Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Sam Cunningham Dies at 71; Fostered Integration on the Football Field

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      As one of three Black players in the U.S.C. backfield, he led the team to a stunning win in 1970 over Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama. He would go on to star for the New England Patriots.Sam Cunningham, a fullback for the integrated University of Southern California football team that in 1970 trounced Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama squad, died on Tuesday at his home in Inglewood, Calif. He was 71.His wife, Cine (Ivery) Cunningham, confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.Cunningham, a sophomore, was playing his first game for U.S.C. on Sept. 12, 1970, at Legion Field in Birmingham. For the Trojans it was a journey into the Deep South to a state that had been governed, and would be again, by the fiery segregationist George C. Wallace.Cunningham, whose nickname was Bam, formed an all-Black backfield with the quarterback Jimmy Jones and the tailback Clarence Davis. Cunningham, a backup player, was the game’s unexpected star, running for 135 yards on 12 carries and scoring two touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-21 victory.For Alabama, it was a humiliating loss on the way to a 6-5-1 record — but it was also a lesson to Bryant that his Crimson Tide would falter in the future without Black players. He knew that already, having recruited Wilbur Jackson, a running back. But as a freshman, Jackson was not allowed to play for the varsity and watched the game at the stadium.Cunningham called the game a “tipping point” in the struggle for civil rights in sports. He told the U.S.C. athletics website in 2016 that it showed “that things should be equal on the football field as they should be in all other parts of life, but that’s not always the case.”The next year, Jackson and John Mitchell, a defensive end, integrated the Alabama team, which went 11-1 (including a win over U.S.C.). The team’s only loss was to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.Richard Lapchick, a human-rights activist and the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said Bryant knew he needed to recruit Black players to stay competitive.In a phone interview, Lapchick said that Bryant had confided in Eddie Robinson, the longtime coach of the historically Black Grambling State University in Louisiana, about the impact of his team’s loss to U.S.C.“Eddie told me how often Bear talked to him about what the game meant,” Lapchick said, “and what Sam meant to his ability to integrate.”By 1977, Alabama had 17 Black football players on scholarship.Samuel Lewis Cunningham Jr. was born on Aug. 15, 1950, in Santa Barbara, Calif. His father was a railroad worker. His mother, Zoe (Ivory) Cunningham, died when he was young; he was raised by his father and stepmother, Mabel (Crook) Cunningham, a nurse.Sam and his brothers, Anthony, Bruce and Randall, a future quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles and three other N.F.L. teams, were all athletic. Sam was introduced to organized sports in elementary school, where he played basketball, baseball, volleyball and flag football.He was recruited by Coach John McKay to U.S.C. and, in his three seasons on the team, gained 1,579 yards on 337 carries. He scored four short-yardage touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-17 victory over Ohio State in the 1973 Rose Bowl, which wrapped up a 12-0 season. That year’s team was ranked No. 1 in college football.Cunningham was selected by the New England Patriots with the 11th overall pick in the 1973 N.F.L. draft. In his nine seasons with the team, he accumulated 5,453 rushing yards, including 516 in his first season, a Patriots rookie record, and 1,015 in 1977, making him the second Patriot to exceed 1,000 yards in a season. He sat out the 1980 season in a contract dispute, which prompted the Patriots to trade him to the Miami Dolphins. But he failed the team’s physical and returned to the Patriots shortly before the 1981 season.“Sam ‘Bam’ Cunningham was one of my favorite players throughout the ’70s, and my sons all loved him,” the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, said in a statement. “After I bought the team in 1994, it was my honor to welcome him back to the team on multiple occasions, recognizing him as a 50th-anniversary team member and again for his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.”Cunningham became a landscape contractor after his playing career ended.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter, Samahndi Cunningham; and his brothers.Cunningham joined Jones and Davis in the backfield early in the first quarter of that historic 1970 game against Alabama.“I didn’t go into any game looking to change history, even though history has a tendency to be changed by things of that nature,” he told The Santa Barbara Independent this year. “I always tried to play to the best of my ability, and that’s what I did that evening. I was put in the right spot and got touched by the hand of God.” More

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      Keith McCants, Football Star Laid Low by Drugs, Dies at 53

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      At one time the N.F.L.’s highest-paid defensive player, he left the league after six seasons and fell into a spiral of addiction, homelessness and desolation.In N.F.L. parlance, Keith McCants was a “can’t miss.” A relentless and powerful athlete, he was a first-team all-American linebacker at Alabama and was drafted fourth overall in 1990 by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His success seemingly guaranteed, the team made him the highest-paid defensive player in the league.But McCants soon became known by a less flattering N.F.L. moniker: “draft bust.” Days after being chosen by the Buccaneers, he had knee surgery. A year later, he had to learn a new position when he was moved from linebacker to defensive end. The injuries and frustrations mounted as he tried to meet people’s outsized expectations.His promise unfulfilled, the Buccaneers released McCants after three years. He spent three more seasons with the Houston Oilers and Arizona Cardinals before he left the league, his money and celebrity diminished. What remained was an overpowering addiction to painkillers, and eventually to other drugs, that consumed the rest of McCants’s life and turned him into a cautionary tale.After decades of drug abuse, numerous arrests, dozens of surgeries and years living on the street — all punctuated by brief stretches of sobriety — McCants was found dead early Thursday morning at his home in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 53.The cause appeared to be a drug overdose, but Amanda Sinni, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, said the department was awaiting a report from the medical examiner’s office.In and out of rehabilitation and eager to share his story to warn others away from drugs, McCants all but predicted his demise in 2015, when he was interviewed by The New York Times.During six seasons in the N.F.L., Keith McCants became addicted to painkillers, and later went to jail, lived on the street and battled depression. He was interviewed by The New York Times in this 2015 video.Josh Ritchie for The New York Times“I live one day at a time; I’m a recovering addict,” he said. “Tomorrow’s not promising. If I die today or tomorrow, I’m all right with that because I’m comfortable with me. My goal is to help people who can’t help themselves, to turn their negatives to positives, to give them hope. That’s what I sell.”McCants did not just talk about his struggles with substance abuse. He pointed the finger squarely at the N.F.L. Coaches, he said, pushed players to perform without regard to their long-term health. Team doctors handed out painkillers like candy to mask injuries and get players on the field. And when players were unable to perform, he said, the league turned its back and focused on younger replacements.“I will continue to tell the truth, how they got me hooked on drugs,” he said. “I feel it’s my duty as a retired player to explain the difference between being hurt and being injured.”McCants in a game against the Indianapolis Colts in 1992, when he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was with Tampa Bay for three seasons before being released, his promise unfulfilled.Scott Halleran/Allsport, via Getty ImagesAlvin Keith McCants was born on April 19, 1968, in Mobile, Ala. His father abandoned him when he was young; he was raised by his stepfather, James Turner, who worked for the city, and his mother, Cinderella Turner, a cook. He is survived by two sons, Keith Jr. and David; two daughters, Aysha and Kera; two brothers, Robert and Anthony; and two sisters, Angie and Denise. He was married and divorced twice.Widely scouted while at Murphy High School in Mobile, McCants enrolled at Alabama, home to one of the country’s premier football programs. He left for the pros after his junior year, a bold but contentious step at the time. He said he opted out of his senior year because he did not want to risk further injuries that might shorten his career, and because he needed to provide for his family while he could.Some experts predicted that McCants could have been chosen first overall in the draft; he was ultimately picked fourth, one slot ahead of Junior Seau, a linebacker from the University of Southern California who played for 20 years and was elected posthumously to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015. Seau killed himself in 2012 and was later found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head.The Buccaneers had losing records each of McCants’ three years in Tampa, which heightened the scrutiny of his performance and his paychecks. (He received a record $2.5 million signing bonus as part of a five-year $7.4 million deal.) McCants lived the life of a celebrity player, spending freely. He said that he was preyed upon by financial advisers and others and lost $17 million.He played in 88 games in his career and recorded 13.5 quarterback sacks and one interception.After he left the N.F.L., McCants, who studied criminal law in college, became the first Black marine police officer in Alabama when he joined the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. He joked that he found it hard to arrest people because they often recognized him from his playing days and said they were fans of his.Yet the power of his addiction proved strong. He lived on the street in Tampa for two years in the early 2000s, worked as a pimp and drug dealer, and spent time in jail, where he once tried to hang himself. He spent stretches in numerous rehabilitation facilities, only to succumb to drugs again once he got out, as he recounted in his 2018 memoir, “My Dark Side of the N.F.L.”In recent years, seemingly at peace with his fate, he tried to warn others by talking about his financial troubles, his run-ins with the law and the pain — emotional as well as physical — that he buried with drugs.“I’m not too much worried about Keith McCants,” he said. “I’m more worried about the people that’s coming after Keith McCants.” More

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      Gerd Müller, Soccer Star Known for His Scoring Prowess, Dies at 75

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      He scored 566 goals for Bayern Munich, helping the club to four German titles, four German Cup wins and three European Cup victories in 15 years.Gerd Müller, the German soccer scar who became known as “Der Bomber” for his scoring prowess, died on Aug. 15 in Wolfratshausen, Germany. He was 75.Bayern Munich, the club for which he played from 1964 to 1979, announced his death. Bayern did not specify the cause, but it had announced in October 2015 that Müller had had Alzheimer’s disease for “a long time” and had been receiving professional care since that February.Müller scored 566 goals for Bayern, helping it to four German titles, four German Cup wins and three European Cup victories in 15 years. He still holds the record for the most goals scored in the Bundesliga, Germany’s primary football league: 365 goals, scored in 427 league games.“Gerd Müller was the greatest striker there’s ever been,” Bayern’s president, Herbert Hainer, said in a statement.Müller made 607 competitive appearances for Bayern and was the league’s top scorer on seven occasions. He played as important a role in making Bayern Germany’s powerhouse team as his former teammates Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeness.Müller’s record of 40 goals scored in the 1971-72 Bundesliga season was beaten only last season, when the current Bayern forward Robert Lewandowski scored his 41st goal in the last minute of the last game.Müller became a youth coach after his playing days ended.Andreas Rentz/Getty ImagesMüller also helped West Germany (now Germany) win the European championship in 1972 and then the World Cup two years later, when he scored the winning goal in the final against the Netherlands. Altogether he scored 68 goals in 62 appearances for West Germany, a national record not surpassed until 2014 — and Miroslav Klose, who broke Müller’s record, needed 129 appearances to match him.Müller became a youth coach at Bayern after his playing days ended.“His achievements are unrivaled to this day and will forever be a part of the great history of FC Bayern and all of German football,” Bayern’s chairman, Oliver Kahn, said.Müller was born on Nov. 3, 1945, in Nördlingen, Germany. His survivors include his wife, Uschi, and a daughter, Nicole. More

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      Shirley Fry Irvin, Tennis Star of the ’40s and ’50s, Is Dead at 94

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      The fastest player of her day, she played down her own ability but admitted, “Billie Jean King said I was her idol.”Shirley Fry Irvin, a tennis player who in the pre-Open era swept the singles and doubles titles in the four Grand Slam tournaments, died on Tuesday in Naples, Fla. She was 94. Her death was announced by the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she was inducted in 1970.At a time when the players were amateurs, the rackets were made of wood and the championship surfaces were mostly grass, Irvin (who was known in her playing days as Shirley Fry) won the French title (on clay) in 1951, the Wimbledon and United States titles in 1956 and the Australian title in 1957. She then retired from tennis to raise a family.She was one of only 10 women to win the singles titles at all four of those championships.She also won 12 women’s doubles championships in those four tournaments, the first 11 partnered with Doris Hart and the 12th with Althea Gibson. In the annual Wightman Cup competition between the United States and Britain, she played six years, winning 10 of her 12 matches. At 5-foot-5 and 125 pounds, she was the fastest player of her day. But she apparently did not think much of her talents.“Billie Jean King said I was her idol,” she told The Orlando Sentinel in 2000. “That flatters me, because I really wasn’t that good of a player. I wasn’t a natural. I had athletic ability, I could run and I could concentrate. I excelled in running and concentration. I had no serve.”Hart, her frequent doubles partner, admired Irvin’s tenacity. “Shirley was one of the best runners I ever saw play,” she said in 2000. “She ran everything down.”Shirley June Fry was born on June 30, 1927, in Akron, Ohio. She was an athletic child, trying hockey, badminton, baseball, archery, ice skating, swimming and running as well as tennis. In 1999, she told The Akron Beacon Journal, “I wanted to play football, but once we got into junior high school it became the boys and the girls.”Irvin waves her hat in 2004 as 50 Hall of Famers are introduced during ceremonies celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. She was inducted in 1970.Victoria Arocho/Associated PressTennis won out. At a Hall of Fame event in Newport, R.I., in 2004, she told the broadcaster and columnist Bud Collins that she had begun traveling alone to tournaments all over the nation when she was 10.“My parents would put me on a bus in Akron and off I’d go,” she said. “Usually, someone met me at the other end, but I would go to Travelers Aid if there was a problem. It built self-reliance, and it was fun.”When she was 11, she told The New York Times, “I traveled by train to a tournament in Philadelphia, and then, at my father’s suggestion, went on to New York. I took a train to Penn Station and then the subway to Forest Hills, where he had made a reservation for me at the Forest Hills Inn. Then I walked all the way to the New York World’s Fair.”In 1941, at 14, she played in the United States amateur championship, the youngest person to compete there until Kathy Horvath (who was a month younger) in 1979. In 1942, she became the youngest United States amateur quarterfinalist. For 13 consecutive years (1944-56), she ranked in the United States Top 10. She was No. 1 in 1956.She found time to earn a degree in human relations from Rollins College in Florida in 1949. After the 1954 season, she retired from tennis because of a nagging elbow injury and got a job as a clerk at The St. Petersburg Times in Florida, where she made about 75 cents an hour. As that newspaper recalled in 1989, “One of her first duties as copy girl was sending the story of her own retirement down to the composing room.”After a few months of recreational tennis, she entered two Florida tournaments in 1955 and won both, in one of which she beat Hart in the final. That summer, she quit her job and returned to full-time tennis.The next year provided her crowning glory at Wimbledon, where she beat Gibson in the quarterfinals, Louise Brough in the semifinals and Angela Buxton of England in a 50-minute final.“I play better when it doesn’t matter if I win or lose,” she told The New York Times about her victory at Wimbledon, which came on her ninth try. “After eight attempts at Wimbledon, I didn’t think I was going to win.” Her subsequent United States championship was her first at Forest Hills in 16 tries.Shirley Fry in 1951 in a semifinal match against Louise Brough at Wimbledon. She won, but lost in the finals to Doris Hart.Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesShe won the Australian title in 1957 and then retired again. That year she married Karl Irvin, an American advertising executive whom she had met when he was working in Australia and served as an umpire for some of her matches there.“During one match,” she told The Times, “I became furious over several of his calls and asked that he be removed and that he not work any more of my matches. Shortly after that, we were married and had four children within the space of five years.”Her husband died in 1976. She is survived by their children, Mark, Scott, Lori and Karen, and 12 grandchildren.Irvin lived in West Hartford, Conn., for 35 years before moving to Florida. She taught tennis for three decades, played in senior tournaments and, at 58, won the United States clay-court championship for women 55 and older. When her knees gave out at 62, she stopped playing tennis in favor of golf, which had become her favorite sport.She loved golf, but she was not that good at it, generally shooting higher than 100.“It’s a little embarrassing,” she said in 2000. “You say, ‘She won the Wimbledon tennis tournament?’ Then you see me playing golf and say, ‘How could she?’”Frank Litsky, a longtime sportswriter for The Times, died in 2018. Peter Keepnews contributed reporting. More

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      in Basket

      Dennis Murphy, Impresario of Alternative Leagues, Dies at 94

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      He founded the American Basketball Association, which revolutionized the game, and participated in other imaginative, sometimes zany sports ventures.Dennis Murphy, the impresario of alternative athletic leagues, including the American Basketball Association, who also shook up tennis and ice hockey and launched imaginative, sometimes quixotic ventures in other sports, among them indoor roller hockey, died on Thursday at an assistant living facility in Placentia, Calif. He was 94.His son, Dennis Jr., said the cause was congestive heart failure.Mr. Murphy’s most lasting achievement was the A.B.A., which he conceived, and which he started in 1967 as a cheeky competitor to the National Basketball Association. The league was known for its wide-open offenses; its red, white and blue ball; and the salary war it ignited against the N.B.A. to bring stars like Rick Barry and Zelmo Beaty into the upstart league.Mr. Murphy’s rationale for starting the A.B.A. was simple, as was his research into its viability: There were only 12 teams in the N.B.A.“There’s only one basketball league and one hockey league, so why not have another?” he was quoted as saying in Terry Pluto’s oral history “Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association” (1990). “Since I knew nothing about hockey, but basketball was my favorite sport, I figured I’d pursue the idea of a basketball league.”The A.B.A. thrived as a freewheeling hoops spectacle. It nurtured stars of its own, like Julius Erving and David Thompson, and generated excitement with the three-point shot and the All- Star Game slam-dunk contest, which eventually became staples in the N.B.A.“He wasn’t responsible for them, but he recognized their value and he went with it,” said Jim O’Brien, a reporter for The Sporting News who covered the Miami Floridians when Mr. Murphy was the team’s general manager. In an interview, he recalled Mr. Murphy’s promotional prowess and his willingness to make players accessible to the media.“He was fun and creative,” Mr. O’Brien said, “and he was always hustling somebody.”Mr. Murphy, center, at an A.B.A. meeting in Miami 1971. He was the general manager of the league’s Miami Floridians at the time.Arthur Hundhausen CollectionMr. Murphy had left the A.B.A. by 1972, four years before the league shut down and four of its teams — the New York Nets (who now play in Brooklyn), San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers — were absorbed into the N.B.A.Soon he was in the midst of itinerant league creation.He and Gary Davidson, another sports entrepreneur, in 1972 started the World Hockey Association, which challenged the dominance of the National Hockey League; in 1974, he and a group of partners, including the lawyer Larry King, who was then married to the tennis superstar Billie Jean King, formed World Team Tennis; and in 1976, he and Ms. King were among the founders of the International Women’s Professional Softball League.“He was a great cheerleader, a good manager and a skillful orchestrator at getting big egos to agree on things,” Mr. King said by phone.Of those three leagues, the W.H.A. probably had the greatest impact: It brought the Detroit Red Wings legend Gordie Howe out of a brief retirement to join the Houston Aeros, persuaded Bobby Hull to leave the Chicago Blackhawks for the Winnipeg Jets and signed the 17-year-old Wayne Gretzky to the Indianapolis Racers.Its level of play challenged the N.H.L.’s, just as the A.B.A.’s had challenged the N.B.A.’s. But its teams had financial difficulties, and the W.H.A. died in 1979. Four of its teams — the Edmonton Oilers, the New England Whalers, the Quebec Nordiques and the Jets — joined the N.H.L.“Murphy had a couple of things going for him,” the hockey writer Stan Fischler wrote recently in his column on Substack. “One was that N.H.L. president Clarence Campbell never took the W.H.A. seriously — until too late.”Another, Mr. Fischler said, was chutzpah. Before the W.H.A. started, Mr. Murphy showed up at a minor-league hockey meeting in the Bahamas, posing as a reporter, and started asking Emile Francis, the general manager of the New York Rangers, about the N.H.L.’s plans for expansion.Soon after, Mr. Francis was watching television and saw Mr. Murphy being interviewed by another reporter about the league he planned to start.Dennis Arthur Murphy was born on Sept. 4, 1926, in Shanghai, where his father, Arthur, was an engineer for Standard Oil. His mother, Adele (Gurevitz) Murphy, was a homemaker. The family moved to Brentwood, Calif., in 1940.After serving in the Army in the Philippines, Mr. Murphy attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.For most of the 1950s and the early ’60s, Mr. Murphy worked at an engineering firm. For two years during that period, he was the part-time mayor of Buena Park, in Orange County.His fascination with sports leagues continued with the creation in 1981 of Team Tennis, also with Mr. King, after World Team Tennis failed in 1978. Team Tennis would later adopt the name of its predecessor and rechristen itself World Team Tennis. And in the early 1990s, Mr. Murphy, Mr. King and Ralph Backstrom, a former N.H.L. player, formed Roller Hockey International, an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of in-line skating.“We believe we can be the No. 1 hockey sport,” Mr. Murphy told The New York Times in 1994.But the league played its last season in 1999, when the champion St. Louis Vipers won the Murphy Cup. One of his mistakes, Mr. Murphy told The Hockey News in 2019, had been expanding to 24 teams in the league’s second season.“We should have kept it smaller and then expanded,” he said. “But we did it for money. I had a lot of contacts through my other leagues. Everybody wanted to get in because of our success in the other leagues. So they put pressure on me, and I fell for it.”Besides his son, Mr. Murphy is survived by his daughters, Dawn Mee and Doreen Haarlamert; eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.The A.B.A. did not have a national television contract and struggled for attention. The Floridians, for example, had bikini-clad cheerleaders, an idea that came from a publicist.“The idea was that we needed to get attendance at the games,” Mr. Murphy told The Reno Dispatch, a blog, in 2013. The cheerleaders, he added, were always on the visitors’ side of the court “so the visiting players would look at girls rather than pay attention to the game.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Dicky Maegle Dies at 86; Football Star Remembered for a Bizarre Tackle

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      He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame, but he’s probably best known for the Cotton Bowl game in which an opposing player left the bench to take him down.Dicky Maegle was an all-American running back at Rice University. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. And he was a Pro Bowl defensive back in his first N.F.L. season.But when Rice announced that Maegle had died on Sunday at 86, he was remembered mostly for a single moment: one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of college football, witnessed by some 75,000 fans at the 1954 Cotton Bowl in Dallas and a national television audience.Taking a handoff at Rice’s 5-yard line in the second quarter of its matchup with Alabama, Maegle cut to the right and raced down the sideline. When he passed the Alabama bench while crossing midfield, on his way to a virtually certain touchdown, the Crimson Tide fullback Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period and, sans helmet, sprang onto the field and leveled Maegle with a blindside block at Alabama’s 42-yard line.The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run. Rice, ranked No. 6 in the nation by The Associated Press, went on to a 28-6 victory over 13th-ranked Alabama.Maegle, a junior that season, also scored on runs of 34 and 79 yards in that Cotton Bowl game and gained 265 yards on 11 carries.Lewis apologized to Maegle at halftime.“I’m too emotional,” he said when the game ended. “When I had him tackled, I jumped up and got back on the bench. I kept telling myself, ‘I didn’t do it.’ But I knew I did.”The following Sunday, Maegle and Lewis were reunited, so to speak, as guests on Ed Sullivan’s popular CBS variety show.“I saw him when he was about a step and a half away from me,” Maegle told The Dallas Morning News in 1995. “I veered to the left, and that helped cushion the blow. If I hadn’t veered away from him, I really think he would have broken both my legs.”Maegle was an all-American as a senior in the 1954 season, when he ran for 905 yards and 11 touchdowns and finished sixth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, presented annually to college football’s most outstanding player. The trophy was won that year by the Wisconsin back Alan Ameche (who went on to fame with the Baltimore Colts for scoring the winning touchdown in overtime in the storied 1958 N.F.L. championship game against the New York Giants).The San Francisco 49ers drafted Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 N.F.L. draft. He was a 49er for five seasons, playing mostly at right safety and occasionally as a running back, then concluded his pro career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes, running one of them back for a touchdown.He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.Maegle (who spelled his surname Moegle at the time), Lewis and other players immediately after one of the strangest plays in college football history. The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run.Rice UniversityRichard Lee Moegle (he later legally changed his surname to reflect its correct pronunciation) was born on Sept. 14, 1934, in Taylor, Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. He played high school football, then received an athletic scholarship to Rice.After leaving football, he pursued real estate interests and managed hotels in Houston.Maegle’s wife, Carol, told The Houston Chronicle that he died at their home in Houston, and that he been in declining health since a fall several months ago. (Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.)Tommy Lewis, who played in the Canadian Football League, coached high school football and worked in insurance in Alabama, died in 2014 at 83.Roy Riegels, the center for the University of California who ran 69 yards the wrong way after picking up a fumble by Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl game, leading to Cal’s 8-7 loss and earning the moniker Wrong Way Riegels, watched the Maegle-Lewis drama unfold from his California home.He had advice for Lewis the next day:“Laugh with ’em, that’s all you’ve got to do. What the heck difference does it make? It’s just a football game.”Maegle wasn’t laughing about that Cotton Bowl game as time passed; he believed that the Lewis episode overshadowed his considerable football achievements.“People still just don’t get it,” he remarked some 40 years later. “I led the nation in punt returns. I led the nation in yards per carry. I led the conference in rushing and in scoring. But when people introduce me, all they ever mention is what happened in that game.” More

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      in Football

      Terry Donahue, Who Led U.C.L.A. to Bowl Victories, Dies at 77

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      Over 20 years, he had more wins than any football coach in the school’s history, including seven consecutive bowl championships.Terry Donahue, who became the face of football at U.C.L.A. as a player and coach, staying in the latter position for 20 years and leading the school to seven consecutive bowl-winning seasons in the 1980s, died on Sunday at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 77.The cause was cancer, U.C.L.A. said.Donahue won more games than any other coach in the school’s and the Pac-12 Conference’s history, and he ended his career with a winning record against each of the conference’s teams, including the Bruins’ crosstown rival, the University of Southern California Trojans.Overall, he won 151 of the 233 games he coached, and 98 of those victories were in the Pac-10 (as the conference was known before adding two teams in 2011). His eighth and final win in a bowl came in the 1991 John Hancock Bowl.Donahue’s streak of bowl victories included Rose Bowl wins in ’83, ’84 and ’86. He was the first person to appear in the Rose Bowl as a player, an assistant coach and a coach.On the field, Donahue played in 1966 in U.C.L.A.’s first Rose Bowl victory. The team earned the nickname “Gutty Little Bruins” because nobody on the defensive line weighed more than 225 pounds. Donahue, a walk-on, weighed just 195 pounds.He brought the same overachieving spirit to his tenure as a coach. Some of U.C.L.A.’s best players in the Donahue era, like the future Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden, came from regions far from California. The famed quarterback Troy Aikman transferred to U.C.L.A. from another college football program.Donahue talking to his quarterback John Barnes in 1992.Otto Greule Jr/Allsport, via Getty ImagesIn an article last year about how Donahue’s successors have not measured up to the standard he set, The Los Angeles Times attributed Donahue’s success to his being “a pioneer in national recruiting,” in part by having a scout “scour the country for talent.” N.F.L. teams chose 14 players from the Donahue era in the first round of professional drafts.In a 2011 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he discussed the level of commitment required to discover and woo young quarterbacks. “You need money, access to an aircraft if possible,” he said. “I went and got players from Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Texas, Oregon.”A news conference where Donahue announced his retirement in 1995 became a spectacle. The Los Angeles Times said that a U.C.L.A. spokesman prepared two news releases in case Donahue changed his mind. As he began to explain his decision, hundreds of reporters and friends “leaned forward at the same instant,” The Times reported.“I can’t believe I’m holding this press conference,” Donahue said. “What are you all doing here?”But he did retire. Twenty-five years later, The Times would write that the U.C.L.A. football program had been “tormented” since Donahue’s departure.Terrence Michael Donahue was born on June 24, 1944, in Los Angeles to Betty (Gantner) Donahue and Bill Donahue, a physician.He was a starting linebacker at his high school in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, but he struggled to establish himself in college, failing to gain a steady position at San Jose State and Los Angeles Valley College before getting a tryout at U.C.L.A. in 1964. He was taken on as a reserve lineman and worked his way up to starter.“Terry didn’t have a lot of ability, but he had a lot of character, high intelligence and seldom made a mistake,” Jerry Long, a former U.C.L.A. line coach, said.Donahue graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He also earned a master’s from the university in kinesiology in 1977.Donahue in 2013. He struggled to accept his own decision to retire as U.C.L.A.’s coach. “I can’t believe I’m holding this press conference,” he said during the announcement. “What are you all doing here?”Stephen Dunn/Getty ImagesHe got his start as a coach by asking a former mentor, Pepper Rodgers, to take him on as an unpaid assistant for the University of Kansas Jayhawks. When Rodgers became head coach at U.C.L.A., Donahue followed him. Rodgers’s successor, Dick Vermeil, left to coach the Philadelphia Eagles in 1976, and Donahue took over, even though he was in his early 30s.After leaving U.C.L.A., he worked in the front office of the San Francisco 49ers from 1999 to 2005.Donahue’s survivors include his wife of 52 years, Andrea (Sogas) Donahue; three daughters, Nicole, Michele and Jennifer; and 10 grandchildren.In 1976, Donahue’s first season coaching U.C.L.A., the Bruins went 9-2-1. An article in Sports Illustrated said he “may be the best young coach in the country.” Known to be relaxed and well tanned, Donahue was asked if he ever felt nervous.“We’re prepared and we’ve worked hard, so there’s nothing to worry about,” he told Sports Illustrated. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go throw up.” More

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      Jim Fassel, Who Coached the Giants to the Super Bowl, Dies at 71

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      He predicted that New York would make the playoffs when no one gave them much of a chance. Then they marched to the championship game, only to lose to the Ravens.Jim Fassel, who was a longtime architect of offensive schemes in the pros and collegiate football and reached the pinnacle of his career when he coached the Giants team that reached the 2001 Super Bowl, died on Monday in Las Vegas. He was 71.The Giants reported the death on their website. Fassel’s son John, the special teams coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys, told The Los Angeles Times that the cause was a heart attack.Fassel, who lived in the Las Vegas area for many years, told sportswriters in late November 2000 that he was “shoving my chips to the center of the table” in guaranteeing that his Giants team, 7-4 after a loss to the Detroit Lions, would reach the playoffs.“When I called the staff together the night before to tell them what I was going to say, they thought somebody on the staff was going to be fired,” he told The New York Times. “I just wanted to tell them what I was going to do, and the next day I did it.”The Giants won their last five games of the 2000 regular season, defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round of the playoffs and trounced the favored Minnesota Vikings, 41-0, in the National Football Conference championship game at Giants Stadium. Kerry Collins, one of the many quarterbacks Fassel worked with over the years, threw for five touchdowns, including two to Ike Hilliard and another to Amani Toomer, his prime wide receivers.Fassel was carried off the field by the linemen Michael Strahan and Keith Hamilton, mainstays of the Giants’ defense, along with the linebacker Jessie Armstead.The Giants’ co-owner Wellington Mara, responding to those who might have despaired over the team’s prospects late in the regular season, said: “Today we proved that we’re the worst team to ever win the National Football Conference championship. I’m happy to say that in two weeks we’re going to try to become the worst team to ever to win the Super Bowl.”Fassel on the sidelines during Super Bowl XXXV in 2001 in Tampa, Fla. The Giants made a surprising run through the playoffs but were defeated in the title game by the Baltimore Ravens. Barton Silverman/The New York TimesBut the Giants’ luck — chips or no chips on the table — ran out in January, when they were routed by the Baltimore Ravens, 34-7, in Super Bowl XXXV, the Giants’ first league championship matchup since they defeated the Buffalo Bills in the 1991 Super Bowl.Fassel was an assistant coach with the Giants in 1991 and 1992 and an offensive aide with the Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders and Arizona Cardinals later in the 1990s before he was named in 1997 to succeed Dan Reeves, the Giants’ head coach for the four previous years.He was named the N.F.L.’s coach of the year that season, when the Giants finished at 10-5-1. In December 1998, they upset the Denver Broncos, who came into the game at 13-0 behind the future Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway.Fassel announced in mid-December 2003 that he would resign at the end of the season, after a pair of losing campaigns that included a crushing loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the 2002 playoffs after the Giants held a 24-3 lead in the third quarter.The Giants went 58-53-1 in Fassel’s seven seasons as head coach and made the playoffs three times.He was a color commentator for Westwood One’s radio coverage of N.F.L. games in 2007 and 2008 and was later head coach of the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League.Fassel was interviewed by at least three N.F.L. teams for a head-coaching post after leaving the Giants, but he was passed over each time. He was an offensive coordinator for the Ravens in 2005 and 2006.Fassel at his home in Henderson, Nev., in 2011. He was named the N.F.L.’s coach of the year in 1997.Isaac Brekken for The New York TimesJames Edward Fassel was born on Aug. 31, 1949, in Anaheim, Calif. He was a quarterback at Anaheim High School, played for Fullerton College and was then the backup quarterback for Southern California’s undefeated Rose Bowl championship team of 1969. He later played for Long Beach State.He played for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League in 1973, then coached in the World Football League before returning to college football as an offensive coach for Utah; Weber State, also in Utah; and Stanford. He was head coach at Utah from 1985 to 1989.In addition to his son John, Fassel’s survivors include his wife, Kitty, four other children and 16 grandchildren.“Most people will remember his ‘guarantee’ from 2000, which was genius because if he was wrong he’d have been fired and it’d have been forgotten,” the former Giants running back Tiki Barber, who played for Fassel, wrote on Twitter after Fassel’s death. “When he was right, it became legendary.” More