Vic Washington; football star on both sides of the border
Hyfler/Rosner
VIC WASHINGTON, 62: ATHLETE
Versatile star ran for Grey Cup record
Inauspicious childhood, troubled retirement book-ended a
dazzling football career on both sides of the border
TOM HAWTHORN
Special to The Globe and Mail
February 19, 2009
Of all the spectacles possible in football, few matched the
fury and grace of Vic Washington in an open-field dash.
Any time he was handed the ball - whether by his own
quarterback, or after snagging an interception, or while
receiving an opponent's kick - it seemed possible that he
might scamper all the way to the end zone.
He recorded brilliant individual runs in high school and
college and on the bright stage of the National Football
League.
One of his more memorable romps occurred in the fourth
quarter of the 1968 Grey Cup. The play was a turning point
in the game.
He amazed football fans with his dazzling runs, but injuries
limited his career and he was forced to leave the game too
young. "I took every play like it was my last play," he once
said. "That's the only way to play."
The former player became destitute, relying on food stamps
and, for a time, living without a home in the community
where he had been a high-school hero. He spent some time as
an ordained pastor in Arizona.
For many years, he fought with the NFL over a disability
pension. He also spoke in retirement of football's unspoken
but widespread drug use, from amphetamines to cocaine to
steroids, and admitted that his struggles with chronic pain
led to depression.
Mr. Washington died on the last day of 2008, nearly
unnoticed by the sporting world. As a departure, it was as
inauspicious as his beginning.
Victor Arnold Washington was born to Marion Washington, a
16-year-old single mother in Plainfield, N.J. He said as an
adult that he had never met his father, identified as J.T.
Smith in a paid obituary notice. The boy was raised by his
maternal grandmother until a series of family difficulties
led to his placement in an orphanage for three years.
He was a strapping youth at 5-foot-11 and 190 pounds, lean
in face as well as physique. In high school, he thrived on
the track, the ball diamond and especially the football
gridiron.
Plainfield High coach Abe Smith knew how to handle athletes
on the cusp of greatness.
In his quarter-century guiding the Plainfield Cardinals, the
disciplined coach handled several future professionals,
including Milt Campbell, who won Olympic decathlon gold in
1956 before playing football in Montreal. Several other
Plainfield high schoolers became professionals.
The University of Wyoming recruited Mr. Washington on a
scholarship in 1965. Always a threat as a running back and a
devilishly quick cornerback on defence, Mr. Washington
excelled as a punt returner. He led all collegians in punt
returns in his junior year, setting school records for
single-game returns (145 yards) and single-season returns
(565 yards).
Mr. Washington seemed to have his greatest success on the
road. He ran a punt 55 yards into the end zone against the
University of Texas at El Paso, and he stunned a partisan
crowd at Provo, Utah, by returning a kickoff 95 yards for a
touchdown.
The Cowboys were ranked fifth in the United States when they
faced the unranked Louisiana State Tigers in the 1968 Sugar
Bowl. They went into the locker-room with a 13-0 halftime
lead, but lost 20-13.
It turned out to be Mr. Washington's last college game. That
March, an intramural basketball game on the Laramie campus
ended in a physical altercation between him and a
19-year-old student referee, who charged that he was knocked
unconscious and suffered a seven-stitch cut over an eye.
After pleading guilty to an assault charge, Mr. Washington
was fined $25 and received a suspended five-day jail
sentence. The university permanently expelled him.
He was lured north to the Ottawa Rough Riders by Kelley
Mote, a former NFL player working as an assistant to Frank
Clair. In November, 1968, the team advanced to the Grey Cup
final against the Calgary Stampeders at Toronto's Exhibition
Stadium.
Mr. Washington was part of two key plays in the second half.
First, the Rough Riders tackled Calgary's punter at midfield
before he could get off a kick. The good field position
became all the better following the rookie's spectacular
14-yard run from scrimmage, which set up an Ottawa
touchdown. The play seemed to give Mr. Washington a boost of
confidence.
The second play, a game-changer, was called by Ottawa
quarterback Russ Jackson, who employed a variety of
innovative manoeuvres to keep the Stampeders' defence
guessing. With Calgary leading 14-11 early in the third
quarter, Mr. Jackson selected a play described as a "quick
pitch sweep left." The Rough Riders lined up on their own
30-yard line with three flankers on the left and Mr.
Washington as the lone running back.
On the snap, Mr. Washington broke to his left to receive an
underhanded toss from the quarterback. Just as the ball
arrived, he looked up. That was a mistake.
"I took the pitchout," he told The Globe and Mail's Dick
Beddoes in the locker room after the game. "I was looking to
get behind my blockers when the ball bobbled right through
my hands."
A lucky bounce salvaged the play. "The ball hit the ground
twice, but bounced back in my arms. I got a block from [Whit
Tucker] and was gone."
Two Stampeders gave chase, but Mr. Washington was gone,
untouched on an 80-yard romp to the end zone. It established
a new record for the longest run in Grey Cup history, and
still stands after 40 seasons. "All I could think as I ran
was 'I hope I don't get a cramp! I hope I don't get a
cramp!' " he said.
The Rough Riders never relinquished their lead on the way to
a 24-21 victory, and Mr. Washington got the keys to a new
car after being named the game's most valuable player.
He spent another season in Ottawa before joining the B.C.
Lions. But Vancouver was not to his liking. He became so
disgruntled that his teammates assigned two players to
address his attitude, according to sports columnist Jim
Taylor.
Running back A.D. Whitfield appealed to his athletic pride
and his Christian beliefs, but veteran receiver Ernie Pitts
had a different approach. "I told him that if he got out of
line one more time, I was going to kick the living crap out
of him," Mr. Pitts told the columnist.
Whichever part of the message got through, Mr. Washington
behaved for the remainder of the season.
The next season, he signed with the NFL's San Francisco
49ers, cementing his roster spot with two touchdowns during
an exhibition game against San Diego. He earned a spot in
the Pro Bowl after rushing for 811 yards with a 4.2-yard
average in his debut season.
His greatest single feat in the NFL was a 97-yard kickoff
return in San Francisco's 1972 playoff loss to the Dallas
Cowboys. He also played one season with the Houston Oilers
and two with the Buffalo Bills.
Mr. Washington played the entire 1973 season with a cracked
kneecap, the result of a hard tackle on artificial turf in a
preseason game. He was prescribed painkillers by team
doctors, who also administered cortisone injections so he
could take to the field despite his pain.
The sudden end to his professional career began a spiral in
his personal life. His marriage collapsed, and in interviews
with the Chicago Sun-Times in 1993 and The Wall Street
Journal in 2005, he spoke about being diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder, leaving him unable to watch
football on television without "reliving the experience of
being in a war zone."
"We were in a war out there," he said. "And using cocaine
was seen as a way of getting psyched up to have an edge. I
understood it at the time because we were out of reality.
Pro football is not reality."
His struggles included bankruptcy, a stint on welfare and a
brief period of homelessness.
According to the Journal, he filed a disability claim in
1983 and was diagnosed with arthritis, degenerative joint
disease and other ailments.
A psychiatrist found he suffered from depression and an
inability to concentrate. Still, trustees of the NFL's
disability plan split 3-3 about whether his disability was
football-related or related to his troubles as a youth. They
approved a benefit of just $750 per month, instead of the
$4,000 to which he felt he was entitled.
Mr. Washington was named to the University of Wyoming
Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005. In the years after he left
the football field, he had become one of those figures whose
reputation grew in the retelling. To Canadian football fans
of a certain generation, his name still elicits memories of
the spectacular.
VIC WASHINGTON
Victor Arnold Washington was born March 23, 1946, in
Plainfield, N.J. He died Dec. 31, 2008, at Lehigh Valley
Hospice in Allentown, Penn. A resident of Greenwich
Township, N.J., he was 62. He leaves a son, three daughters,
three sisters and three grandchildren.