Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Harlon Hill, star receiver...

...for the Chicago Bears, died at age 80. From his obit in the Times (my emphasis):

The Harlon Hill Trophy has been awarded annually since 1986 to the leading football player in Division II of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It is the equivalent of the Heisman Trophy for the would-be Hills of the small-college game.

But, even more interesting (to me) was this:

Harlan Junious Hill was born on May 4, 1932, in Killen, Ala., where his father, Beatrice, was a cotton sharecropper. He became a small-college all-American at nearby Florence State Teachers College, now the University of North Alabama. The team played out of a run-oriented single wing. But one of the quarterbacks, George Lindsey, who became best known as the actor who played the hayseed Goober Pyle in “The Andy Griffith Show” and its successor, “Mayberry R.F.D.” (and who died last May), told Sports Illustrated in 1993 that “our favorite play was ‘Harlon, go long.’ ”

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