Collision of Wills by Jack Gilden

Author:Jack Gilden [Gilden, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO015000 Sports & Recreation / Football, SPO019000 Sports & Recreation / History
ISBN: 978-1-4962-1038-8
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2018-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

12

Changing Times

After three years Unitas and Shula had accomplished a great deal together—everything, it seemed, except what they had set out to do. They made themselves famous and the Colts one of the most feared and respected teams in the league. But to their mutual embarrassment, they still had failed to win a championship.

Meanwhile, the team was evolving and changing. Charley Winner, the Colts’ defensive coordinator since the mid-1950s, announced that he was leaving to become head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. Few men had ever done as much for a franchise as Winner had for Baltimore. Charley was the man who brought Weeb Ewbank to the Colts’ attention. Winner had scouted Don Shula in college and greatly aided his development as a pro player. Charley was there when Johnny U walked through the doors for the first time, greeting him and accurately evaluating his talent. Later on Charley worked with Unitas late into the night to teach the young quarterback all about defense.

Charley Winner was an unlikely football player or coach. He was small, intelligent, articulate, and genial. At only five feet six and less than 150 pounds, it was hard to imagine him competing in a uniform, let alone bossing around the behemoths who did. But he was a lot tougher than anyone realized.

Charley came out of a hardscrabble German American family in Summerville, New Jersey, about a half hour south of New York City. His father was poor and uneducated but possessed a keen understanding of machinery and could take an automobile apart piece by piece.

That skill landed the elder Winner a job as a laborer for the town. He drove and repaired street cleaners for the magnificent sum of $26 per week. Charley was as energetic and physical as his father; in fact, he could barely sit in a chair. But his passion wasn’t for labor; it was for football, and his austere parents didn’t approve of the frivolity.

“I could hear [my mother and father] in their bedroom, arguing,” Charley said. “They never wanted to sign my consent slip so that I could play football. Then, when I got to the point that I was playing pretty good, they would argue about who I took after.”

In fact, football offered Winner a chance to move beyond his parents’ life. Though he was small of stature, Charley had powerful legs and jackrabbit speed that attracted the interest of college recruiters. Southwest Missouri State, in particular, was interested and formally offered him a scholarship.

“I went down to the barbershop,” Winner remembered, “and my dad was sitting in the chair. I walked up to him, and I said, ‘I have a chance to go to college, and it won’t cost the family anything. What do you think?’”

Winner’s father took a deep breath and said, “I think you ought to go out and get a job and help the family.”

The young man and the old man simply disagreed. The very next morning Winner lit out for Missouri. He was eighteen and had $150 of his own money in his pocket.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.