SPORTS PROFILE: JOE DON LOONEY
I remember just one football carry for my hometown Baltimore Colts by its newly-acquired and highly-touted running back, Joe Don Looney - 58 yards, touchdown!
Never heard from him again in Baltimore and just barely heard anymore from him before or since that TD run!
Here was an Oklahoma Sooner who made headlines on the gridiron, then nothing!
What happened to a star football player who finally became a recluse long after his football career ended and who left all who had marveled at his football skills befuddled and puzzled?
When asked by Lions head coach Harry Gilmer to take a play into the huddle, this #1 draft choice by the New York football Giants, then with the Lions responded, "If you need a messenger, call Western Union!"
Baltimore's Shula asked Looney to finish his burger in the hallway after Joe Don tried to finish eating his burger during a team meeting because "he was hungry!"
Bud Wilkinson, the renowned Sooner head coach, tried and failed to understand and motivate this truly gifted football marvel, as did the 5 NFL coaches who also saw Joe Don's marvelous ability.
Exactly who was the player called by a Sporting News reporter "the greatest football who never was."
I started to read the biography, 3rd Down & Forever, mainly for the NFL segments, then I finished learning more about his life from the mini-biography from the Sporting News, which you can also view by clicking here ----> JOE DON LOONEY
J. Brent Clark's full biography of Joe Don Looney, 3rd Down& Forever (ISBN 0-312-07870-6), St. Martin's Press, 1991, adds flesh to the bones and reveals even more about the man.
Luckiest Man about Lou Gehrig is the saddest sports biographyI've ever read. Clark's biography on Looney is second as the sadness mounts continually to its final conclusion off of a lonely Texas highway - Looney's cynical sense of humor throughout makes all very bearable in the end.
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Image: amazon.com
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