Forever young, forever in place: Remembering notable college football deaths from 2021

The beauty of college football stars is they stay forever young. The beauty of legendary college football coaches is that years pass and they remain in place.

College football is more than stars and legendary coaches. It is assistants and writers and athletic directors and so many more. The men remembered below, whether legendary or not, share one trait: At one time, they held a prominent place in the sport of college football.

Notable college football deaths in 2021:

+ Bobby Bowden won 389 games in a 44-year coaching career, but he didn’t win the first of his two national championships at Florida State until he was 64 years old, in his 27th season. Bowden (August 8, age 91) made the Seminoles a national power. Their record of 14 consecutive top-five finishes won’t be matched soon. At least not before 2030 – Ohio State has the longest current streak at four.

+ Imagine Nick Saban retiring in five years and Alabama hiring John Metchie III to replace him as coach. Now you know the expectations dumped on Terry Brennan, hired at age 26 by Notre Dame in 1954 to replace his college coach, legendary Fighting Irish leader Frank Leahy. In 1956, when the Irish went 2-8, quarterback Paul Hornung still won the Heisman. A year later, Brennan’s Domers ended Oklahoma’s 47-game unbeaten streak. Brennan (September 7, age 93) went 32-18 in five seasons. He never got another head-coaching job.

+ USC fullback Sam Cunningham ran for three touchdowns against Alabama at Legion Field in Birmingham in a 42-21 Trojans victory in 1970, and the legend is that Bear Bryant introduced him to his all-white team after the game and said, “Gentlemen, this is what a football player looks like.” It probably never happened. Cunningham professed he couldn’t remember. Tide assistant Jerry Claiborne’s quote, that Cunningham had done more to integrate the Crimson Tide in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King, Jr., did in 20 years, is baloney. Bryant already had signed a Black player, freshman running back Wilbur Jackson. Cunningham (September 7, age 71) was a good back in his own right. He didn’t need an apocryphal legend to bolster his stature.

+ Bobby Collins never shed the taint of coaching the SMU team that received the NCAA death penalty. Too bad – the man could coach (91-44-3, 12 seasons). Not only did he turn Southern Miss into a winner, going 9-10-1 against SEC foes, but he led the SMU Mustangs to national prominence thanks to the “Pony Express,” running backs Eric Dickerson and Craig James. The SMU scandal reached into the highest level of state and university government (Gov. Bill Clements chaired the SMU Board of Governors), but Collins (November 15, age 88) served as much penance as anyone. He never had a prayer at a big-time coaching job again.

+ Gordon Hudson had received exactly one scholarship offer, from Bruce Snyder at Utah State, when BYU coach LaVell Edwards offered him, too. When Hudson played tight end for the Cougars, his quarterbacks were Jim McMahon, Steve Young (Hudson’s roommate), and Robbie Bosco. Hudson (September 27, age 59) caught 178 passes, 22 of them for touchdowns, in three seasons. In 1981, he caught 13 passes for 259 yards (for 40 seasons and counting, an NCAA record for receiving yardage by tight end) and two touchdowns in McMahon’s last regular-season game, against archrival Utah.

+ Rice halfback Dicky Maegle isn’t remembered because he played well enough to lead the Owls to a share of the 1953 Southwest Conference championship or because he was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Maegle is remembered for being a victim. In the 1954 Cotton Bowl, as Maegle ran down the sideline in front of the Alabama sideline, Alabama’s Tommy Lewis sprinted off the bench without a helmet and tackled him. The refs awarded Maegle (July 4, age 86) a 95-yard touchdown run, and history awarded him an asterisk’s worth of fame. Maegle’s 265 rushing yards remained a Cotton Bowl record for 54 years.

+ Charlie Krueger grew up a sharecropper’s kid, “6-6 and skinny,” Bryant said of his Texas A&M recruit. “But when we started feeding him, he filled out nice.” Krueger was one of the survivors among the two busloads of Aggies players who went to Bryant’s preseason camp in Junction, Tex., and came back in one. They became known as the Junction Boys, forever famous for going 1-9 in Season One (1954) and 9-0-1 two years later. Krueger (February 5, age 84) became an All-American, “one of the two best tackles I ever had,” Bryant said.

+ The only mistake Leroy Keyes ever made on the football field involved his timing. The Purdue back came of age at the same time as USC back O.J. Simpson. Keyes finished third in the Heisman voting to UCLA quarterback Gary Beban and Simpson in 1967, and second to Simpson in 1968. With Keyes and quarterback Mike Phipps, the Boilermakers knocked off No. 1 Notre Dame in 1967; the next season, Keyes led the top-ranked Boilermakers past the second-ranked Irish in South Bend. Don’t make the mistake of selling Keyes (April 15, age 74) short. He is, along with quarterback Peyton Manning of Tennessee and Andrew Luck of Stanford, among the select group of best players never to win the Heisman.

+ Shirley “Red” Wilson, after 10 seasons of coaching Elon at the NAIA level, went 16-27-1 in four seasons as Duke’s coach from 1979-82. That is, in and of itself, unremarkable at best. But Wilson will be known and appreciated forever as the coach who gave a recently retired NFL quarterback his first college offense to run. Under Steve Spurrier, Duke’s offense began to pass so well that it shook up the staid ACC. In 1982, junior Ben Bennett became the first ACC passer to throw for 3,000 yards and won conference player of the year honors. Wilson (January 8, age 95) retired after the 1982 season. Spurrier returned to Duke in 1987 as coach and took the Blue Devils to the ACC title in 1989 before leaving for Florida.

+ Terry Donahue mastered the art of being competitive without being combative. He took over UCLA at age 31, led the Bruins to five Pac-10 championships and four Rose Bowls, and won more games (151) than any other UCLA coach. And at age 51, he quit, as even he would admit, way too soon. Donahue (July 4, age 77) made a successful transition into broadcasting, then returned to football to work in the 49ers’ front office for his mentor, Bill Walsh. UCLA could use a Terry Donahue these days.

+ Floyd Little’s father died when Floyd was 6 years old, and Floyd spent his childhood in New Haven, Conn., shining shoes, washing cars, whatever he could do to help his family. He went to a military institute after high school to academically prepare for college. Little chose Syracuse over Notre Dame to fulfill a promise he had made to the late Ernie Davis. The Syracuse back, who in 1961 became the first Black to win the Heisman, had helped host Little on a recruiting visit. Little, like Jim Brown and Davis before him, wore No. 44 and refused to be tackled. He rushed for 2,704 yards and 35 touchdowns. Like Brown and Davis, Little (January 1, age 78) also is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

+ Howard Schnellenberger played for Bear Bryant and Blanton Collier at Kentucky and became an All-SEC end. As an assistant for Bryant, Schnellenberger recruited Joe Namath out of Pennsylvania to play at Alabama. As a head coach, Schnellenberger time and again made a lot out of a little. He took a Miami program that had fallen apart and created the 1983 national champion, laying the foundation for the ’Canes to win five national titles in 19 seasons. He made Louisville into a Fiesta Bowl champion, starting the Cardinals down the road that led the school to the ACC. And Schnellenberger (March 27, age 87) started from scratch an FAU program that in its seventh season won the Sun Belt Conference.

+ Rudy Riska, confidante to generations of Heisman winners (September 12, age 85).

+ Cecil Hurt, longtime columnist of The Tuscaloosa News (November 23, age 62).

+ Defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn, the mastermind of the 3-3-5 scheme (October 26, age 75).

+ Jim Shofner won two games in three seasons as coach at TCU (1974-76), where he starred as a two-way back in the 1950s (July 17, age 85).

+ Guard J.D. Roberts of Oklahoma (May 24, age 88) won the 1953 Outland Trophy.

+ Roger Brown, NAIA All-American at Maryland State (now Maryland-Eastern Shore), member of the “Fearsome Foursome” defensive line with the Los Angeles Rams (September 17, age 84).

+ Wayne Nunnely, hired by his alma mater, UNLV, in 1986 as the first Black coach on the West Coast (February 16, age 68).

+ Dave Campbell, Waco Tribune-Herald columnist, publisher of Texas Football magazine (December 10, age 96) and Bill Lumpkin, Birmingham Post-Herald columnist (April 5, age 92), both winners of the Bert McGrane Award, putting them in the Football Writers Association of America Hall of Fame.

+ Sam Huff, West Virginia All-American linebacker and College Football Hall of Famer who went on to NFL stardom (Nov. 13, age 87).

+ Jim Fassel, John Elway’s offensive coordinator at Stanford, coach at Utah for five seasons (25-33, 1985-89) before a long NFL coaching career (June 7, age 71).