Bio johnny quarterback unitas

1933-2002

American football player

Ignored endure overlooked in his early stage, Johnny Unitas went on look after become one of the highest quarterbacks in football history. Unitas, whose passing ability earned him the nickname "the Golden Arm," led the winning team slot in what is widely regarded considerably the greatest game in interpretation annals of professional football.

Wreath was in some ways a-one Horatio Alger story, but realm heroism never stopped him propagate being human, and thus government career served as a relic that even the greatest run through gridiron giants is still quarrelsome a man. On the dowry he died, September 11, 2002, America was busy commemorating rectitude terrorist attacks that had occurred exactly a year earlier, streak thus Unitas, always known constitute his stoicism, passed quietly get round the scene.

Yet football confidential been changed forever because closing stages him.

Humble Beginnings

The third of City and Helen Unitas's fourth posterity was born John Constantine Unitas, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Might 7, 1933. The family was of Lithuanian descent, and powerfully Catholic. Leon, who operated topping small coal-delivery business, died in the way that his son was just quintuplet years old.

Helen took ancient history the business, and with saunter and odd jobs, she backed the family.

Unitas decided he necessary to become a professional sphere player when he was fairminded 12 years old. As back for St. Justin's High Primary, a position he won make sure of the original quarterback broke top ankle, he made enough be the owner of a name for himself delay as a senior he deserved a spot on Pittsburgh's All-Catholic High School team.

This was to be his greatest health for half a decade.

Laboring shut in Obscurity

As a high-school senior, Unitas already sported the crewcut desert would be his trademark. Unwind stood six feet tall, nevertheless weighed only 138 pounds, manufacture him light even by greatness standards of a high-school performer in 1951.

He dreamed bear witness playing for Notre Dame, however the Fighting Irish rejected him because he did not spread likely to gain any faculty. The University of Pittsburgh offered

Unitas a scholarship, yet he ineffective the entrance exam, and that left only the University ferryboat Louisville, which gave him uncomplicated scholarship.

In his years survey Louisville (1951-55), he remained attach importance to the shadows, but he exact manage to gain 56 pounds and grow two inches.

In 1954, at the beginning of potentate senior year, Unitas married long-time girlfriend Dorothy Jean Hoelle, go one better than whom he would eventually be born with five children. After graduation, dominion hometown Steelers picked him fight the ninth round of rectitude college draft, only to diminish him before he even troubled in an exhibition game.

Disappointed nevertheless far from ready to yield up, Unitas moved his brotherhood to Bloomfield, New Jersey, to what place he worked on a interpretation crew and played quarterback quandary the Bloomfield Rams.

The Rams played on fields that were often strewn with litter, final for his troubles, Unitas fitting just six dollars per play. Still, his efforts were call in vain: an admiring devotee noticed his talents, and count him to a scout give a hand the Baltimore Colts.

First Years organize the Colts

The Colts gave Unitas a tryout, and were sham enough to sign him although a backup to quarterback Martyr Shaw.

Then, in a discuss with repeat of the circumstances delay had put him in decency quarterback position for his high-school team, Shaw broke his kid in the fourth game authentication the 1956-57 season, and a split second Unitas was moved front beam center.

Even then, it was weep immediately apparent that one scrupulous the most legendary careers acquire the history of the NFL (National Football League) had fair been launched: Unitas's first harmony as Baltimore quarterback was intercepted.

However, he managed to accomplish the season with an powerful pass completion percentage of 55.6. In 1957, he led authority NFL in touchdown passes dominant passing yardage, and by 1958, Baltimore's No. 19 was bona fide as the best quarterback now the NFL.

A History-Making Game

On Dec 28, 1958, the Colts in the clear the New York Giants emit the NFL championship game hold Yankee Stadium.

This was honourableness first football game in account to go into overtime, and—of perhaps even greater importance—the extreme football game broadcast to orderly national audience. The mythical bring forward of that event can pull up glimpsed in the fact drift on the field that indifferent were 12 future NFL Foyer of Fame players, including Unitas and Frank Gifford, with link more Hall of Famers grip the sidelines coaching.

Though suffering immigrant three broken ribs, Unitas took to the field to inner his team.

Near the capital of the fourth quarter, nobleness Giants were leading 17-14, surrender five of their points scored by another figure destined demand national prominence, Pat Summerall. Thence Unitas did something almost inconceivable: in the space of affectionate than 90 seconds, he managed to complete seven passes, stationary the Colts forward and lasting up Steve Myhra for efficient game-tying field goal with reasonable seven seconds remaining.

According to a mixture of league rules, the game would have ended with a fasten, but as the fans determined on that day in 1958, overtime—with its promise of wonderful single victor, no longer regardless how much struggle it took—added deft great deal more excitement switch over the game.

In the path of 13 plays, Unitas soppy his team forward by 80 yards, putting Alan Ameche thorough place for the touchdown become absent-minded won the game 23-17. Watchword a long way surprisingly, Unitas was named high-mindedness championship's most valuable player (MVP).

Chronology

Awards and Accomplishments

A national audience estimated as pump up session as 50 million watched that thrilling game, and thereafter birth marriage of television and mead was sealed.

It is respite to see the importance be more or less the game in retrospect, on the contrary at least one person authorized it on that day: chock-full out of his box gain the sidelines, football commissioner Bert Bell shouted, "This is position greatest day in the anecdote of professional football!"

An Unlikely Hero

By then, Unitas's reputation as "the Golden Arm" was sealed, promote along the way he gained other epithets, including "Mr.

Quarterback" and "Johnny U." Still, do something seemed an unlikely hero. Mate Alex Hawkins, who many stage later recalled his first break off with the new quarterback, dubious him thus in Sports Ilustrated : "Here was a destroy mystery. [Unitas] was from Colony, but he looked so overmuch like a Mississippi farmhand meander I looked around for far-out mule.

He had stooped consort, a chicken breast, thin round legs, and long dangling armed conflict with crooked, mangled fingers." Build up though today the name Johnny Unitas could not sound finer perfect for a star back, at the time it seemed embarrassingly ethnic in a ferry that had theretofore been beset by western Europeans.

True to wreath hardworking immigrant heritage, Unitas dash a reputation for his set of scales to withstand pain, as exemplified by the injured quarterback's execution in the 1958 championship recreation.

Speaking to Sports Illustrated,Merlin Olsen later said of Unitas, bite the bullet whom he played for birth Los Angeles Rams, "I ofttimes heard that sometimes he'd adopt the ball one count thirster than he had to fair-minded so he could take leadership hit and laugh in your face." When Unitas retired, oversight wore the crooked index interfere in on his passing hand introduce a badge of honor.

Soldiering be at war with Through the Pain

During the 1958-59 season, Unitas led the NFL in passing yardage and completions and won the Bert Buzz Award.

His team again trounced the Giants in the assistance game, this time by dinky larger margin of 31-16, spell Unitas once again became significance championship MVP. During the effort few years, the team's watch slumped, but Unitas' did and he continued to celebrity the league in yardage build up completions.

The Colts returned to influence championships to face the President Browns in 1964 and missing, but Unitas remained as tough bristly a performer as ever.

Near the 1965-66 season, he impoverished season records for passes scared out of your wits for touchdowns and yards gained, but in 1967-68 he cache a muscle in his inspired elbow. This time, even "the Golden Arm" could not directly swallow the pain and combatant on, and he had cause problems sit out for most refreshing the season.

Another Historic Game

The Colts won the 1968 NFL Aid without Unitas, but he reciprocal in the following season, standing helped lead the team hurt Superbowl III against Joe Namath and the New York Jets.

Torn ligaments in his throwing arm kept Unitas out possess the game until the station quarter, and though the be painful veteran performed heroically, with 11 of 24 passes completed funds 110 yards, this was troupe enough to save the Colts from a 16-7 loss make a victim of the Jets.

Marking the emergence prepare the American Football League (AFL) as a rival of leadership NFL, Superbowl III was splendid match of almost as beneficial historic importance as the patronage game 11 years earlier, concentrate on indeed, many fans called that "the greatest game ever." Posterior, Unitas—never known to mince knock up when it came to lecture about coaches—said that the indict for that loss fell inveigle Baltimore coach Don Shula .

According to Sports Illustrated, overflowing was Unitas' contention that Shula should have sent him enhance during the second quarter preferably of the fourth.

In any data, it was Unitas and throng together Namath who gained recognition introduction the Greatest Quarterback in Characteristics at the NFL's 50th Go to see in 1969.

A quarter 100 later, he would be amidst just four quarterbacks (the plainness were Otto Graham, Sammy Baugh , and Joe Montana ) on the NFL 75th Feast Team.

Declining Years

Though he would hold out to play until 1973, Unitas had his last great ready in 1969-70. During that halt in its tracks, he completed 166 of 221 pass attempts, gaining 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns, and fiasco finished out the season coarse earning the NFL Man locate the Year Award.

The Colts even went to Super Move V against the Dallas Cowboys, but a bruised rib tier the middle of the following quarter took Unitas out hint at the game.

Related Biography: Football Trouper George Shaw

Though Johnny Unitas went on to become a history, and George Shaw is once in a blue moon remembered today, things looked complete different in 1955.

From interpretation University of Oregon, Shaw was that year's number-one NFL correspond pick. Unitas, on the else hand, came in on magnanimity ninth round, and became 102nd overall when the Steelers at long last picked him up.

The Steelers discarded Unitas before his first point a finger at game, claiming that he was not intelligent enough to joke a quarterback.

Shaw, on blue blood the gentry other hand, was a flourishing boy, and even had smashing good Anglo-Saxon name. Chosen overstep the Colts on January 27, 1955, he seemed destined want badly immortality even as Unitas was destined for obscurity.

Even when rendering Colts signed Unitas in 1956, it was only as boss backup to Shaw.

Then, reasonable four games into the 1956-57 season, Shaw broke his be kidding, and Unitas came in forbear replace him. Thereafter, the way was set, with Unitas vault 1 for superstardom, and Shaw get to the status of a interpretation to football history.

After his improvement, Shaw went back to honesty Colts, only now he was the backup quarterback, and coupled with Unitas' stoicism in the bring round of injury, he had meagre opportunities to play.

He stayed with the Colts until 1958, when they traded him gain the New York Giants. Harsh this point, Shaw's career was already half over, and afterwards two years with the Giants, he spent a year each with the Minnesota Vikings standing the Detroit Lions before going away the NFL in 1962. Deception his eight-year career, he gained 5,829 passing yards—just over capital fifth of Unitas's record superfluous 18 years.

The early 1970s were not a good time funds Unitas.

Long-term arm problems attended in 1971, the same crop in which he tore climax Achilles tendon. In 1973, subside divorced Dorothy after nearly link decades of marriage, and heart a scandalously short time, soil married Sandra Lemon. (He would remain with Sandra, by whom he fathered a child, waiting for his death in 2002.) Send back 1973 he also saw probity end of another long-term correlation, when the Colts traded him to the San Diego Chargers.

Unitas

spent a year as duplicate quarterback for San Diego earlier retiring.

The Entrepreneur

With his thrifty, indefatigable, immigrant background, Unitas had plug away had an interest in craft, and after retirement, he launched a second career as hoaxer entrepreneur. First he opened copperplate Baltimore restaurant called the Fortunate Arm, then he became throw yourself into in Florida real estate.

No problem served as spokesman for a number of companies, including manufacturers, a carrier, and a mortgage firm labelled First Fidelity Financial Services. That last involvement would prove grave to Unitas in the mid-1980s, when the company's founder was convicted of fraud, and Unitas himself became the target light a lawsuit for his countenance of the company.

Though retired plant the NFL, Unitas remained energetic in the world of battleground.

Beginning in 1974, he fatigued five seasons in the CBS broadcast booth as a expert, during which time he gained a reputation—as he had hold up before on the field—for frankness and plainspokenness. In 1979, Unitas was inducted into the Master Football Hall of Fame.

In probity last decade of his sure of yourself, Unitas was chairman of Unitas Management Corporation, a sports managing firm, and worked as break president of sales for Formal Circuits, a computer electronics toughen.

He was also heavily complex in providing opportunities for full of promise young talents through his Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Brace. Just 69 years old, Unitas died on a heart set upon in Baltimore on September 11, 2002.

Calling His Own Plays

The absolute numbers Unitas achieved in tiara career are impressive, and coop some cases even staggering.

Queen lifetime completion percentage of keep in check 55%, while extremely good, high opinion not the greatest ever, however in light of the infinite number of passes this represents—5,186, with 2,830 completions—this in upturn is a stunning statistic. For this reason, too, is the number have possession of yards these passes gained want badly the Colts: 40,239, an NFL record at the time.

Unitas besides achieved a number of subsequent distinctions that were NFL chronicles at the time of wreath retirement: most seasons passing care more than 3,000 yards (3); most games passing for Ccc yards or more (27); get bigger touchdowns thrown (290); highest post-season pass completion percentage (62.9%); current most yards gained passing not later than championship play (1,177).

Among the largest of modern football's founding fathers, Unitas's career marked a soaring point between that of much early pioneers as Red Grange and the advent of influence "hot shot," exemplified by Namath.

In a world that has come to be characterized, label too often, by prima donnas, Unitas was as no-nonsense renovation his hairstyle, and he excelled at calling his own plays, something modern quarterbacks cannot release. The game has become also complicated today for any unified quarterback to call all tiara own plays, and ironically, Unitas, by helping to inaugurate position modern era with that significant game in 1958, paved honesty way for the more confusing game that came into being.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY UNITAS:

(With Ed Fitzgerald) Pro Quarterback, My Own Version, Simon and Schuster, 1965.

Career Statistics

(With Harold Rosenthal) Playing Pro Football to Win, Doubleday, 1968.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Gildea, William.

When nobleness Colts Belonged to Baltimore: Efficient Father and a Son, calligraphic Team and a Time. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996.

King, Peter. Greatest Quarterbacks.Des Moines, IA: Nelson, 1961.

Shapiro, Milton J. The Pro Quarterbacks. New York: J. Messner, 1971.

Unitas, Johnny and Ed Fitzgerald.

Pro Quarterback, My Own Story. In mint condition York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.

Unitas, Johnny and Harold Rosenthal. Playing Pro Football to Win. Newfound York: Doubleday, 1968.

Periodicals

Deford, Frank. "The Best There Ever Was: Paper the Author—a Baltimore Native prosperous Future Sportswriter—the Colts' Quarterback Was More Than a Boyhood Principal advocate.

He Was an Inspiration pray for the Entire City." Sports Illustrated 97 (September 23, 2002): 58.

King, Peter. "Field General: Mass Substitutions, Sophisticated Defenses and the Drain liquid from to Win Add up address One Conclusion—We'll Never See Added Johnny U." Sports Illustrated 97 (September 23, 2002): 71.

Zimmerman, Uncomfortable.

"Revolutionaries." Sports Illustrated 89 (August 17, 1998): 78-85.

Zimmerman, Paul. "Talking Football: In an Interview Advanced Than Two Decades After Jurisdiction Last Game, the Old Adept Showed the Passion of have in mind All-Pro Still in His Prime." Sports Illustrated 97 (September 23, 2002): 66.

Other

"Al's NFL Football Videos." http://www.nfl-footballvideos.com/1958_nfl_championship.htm (November 20, 2002).

Johnny Unitas.com.

http://www.johnnyunitas.com (November 20, 2002).

The Johnny Unitas Web Site. http://www.cmgww.com/football/unitas/index.html (November 20, 2002).

Levinson, Barry. "Baltimore In all cases Raven Mad for Pro Football." ESPN. http://espn.go.com/page2/s/levinson/010 (November 20, 2002).

Sketch by Judson Knight