I just started reading Asher Price's book Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact. I discovered and fell for football in the 1970s. The Minnesota Vikings grabbed me first. Then came all of the fantastic football players scattered across the NFL. I was hooked. There may have been no other player (non-Vikings player) that I enjoyed watching more than Earl Campbell. So strong, so powerful, so violent, so fast. To this young football fan, Campbell was football. I felt like I was being treated to the sort of player that fans of an earlier day saw in Bronko Nagurski or Clarke Hinkle. As with many great football players, hearing what those that played with Campbell, against him, or just knew him can be the most telling thing of all.
"We make four sizes of thigh pads: small, medium, large, and Earl Campbell."
-a Houston equipment manufacturer
"What we've seen tonight, ladies and gentlemen is a truly great football player in the late moments take total control of a game."
-Howard Cosell after Campbell put the Miami Dolphins away on Monday Night Football
"Every time Earl carried the football, we'd have to run a stretcher onto the field to carry one or more of our guys off. He's a physical, brutal runner, Very hard to stop. I know our defensive unit hurt for three days after the Texas game."
-Rice head coach Homer Rice
"didn't hit tacklers, he splattered them"
"He won the respect of every defensive player who ever had the misfortune to be introduced to his patented stiff arm. He played the game with the subtlety of a sledgehammer."
"It's me first, Earl second, and everybody else, get in line."
-Jim Brown
"I always thought that Superman was white and wore an S, but now I know he's black and wears number 20."
"Earl Campbell is the greatest player who ever suited up. He's the greatest football player I've ever seen. Billy Sims is human. Campbell isn't."
-Barry Switzer when asked to compare Campbell to Sims
"Every time you hit him you lower your own IQ."
-linebacker Pete Wysocki
“Watching Earl Campbell play football was almost as good as coaching to heaven.”
-Thorndyke Lewis, Campbell’s 5th-grade flag football coach
“I was playing in football in junior high and I tried to tackle him (Campbell) one day and right then and there I decided to take up golf.”
-pro golfer Andy Dillard when asked how Campbell impacted his career choice
"I hit him square. I mean I popped him face-to-face. After I hit him, I couldn't see anything. All I could see was black. I thought I was blind. Then I opened my eyes, and I was lying on my back in the end zone, and I could make out the lights on the ceiling, They were all fuzzy and blurry and spinning. I thought I was in heaven. Then I turned my head, and Earl was lying next to me. He reached his hand over to help me up, and I said, "Earl, I've go to lie here awhile, I think you knocked out my eyes."
-safety Bo Eason
It turned out that Campbell had hit Eason so hard that his contacts flew out
"You want to know what it was like blocking for Earl Campbell? Go down to the railroad track at night where the freight train comes through every evening at 9 pm. Close your eyes and get within ten feet: That's what it was like blocking for Campbell. You hear the train coming and you better get the hell out of the way."
-Oilers offensive lineman Carl Mauck
And my favorite quote from Campbell himself when college recruiters came around offering bribes:
"My people were bought and sold when they didn't have a choice: Earl Campbell is not for sale."
No comments:
Post a Comment