Re: Max McGee, 75 (scored first Super Bowl touchdown, Green Bay in '67)
Bill Schenley
Milwaukee Journal, written after the first Super Bowl ...
> MINNEAPOLIS (AP)
Photo:
http://www.pavekmuseum.org/images/hartman_med.jpg
Max McGee, the free-spirited Green Bay Packers receiver
who became part of Super Bowl lore after a night on the
town, died Saturday when he fell while clearing leaves
from the roof of his home. He was 75.
The police were called to his home in suburban Deephaven
on Saturday afternoon, Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts
to resuscitate him failed.
“I just lost my best friend,” McGee’s former teammate Paul
Hornung told The St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Hornung said McGee’s wife, Denise, was away from the
house and had warned McGee not to get up on the roof.
“He shouldn’t have been up there,” Hornung said.
“He knew better than that.”
McGee caught the first touchdown pass and scored the first
points in Super Bowl history in 1967, in a game he expected
to watch from the sideline. When it was over, he had caught
seven passes for 138 yards and 2 touchdowns. Green Bay,
coached by Vince Lombardi, defeated the Kansas City
Chiefs, 35-10.
“Now he’ll be the answer to one of the great trivia questions:
Who scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl history?”
Hornung said. “Vince knew he could count on him.”
McGee had only four receptions for 91 yards during the 1966
regular season. He did not plan to play in the title game against
the Chiefs because he violated the team curfew and spent the
night before partying.
Boyd Dowler separated a shoulder on the Packers’ second
drive, and Lombardi summoned McGee. He had to borrow a
helmet because he left his in the locker room. A few plays
later, McGee made a one-handed snare of a pass from Bart
Starr and ran 37 yards to score.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DecUEmQjdYg ]
Though an admirer of Lombardi, McGee time and again
pushed the tough-as-nails coach to the breaking point.
“When it’s third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers and
I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time,” McGee said.
Jerry Kramer played 11 seasons on the Packers with McGee,
and they remained friends. He said McGee’s humor defused
the tension on a team run by Lombardi’s iron hand.
“When everyone else was looking at their feet wondering what
to do, Max would come up with something,” he said.
Kramer said that McGee had a stubborn streak and that it was
not altogether surprising he went on the roof by himself.
“It’s hard to admit and distinguish the fact that you’re no
longer what you were and you’re no longer capable of certain
activities,” Kramer said. “And I think we push the limit a little
bit.”
"He had a delightful sense of humor and had a knack for
coming up with big plays when you least expected it to happen,"
Packers historian Lee Remmel said. "He had a great sense of
timing."
Remmel said McGee once teased Lombardi when the coach
showed the team a football on their first meeting and said,
"Gentlemen, this is a football."
"McGee said, 'Not so fast, not so fast,"' Remmel said. "That
gives you an index to the kind of humor that he served up
regularly."
McGee attended White Oak High School in East Texas.
He was a running back at Tulane and the nation’s top kick
returner in 1953. Selected by the Packers in the fifth round
of the 1954 draft, McGee spent two years in the Air Force
as a pilot after his rookie year before returning in 1957 to play
11 more seasons. He finished his career with 345 receptions
for 6,346 yards — an 18.4-yard average — and scored 51
touchdowns and 306 points.
After retiring from football, he became a major partner in
developing the popular Chi-Chi’s chain of Mexican restaurants.
In 1979, he became an announcer for the Packer Radio
Network with Jim Irwin until retiring in 1998.
McGee and wife Denise founded the Max McGee National
Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes at the Children's Hospital
of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in 1999.
According to the center's Web site, his brother fought diabetes
in his lifetime, and Max and Denise's youngest son, Dallas, lives
with the disease.
In addition to his wife, McGee is survived by four children.
---
Photo:
http://www2.jsonline.com/packer/sbxxxii/image/hist/csb105.jpg
---
McGee Proves to be Clutch Catcher
FROM: The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (January 15th 1967) ~
By Journal Staff Correspondence
LOS ANGELES, Calif.
Before Sunday's Super Bowl game, William Max McGee,
34-year-old man about town of the Green Bay Packers,
hadn't been bothered much for interviews. After all, in his
11th professional season, McGee had caught only four
passes for a total gain of 91 yards in 14 National Football
League games.
His roommate on the road, halfback Paul Hornung, a former
star relegated to Green Bay's bench fulltime, had dubbed
McGee "pro football's highest-priced receiver, per catch."
Not that McGee didn't make his catches when they counted
-- one in Baltimore set up the winning touchdown in the
game that clinched the western division title.
And in the NFL title game in Dallas two weeks ago, McGee
caught one pass -- for the touchdown that eventually proved
to be the margin of victory against the Cowboys.
Busy Day
In the Coliseum here Sunday, against the Kansas City
Chiefs, American Football League champions, however,
McGee surprised even himself.
He caught a total of seven passes from quarterback Bart
Starr, for 138 yards and two touchdowns. His first
touchdown catch, on a 37-yard play, got Green Bay away
to a 7-0 lead, and his second, on a 13-yard play, more or
less removed the last doubts in Green Bay's 35-10 victory.
"Hornung and I were talking about it yesterday, or maybe
it was today, before the game," McGee said in the dressing
room, as newsmen pressed around his locker stall. "I told
him, 'If anything happens to Boyd Dowler, I don't know
how long I'll be able to go.' I haven't played much this
season and you have to play to stay really in shape."
Early Summons
"But then I thought, 'Nothing will happen to Boyd." I was
sitting on the bench and they started hollering and hollering
for me to go in because Dowler had gotten hurt."
Packer Passer Impresses Chiefs
Kansas City's young defensive linemen just shook there
heads as they talked about Bart Starr, the Green Bay
quarterback, in the dressing room here Sunday after the
Packers had beaten the Chiefs for the professional football
championship.
"I've never seen anything like that," said Chuck Hurston,
second year right end from Auburn, a Packer draftee who
chose the American Football League. "Once I was this
close to him (Hurston held his fingers an inch apart) and he
still threw a touchdown pass. And he didn't even notice me."
Jerry Mays, the left end who is Kansas City's defensive
captain, took the same tack.
Starr and Stars
"He's the most accurate passes I've ever seen and nothing
rattles him," Mays said. "The Packers have a star at every
position."
Hurston had something else to say and Starr was at least
obliquely involved in that.
"Coach Stram tells us we've got to do three things to win
-- give a good effort, keep our poise and don't make
mistakes. Well, we lost our poise in the third quarter and
their quarterback didn't make any mistakes."
Hurston's comments on Starr's not noticing him fit in with
what Norm Van Brocklin, the Minnesota Vikings' coach,
was saying in the press room at the game headquarters
downtown later.
Unafraid and Accurate
"Starr never loses his composure," Van Brocklin said. "He's
not afraid to take his licks after he gets the ball away. That's
why he can be so accurate. He doesn't turn away and flinch.
He just follows through and completes the pass."
Bill Austin, the former Packer line coach who had a fine season
as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, added something to
that.
"Bart's throwing more now because they don't have the ground
game they once had," Austin said. "They kept completing the
same simple patterns they've always had. It was a case of
execution."
Norb Hecker, another former Packer aide, whose Atlanta
Falcons won three games in their first season, also analyzed
his old team briefly.
"The Packers played a little cautiously on defense in the first
half, but they went after them after that," Hecker said. "Bart
did his usual fine job of picking the defense apart. He's better
than ever."
Mays concluded on a somber note. "All the talking is over
now," he said. "As Hank Stram says, they beat us on the
grass. They beat us physically and they used a little witchcraft
on us. They're a great ball club. They're not superhuman, but
they're great.
Hammer Hit but He's OK
Fred Williamson, Kansas City Chiefs cornerback knocked
out in Sunday's Super Bowl game, was pronounced in fine
condition Monday by his coach. Williamson, known as
"The Hammer," was flattened late in the game as he tried to
tackle Green Bay rookie Donnie Anderson. Williamson was
carried from the field.
Coach Hank Stram said of Williamson Monday, "He's fine.
He was knocked out, all right, but was just a little woozy for
a while. It wasn't necessary to take him to a hospital. He'll
return with us this afternoon."
"I guess I was knocked out," Williamson said. "I don't
remember a thing. Did I make the tackle?"
Stram said Williamson "got his share of the tackle."
---
Photo:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/nfl/superbowl/summaries/images/sb01.gif
Sports Illustrated cover (January 23rd 1967)
http://img.gkblogger.com/blog/imgdb/000/000/094/925_2.jpg
1959 Topps (#4) football card:
http://footballcardgallery.com/1959+Topps/4/
Stats: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/McGeMa00.htm
Brad Ferguson
<stra...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
> Hornung said McGee’s wife, Denise, was away from the
> house and had warned McGee not to get up on the roof.
This sounds like the beginnings of an old-time radio comedy plot.