHNSON, JIMMY
JONES, JERRY (with photograph)
KELLY, JIM
LOTT, RONNIE
MADDEN, JOHN
MARINO, DAN
MONK, ART
MONTANA, JOE
MOON, WARREN
PARCELLS, BILL
PATERNO, JOE
PAYTON, WALTER
RICE, JERRY
ROBINSON, EDDIE
SANDERS, BARRY
SANDERS, DEION
SIMMS, PHIL
SINGLETARY, MIKE
SMITH, BRUCE
SMITH, EMMITT
TAGLIABUE, PAUL
TAYLOR, LAWRENCE
WALKER, HERSCHEL
WALSH, BILL
WHITE, REGGIE
YOUNG, STEVE

AIKMAN, TROYAIKMAN, TROY
Nov. 21, 1966- Football player.

When the Dallas Cowboys made Troy Aikman the first selection in the 1989 National Football League draft, the All-American quarterback from the University of California at Los Angeles joined a proud franchise that had fallen on hard times. In his rookie season with the team, the Cowboys lost fifteen times in sixteen outings, their only victory coming against the Washington Redskins when Aikman, who was injured, was out of the lineup. Mistrustful of Dallas coach Jimmy Johnson and prone to injury, the newcomer seemed unlikely to ever replace the Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach in the hearts of Cowboys' fans, but during the 1992-93 season, a healthy Aikman emerged as one of the league's premier signal callers, and in a dramatic resurrection from the ashes of 1989's 1-15 record, Dallas claimed the first of its back-to-back Super Bowl victories. Proclaimed "the best quarterback in the NFL" by no less an authority than Roger Staubach himself, in 1993 Aikman signed a fifty million dollar contract that made him the highest-paid player in professional football history.

With his movie-star good looks, his genuine humility, and his championship rings, Aikman would appear to be a dream come true for Madison Avenue marketeers, who would like to package and sell him as an urban cowboy for the masses, an iconic heartthrob from the heartland clad in blue jeans and boots. The quarterback, however, is uncomfortable with the adulation he receives and wary of the merchandising that currently accompanies fame in professional sports. "You know, I wish there was a switch I could flip, where no one knows me," he confessed to Jill Lieber in an interview for Sports Illustrated (February 15, 1993). "And then, when I'm ready to make a splash, I'd flip the switch and say, Hey, I'm ready now.' Unfortunately, that doesn't happen."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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ALLEN, MARCUSALLEN, MARCUS
Mar. 26, 1960- Football player.

The Los Angeles Raiders' running back Marcus Allen "just flows," according to his Los Angeles area rival Eric Dickerson. "Nobody cuts back at full speed the way he does. Plus, he'll knock your jock off blocking, and he throws the ball better than half the quarterbacks in the league." Allen, whose potential as a National Football League player was once questioned by professional scouts, combines with his physical gifts the "intangibles" of extraordinary ambition and self-confidence. Now generally acknowledged to be the game's most versatile running back, Allen, at twenty-six, has won more major awards than any other football player in history, including college football's coveted Heisman Trophy, the National Football League's Rookie of the Year Award, Super Bowl XVIII's Most Valuable Player Award, and the NFL seasonal award for Most Valuable Player. The San Francisco 49ers' All-Pro defensive back Ronnie Lott has testified, "When I prepare for the Raiders I prepare for Marcus Allen. I know that every, every, every play, he can beat you."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1986 Current Biography Yearbook.

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CAMPBELL, EARLCAMPBELL, EARL
Mar. 29, 1955- Football player.

After only five seasons in the National Football League, Earl Campbell, the running back of the Houston Oilers, ranks tenth on the NFL career rushing list. Campbell came to the Oilers from the University of Texas, where he won the Heisman Trophy for the best football player in the country, in his senior year, 1977. In his first four seasons as a professional he rushed for 6,457 yards, a league record for a four-year span, and over that period he averaged an extraordinary twenty-three carries a game. Jim Brown, the holder of the all-time rushing record (12,312 yards), averaged only nineteen carries during his period of heaviest comparable duty, his last four years with the Cleveland Browns.

In 1982, when Campbell's average per carry dropped from 4.62 yards to 3.43, Rob Carpenter, a former teammate of his, now a running back with the New York Giants, observed, "If Earl is wearing down, I don't think it's the number of carries so much as it is the number of tacklers who hit him on each carry. It seems like six, seven guys get a good shot at him every play." As the former superstar running back O. J. Simpson has observed, Campbell has an "inspirational quality far beyond [his considerable physical] talents" and "provides a certain lift to a team; everything will be going along normally, then all of a sudden he takes over."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1983 Current Biography Yearbook.

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CUNNINGHAM, RANDALLCUNNINGHAM, RANDALL
Mar. 27, 1963- Football player.

In just six seasons in the National Football League, Randall Cunningham of the Philadelphia Eagles has established himself as the most dangerous scrambling quarterback since Fran Tarkenton made life miserable for opposing defenders in the 1960s and 1970s. At six feet four inches and 203 pounds, Cunningham may also be the best all-around athlete ever to play that position. "Cunningham is the last of what was once popularly known as a triple threat," Dave Anderson of the New York Times wrote. "He can throw a football as if he had released an arrow from a bow. He can gallop upfield through tacklers as if he were a stallion in a pasture. And when he's needed, he can punt a football as high as a harvest moon." Moreover, the success of Cunningham and Warren Moon of the Houston Oilers, the league's other starting black quarterback, has ended what was once a de facto whites-only policy regarding the all-important quarterbacking job. As Mike Singletary, the great linebacker for the Chicago Bears, pointed out, "The difference with Cunningham is he's the first one not to be thought of always as a black quarterback but just as a quarterback. That is a whole new door opened."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1991 Current Biography Yearbook.

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DAVIS, ALDAVIS, AL
July 4, 1929- Football executive.

An ever-controversial rebel, Al Davis is the managing general partner and "total boss" of the fabled Los Angeles Raiders. Often abrasive and sometimes devious, Davis has not hesitated to buck the powerful National Football League and Commissioner Pete Rozelle to achieve his goals. In 1982 he transferred his team from Oakland to Los Angeles in defiance of the league's rules, a move upheld after years of court battles. Long known as "the Genius," and as an innovative strategist and hard worker, Al Davis acquired his football smarts in a turbulent career as head coach, general manager, league commissioner, and part-owner that began in 1963 when he set about refashioning the Oakland Raiders in his image. Brawling their way to the top record in professional sports--217 wins, 11 ties, and 87 losses in twenty winning seasons--the Raiders have won the world championship three times, in Super Bowls XI, XV, and XVIII.

Alluding to the contradictory images that Davis presents to football pundits, Al Stump noted in Los Angeles magazine (November 1984) that "whatever Davis really is--power monger, mad genius, super egoist, brilliant strategist, renegade opportunist, skilled motivator--he's got one big thing going for him. Everybody loves a winner. And how can you help but love someone whose only goal is Just Win, Baby, Win'?"

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1985 Current Biography Yearbook.

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DITKA, MIKEDITKA, MIKE
Oct. 18, 1939- Professional football coach.

"Attack--always." That is the football philosophy of Coach Mike Ditka, an old-fashioned, no-frills exponent of the brawling, do-or-die school. As a player, Ditka was an All-American end at the University of Pittsburgh before turning professional. As a pro, he played end with the great Chicago Bears team of the early 1960s, with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1967 and 1968, and then for four years with the Dallas Cowboys team that won Super Bowl victories in 1970 and 1971. Following a coaching apprenticeship under Tom Landry in Dallas, he returned in 1982 to his first love, the Bears, who had over the years deteriorated into a 6-10 team. Learning to control his notorious irascibility, he imbued the Chicago players with some of his intensity and coached the resuscitated team to a five-year record of 50-23, to the National Football Conference playoffs in 1984, 1985, and 1986, and to triumph in the Super Bowl in January 1986.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1987 Current Biography Yearbook.

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ELWAY, JOHNELWAY, JOHN
June 28, 1960- Football player.

Perhaps the most physically gifted athlete ever to play quarterback in the National Football League, John Elway is tall, strong, extremely mobile when scrambling out of the pocket, and capable of exceptional spin and thrust on his cannon-like throws. From the time he was an all-American at Stanford University, greatness was predicted for Elway, and, since he became Denver's regular starting quarterback in 1984, the Broncos have been the premier team of the American Football Conference (AFC). Only Joe Montana, San Francisco's great quarterback, has won more games than he. Elway has led Denver to the AFC championship three times, but in his team's three Super Bowl appearances the Broncos have folded, losing those games by an aggregate score of 136 to 40. The Broncos, however, have not become sport's beautiful losers. It is fashionable to ridicule the entire team, and Elway's maturity has been publicly questioned by Hall of Fame quarterbacks like Terry Bradshaw and Johnny Unitas. The acknowledged leader of his team and one of the most exciting players in pro football, Elway is determined to erase bitter memories of Super Bowls past by winning the big game for Denver before he retires.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook.

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ESIASON, BOOMERESIASON, BOOMER
(uh-SIE-ah-suhn)
Apr. 17, 1961- Football player.

Big and brash, Boomer Esiason of the New York Jets has played quarterback with an aggressive flair that has made him a standout. A star of two sports in high school, he became a football All-American while at the University of Maryland, where he led the Terrapins to back-to-back bowl appearances. Disappointed at not being a first-round National Football League draft pick in 1984, which sports observers blamed on his reputation for being undisciplined, Esiason proved his worth to the team that selected him in the second round, the Cincinnati Bengals. In his second professional season, he became the Bengals' starting quarterback and sparked an offensive explosion that led to a team record for total points scored. After coming under heavy criticism from Cincinnati fans in 1987, a year marred by a divisive players' strike and a disappointing 4-11 Bengals' season, Esiason went on to have a career year in 1988. He won the NFL's most- valuable-player award and led his team to Super Bowl XXIII, which the Bengals lost to the San Francisco 49ers in the final moments of the game. Over the next few seasons, the Bengals' fortunes plummeted, as age, injuries, and personnel changes weakened the team. By the end of the 1992 season, Esiason had been benched in favor of a rookie quarterback; he was subsequently traded to the Jets amid rumors that his arm strength had diminished irreparably. Although Esiason's arrival has not yet resulted in a turnaround for the Jets, the trade helped revive his career: he completed an impressive 60.9 percent of his passes in 1993 and 58 percent in 1994.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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FLUTIE, DOUGFLUTIE, DOUG
Oct. 23, 1962- Football player.

The college senior most assiduously pursued by the professional United States Football League after the 1984 season was the Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie, the improbably short (under five feet ten inches) quarterback whose passing arm and improvisational genius carried Boston College to the national spotlight. In his four seasons with the B.C. Eagles, the nimble and brainy Flutie set new National Collegiate Athletic Association Division 1-A records for yards gained passing (10,579) and in total offense (11,317), and he crowned his college career with a spectacular senior season, the high point of which was a last-second game-winning pass against Miami that clinched his reputation as a daring and imaginative gridiron miracle worker. As Alabama coach Ray Perkins observed during that season, Flutie's special magic is not in running or even in passing but in "his ability to make a play out of nothing." Acquired by the USFL's New Jersey Generals for a then record amount (a little more than $1 million a year) in February 1985, Flutie was adjusting well to the Generals' conservative running game until he broke his left collarbone, on June 1. When the Generals merged with the Houston Gamblers two months later, Donald J. Trump, the owner of the Generals, announced that Jim Kelly would be the new team's quarterback and that he, Trump, would try to trade Flutie.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1985 Current Biography Yearbook.

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GIBBS, JOEGIBBS, JOE
Nov. 25, 1940- Football coach.

One of only three National Football League coaches to win at least three Super Bowls (Chuck Noll and Bill Walsh are the others), Joe Gibbs has, in his eleven years at the helm of the Washington Redskins, won just under 70 percent of his games. Gibbs's coaching style emphasizes meticulous organization and preparation, and he is also a master of motivation who pulls no punches with his players. "He won't give you any bull," Redskins wide receiver Gary Clark told Richard Justice of the Washington Post (January 24, 1992). "He lays it out for you, and when he tells you something, you know you've heard the straight story. He's not a phony. He doesn't try to trick you, as so many coaches do. When we look at the [game] films, he tells you when you make a good play and when you make a bad one."

Regarded as one of the finest offensive strategists ever to step onto a football field, Gibbs originated the one-back offense, and he is famous for confusing defenses by making frequent substitutions and by putting as many as five players in motion on a single play. Uninterested in defensive strategy, he leaves that part of the game entirely to his longtime defensive coordinator, Richie Petitbon. Low-keyed and modest, Gibbs is a deeply religious man who shies away from publicity and likes players who share his attitudes and values. "There's no one better," Wayne Fontes, the coach of the Detroit Lions, told a reporter for the Sporting News (January 27, 1992). "You play a Joe Gibbs team and you're getting an opponent that's going to be prepared and smart and is going to give you a solid effort for sixty minutes. As a coach, that's the ultimate compliment you can pay another coach."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1992 Current Biography Yearbook.

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GIFFORD, FRANKGIFFORD, FRANK
Aug. 16, 1930- Sportscaster; former football player.

In the history of prime-time television, few have proven to be more durable than Frank Gifford, the former star halfback who is the senior member of the trio of sportscasters on ABC's Monday Night Football, which celebrated its twenty-fifth year during the 1994 football season. As a player, Gifford made All America as both an offensive tailback and defensive back at the University of Southern California, and subsequently he was All Pro in eight of his twelve years with the New York Giants. Following his retirement from football in 1965, he served his apprenticeship in network television broadcasting with CBS Sports. He moved to ABC Sports to team up with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith on Monday Night Football in 1971, when the show was in its infancy. Since then, the weekly program, consisting of live coverage of a specially selected premium National Football League game beginning at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time on Mondays, has become television's longest-running prime-time attraction and a consistent finisher (over the past five years) in the top ten among 130 competing shows in national TV ratings. In the present Monday Night Football broadcast booth, Al Michaels does the play-by-play announcing, and Gifford adds his own relatively soft-spoken analysis to the more bombastic color commentary of Dan Dierdorf. "What I do is help blend the three of us together," he has explained. In private life Gifford is the husband of Kathie Lee Gifford, the cohost of the popular morning television talk show Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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HOLTZ, LOUHOLTZ, LOU
Jan. 6, 1937- Football coach.

Although the position of head coach at Notre Dame is the most attention-getting coaching job in America, Lou Holtz likes to describe himself in unflattering terms: "I am five feet ten inches tall, weigh 152 pounds, speak with a lisp, and appear to be afflicted with a combination of beriberi and scurvy. I wasn't a great athlete. I'm not very impressive, I'm not very smart, I'm not very intelligent." But in just three years after taking over at Notre Dame, the school whose past and present gridiron glory justifies the claim that it is the home of "America's team," Holtz took the Fightin' Irish to the national championship in 1988. Notwithstanding his penchant for self-deprecation, Holtz is, along with Michigan's Bo Schembechler and Penn State's Joe Paterno, one of the coaches who might someday be regarded as equals of such immortals from the collegiate past as Knute Rockne, Bear Bryant, Frank Leahy, Woody Hayes, and Ara Parseghian.

Probably the only coach in college football who has traded quips with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, Holtz is equally popular on the corporate lecture circuit, where he spices his high-priced speeches on motivational techniques with his trademark jokes and whimsical banter. He is also a skilled amateur magician, though the prestidigitation for which he is most renowned owes nothing to feats of optical illusion. He has a gift for taking over foundering football teams and turning them almost instantly into winners. Having worked his miracles at William and Mary, North Carolina State, and the University of Minnesota, Holtz took over at Notre Dame after his predecessor, coach Gerry Faust, compiled a five-year record of frustration, during which the team won thirty of fifty-six games and tied one. Faust's would have been a fair record at most colleges but not at Notre Dame, where Holtz quickly turned into reality the school's dream of "waking up the echoes" from the fabled Irish past.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1989 Current Biography Yearbook.

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HUIZENGA, H. WAYNEHUIZENGA, H. WAYNE
(HY-zeng-uh)
Dec. 29, 1939- Corporation executive; entrepreneur.

"I enjoy building something good and having a successful product and making money," the entrepreneur H. Wayne Huizenga has said. The hero of a real-life Horatio Alger story, in his early twenties Huizenga worked as a garbage-truck driver. Striking out on his own, he started a one-man trash-collection operation that, within a decade, had grown into a highly profitable enterprise providing employment for several dozen people. In 1968, combining his business with three other companies, he created Waste Management, Inc., which, when he resigned as president and chief operating officer in 1984, having decided to retire, ranked as the largest trash haulage and disposal business in the world. Bored with inactivity, he began buying properties in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, his adopted hometown, and soon became a major player in the city's economy.

In 1987 Huizenga and two partners acquired a nineteen-store chain called Blockbuster Video. As chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Blockbuster Entertainment Corp., he used his skills as a master deal maker to help transform the business into the world's largest video-rental chain and, in the words of one reporter, into "the company that is to videos what McDonald's is to hamburgers." With revenues of more than $2 billion in 1993, its share of the market has reached 20 percent, and it has reportedly grown larger than the next 550 video-rental chains combined. After Blockbuster's merger with the media giant Viacom, in 1994, Huizenga was named vice-chairman of Viacom and chairman of a new entity called the Blockbuster Entertainment Group. In 1995 he left Blockbuster to become the chairman and chief executive officer of Republic Waste Industries, a relatively small solid-waste collection business. As the owner of the Miami Dolphins football team, the Florida Marlins baseball team, and the Florida Panthers hockey team, Huizenga is the only person in the United States whose holdings include three professional sports clubs.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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JACKSON, BOJACKSON, BO
Nov. 30, 1962- Baseball player; football player.

One of only a handful of athletes ever to play in two sports at the professional level, Bo Jackson has become a worldwide celebrity not only through his feats on the baseball and football fields but also through his equally lucrative career as a commercial spokesman for Nike athletic shoes and other products. A Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn University in 1985, Jackson was the first player to be selected in the 1986 college draft, but he spurned a multimillion-dollar offer from the National Football League's Tampa Bay Buccaneers and instead signed a professional-baseball contract with the Kansas City Royals of the American League. Strictly a baseball player for one season, Jackson stunned the sports world in 1987 by signing a five-year contract with the Los Angeles Raiders of the NFL, announcing that he intended to play pro football in the fall while continuing to play baseball in the spring and summer. Jackson's incredible athletic ability has awed his fans, but it has also brought him harsh criticism from those who believe that, by insisting on playing two sports, he shows a lack of respect for both and makes it impossible for himself to be truly great in either one.

Jackson has countered that he has been playing both baseball and football since he was sixteen years old, and that playing both seems perfectly natural to him. "I've chosen to live my life this way, and I could care less what anybody thinks," Jackson told Ken Picking of USA Today (July 20, 1988). "I can honestly say I've never felt physically fatigued. At my age, why should I? I can't stand idle time. I have the rest of my life to rest and relax. Now is the time for me to do what I can do."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1991 Current Biography Yearbook.

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JOHNSON, JIMMYJOHNSON, JIMMY
July 16, 1943- Football coach; sportscaster.

When Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989 and abruptly replaced the coaching legend Tom Landry, the only coach in the team's history, with Jimmy Johnson, a brash college coach with no NFL experience, many football fans were shocked. The venerated Landry seemed to have been shunted aside in favor of a college coach known as much for his lacquered coiffure as for the successful, if controversial, teams he fielded at the University of Miami. In the Cowboys, Johnson inherited a once-mighty club that had fallen on hard times, but in just three seasons he silenced his critics by transforming Dallas into a title contender. When the Cowboys demolished the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVII, in January 1993, Johnson became the first coach to have won both a college national championship and a Super Bowl. With Dallas's second consecutive NFL championship, in 1994, Johnson joined the select company of Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, and Chuck Noll as the only coaches to win back-to-back Super Bowls. Former college teammates and roommates, Johnson and Jones had been portrayed in the media as best friends who shared the responsibility for restoring the Cowboys to greatness. The reality, however, was that the two men had never been close. After several well-publicized verbal jabs at each other, they ended their productive but tempestuous relationship in March 1994, when Johnson resigned as coach of the two-time defending Super Bowl champions.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

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JONES, JERRY*
Oct. 13, 1942- Businessman; football executive.

In 1989 Jerry Jones risked the fortune he had amassed in the energy-exploration business to buy the Dallas Cowboys, a once-mighty NFL franchise that had fallen into disarray. Many football fans were shocked when, in one of his first moves as the team's owner, he abruptly ousted Tom Landry, the only coach in Cowboy history, in favor of Jimmy Johnson, a brash college coach who had been Jones's teammate at the University of Arkansas in the early 1960s. Nevertheless, the two "J. J.s," as Jones and Johnson were called, quickly revived the Cowboy mystique, turning the league's worst team into a title contender in 1991 and a Super Bowl champion in 1992. After Dallas won a second consecutive NFL championship, the two men terminated their relationship in March 1994, amid a well-publicized spat.

Even without Johnson, however, Jones has kept the Cowboys among the league's elite teams while redefining the role of activist owner in a new era of escalating expenses, payroll salary caps, and player free agency. As the team's general manager, he negotiates contracts and participates in the college draft; as the NFL's most visible owner, he stoked the star-making machinery of the Dallas Cowboys in 1995 by adding the high-priced free agent Deion Sanders to a glittering roster of wealthy, mediagenic superstars that includes Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin. "There was no way I was going to come in and not make money--big money--from this team," Jones told Dan McGraw of U.S. News & World Report (September 26, 1994). "To win [games] and lose money would be a failure. In order to be successful, I always felt we had to [win] both."

The complete article can be found in the May 1996 issue of Current Biography. An updated version of the article will appear on the 1983-1996 Current Biography CD-ROM (to be released in January 1997) and in the 1996 Current Biography Yearbook (to be published in December 1996).

* Photo courtesy of the Dallas Cowboys.

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KELLY, JIMKELLY, JIM
Feb. 14, 1960- Football player.

Jim Kelly has been one of the National Football League's premier quarterbacks since 1986, when he entered the NFL after spending two record-shattering seasons at the helm of the Houston Gamblers in the now-defunct United States Football League. A highly recruited high school prospect from western Pennsylvania, Kelly became the first of the prototypical pro-style pocket passers who have earned the University of Miami Hurricanes the tag "Quarterback U." He rejected the overtures of the Buffalo Bills in 1983, when that club made him its number-one draft pick, because "you can't be a great quarterback in snow and thirty-mile-an-hour wind," as he put it. In just two USFL seasons, Kelly threw for almost ten thousand yards and eighty-three touchdowns, and in 1986 he signed an $8 million contract to play for the victory-starved Bills. By 1990, with Kelly directing their so-called offense of the future, the fast-striking "no-huddle" attack, the Bills had emerged as the best American Football Conference team since the Oakland Raiders of the early 1980s. Despite leading the team to appearances in two consecutive Super Bowls, Kelly is haunted by the paradox of being a great regular-season quarterback who may never be accepted as one of football's truly elite signal-callers unless his team someday wins the NFL championship.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1992 Current Biography Yearbook.

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LOTT, RONNIELOTT, RONNIE
May 8, 1959- Football player.

"Ronnie Lott is the best defensive player I've seen," the Los Angeles Rams' quarterback Jim Everett has said. Combining exceptional man-to-man coverage skills with a linebacker's instinct for bone-jarring tackles, Lott, a defensive back, has guaranteed himself induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame after he retires. He arrived in the National Football League as part of what has been called the "great defensive draft of 1981," which produced three of football's greatest defenders--Lott, middle linebacker Mike Singletary, and outside linebacker Lawrence Taylor--and from 1981 through the 1990 season, he was the heart and soul of the defense of the San Francisco 49ers, who won four Super Bowls during those years. In 1991, however, the 49ers, incorrectly assuming that the proud veteran, widely regarded as the greatest safety in the game and as the NFL's hardest hitter, was past his prime, allowed him to be taken on Plan B free agency by the Los Angeles Raiders. He responded by leading the league in interceptions in 1991 and by making the Pro Bowl at his third different position, strong safety. In 1993 Lott signed a multimillion-dollar, two-year contract to play for the New York Jets, who hoped his winning attitude would be contagious among their younger players.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

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MADDEN, JOHNMADDEN, JOHN
Apr. 10, 1936- Sports commentator; former football coach.

Bluff and boisterous John Madden, formerly a football coach and currently a television pitchman and commentator, as well as author of a best-selling, entertaining autobiography, has become heralded nationwide as perhaps the best football "color caster" on the airwaves. Thirty seconds of exposure on his first Miller Lite Beer television commercial brought him more popular recognition than his decade, from 1969 to 1978, as head coach of the mighty Oakland Raiders. The youngest football coach at the time of his appointment, at thirty-three, John Madden guided his troops to seven division championships, an American Football Conference championship, and a world championship in Super Bowl XI, in 1977. With a career record of 103 games won, thirty-two lost, and seven tied, and a .763 percentage, Madden was the second coach in forty years with 100 or more victories in ten seasons--an achievement equaled only by the Miami Dolphins' Don Shula.

As Sarah Pileggi wrote of John Madden in Sports Illustrated (September 1, 1983): "His big, doughy, unmade bed of a face and his hulking figure are known and loved by total strangers from Meridian, Mississippi to Missoula, Montana. He is both the good-natured but slightly dangerous--to himself as well as others--goof who breaks through the paper walls in all those Miller Lite commercials and the CBS football pundit with the common touch who leads us all through television's swamps of verbal hogwash onto the high ground of enlightenment."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1985 Current Biography Yearbook.

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MARINO, DANMARINO, DAN
(mah-REE-noh)
Sept. 15, 1961- Football player.

Dan Marino, the Miami Dolphins' rifle-armed quarterback, has risen to National Football League superstardom faster than any signal caller before him and has played a major role in shifting the emphasis in professional football from the run to the pass. Endowed with an extraordinarily strong arm and a lightning-fast release, Marino, in the words of Jim Finks, the general manager of the New Orleans Saints, "plays the position as well as anybody this league has ever seen." Marino's career passing efficiency rating (a statistical formula developed by the NFL to evaluate quarterbacks by combining their statistics in the major passing categories) is the highest in league history. He holds seventeen NFL and twenty Dolphin team passing records and led the league in completions, passing yards, and touchdown passes in each of his first three full years as a starting quarterback. In 1984, his second year as a pro, Marino had probably the greatest individual season any NFL quarterback has ever had, setting single-season records for TD passes, completions, and passing yards, as he led the Dolphins to the Super Bowl. His quick rise to stardom astonished the football world, since even highly talented young quarterbacks usually take several years to learn how to exploit NFL defenses, which are much more complex than those employed by college teams. Marino's great natural talent has been complemented by the Dolphins' outstanding offensive line and gifted wide receivers, as well as by several rules changes that have been instituted by the NFL since the early 1980s to aid the passing game.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1989 Current Biography Yearbook.

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MONK, ARTMONK, ART
Dec. 5, 1957- Football player.

"I don't consider myself a standout player," Art Monk, who caught more passes than any player in the history of the National Football League, said in one of his infrequent interviews, with Thomas Boswell for a Washington Post Magazine (September 2, 1990) profile. "I never thought I had the ability to play in the NFL.. . .Even now, when I see highlights of [San Francisco 49ers star] Jerry Rice, I say, Man! How does he do that?' But when I see myself, it doesn't look very special to me.. . .That's why I don't take anything for granted." Notwithstanding his self-effacing humility, Monk was perhaps the NFL's prototypical possession receiver throughout his fifteen-year professional career, which began when he joined the Washington Redskins in 1980. A running back and kick returner at Syracuse University, he was tall, strong, fast, and sure-handed, a virtual carbon copy of Redskin great Charley Taylor, a record-setting split end who had been one of Monk's childhood heroes and who, as the coach of the Redskins' receivers, helped Monk make the transition to wide receiver in the professional ranks. Monk, however, doubted that he was good enough for the NFL. To overcome his anxieties, he adopted a grueling off-season conditioning regimen and simply worked harder year round than any other player on a team of blue-collar overachievers. In the process, he became the most prolific receiver in league history as well as a quiet, steady, respected leader on a team that won four National Football Conference championships and three Super Bowls in a span of ten years. "I remember playing against him when I was at Penn State and he was at Syracuse. . .," the linebacker Matt Milled told Thomas George of the New York Times (October 23, 1991). "He is so tough and reliable. When the chips are down, you know where the ball is going, and he still comes up with it. The thing that impresses me most about Art is that he is always asked to do the things that other guys can't do, and that's block and catch the ball over the middle. Art excels at those tasks that other receivers hate."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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MONTANA, JOEMONTANA, JOE
June 11, 1956- Football player.

When the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League drafted the canny clutch, signal caller and ace passer Joe Montana out of Notre Dame four years ago, Montana's come-from-behind heroics were well known, but his consistency as a quarterback was underrated. Confounding the skeptics and playing up to Coach Bill Walsh's expectations, Montana assumed the field leadership of the 49ers late in 1980 and has been directing Walsh's precision offense with cool authority and efficiency ever since. From the cellar of the NFL, he led the 49ers to the league championship in 1981-82, compiling along the way the NFL's highest pass-completion percentage and lowest interception rate. Going into the 1983 season, he was the second ranking quarterback in the NFL's National Football Conference, just behind Danny White of Dallas.

The keys to Montana's success are his poise, his concentration under pressure, his patience in waiting for an open receiver, his extraordinary downfield vision, his agility in scrambling and throwing on the run, and, above all, his grasp of the San Francisco game plan, the most detailed and intricate in the NFL. At this stage in his development, as carefully planned by Coach Walsh, he does not yet call his own plays, but he changes calls at scrimmage with quick intelligence and decisiveness and, according to Sam Wyche, San Francisco's quarterback coach, "knows precisely what is right or wrong with a play as soon as it happens." According to Walsh, the "greatness within him" is yet to be fully realized: "With Joe, we don't have a limit....In time, he will have more and more input."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1983 Current Biography Yearbook.

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MOON, WARRENMOON, WARREN
Nov. 18, 1956- Football player.

The leader of the high-powered run-and-shoot offense of the Houston Oilers, Warren Moon is one of the premier quarterbacks in the National Football League. Before he joined the Oilers in 1984, Moon played with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League (CFL) for six years, and in his final season he set professional-football records for most yards passing in a single game (555) and in a single season (5,648). Edmonton won the CFL championship in each of Moon's first five years in Canada, but he inherited a weak team in Houston, and in his first three years as starting quarterback, the Oilers posted a cumulative record of 13-35. Ever since Houston finally reached the NFL playoffs in 1987, they have made the postseason tournament in every season, though they have never advanced past the second round. The only man to pass for at least 20,000 yards in both the CFL and the NFL, Moon enjoyed his best NFL season in 1990, when he led the league in completions, passing yardage, and touchdown passes and tied the NFL record by passing for at least 300 yards in each of nine games. In a Houston victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on December 16, 1990, Moon threw for 527 yards, the second-highest total in NFL history, and his seasonal total of 4,689 yards was the fifth-highest in league history. "I think he's great, not good but great," the legendary football coach Sid Gillman once said. "He could be the best ever. I've never seen a better exhibition of throwing the football than in his performance against Kansas City, and I've seen a lot of football games."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1991 Current Biography Yearbook.

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PARCELLS, BILLPARCELLS, BILL
(pahr-SELS)
Aug. 22, 1941- Sports commentator.

When Bill Parcells and his New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV on January 27, 1991, it marked the team's second National Football League championship in five years. A Giants fan since childhood, Parcells became the team's head coach in 1983, after having served for two years as its defensive coordinator. Following a disastrous first season in which the Giants won only three games, Parcells turned the franchise around, guiding it into the playoffs in five of the next seven seasons and leading it to its first world title in thirty years, in 1987. Parcells resigned as head coach of the Giants in May 1991, and a month later he accepted a position as a football analyst with NBC Sports.

Once described as the "ultimate players' coach," Parcells, unlike many NFL coaches, did not believe in keeping his distance from members of the team, and he refused to give preferential treatment to star players. Parcells's coaching philosophy emphasized a conservative, ball-control offense, based around a huge offensive line. On defense, Parcells, a former linebacker and linebacker coach, stressed that position, keeping at least three linebackers on the field at all times and eschewing "nickel" or "dime" defenses, which employ only one linebacker. He called his coaching style "power football." "It's a rather quaint reversion to the days before sock 'em gave way to slick 'em...," Paul Zimmerman commented in Sports Illustrated (February 4, 1991). "Draft big, powerful people to play on both sides of the ball, grind out a rushing game behind a hog-type line,...stuff the run on defense, and, when the other team passes, make sure the routes are short and the receivers are funneled to the linebackers."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1991 Current Biography Yearbook.

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PATERNO, JOEPATERNO, JOE
Dec. 21, 1926- Football coach.

Shortly after he became head football mentor at The Pennsylvania State University two decades ago, Joe Paterno, the thinking man's coach, announced his "grand experiment," aimed at proving that a major college football program can emphasize academic credibility over winning and still produce a national champion. The national championship was more of a goad than a goal to Paterno--who believes that "it is the striving to be number one that's important"--but he achieved it anyway, when Penn State defeated Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's night 1983, following a 10-1 season in 1982. A year later, Penn State's victory over the University of Washington in the Aloha Bowl brought Paterno's career record as head coach to 170 wins, thirty-eight losses, and two ties--the best winning percentage among major college coaches with tenures of ten years or more.

The remarkableness of Paterno's record can be appreciated only in light of his priorities, which cut him off from the widespread, scandalous practice of recruiting physically superior but marginally literate athletes and maintaining them as "students." The "Penn State way," as his players call Paterno's approach, rests on two tenets: there is more to college than football, and there is more to football than winning. Ninety percent of Paterno's scholarship players have left college with degrees, a record unmatched among major college teams with the exception of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1984 Current Biography Yearbook.

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PAYTON, WALTERPAYTON, WALTER
July 25, 1954- Football player.

The Chicago Bears' durable and overworked running back Walter Payton, widely rated the best all-purpose yardage gainer in National Football League history, was for many years denied the celebrity he deserved by the mediocrity of his team, which has had only three winning seasons since he joined it in 1975. Payton's superstar status did not become generally known until 1984, when he set a new NFL career record in rushing, finishing the season with a career total of 13,309 yards in 3,047 attempts, and in combined yardage (receiving as well as running), with 17,304 yards. Not the most graceful of runners, Payton compensates for finesse with his consistency, intensity, never-say-die attitude, and the aggressiveness with which he vaults over or, more often, gallops into would-be tacklers. A versatile team player, he is as fearsome at blocking as he is at running and receiving, and on the occasions he is called on to pass he can be expected to complete one-third of his throws for touchdowns. Payton has started in 140 of 146 games in his professional career, and he enters his eleventh pro season with 124 consecutive starts.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1985 Current Biography Yearbook.

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RICE, JERRYRICE, JERRY
Oct. 13, 1962- Football player.

When Jerry Rice was drafted in 1985 out of tiny Mississippi Valley State University by the world champion San Francisco 49ers, he was thought by some "experts" to be lacking the breakaway speed that is required of wide receivers in the National Football League. But after just five seasons, the record-breaking Rice is not only the greatest deep-threat receiver in pro ball; he may be the "single most dominating player in the game today," in the estimation of his former coach Bill Walsh. Indeed, he has been compared to such legendary wide receivers as Charlie Taylor, Paul Warfield, and Don Hutson, and before he retires he may establish himself as the greatest pass catcher in the history of football. Although Rice struggled as a rookie, by 1986 he had added a new dimension to the short, pinpoint passing game that is the essence of the lethal 49er offense. Because he is capable of scoring a touchdown anytime he catches the ball, Rice has turned the great quarterback Joe Montana into a dangerous deep passer and helped the 49ers win successive Super Bowl games in 1989 and 1990 that earned for them the title "team of the decade."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook.

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ROBINSON, EDDIEROBINSON, EDDIE
Feb. 12, 1919- Football coach.

The football coaching record for most games won, professional as well as collegiate, is held by Eddie Robinson of Grambling State University, with more than 340, or better than 70 percent of his career schedule. Robinson became head coach at Grambling, then a tiny and obscure segregated black normal and industrial institute, in 1941. Virtually from scratch, he built the Grambling Tigers into a six-time title winner in the all-black Southwestern Athletic Conference. In the late 1960s he transformed the team into a barnstorming sensation, which went on to compete not only with such black powerhouses as Morgan State but also with some Division I-A, traditionally white schools in packed first-class stadia across the country. Although he thinks of himself as an "American" rather than a "black" coach, Robinson's achievement on the athletic field contributed significantly to the elevation of the status of black colleges and the general public's perception of them. Following the breaking of the color line in professional football, Grambling sent more players to the pros than any university except Notre Dame, and Robinson was instrumental in denting the professional misconception that there were no superior black quarterbacks.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1988 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SANDERS, BARRYSANDERS, BARRY
July 16, 1968- Football player.

Barry Sanders has been a marquee running back in the National Football League since his rookie season, during which Walter Payton, the NFL's all-time leading rusher, declared, "I don't know if I was ever that good." Until the fall of 1988, Sanders was a little-known kick returner and backup tailback for the Oklahoma State University Cowboys, but by the end of the season, the five-foot-eight-inch junior had rewritten the NCAA single-season record book, rushing for an astonishing 2,628 yards and scoring thirty-nine touchdowns. A modest, unassuming young man who lives in accordance with rigorous Christian precepts, Sanders neither campaigned for nor seemed to want the Heisman Trophy he was awarded at the end of the 1988 college football season.

Drafted after his junior year by the Detroit Lions, Sanders was named the NFL rookie of the year in 1989, and he has gained more than 1,300 yards rushing and has earned a starting spot in the Pro Bowl in each of his four seasons as the lone running back in the Lions' run-and-shoot offense. "I don't know of a person with his kind of speed and [his] ability to do things on his own," Billie Matthews, Detroit's running-back coach, said in an interview with Dan Noxon for the Chicago Tribune (November 3, 1991). "Barry can move laterally at full speed. He can hit, spin, and come out of the spin with the ability to accelerate better than anybody I've ever been around or watched." "Defending him is different than defending anybody else," Jerry Burns, a former head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, told Noxon. "You can't have one guy spying on him because no one guy in the NFL can bring him down."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1993 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SANDERS, DEIONSANDERS, DEION
(DEE-ahn)
Aug. 9, 1967- Baseball player; football player.

Combining explosive speed, dazzling talent, and a flamboyant personality seemingly tailor-made for the spotlight, Deion Sanders is a force in both the National Football League and major-league baseball. Nicknamed "Prime Time" by a high school friend, for his play on the basketball court no less, he has lived up to the moniker in the NFL, not only as an All-Pro cornerback but also as a spectacular punt and kickoff returner and occasionally as a wide receiver. One of the few defenders who can dominate a game, he is viewed by many observers as the best defensive player in the sport. His development on the baseball diamond has been a little slower, but he has worked to make himself a dangerous lead-off hitter and one of the game's premier base stealers.

Even though he has excelled in both sports, Sanders's apparent inability to set his priorities during the three months when the baseball and football seasons overlap each year has made him the target of criticism, with some observers questioning his worth to any team in a sport not given his full attention. When he began his professional career, Sanders put football first, leaving baseball in early September, but after joining the Atlanta Braves, who were pennant contenders the three seasons he was on the team, he began to play both sports during baseball's division race and playoffs. In shuttling back and forth between the baseball diamond and the football field, Sanders, who had already become the only pro player ever to hit a major-league home run and score an NFL touchdown in the same week, became the first person to suit up for both professional sports in one day. After two chaotic years of trying to play both at the same time, he decided to stay with baseball for the duration of its season before turning to football. Perhaps even more impressive than Sander's playing two sports is his desire to play every down in football games. He has received limited play at wide receiver, but he wants to become as dominating on offense as he is on defense. "I've always been an offensive-type football player, even on defense," Sanders told Kevin Cook of Playboy (August 1994). "When I get the ball, people can see the offense in me--I'm taking it to the house, thinking about scoring every time I touch the ball."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SIMMS, PHILSIMMS, PHIL
Nov. 3, 1955- Sportscaster; football player.

The all-time passing leader of the New York Giants is Phil Simms, a battle-scarred veteran of fifteen NFL seasons, who fought back from injury and adversity to become one of football's most respected quarterbacks. Drafted out of tiny Morehead State University in the first round of the 1979 draft by the then-struggling Giants, Simms showed promise as a rookie, but his potential seemed unlikely to be fulfilled as injuries forced him to sit out at least part of four successive seasons. Even though he set club passing records in his first full season as a starter and, in the 1986 season, won most-valuable-player honors for both the season and Super Bowl XXI, in which he led the Giants to their first championship in thirty years, Simms was never fully embraced by the notoriously fickle Giant fans. A gritty, blue-collar quarterback whose tenacity, disciplined work habits, and fearless composure earned him the admiration of his teammates and the respect of head coach Bill Parcells, Simms was again leading New York to the playoffs when, in 1990, an injury forced him to the sidelines, where he watched as his substitute, Jeff Hostetler, guided the Giants to their second Super Bowl win in five seasons.

Simms and Hostetler competed for the starting job in 1991 and 1992, a period of disarray during which the Giants compiled a two-season record of fourteen and eighteen under the indecisive tutelage of Parcells's successor, Ray Handley. In 1993 a new head coach, Dan Reeves, returned the offense to Simms, who unexpectedly took the team to the playoffs with a Pro Bowl season. "Some quarterbacks can just drive Cadillacs," Bill Parcells said to Frank Litsky of the New York Times (December 2, 1990). "But I think Simms can drive a Ford, too. When the surrounding cast is sufficient, a lot of quarterbacks can drive the car. But there are only a few who can do it whether the supporting cast is sufficient or not. And I think he can do that. When he's gone, people will say about the Giants' quarterback, He's good, but he's no Phil Simms.'" Despite his strong performance in 1993, Simms was dropped from the team in June 1994, partly because of the new NFL salary cap limiting the total amount a team can spend on its players, leaving two untested quarterbacks to face the inevitable comparisons. He has since signed on as a sportscaster with ESPN.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SINGLETARY, MIKESINGLETARY, MIKE
Oct. 9, 1958- Football player.

Mike Singletary has been called the "last of the great middle linebackers." From the 1950s through the 1970s, the anchor of the 4-3 defensive standard was the run-stuffing middle linebacker. Players like Dick Butkus and Bill George of the Chicago Bears, Sam Huff of the New York Giants, Ray Nitschke of the Green Bay Packers, and Jack Lambert of the Pittsburgh Steelers made middle linebacker the most exciting defensive position in football. By 1981, when Mike Singletary began playing for the Chicago Bears, the 4-3 was being eclipsed by the 3-4 defensive scheme, which emphasized marauding outside linebackers like Lawrence Taylor--fast, powerful blitzers whose job was to sack the quarterback rather than engage in one-on-one duels with running backs.

Singletary combined a talent for helmet-shattering tackles with a diligent work ethic to overcome the lessening of the middle linebacker's role and to dispel concerns that he was too small and too slow for great success in the National Football League. By his retirement, at the end of the 1992 season, he was considered the most formidable defensive player in the history of the Chicago Bears franchise other than the legendary Dick Butkus. "He should make the Hall of Fame," Ernie Accorsi, the former general manager of the Cleveland Browns, has said of Singletary. "He was the best of his era at his position, the focal point of a championship team. Those are pretty strong credentials."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1993 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SMITH, BRUCESMITH, BRUCE
June 18, 1963- Football player.

One of the fiercest pass rushers in National Football League history, Bruce Smith is the linchpin of the defense that helped carry the Buffalo Bills to an unprecedented four consecutive Super Bowl appearances in the early 1990s. After earning All-America honors as a defensive lineman at Virginia Tech, Smith was the first player selected in the 1985 NFL draft, joining a hapless team in one of the NFL's smallest media markets. Although he arrived in Buffalo overweight and overconfident, he quickly established himself as a force capable of singlehandedly disrupting offensive attacks. Smith was leaner by 1990, when the Bills emerged as the AFC's dominant team, and his explosive speed and overwhelming strength made him impossible to stop with one-on-one blocking schemes. His declared ambition was to become the most formidable defensive player of all time, but after undergoing knee surgery during training camp, he spent most of the 1991 season on the sidelines.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SMITH, EMMITTSMITH, EMMITT
May 15, 1969- Football player.

"I'm chasing after legends, after Walter Payton and Tony Dorsett and Jim Brown and Eric Dickerson, after guys who made history," Emmitt Smith, the three-time NFL rushing leader, declared to Peter King of Sports Illustrated (January 31, 1994). "When my career's over, I want to have the new kids, the new backs, say, Boy, we have to chase a legend to be the best.' And they'll mean Emmitt Smith." Although he was once said to be too slow and too small to succeed in the National Football League, Smith has been a dominant player at every level, from youth football to the NFL. One of the leading high school rushers of all time, he went on to become a Heisman Trophy candidate in each of his three years at the University of Florida, then joined the Dallas Cowboys, where he soon emerged as one of the NFL's premier offensive performers. After becoming the first league rushing champion to play in the Super Bowl, in 1992, he missed the first two games of the 1993 season because of a prolonged contract dispute. Nevertheless, Smith won his third straight rushing crown that year as well as the most-valuable-player awards for both the season and the Super Bowl, as he led the Cowboys to their second consecutive league championship. "At this level, they can define all the physical features that it takes to become an NFL player, but they can't measure the size of the player's heart," Smith said in an interview with Randy Galloway of Sport (August 1993). "And that's what they left out of my scouting report."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

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TAGLIABUE, PAULTAGLIABUE, PAUL
(TAG-lee-ah-boo)
Nov. 24, 1940- Sports executive; lawyer.

When Pete Rozelle stepped down as commissioner of the National Football League in 1989, he was one of the toughest acts to follow in the business world. Since becoming commissioner in 1960, Rozelle had presided over the merger of the American Football League (AFL) with the NFL, the growth of the Super Bowl from a mere championship game to an astonishing spectacle of modern marketing and media-driven hype, and the ascension of professional football to the top of the television heap among the major broadcast sports. Under Rozelle's guidance, the NFL became the very model of the successful modern sports league. However, in the 1980s the league entered a fractious, litigious era, during which it has fended off a series of antitrust lawsuits and twice endured strike-shortened seasons. After twenty-nine years, Rozelle called it quits, sparking a seven-month-long squabble among the team owners over who would become his successor. In the end, the owners turned to the ultimate NFL insider, Paul Tagliabue, a senior partner at a powerful Washington, D.C., law firm who had served as Rozelle's chief legal counsel for two decades. A former basketball player and by all accounts a brilliant man, Tagliabue quickly demonstrated that he was energetic and nimble in the manner of the young Rozelle and more than capable of overseeing the league's expansion into international markets as professional football heads into the twenty-first century. "He's really involved at every level," Pat Bowlen, the owner of the Denver Broncos told Peter Finch in an interview for Business Week (January 28, 1991). "I have not been in any league meeting, from finance to broadcast to labor, where he was not present."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1992 Current Biography Yearbook.

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TAYLOR, LAWRENCETAYLOR, LAWRENCE
Feb. 4, 1959- Football player.

"I'm a wild man in a wild game," Lawrence Taylor, who in his nine seasons with the New York Giants has been a perennial All-Pro and a prototype of the pass-rushing outside linebacker in the 3-4 formation that became the standard defensive alignment in the National Football League in the 1980s, once said. Taylor is the league's all-time quarterback-sack champion, and, as Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman wrote, Taylor's blitzes "are like messages from Thor....Random House's unabridged dictionary defines a blitz this way: War waged by surprise, swiftly and violently, as by the use of aircraft, tanks, etc.' Etcetera stands for Lawrence Taylor."

But Lawrence Taylor is also one of sport's most controversial athletes. A complex, intelligent man who is also boastful and callow, he prides himself on his stance as a born rebel, a "renegade" who lives outside the pale of convention. While football's elemental fury is embodied in Taylor's abandoned, instinctual style of play, he has also adopted a way of life that is characterized by mayhem and excess. He may be the greatest linebacker and best defensive player in the history of pro football, but he has twice tested positive for hard-drug use and for that reason may never be voted into the Hall of Fame.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1990 Current Biography Yearbook.

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WALKER, HERSCHELWALKER, HERSCHEL
Mar. 3, 1962- Football player.

"My mind's like a general and my body's like an army. I keep the body in shape and it does what I tell it to do," the running back Herschel Walker told a sportswriter in 1982, the year he won the Heisman Trophy as the outstanding college football player in the United States. With his awesome combination of speed and power, Walker rushed 5,596 yards--for an average of 5.2 yards per attempt and 155.4 per game--in three consensus All-America seasons with the University of Georgia, breaking ten National College Athletic Association records and fifteen Southeastern Conference records. Sacrificing his final year of collegiate eligibility, Walker turned professional in 1983, joining the New Jersey Generals of the new United States Football League under the most lucrative contract in pro football. He led the league in rushing in 1983, was third in 1984, and set a new pro single-season record for yards gained rushing in 1985, with 2,411. His total professional statistics are 5,562 yards and fifty-four touchdowns in 1,143 attempts rushing and 1,482 yards and seven TDs receiving. His favorite sport, surprisingly, is not football, but track; a world-class sprinter, he forsook a long-held dream of competing in the 1984 Olympics when he lost his amateur standing.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1985 Current Biography Yearbook.

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WALSH, BILLWALSH, BILL
Nov. 30, 1931- Sports commentator.

When San Francisco won its third Super Bowl in eight seasons on January 22, 1989, the 49ers were hailed as the football team of the decade. Throughout the 1980s the 49ers had won consistently because they possessed the NFL's most imaginative and sophisticated offense, whose inventor was Bill Walsh, the team's head coach from 1979 until his retirement after the Super Bowl in 1989. One of the most innovative coaches in the history of the game, Walsh has been called the Vince Lombardi of the 1980s and a "genius," though Walsh himself denies that a term so hyperbolic can be applied to anyone in the profession of coaching. An unlikely inheritor of the mantle of the gruff Lombardi, Walsh is a distinguished, cultivated, and white-haired man of professorial appearance who toiled as an assistant coach and developer of quarterbacks for seventeen years before becoming a head coach at the age of forty-five.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1989 Current Biography Yearbook.

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WHITE, REGGIEWHITE, REGGIE
Dec. 19, 1961- Football player; minister.

Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers has tackled more quarterbacks behind the line of scrimmage than any other player in National Football League history. He achieved his record of 145 sacks through the 1994 season in spite of being routinely double- or triple-teamed by opponents. Using a combination of bullish strength and cannonball speed, White disrupts offensive blocking schemes and running patterns with fierce regularity. His eminence in the NFL became even more obvious in 1994, when he was selected to the Pro Bowl for the ninth consecutive year, making him the first defensive end in the league to be so honored. "Reggie White can change your whole defense," Mike Holmgren, the coach of the Green Bay Packers, has said. "He's the one guy other than a quarterback who can come in and change your whole program around." After eight years as the heart and soul of the Philadelphia Eagles' dominating defense, White, a free agent, was the object of an intense recruiting war until he signed a four-year deal with the Packers in 1993 that made him the highest-paid defender in the NFL at the time.

In addition to his career on the football field, White is an ordained minister. During his years in Philadelphia, he and his wife, Sara, spent many hours on street corners talking to inner-city youths about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and the importance of staying in school. He and Sara opened a residence on their Tennessee property in 1991 for unmarried pregnant women and new mothers. The home, called Hope Palace, is partially funded by the royalties from his book, The Reggie White Touch Football Playbook: Winning Plays, Rules, and Safety Tips (1991). White has pledged one million dollars toward another pet project, a community-development bank in Knoxville, Tennessee dedicated to helping inner-city borrowers. Asked by Vince Aversano of Inside Sports (August 1993) how he reconciled his Christian outreach work with the brutality of his football job, White replied, "One thing you've got to realize is that football is aggressive, not violent. Violence is what's happening on our streets, where our kids are dying.. . . I get a little fit when the game is labeled violent, because the game is not violent. We're not killing each other. I don't think too many guys go out with the intention to end anybody's career."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1995 Current Biography Yearbook.

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YOUNG, STEVEYOUNG, STEVE
Oct. 11, 1961- Football player.

After understudying the legendary Joe Montana as backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers for four years, Steve Young has emerged as perhaps the top quarterback in the National Football League. A standout college player for Brigham Young University, Young was runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in his senior year. Bypassing the NFL, he began his professional career with the Los Angeles Express of the now defunct United States Football League in 1984. Young entered the NFL in 1985, joining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At the end of the 1986 campaign, he was traded to the 49ers, where he was relegated to the role of backup to Montana. Following major surgery on Montana's throwing arm prior to the 1991 season, Young was finally given the opportunity to prove himself, and he made the best of it.

A mobile scrambler with a quick mind and a strong and accurate left arm, Young proceeded to establish himself as the NFL's highest-rated passer in both 1991 and 1992. In the latter year, spearheading the most potent offense in the league, he led the 49ers to the NFL's best record, surpassed all other pro quarterbacks in completion percentage, passing yardage per game, yards per passing attempt, and touchdown passes, and had the lowest interception rate of any pro quarterback. In recognition of those achievements, he was named the NFL's most valuable player and offensive player of the year.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1993 Current Biography Yearbook.

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