Forrest Gregg, 1933-2019

"The finest player I ever coached." That's how Vince Lombardi, in his book Run to Daylight, described Forrest Gregg. It's not surprising that Lombardi, who had played guard at Fordham University, would have chosen a fellow offensive lineman for that honor. It's also not surprising that the one he chose was Gregg, who might have been the greatest offensive tackle who ever lived.

Alvis Forrest Gregg was born on October 18, 1933 in Birthright, Texas, with Dallas the closest major city. His birthright appears to have been football, and, in Texas, football is said to be a religion. "I always knew I wanted to play, after hearing the games on the radio," he once said in an interview. He grew up in nearby Sulphur Springs, and played tackle on both sides of the ball at Dallas' Southern Methodist University (SMU), serving as Captain in 1955.

One of his teammates was Raymond Berry, later a great receiver for the Baltimore Colts. But despite having 2 future members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Mustangs didn't do very well.

Gregg was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 1956, but spent the 1957 season in the U.S. Army. When he returned in 1958, the Packers went 1-10-1. Head coach Ray "Scooter" McLean was out, Vince Lombardi was in. Lombardi told his players many things. One was, "We may not win, but we won't be losing with the same people," and cleared a few comfortable players out.

Another thing he told his players was, "Those who stay will be champions." He was right. In 1959, he got the Packers to a 7-5 record. In 1960, they won the NFL Western Division, but lost the NFL Championship Game to the Philadelphia Eagles.

The dynasty was on: With perhaps the greatest offensive line the football world had ever seen -- center Jim Ringo, guards Jerry Kramer and Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston, and tackles Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski -- blocking for quarterback Bart Starr, running backs Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, tight end Gary Knafelc, and receivers Max McGee and Boyd Dowler, the offense was as strong as any in NFL history.

The defense was equal to the task: Ends Willie Davis and Ben Davidson, tackles Henry Jordan and Dave Hanner; linebackers Ray Nitschke, Dan Currie and Bill Forester; cornerbacks Herb Adderley and Jesse Whittenton, and safeties Willie Wood and Hank Gremminger.

The Packers, in their 1st season wearing the familiar G monogram on their yellow helmets, went 11-3, won the Division again, and clobbered the New York Giants 37-0 in the Championship Game, their 1st title in 17 years. The following year, they were even better, going 13-1, losing only a trip to Detroit to play the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, and beating the Giants in the Championship Game again, 16-7.

Gregg would make 9 Pro Bowls, including every season from 1959 to 1968, except for 1965. That season, the Packers lost 21-10, away to the Los Angeles Rams. At a practice the next week, Lombardi began ranting at his 8-3 team, finally yelling, "I'm the only one who gives a damn if we win or lose!"

And Forrest Gregg, the man he had already publicly called "the finest player I ever coached," yelled back at him: "Excuse the language, coach, but it makes me sick to hear you say something like that! We lay it on the line for you every Sunday! We live and die the same way you do! And it hurts!"

According to center Bill Curry, himself later a college head coach, Gregg was "bright red, with a player on either side, holding him back by each arm, and he was straining forward." Other players stood up, claiming a will to win.

Curry said, "We did not lose another game that year." Which is true: They closed the regular season with wins at home to the Minnesota Vikings, away to the Baltimore Colts, and a tie away to the San Francisco 49ers. They tied the Colts for the Western Division title (why Baltimore was in the West, who knows), beat them at Lambeau Field in a playoff, and then hosted the Cleveland Browns in the NFL Championship Game, winning 23-12 in what turned out to be Browns star Jim Brown's last game.

Gregg played in 188 consecutive games, an NFL record at the time, earning him the nickname "Iron Man." He would help the Packers become the only team ever to win 3 straight NFL Championship Games: 1965, over the Browns; 1966, 34-27 over the Dallas Cowboys at the Cotton Bowl; and 1967, again over the Cowboys, this time in the miserable cold of Green Bay, 21-17, a game known as the Ice Bowl.

After those latter 2, the Packers were in the 1st 2 installments of the "AFL-NFL World Championship Game." It wasn't called the "Super Bowl" until the 3rd one, and it didn't get the Roman numerals until Super Bowl V. So the games played on January 15, 1967, with the Packers beating the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10, and January 14, 1968, with the Packers beating the Oakland Raiders 33-14, were retroactively labeled Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II, respectively.

After the 1970 season, Gregg and Adderley were acquired by the Dallas Cowboys. They helped the Cowboys win their 1st title, Super Bowl VI. This allowed them to join former teammate Thurston, also a member of the 1958 Baltimore Colts as players to win 6 NFL Championships. They remain the only ones ever to do this without cheating.

Jethro Pugh wore 75 with the Cowboys,

so Gregg switched to his high school number.

Shut up, Tom Brady: You had your chance to do it right. You never would have lasted on Vince Lombardi's Packers. Maybe on Tom Landry's Cowboys.

Gregg then retired. He was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the NFL's 1960s All-Decade and 75th Anniversary teams, and the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. The Packers don't retire many numbers, so his 75 remains in circulation, but SMU retired his 73. In 1999, The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Football Players. Gregg was ranked 28th, making him 2nd behind Ray Nitschke among Lombardi players, 2nd behind Anthony Munoz (one of his Cincinnati Bengals players) among offensive tackles, and 3rd behind Munoz and John Hannah among all offensive linemen.

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With Lombardi and Landry as his head coaches, it's not surprising that Gregg went into coaching himself. In 1972, he was hired as the offensive line coach for the San Diego Chargers. He got the same job with the Cleveland Browns in 1974, and was promoted to head coach in 1975. The Browns didn't do too well with him, and he was fired after 3 seasons.

After coaching in the Canadian Football League, with the 1979 Toronto Argonauts, he was taken back into the NFL, by the Cincinnati Bengals, whose owner, Paul Brown, remembered him well from his days as Browns coach.

Just as the Packers, with Gregg as a player, won their 1st title in 17 years in their 1st year with the G monogram, so, too, did a uniform switch help the Bengals. 1980 was the last year with their original helmet design: Brown's old Browns orange helmet, with "BENGALS" in black letters across. For 1981, Brown introduced the tiger stripes.

Gregg got them into their 1st AFC Championship Game, and it was bitterly cold at Riverfront Stadium -- nearly as cold as it had been in the Ice Bowl 14 years earlier. The opponent was the 1st pro team to hire him, the Chargers, used to beautiful weather all year 'round in San Diego, and just coming off the heat and humidity of "The Kellen Winslow Game" against the Miami Dolphins at the Orange Bowl. In a game known as the Freezer Bowl, the Bengals beat the Chargers 27-7, and advanced to their 1st Super Bowl.

How cold was it? Straight, 9 degrees below zero.

With the wind chill, on the current scale, -37.

The Ice Bowl? At kickoff, -15 straight,

-36 with the wind chill. By the end, -55.

Super Bowl XVI was held in a cold-weather city, Detroit -- or, more accurately, the suburb of Pontiac, Michigan. Of course, it was indoors, at the Silverdome. The Bengals fell well behind the San Francisco 49ers in the 1st half, but nearly came back, losing 26-21.

When the Packer coaching job opened up in 1984, with the firing of former quarterback Starr, Brown let Gregg take it, but he couldn't get them into the Playoffs. But he had another "homecoming" that would prove more important.

SMU had won a share of the National Championship in 1982, going 11-0-1 with their "Pony Express" backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James, both of whom went on to good NFL careers (in Dickerson's case, the Hall of Fame), and both of whom have become fine studio analysts. But the Mustangs got put on NCAA probation for several rules violations. They continued to violate the rules, including paying players, to the point where fans of other Texas schools printed up bumper stickers that said, "SUPPORT PRO FOOTBALL: WATCH THE SMU MUSTANGS."

Finally, the NCAA decided that, for the 1st time in its 80-year history -- and it has never happened since -- a program had to be canceled for an entire season. This became known as "the death penalty." They canceled SMU's 1987 season. Knowing that nearly every letterman from the 1986 team had transferred elsewhere -- those not involved in the pay-for-play scandal were allowed to keep their full eligibility, and transfer to another Division I-A school without having to sit a season out -- the school canceled their 1988 season, too.

They pretty much had to start from scratch. And, given the reasons for the penalty, they needed to have their program run by a man of unimpeachable integrity. In January 1988, SMU President William Stalcup asked Forrest Gregg to come in and straighten everything out. He accepted.

Gregg was taller and heavier than nearly every player on his team, which was down to 70 men -- well short of the 90+ that most teams had at the time. His former place on the team, the offensive line, was particularly shorthanded, so he had some receivers bulk up and switch. Since the 1988 season had been canceled, anyway, it was essentially a season of practice only. Lots of practice, and lots of recruiting, trying to get players to come to a school whose reputation had been destroyed, and play on a team that had little to no chance of winning over the next 4 years -- and, in the process of getting such players, staying within the rules, since no team was ever under so much scrutiny.

Instead of their usual home, the 72,000-seat Cotton Bowl, which he knew they wouldn't come close to filling, Gregg moved all games back onto campus, to the 23,783-seat Ownby Stadium. The 1st game went as expected: Rice University of Houston, known to have good programs in several sports but not in football, beat the Mustangs 35-6. But then, the University of Connecticut, then a Division I-AA program, came into Ownby on September 16, 1989, and the Mustangs won, 31-30. It was their 1st win since November 15, 1986.

It was still rough: 45-13 home to Texas, 28-10 away to arch-rival Texas Christian University (TCU), 49-3 home to Baylor, and a shocking 95-21 loss to the University of Houston at the Astrodome. (To be fair, Houston was then ranked Number 16 in the country, and their "run-and-shoot" offense was lighting several teams up.) But North Texas, then a Division I-AA school, came into Ownby, and SMU won 35-9.

Under the circumstances, a 2-5 record was considered miraculous. Certainly, it was better than the fictional Texas State team faced in the 1991 film Necessary Roughness, a story obviously based on late 1980s SMU, but with a few comedic absurdities thrown in (such as supermodel Kathy Ireland playing a soccer star who became the team's placekicker).

But that was as good as it got: SMU lost 63-14 away to Texas A&M, 59-6 away to then-Number 1-ranked Notre Dame, and 48-24 home to Texas Tech, before closing with a very respectable 38-24 loss to Number 9 Arkansas, at the Razorbacks' secondary home in Little Rock.

"I never coached a group of kids that had more courage," Gregg said. "They thought that they could play with anyone. They were quality people. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences in my football life, period."

He was named athletic director, a position where the school probably needed him more than they did as head coach. After going 1-10 in 1990, he resigned as head coach to focus on his AD duties. He stayed until 1994, and took one last coaching job, with the Shreveport Pirates, during the CFL's ill-fated American experiment, retiring after the 1995 season.

That was the same year that the Southwest Conference broke up. SMU moved to the Western Athletic Conference (the WAC) for the 1996 season, Conference USA for 2005, and the American Athletic Conference (AAC) in 2013.

In 1997, coached by Mike Cavan, SMU finally had another winning season, going 6-5. And yet, in what can only be called the stupidest move in college football history, they violated NCAA rules yet again. In 1998, on the field, they went 5-7; but most of their games were stricken from the record, and it officially became 1-1.

June Jones, a run-and-shoot coach, took over in 2008, and in 2009, he got them to 8-5, their best season in 24 years, and they won the Hawai'i Bowl. In 2010, he led them to the C-USA West Division title, their 1st 1st-place finish in 26 years. They've since won the BBVA Compass Bowl in the 2011 season, and the Hawai'i Bowl again in 2012. Under Sonny Dykes, they were 5-7 last year. The program isn't back to greatness, but it's back to respectability, on and off the field.

And, more than anyone else, they have native son Forrest Gregg to thank for that.

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Gregg moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife of 59 years, Barbara Dedek. They had a son, Forrest Gregg Jr., and a daughter, Karen Gregg Spehar.

He briefly worked in football one more time, again in the CFL, and again with a "startup": Former Shreveport Pirates owner Bernard Glieberman bought a piece of the Ottawa Renegades, a team attempting to take the place of a longtime, but defunct, CFL team, the Ottawa Rough Riders. He appointed Gregg, by then 72 years old, vice president of football operations. Through little (if any) fault of his, the Renegades didn't last long, folding after the 2006 season.

He survived melanoma in 1976, and colon cancer in 2001. In 2011, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The natural thought in this era is that it was caused by the blows to the head he took as a football player, but he never blamed the game. He refused to join the lawsuits against the NFL: "I don't need anything from anybody, but what I earned."

Gregg at the Packers' 100th Anniversary ceremony last season.

The blurry Number 5 in the background is Paul Hornung.

He said that if he'd known as a boy that he would eventually pay a heavy price for playing, he would still have played. That sounds like the attitude of a Vince Lombardi player. Then again, Lombardi also had colon cancer, and didn't survive it, dying in 1970, only 57 years old.

Gregg lasted until this past Friday, April 12, 2019, at the age of 85. There are still a few guys left from the era that helped to establish the NFL as "America's Game," and he was as evocative of that era -- of cold weather, muddy fields, poor protective equipment, and guys playing with more heart than talent, and sometimes with more heart than sense -- as anybody.

UPDATE: His final resting place is not publicly known.