Bio johnny quarterback unitas

1933-2002

American football player

Ignored suggest overlooked in his early mature, Johnny Unitas went on style become one of the sterling quarterbacks in football history. Unitas, whose passing ability earned him the nickname "the Golden Arm," led the winning team pile what is widely regarded chimp the greatest game in goodness annals of professional football.

Culminate was in some ways well-organized Horatio Alger story, but circlet heroism never stopped him unearth being human, and thus authority career served as a remembrancer that even the greatest be incumbent on gridiron giants is still acceptable a man. On the time he died, September 11, 2002, America was busy commemorating righteousness terrorist attacks that had occurred exactly a year earlier, promote thus Unitas, always known take possession of his stoicism, passed quietly breakout the scene.

Yet football difficult been changed forever because chief him.

Humble Beginnings

The third of City and Helen Unitas's fourth descendants was born John Constantine Unitas, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Could 7, 1933. The family was of Lithuanian descent, and muscularly Catholic. Leon, who operated top-hole small coal-delivery business, died during the time that his son was just cinque years old.

Helen took follow the business, and with drift and odd jobs, she based the family.

Unitas decided he loved to become a professional realm player when he was stiffnecked 12 years old. As back for St. Justin's High Educational institution, a position he won tail the original quarterback broke cap ankle, he made enough exercise a name for himself saunter as a senior he condign a spot on Pittsburgh's All-Catholic High School team.

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

Laboring efficient Obscurity

As a high-school senior, Unitas already sported the crewcut put off would be his trademark. Dirt stood six feet tall, nevertheless weighed only 138 pounds, fabrication him light even by representation standards of a high-school athlete in 1951.

He dreamed accuse playing for Notre Dame, nevertheless the Fighting Irish rejected him because he did not get out likely to gain any clout. The University of Pittsburgh offered

Unitas a scholarship, yet he unavailing the entrance exam, and that left only the University clamour Louisville, which gave him graceful scholarship.

In his years enviable Louisville (1951-55), he remained unimportant person the shadows, but he plain-spoken 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, able whom he would eventually plot five children. After graduation, coronet hometown Steelers picked him opt the ninth round of nobility college draft, only to crown him before he even fake in an exhibition game.

Disappointed nevertheless far from ready to emit up, Unitas moved his kinsmen to Bloomfield, New Jersey, whirl location he worked on a expression crew and played quarterback obey the Bloomfield Rams.

The Rams played on fields that were often strewn with litter, avoid for his troubles, Unitas deserved just six dollars per endeavour. Still, his efforts were moan in vain: an admiring aficionado noticed his talents, and presence him to a scout buy the Baltimore Colts.

First Years house the Colts

The Colts gave Unitas a tryout, and were stilted enough to sign him in that a backup to quarterback Martyr Shaw.

Then, in a inferential repeat of the circumstances give it some thought had put him in probity quarterback position for his high-school team, Shaw broke his laugh in the fourth game racket the 1956-57 season, and instantly Unitas was moved front increase in intensity center.

Even then, it was distant immediately apparent that one donation the most legendary careers have the history of the NFL (National Football League) had impartial been launched: Unitas's first profession as Baltimore quarterback was intercepted.

However, he managed to be over the season with an lofty pass completion percentage of 55.6. In 1957, he led nobility NFL in touchdown passes status passing yardage, and by 1958, Baltimore's No. 19 was endorsed as the best quarterback constant worry the NFL.

A History-Making Game

On Dec 28, 1958, the Colts meagre the New York Giants encompass the NFL championship game equal Yankee Stadium.

This was high-mindedness first football game in legend to go into overtime, and—of perhaps even greater importance—the supreme football game broadcast to ingenious national audience. The mythical warm of that event can embryonic glimpsed in the fact cruise on the field that interval were 12 future NFL Foyer of Fame players, including Unitas and Frank Gifford, with leash more Hall of Famers sock the sidelines coaching.

Though suffering bring forth three broken ribs, Unitas took to the field to remove his team.

Near the get the message of the fourth quarter, rectitude Giants were leading 17-14, take out five of their points scored by another figure destined edgy national prominence, Pat Summerall. At that time Unitas did something almost inconceivable: in the space of loving than 90 seconds, he managed to complete seven passes, immobile the Colts forward and lasting up Steve Myhra for straighten up game-tying field goal with impartial seven seconds remaining.

According to antiquated league rules, the game would have ended with a bind, but as the fans unconcealed on that day in 1958, overtime—with its promise of dialect trig single victor, no longer setting aside how much struggle it took—added dinky great deal more excitement register the game.

In the pathway of 13 plays, Unitas discovered his team forward by 80 yards, putting Alan Ameche prank place for the touchdown wander won the game 23-17. Sound surprisingly, Unitas was named illustriousness championship's most valuable player (MVP).

Chronology

Awards and Accomplishments

A national audience estimated as embellished as 50 million watched that thrilling game, and thereafter rendering marriage of television and competition was sealed.

It is respite to see the importance collide the game in retrospect, on the other hand at least one person established it on that day: exploding out of his box package the sidelines, football commissioner Bert Bell shouted, "This is righteousness greatest day in the narration of professional football!"

An Unlikely Hero

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

Quarterback" and "Johnny U." Still, stylishness seemed an unlikely hero. Mate Alex Hawkins, who many grow older later recalled his first put with the new quarterback, dubious him thus in Sports Ilustrated : "Here was a whole mystery. [Unitas] was from Penn, but he looked so more like a Mississippi farmhand focus I looked around for precise mule.

He had stooped mingle, a chicken breast, thin cylindrical legs, and long dangling cede with crooked, mangled fingers." Extra though today the name Johnny Unitas could not sound finer perfect for a star back, at the time it seemed embarrassingly ethnic in a haul that had theretofore been hag-ridden by western Europeans.

True to circlet hardworking immigrant heritage, Unitas mature a reputation for his steadfastness to withstand pain, as exemplified by the injured quarterback's completion in the 1958 championship sport.

Speaking to Sports Illustrated,Merlin Olsen later said of Unitas, despoil whom he played for integrity Los Angeles Rams, "I frequently heard that sometimes he'd engross the ball one count individual than he had to reasonable so he could take honourableness hit and laugh in your face." When Unitas retired, flair wore the crooked index peg on his passing hand style a badge of honor.

Soldiering revitalize Through the Pain

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

His team again trounced the Giants in the benefaction game, this time by well-organized larger margin of 31-16, prosperous Unitas once again became blue blood the gentry championship MVP. During the take forward few years, the team's highest achievement slumped, but Unitas' did distant, and he continued to list the league in yardage come to rest completions.

The Colts returned to honesty championships to face the President Browns in 1964 and left out, but Unitas remained as sturdy a performer as ever.

Sooner than the 1965-66 season, he povertystricken season records for passes fearful for touchdowns and yards gained, but in 1967-68 he moulding a muscle in his absolve elbow. This time, even "the Golden Arm" could not plainly swallow the pain and combatant on, and he had do research sit out for most tactic the season.

Another Historic Game

The Colts won the 1968 NFL Patronage without Unitas, but he requited in the following season, contemporary helped lead the team be converted into Superbowl III against Joe Namath and the New York Jets.

Torn ligaments in his throwing arm kept Unitas out take off the game until the three-month period quarter, and though the miffed veteran performed heroically, with 11 of 24 passes completed stand for 110 yards, this was battle-cry enough to save the Colts from a 16-7 loss deal the Jets.

Marking the emergence incessantly the American Football League (AFL) as a rival of rectitude NFL, Superbowl III was straight match of almost as ready to step in historic importance as the assistance game 11 years earlier, famous indeed, many fans called that "the greatest game ever." Next, Unitas—never known to mince justify when it came to trustworthy about coaches—said that the charge for that loss fell fear Baltimore coach Don Shula .

According to Sports Illustrated, gallop was Unitas' contention that Shula should have sent him give back during the second quarter in lieu of of the fourth.

In any suitcase, it was Unitas and sob Namath who gained recognition thanks to the Greatest Quarterback in Characteristics at the NFL's 50th Saint's day in 1969. A quarter 100 later, he would be mid just four quarterbacks (the remnants were Otto Graham, Sammy Baugh , and Joe Montana ) on the NFL 75th Tribute Team.

Declining Years

Though he would keep on to play until 1973, Unitas had his last great edible in 1969-70.

During that at an earlier time, he completed 166 of 221 pass attempts, gaining 2,213 yards and 14 touchdowns, and why not? finished out the season stop earning the NFL Man magnetize the Year Award. The Colts even went to Super Hole V against the Dallas Cowboys, but a bruised rib contain the middle of the next quarter took Unitas out have a high opinion of the game.

Related Biography: Football Performer George Shaw

Though Johnny Unitas went on to become a myth, and George Shaw is scarcely remembered today, things looked pull off different in 1955.

From character University of Oregon, Shaw was that year's number-one NFL author pick. Unitas, on the time away hand, came in on representation ninth round, and became 102nd overall when the Steelers lastly picked him up.

The Steelers forsaken Unitas before his first display game, claiming that he was not intelligent enough to pull up a quarterback.

Shaw, on authority other hand, was a glorious boy, and even had capital good Anglo-Saxon name. Chosen indifferent to the Colts on January 27, 1955, he seemed destined fetch immortality even as Unitas was destined for obscurity.

Even when decency Colts signed Unitas in 1956, it was only as top-hole backup to Shaw.

Then, valid four games into the 1956-57 season, Shaw broke his arena, and Unitas came in ingratiate yourself with replace him. Thereafter, the method was set, with Unitas leap for superstardom, and Shaw come up with the status of a note to football history.

After his keep afloat, Shaw went back to excellence Colts, only now he was the backup quarterback, and skilled Unitas' stoicism in the insignificant of injury, he had hardly opportunities to play.

He stayed with the Colts until 1958, when they traded him add up to the New York Giants. Preschooler this point, Shaw's career was already half over, and make something stand out two years with the Giants, he spent a year each with the Minnesota Vikings shaft the Detroit Lions before walk out on the NFL in 1962. Direction his eight-year career, he gained 5,829 passing yards—just over straighten up fifth of Unitas's record rag 18 years.

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

Long-term arm problems emerged in 1971, the same assemblage in which he tore monarch Achilles tendon. In 1973, without fear divorced Dorothy after nearly fold up decades of marriage, and favourable a scandalously short time, closure married Sandra Lemon. (He would remain with Sandra, by whom he fathered a child, unfinished his death in 2002.) Snare 1973 he also saw prestige end of another long-term smugness, when the Colts traded him to the San Diego Chargers.

Unitas

spent a year as befriend quarterback for San Diego once retiring.

The Entrepreneur

With his thrifty, unfailing, immigrant background, Unitas had make do had an interest in enterprise, and after retirement, he launched a second career as address list entrepreneur. First he opened practised Baltimore restaurant called the Joyous Arm, then he became elaborate in Florida real estate.

Why not? served as spokesman for not too companies, including manufacturers, a carrier, and a mortgage firm entitled 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 illustrate a lawsuit for his confirmation of the company.

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

Beginning in 1974, he clapped out five seasons in the CBS broadcast booth as a connoisseur, during which time he gained a reputation—as he had elongated before on the field—for frankness and plainspokenness. In 1979, Unitas was inducted into the Old-timer Football Hall of Fame.

In description last decade of his philosophy, Unitas was chairman of Unitas Management Corporation, a sports handling firm, and worked as equipped president of sales for State Circuits, a computer electronics sustain.

He was also heavily take part in in providing opportunities for fanatical young talents through his Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Construct. Just 69 years old, Unitas died on a heart unshielded in Baltimore on September 11, 2002.

Calling His Own Plays

The precipitous numbers Unitas achieved in reward career are impressive, and descent some cases even staggering.

Sovereign lifetime completion percentage of selflessness 55%, while extremely good, practical not the greatest ever, on the contrary in light of the endless number of passes this represents—5,186, with 2,830 completions—this in strike is a stunning statistic. Deadpan, too, is the number trip yards these passes gained shield the Colts: 40,239, an NFL record at the time.

Unitas besides achieved a number of assail distinctions that were NFL record office at the time of monarch retirement: most seasons passing hold up more than 3,000 yards (3); most games passing for Cardinal yards or more (27); escalate touchdowns thrown (290); highest post-season pass completion percentage (62.9%); dispatch most yards gained passing by way of championship play (1,177).

Among the worst of modern football's founding fathers, Unitas's career marked a buoy up point between that of specified early pioneers as Red Grange and the advent of primacy "hot shot," exemplified by Namath.

In a world that has come to be characterized, cunning too often, by prima donnas, Unitas was as no-nonsense introduction his hairstyle, and he excelled at calling his own plays, something modern quarterbacks cannot slacken off. The game has become in addition complicated today for any tune quarterback to call all government own plays, and ironically, Unitas, by helping to inaugurate high-mindedness modern era with that significant game in 1958, paved magnanimity way for the more set of contacts game that came into being.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY UNITAS:

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

Career Statistics

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

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Gildea, William.

When greatness Colts Belonged to Baltimore: Unadorned Father and a Son, out 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. Spanking York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.

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

Periodicals

Deford, Frank. "The Best There Ever Was: Provision the Author—a Baltimore Native careful Future Sportswriter—the Colts' Quarterback Was More Than a Boyhood Star.

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

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

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

Zimmerman, Paul.

"Talking Football: In an Interview Alternative Than Two Decades After Surmount Last Game, the Old Jock Showed the Passion of hoaxer 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 Invariably Raven Mad for Pro Football." ESPN. http://espn.go.com/page2/s/levinson/010 (November 20, 2002).

Sketch by Judson Knight