Paul Hornung - # 245

Packers and Notre Dame Hall of Famer Paul Hornung dies at 84

 

 He was number 245 on the list.

Paul Hornung was a Vince Lombardi favorite and maybe the most important player on the famed coach’s early championship teams with the Green Bay Packers.

Lombardi loved Hornung for his versatile skill set and clutch play as the featured left halfback in the Packers’ offense, as well as for his fun-loving off-field persona that helped get Hornung the nickname “Golden Boy.”

Hornung, who also won the 1956 Heisman Trophy, died Friday in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, at age 84 after a long battle with dementia, the Louisville Sports Commission announced.

Though Hornung never put up big rushing numbers in the NFL — his single-season high for rushing was only 681 yards — he filled the key position in Lombardi’s offense as a runner in the famed Lombardi sweep and option passer. He was a big back (6-feet-2 and 215 pounds) with a nose for the goal line and for much of his career also was the Packers’ kicker.

His 176 points in the 12-game 1960 season was an NFL record that stood until 2006, 29 years after the league had moved to a 16-game schedule. He was voted the NFL’s most-valuable player that season.

Hornung also was voted a member of the NFL’s all-decade team of the 1960s and into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 after a nine-year career that ended in 1966. But perhaps the greatest tribute to him came from Lombardi himself in his two-volume book, “Vince Lombardi on Football,” which was published in 1973.

“Paul may have been the best all-around back ever to play football,” Lombardi wrote.

Hornung joined the Packers in 1957 as a so-called “bonus choice,” which was the first overall pick of the draft that rotated among the 12 teams in the league from 1947 to ’58. His career floundered for two years until Lombardi was hired as Packers coach in 1959 and built his offense around the same position that had made Frank Gifford a star when Lombardi was offensive coordinator with the New York Giants.

Hornung immediately thrived and would be a key player on offense from 1960-65, during which time the Packers won three NFL championship games and played in a fourth. He won three NFL scoring titles in that time.

He also was suspended by the NFL for one season, 1963, after admitting to gambling on NFL games. In an indication of the vital role he played in the Packers’ success, the team didn’t advance to the championship game that season after winning the title in ’61 and ‘62.

When former general manager Ron Wolf joined the Packers in late 1991, he made a point of sitting down with the three scouts he inherited who had played or coached for the Lombardi-era Packers. He asked each to pick the player from the Lombardi era they would take first in a draft if all were available. There are 11 players from Lombardi’s teams in the Hall of Fame.

All three scouts said Hornung.

“For them to give that kind of praise to a player, that’s remarkable,” Wolf said. “Think about all those (Lombardi-era) players.”

Hornung played for the Packers from 1957-66. His ’66 season was mostly a washout because of a neck injury so his final hurrah was late in ’65. Because of the neck, knee and rib injuries, he no longer was the starter and shared time at halfback with Elijah Pitts and Tom Moore that season.

But in a key showdown in the second-to-last week of the regular season at Baltimore, their main contender for the West Division title, Hornung was the surprise starter and scored five touchdowns in the Packers’ 42-27 win.

Then in the NFL championship game two weeks later, Hornung rushed for 105 yards on 18 carries in the Packers’ 23-12 win.

Hornung starred in football, basketball and baseball at Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget High School and then attended college at Notre Dame. He won the Heisman in 1956 even though Notre Dame finished 2-8 that year.

Hornung was obliged to serve in the U.S. Army and he was called to active duty during the 1961 season, but he was able to get weekend passes to play on Sundays. Head coach Vince Lombardi was a friend of President John F. Kennedy, and a pass was arranged so Hornung could play in the NFL championship game against the New York Giants.

Sport magazine named Hornung the most outstanding player in the 1961 championship game, which led to a tax dispute that cemented the tax status of awards to athletes. Hornung was awarded a 1962 Chevrolet Corvette, but the car's fair market value was not included on his tax returns for either 1961 or 1962. Because it would have been impossible for Hornung to take possession of the Corvette in 1961 – the game was played on December 31 in Green Bay and the car was in a closed dealership in New York – it was determined that the car should have been included in income in 1962. More importantly for the athletic community, the court in Hornung v. Commissioner also determined that awards for achievement in the field of athletics do not fall under the exceptions provided under section 74(b) of the Internal Revenue Code. From this point on, it became impossible for athletes to exclude any awards they are given for athletics from their gross incomes.

Hornung's penchant for high-living proved disastrous when, in 1963, a major scandal erupted and Hornung and another of the league's top stars, defensive tackle Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions, were suspended from football indefinitely in April 1963 by commissioner Pete Rozelle for betting on NFL games and associating with undesirable persons. Forthright in admitting to his mistake, Hornung's image went relatively untarnished, and in 1964 his suspension, and Karras's, were re-evaluated by the league and both were reinstated in March.

In a September 2006 interview with Bob Costas, Hornung stated that it was his belief that it was Lombardi's constant lobbying of Rozelle that got him reinstated for the 1964 NFL season. In exchange for Lombardi's efforts, Hornung agreed not to have anything to do with gambling, to stay out of Las Vegas and to even forgo attending the Kentucky Derby which he had done annually.

Hornung was employed as a color analyst on Minnesota Vikings radio broadcasts from 1970 to 1974, as well as TVS WFL telecasts in 1974, CBS NFL telecasts from 1975 to 1979, and ABC Radio USFL broadcasts from 1983 to 1985. He also worked as a sideline reporter for CBS' coverage of Super Bowl XII. Hornung did college play-by-play for TigerVision, LSU's pay-per-view broadcasts in 1982 with ex-Green Bay Packers teammate Jim Taylor. Hornung also performed color commentary for games on College Football on TBS in the early 1980s. He had a bit part in the movie The Devil's Brigade starring William Holden and Cliff Robertson. He also acted in the films Run to Daylight and Semi-Tough,

During a radio interview on March 30, 2004, Hornung, speaking about the recent lack of football success at Notre Dame, said, "We can't stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we've got to get the black athletes. We must get the black athletes if we're going to compete." The response was immediate. The University replied, "We strongly disagree with the thesis of his remarks. They are generally insensitive and specifically insulting to our past and current African-American student-athletes." Famed former Notre Dame head coach Ara Parseghian also disagreed with Hornung, saying that Notre Dame did not lower admission standards for him.

Hornung said that he was not differentiating between races. "We need better ball players, black and white, at Notre Dame."

Upon Rozelle's retirement in 1989, Hornung wrote him a letter crediting him with promoting the NFL's rise and for having been "the best commissioner of any [sports league]."