Bottom of the Bird Cage 4/15
It’s day No. 105 of the year.
On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln dies from wounds inflicted the previous evening by assassin John Wilkes Booth. Andrew Johnson is sworn in as the 17th President of the United States.
On this day in 1892, the General Electric Company was formed. On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, just a few hours after hitting an iceberg the previous night. In 1924, Rand McNally published its first road atlas.
And on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball’s color line.
What most people don’t know is that pro football broke the barrier the year before, when Kenny Washington and Woody Strode played for the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL and Bill Willis and Marion Motley played for the Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference.
Remarkably, Washington and Strode played football at UCLA with Jackie Robinson. They were all part of the 1939 Bruins team, making up three of the four backfield spots. This was at a time when there were only a handful of black athletes playing major college football. Robinson, in fact played minor league football in Hawaii and California in 1941 before the outbreak of World War II.
It wasn’t until 1945 that Robinson played professional baseball, signing a contract with the Kansas City Monarchs.
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The first time the Steelers signed James Harrison, they got him for a $5,000 signing bonus. Then they cut him, then cut him again, then cut him again. Baltimore, another NFL team known for its great linebacker play, did not want to be outdone, so they too signed and cut him.
Yesterday, Harrison wore a dark brown suit that would have cut heavily into his first signing bonus. That’s more like tip money for him now as the Steelers formally announced his six-year contract (he counts $6.2 million against their salary cap this year) that will pay him a signing bonus of $10 million, or 2,000 times his first as a pro.
And he intends to collect on the full $51,175,000 of the six-year contract, even though he will be 37 at its conclusion.
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This was an interesting decision on the part of the Steelers. They almost never spend this kind of money on a player over the age of 30 years old. Harrison will be 31 in May. But Harrison has fewer rings around his football bark because his first seasons in the league did not include a lot of snaps, let alone games. This is also a great story that reaffirms the idea that it’s not how a player comes into the league that will ultimately define him. It’s what he gets done on the field. Harrison despite not being drafted and being cut four different times, has been a success on the field and he’s now collecting at the pay window.
From the Denver Post: Only when Rod Smith officially retired a year ago, unable to come back from a hip injury, did he reflect upon his amazing accomplishments. Perhaps it was then that Bronco Nation realized what No. 80 had done and how much he would be missed. “I was just a poor, slow guy from a small school (Missouri Southern) who did everything I could for as long as I could,” Smith said in a phone interview. “I didn’t ruffle feathers. If I was recognized, it was for doing my job. I played football that way.”
Smith’s way was 849 career receptions, 71 total touchdowns and 11,389 receiving yards. He led the Broncos in receiving six years in a row at the start of this decade, the best career numbers of any undrafted receiver in NFL history.
For his outstanding achievements, Smith will be inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame tonight. He believes the next stop down the line could be Canton, Ohio, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said
I always enjoyed watching Rod Smith play; he constantly seemed to make the big catch for the Broncos against the Chiefs. And he will go down as one of the best receivers in Denver history.
But if Rod Smith thinks his ticket is automatically punched for Canton, he’s going to be very surprised. His 851 catches rank him 14th all-time, and three guys ahead of him are eligible but can’t get into the Hall: Cris Carter, Andre Reed and Irving Fryar. His 11,389 receiving yards ranks 19th all-time and those same three along with Henry Ellard are ahead of him and not in Canton. And, his 68 TDs ranks 33rd in league history and all those players and several others are ahead of him in that statistic.
Rod Smith was a very good wide receiver. Whether he’s a Hall of Fame wide receiver is very much in doubt.
From FOXSports.com:
The Green Bay Packers aren’t the only ones who are interested in Greg Paulus. According to sources close to the situation, the former Duke point guard was in Ann Arbor on Tuesday meeting with Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez about the possibility of playing this season for the Wolverines.
The 6-foot-1 Paulus, who was the Gatorade National Player of the Year as a standout quarterback at Christian Brothers Academy in New York, has one year of eligibility left for football after playing four years of basketball at Duke.
He watched Michigan practice Tuesday afternoon and could fit in with Rodriguez’s spread offense. The Wolverines don’t have a clear-cut starting quarterback, and Paulus could come in and play immediately.
Now here’s a story that doesn’t come down the sports boulevard every day. If Greg Paulus can go from playing basketball at Duke to being the starting quarterback at Michigan this will go down as one of the great stories in college sports history.
Harrison won’t see half that money from Pittsburgh. The guaranteed portion sure, but no more.
Greg Paulus was a great football player here in New York. I would like to see what he could do at the collage level. Still waiting to see Mike Hart get his chance to show us what he’s got at the NFL level.