Gale Sayers received his Medicare card a couple of months ago, and you know what that means.
People who sat in the Memorial Stadium stands back in the early ’60s and watched the man many consider the greatest open-field runner in college football history are becoming fewer and fewer.
I never saw Sayers perform in person, yet, like most of you, I’ve heard plenty about how amazing he was. At the same time, the Sayers legend has been dogged over the years by speculation he was underutilized.
Should Jack Mitchell, Sayers’ coach at Kansas University, have used “The Kansas Comet” more often than he did?
That question arose again in a just-published book penned by former Kansas University Chancellor Gene Budig, a slim paperbound that contains pocket biographies of nine people Budig admires.
In the chapter on Sayers, Budig resurrects a quote from the late Bob Devaney, the man generally credited with turning Nebraska University football into a religion in The Cornhusker State.
In reference to Sayers, Devaney says, “I would have run him a lot more than Kansas did.” Then Budig adds that Tom Osborne, Devaney’s successor in the NU pulpit, feels the same way.
Parenthetically, Budig’s book “Grasping the Ring” also contains a chapter on Devaney. The other anointees are George Steinbrenner, Jerry Reinsdorf, Larry Doby, Roy Williams, Bob Kerrey, Al Neuharth and Bob Dole.
Did Mitchell really waste one of college football’s all-time great offensive weapons? Or are Devaney and Osborne simply sour-graping because Mitchell recruited Sayers out of Omaha (Neb.) Central High?
If you look strictly at KU’s career-rushing stats, Devaney and Osborne have a point. Sayers ranks No. 5 on that chart behind June Henley, Tony Sands, Laverne Smith and Clark Green.
Yet Sayers ranks No. 1 among the KU rushers who played only three years. (Freshmen didn’t become eligible for varsity competition until 1972.) Sayers had far fewer carries than the other four and not, incidentally, strictly because of the three-season factor.
Back in those days, games were much shorter. College teams rushed more than they passed, and that ate more clock time. Too, the clock didn’t stop to move the chains after first downs.
Note this comparison: In Sayers’ senior year (1964), the Jayhawks averaged 59.1 offensive plays a game. Last year’s KU team averaged 76.0 plays. The Jayhawks of ’64 ran the ball 470 times and passed 121 times in 10 games while KU’s ’07 team rushed 512 times and passed 476 times in 13 games.
Sayers was the Jayhawks’ leading rusher each season. No surprise there. But he was also – little-known fact – KU’s leading receiver as a junior and a senior. Moreover, he was the Jayhawks’ leading punt and kickoff returner each season.
How many contemporary college players would lead their team in all four of those categories? Few, if any. That would be considered overutilization.
So I’m not convinced Sayers was used too little as a collegian. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I just don’t see it.
