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Forrest Gregg was remembered Wednesday

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11:34 pm
July 3, 2019


zhangzk

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COLORADO SPRINGS http://www.ravenscheapstores.c…..rsey-cheap , Colo. (AP) — s a gentle giant who was as comfortable playing Barbie dolls with his daughter as he was playing football for Vince Lombardi.Gregg died Friday at age 85 after a long fight with Parkinson’s, a disease his neurologist and family believe might have been triggered by the countless concussions he sustained while playing football in the 1950s at SMU and in the NFL from 1956-71.“Forrest Gregg is one of the giants of the game,” Hall of Fame President David Baker said, noting Gregg was one of a handful of players to win six NFL titles in a league that’s celebrating its 100th season. The others are his Packers teammates Herb Adderley and Fuzzy Thurston and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.Gregg’s booming baritone that was reduced to a whisper in his later years reverberated through the First United Methodist Church in Colorado Springs as his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 1977 was played on two screens above the altar.After playing 14 seasons in Green Bay, Gregg won one more Super Bowl in 1971 in Dallas. He went on to win 75 games in 11 seasons as a head coach in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Green Bay and he took the Bengals to their first Super Bowl during the 1981 season when they lost 26-21 to Joe Montana and the 49ers.Bengals owner Mike Brown was among those who attended the funeral for the man Lombardi once called “the finest football player I ever coached.”In an interview with The Associated Press in 2013, Gregg said “the finest bunch of players I was ever around,” weren’t Lombardi’s Packers or Tom Landry’s Cowboys but “the courageous kids at SMU.” They went just 3-19 from 1989-90 after Gregg was hired at his alma mater to restore integrity to a program that was handed the “death penalty” in the mid-1980s for paying players.Baker spoke at the funeral, as did Hall of Fame receiver James Lofton, who played for Gregg in Green Bay, and Greg Gardner, who was among two dozen ex-SMU players who stood at one point to sing “Varsity” in a moving moment at the public church service that preceded a private burial.Lofton said he saw another side of Gregg upon his retirement when Gregg, who was then the athletic director at SMU, invited him to bring his three young children to a basketball game. Afterward, they went up to Gregg’s office, “and he bounced my kids on his knee and I’m thinking, where’d this guy come from?”“The image that a lot of Packers fans, a lot of people, might have of Forrest Gregg is that iconic picture of Forrest covered in mud ,” Lofton said. “What I saw that day I think is what people in this room saw. We saw a loving father, a loving husband, a loving grandfather. I saw a loving man, someone that I respected, someone that I loved.”Gregg’s daughter, Karen Gregg Spehar http://www.coltscheapshop.com/…..eke-jersey Jersey , said her father was every bit the family man that he was the football man.“At his core, his life was about love,” she said.She shared some of her most poignant memories of her childhood when her father gladly attended her tea parties.She recalled “a giant smiling man sitting across from me, our pinkie fingers raised just so.”In addition to his daughter, Gregg, who was born Oct. 18, 1933, in Birthright, Texas, is survived by Barbara, his wife of 59 years, his son, Forrest Gregg Jr., and his son-in-law, James H. Spehar.Gregg, who earned the nickname “Iron Man” for playing in a then-record 188 consecutive games during his career, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in October 2011. He quickly embarked on a campaign to raise public awareness about the incurable disease, teaming with the AP to reveal his diagnosis so he could urge others to seek treatment early enough to delay the degenerative effects.His daughter said after the funeral that the family donated his brain to Boston University’s CTE Center, which conducts research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and military personnel.“We decided as a family to donate his brain to Boston University because we are not sure what’s going on with his brain as far as either Parkinson’s or CTE because of his repetitive concussion syndrome that he experienced in football,” Gregg Spehar said. “So we are going to find in eight months to a year really what happened with his brain.“And we will share that report with anybody who wants to know so that people can learn about what happens in the world of football and also what happens with Parkinson’s in the brain,” she said. “So, we are hoping that his ultimate gift with be a gift that helps more people.” The only thing that Saquon Barkley has to prove at the NFL combine this week is that he’s every bit as good as advertised.
”For a guy like Barkley who has worked so hard to develop his gifts, I mean, for him it ought to be a victory celebration. It really should,” NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock said. ”You got to come in and knock it down Noah Fant Jersey , one drill after another.

”He’s going to walk out of there four days later and everyone’s going to go: `Wow, he’s just as good or better than we thought he was.”’

Then, there would be no doubt that a running back will go in the top five picks of the draft for the third consecutive year, joining Ezekiel Elliott in 2016 and Leonard Fournette in 2017.

The Penn State star might even be the first running back selected in the top two picks since Reggie Bush in 2006 or even the first to go No. 1 overall since another Nittany Lion, Ki-Jana Carter, in 1995.

”I’m just focused on coming out here and trying to dominate this combine,” Barkley said.

Everyone expects him to do just that.

General managers and coaches know all about the 5-foot-11, 233-pound back with a magnificent medley of jaw-dropping quickness and excellent acceleration, speed, balance, vision and power to go with an off-the-charts work ethic who helped Penn State dismantle Washington’s vaunted defense in the Fiesta Bowl .

Mayock said Barkley will dazzle teams even when he’s not on his feet.

”When he goes into meetings at night,” Mayock said, ”he’s going to blow people away.”

Barkley, who grew up boxing like his father and great uncle but was always drawn more to the gridiron than the ring, quickly rose to national prominence as one of the country’s most dynamic players as a true freshman at Penn State in 2015.

He flashed a frenetic running style to compile a lengthy highlight reel full of hurdles, spin moves and jukes on his way to a program-best 43 rushing touchdowns in three years.

Mayock said Barkley is at least equal to the last four top-10 running backs – Fournette, Elliott, Todd Gurley and Christian McCaffrey – all of whom made their teams significantly better as rookies.

”I could make the case that this kid Barkley is the best of those guys, best of all five of them,” Mayock said. ”He’s clean off the field. And he’ll be great in your locker room. I would be absolutely stunned if this kid doesn’t go in the Top 5.”

The Browns, Giants and Colts own the top three picks in next month’s draft. Cleveland also owns No. 4 and Denver has the fifth selection.

”Any team that wants to draft me,” Barkley said, ”is a blessing to me.”

Barkley said he embraces the chance to transform a downtrodden team like the Browns, who have one win in two years, or the Giants http://www.denverbroncosteamon…..ner-jersey , coming off a down year: ”You want to be part of something like that, something that’s bigger than yourself.”

Whoever ends up choosing Barkley can expect to be picking a lot later in next year’s draft. (Fournette’s Jaguars are picking 29th this year, five picks after McCaffrey’s Panthers).

Barkley averaged nearly 6 yards a carry as a junior in State College, rushing for 1,271 yards and 18 touchdowns and catching 54 passes for 632 yards and three TDs. He also completed two passes – one for a score – and returned two kickoffs for touchdowns.

He won the Paul Hornung Award as college football’s most versatile player and left Penn State after his junior year just 89 yards shy of the program rushing record with 3,843 yards.

”I feel whether I’m running the ball from the 99-yard line or the 1-yard line that I can find a way to get into the end zone. I can do it all, I feel like,” Barkley said. ”I can go over the top of you, I can beat you with speed, I can beat you with some wiggle, I could run through you.”

That may come off as boastful, but not when Barkley says it.

He said he watches all of today’s great NFL running backs but models his game after none of them.

”I’ve never wanted to be like anybody,” Barkley said. ”That’s something that my dad taught me growing up: `Never want to be like someone, be the next you.’ But I am a fan of the game, I’m a fan of the position and I watch everyone.”

Including Barry Sanders on YouTube .

If he had to pick anyone he’d like to be like, it’d be the Lions’ Hall of Famer.

”That was a great guy that I looked up to growing up not only on the field – off the field. The way he carried himself, he was humble,” Barkley said. ”When he scored a touchdown, he’d give the ball to the ref. If you look at his football life, he’s carrying cups to his offensive linemen, and I think that’s what a running back should be about. That’s what our position should be about and I try to model myself after that.”

 

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