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      Dee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythose we’ve lostDee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91He coached the Huskies for eight seasons, taking them to the N.C.A.A. tournament, before spending decades raising money for campus athletic facilities.Dee Rowe being honored in 2019 at the Gampel Pavilion on the University of Connecticut campus. He raised $7 million in donations to build the arena.Credit…Hartford CourantJan. 12, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ETDee Rowe, a revered figure at the University of Connecticut for a half-century as the men’s basketball coach and athletics department fund-raiser, died on Sunday at his home in Storrs, Conn. He was 91.His son, Donald, said that the cause was Covid-19, but that he had also received a diagnosis of Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.Rowe (his given name was Donald, but he got the nickname Dee in childhood, and it stuck) coached the Huskies for eight seasons, compiling a 120-88 record as he guided the team twice to the National Invitational Tournament and once to the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament, in 1976.After defeating Hofstra in the first round of that tournament, Connecticut lost, 93-79, to Rutgers. “We lost because of the way Rutgers makes you play,” he said after the game. “ We just let them play too fast for us. A team like that, that plays that fast, they ultimately wear you down.”Following the 1976-77 season, when he led the Huskies to a 17-10 record, he retired because of pancreatitis. “I got to the point in coaching where I felt I was the lone matador,” he told The Hartford Courant in 2004. “I suffered too much. I got out at 48. I was burned out.”Rowe embraced Coach Dave Gavitt of Providence College in 1976 after Connecticut defeated the Friars in a New England conference championship game that sent the Huskies to the N.C.A.A. tournament. Credit…Hartford CourantWithin a year, he started as the athletics department’s fund-raiser. “He had been offered the athletics director job at Middlebury, and along the way he pursued others, but he was committed to UConn,” his son said in a phone interview. “He wanted to be around it. He was very passionate and was a great salesman. At UConn, he sold from the heart.”In his 13 years as fund-raiser, an official role, Rowe was best known for collecting about $7 million in private donations to build the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, the Storrs campus arena. Named after the lead donor, a real estate developer and alumnus, the pavilion is home to the men’s and women’s basketball team and the women’s volleyball team.After retiring in 1991 he remained a special adviser and helped raise money to build the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, where the basketball teams practice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Floyd Little, Star Running Back for Syracuse and Broncos, Dies at 78

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFloyd Little, Star Running Back for Syracuse and Broncos, Dies at 78Gen. Douglas MacArthur urged him to attend West Point, but he became an Orangeman to honor a promise to Ernie Davis.Floyd Little, right, avoiding a tackle in a game against the Jets in 1969. A three-time all-American, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010.Credit…Associated PressJan. 3, 2021, 4:12 p.m. ETFloyd Little, who followed Jim Brown and Ernie Davis in an extraordinary line of all-American running backs at Syracuse University, each wearing No. 44, and who donned it again when he forged a Hall of Fame career with the Denver Broncos, died on Friday at his home in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas. He was 78.His death was confirmed by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He received a diagnosis of cancer last year and had been in hospice care.Little was only 5-foot-11 and 195 pounds, but he was strong enough to burst through defensive lines and agile in the open field, playing for the Broncos from 1967 to 1975.Playing for Syracuse from 1964 to 1966, Little ran for 2,704 yards, had 46 touchdowns and was an outstanding kick returner. He was a three-time all-American and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 2010 after he had already lost hope that he would be selected.Little was chosen by the American Football League’s Broncos as the No. 6 pick of the pro football draft in 1967, three years before the N.F.L. absorbed the A.F.L. teams. The Broncos had never had a winning record since the A.F.L.’s 1960 inaugural season, but Little became known as “the franchise” for giving their fans some hope, though the team continued to struggle during his time in Denver.Little in 2010 speaking during halftime at a Broncos game. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who met Little when they both attended Syracuse University, said, “He was full of character, decency and integrity.”Credit…Jack Dempsey/Associated Press“I know when I got there the talk was about the team moving to Chicago or Birmingham,” Little told The Associated Press in 2009. “So I supposedly saved the franchise.”Little led the N.F.L. in rushing yards with 1,133 in 1971 and in rushing touchdowns with 12 in 1973, and was named to five Pro Bowl games. He scored 43 career rushing touchdowns as well as nine on receptions and two on punt returns and ran for 6,323 yards, averaging 3.9 yards per carry.“Floyd Little and I were students at Syracuse University together,” President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in a statement on Saturday. “I was in law school and he was a star halfback on the football team. I watched him play in Archbold Stadium, his No. 44 flashing by defenders who had no chance, running as if he was chasing the spirit of his dear friend and fellow 44 legend, Ernie Davis.”“In the years that followed, I got to know Floyd as the man behind the number,” Mr. Biden said. “He was full of character, decency and integrity.”Floyd Douglas Little was born on July 4, 1942, in Waterbury, Conn. His father, Frederick Douglas, named for the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, died of cancer when he was 6. His mother, Lula Douglas, worked several jobs to support Floyd and his five siblings. When he was in his early teens, the family moved to New Haven.Little played football for Hillhouse High School in New Haven for two seasons, then for another two at Bordentown Military Institute in New Jersey, seeking to improve his grades so that he could be accepted to college. “The only thing I had was a dream,” the Broncos quoted Little as saying on a visit to New Haven in 1988. “I had no money, no promises and no guarantees.”Little had considered applying to West Point, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur sought to recruit him while he was at Bordentown.“General MacArthur shook my hand and talked to me about the value of education, about being a leader,” Little recalled in his memoir “Promises to Keep” (2012), written with Tom Mackie. “I was told that if I went to Army, I could become the first Black general.”But in December 1962, while he was on winter break from Bordentown, Little was visited by Davis, who in 1961 had became the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy as college football’s most outstanding player.Little, who had close to 50 scholarship offers, told Davis he would go to Syracuse. But he still had thoughts of attending West Point. When he heard that Davis died of leukemia in May 1963 after being selected by the Cleveland Browns as the No. 1 pick in the 1962 N.F.L. draft, he decided to fulfill his promise to him.Jim Brown, the first of three spectacular No. 44s at Syracuse, playing for the Orangemen from 1954 to 1956, became one of the greatest fullbacks in pro football history, playing for the Browns from 1957 to 1965.Little obtained a master’s degree in legal administration from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 1975 and owned auto dealerships after retiring from football.His survivors include his wife, DeBorah; his son, Marc; his daughters Christy and Kyra; and several grandchildren.When Little was named as a special assistant to the athletic director at Syracuse in 2011, a post he held until 2016, he thought once more of Ernie Davis.“Coming to Syracuse, I’ve tried to emulate what Ernie was and what he would be,” ESPN quoted him as saying. “My life has been tied to Ernie’s life because I wanted to be the Ernie Davis that he couldn’t be.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Paul Westphal, N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Coach, Dies at 70

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPaul Westphal, N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Coach, Dies at 70Drafted in the first round by the Celtics, he played for 12 seasons before leading teams in Phoenix, Seattle and Sacramento.Paul Westphal, left, drives past Bobby Wilkerson during a game against the Denver Nuggets in 1978.Credit…Mark Junge/Getty ImagesJan. 2, 2021Updated 6:58 p.m. ETPaul Westphal, the Basketball Hall of Fame guard who played for the Boston Celtics’ 1974 N.B.A. champions, became a four-time All-Star with the Phoenix Suns and coached them to the league playoff final in 1993, died on Saturday. He was 70. Westphal, whose death was confirmed by the Suns, was found to have brain cancer in the summer of 2020.Westphal was an outstanding shooter with both hands and a fine playmaker and defensive player. He played in the N.B.A. for 12 seasons, also with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Knicks. He was a head coach for all or part of 10 seasons, with the Suns, Seattle and the Sacramento Kings, and an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks and the Brooklyn Nets.He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., as a player in 2019.The Celtics selected Westphal in the first round of the 1972 N.B.A. draft, the 10th player chosen over all.One of his finest games with Boston came in the 1974 N.B.A. championship finals against the Milwaukee Bucks.Westphal scored 12 points in Game 5 and played stifling defense against Oscar Robertson, one of the N.B.A.’s greatest players, who made only 2 of his 13 shots. The Celtics won, 96-87, on the Bucks’ court and captured the series, four games to three.But Westphal was mostly a reserve in his three seasons with the Celtics, since they had outstanding guards in Jo Jo White and Don Chaney. They traded him to the Suns in May 1975 for Charlie Scott, the future Hall of Fame forward, and draft picks.Westphal was back in the playoff finals in 1976, this time playing for Phoenix against Boston. He scored 25 points in Game 5, though the Suns were beaten, 128-126, in triple overtime in what has been called “the greatest game ever played.” The Suns lost the series, 4 games to 2.Westphal played for the Suns from 1975 to 1980 and again in his final season, 1983-84. He played with the SuperSonics in 1980-81, when he gained his fifth All-Star selection. The Knicks signed him midway through the 1981-82 season, though he was still recovering from a stress fracture of his right foot incurred when he played for Seattle.Westphal was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Credit…Elise Amendola/Associated PressIn November 1982, Westphal got a taste of the New York-based television world when he had a small role as a police officer on ABC’s daytime drama “The Edge of Night.”“I’ve never had any acting experience, except for trying to draw fouls during basketball games,” he told The New York Times. But, as he put it, “since basketball players and actors are both pampered and spoiled, I think I would have no trouble making the change to acting.”He never did pursue an acting career, but he won the N.B.A.’s Comeback Player of the Year Award for 1982-83, when he helped take the Knicks to the second round of the playoffs, appearing in 80 of their 82 games and averaging 10 points a game, having recovered from his injury with Seattle.Westphal averaged 20.6 points a game in his six seasons with the Suns and had career averages of 15.6 points and 4.4 assists per game. He won 318 games and lost 279 as an N.B.A. head coach.After his playing days, Westphal coached at several western colleges, including Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, taking the school to the 1988 NAIA national championship.He was an assistant coach with the Suns for four seasons before he was named head coach in 1992-93, when they posted the N.B.A.’s best regular-season record at 62-20, led by Charles Barkley, the league’s most valuable player, along with Dan Majerle, Kevin Johnson and Danny Ainge. But the Suns lost to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in a six-game championship final.Westphal coached several outstanding Suns team afterward but was fired in January 1996 when the Suns, riddled with injuries, were playing poorly.He coached the SuperSonics and the Kings for all or parts of three seasons each and closed out his coaching career as a Nets assistant from 2014 to 2016.Paul Douglas Westphal was born on Nov. 30, 1950, in Torrance, Calif., a son of Armin and Ruth Westphal. His father, an aeronautical engineer, and his older brother, Bill, shot hoops with him in the family’s driveway when he was a youngster.He was a basketball star at Aviation High School in Redondo Beach, then played for the University of Southern California for three seasons. He averaged 16.4 points a game and was voted as a second-team all-American in The Associated Press poll for 1971.Westphal’s survivors include his wife, Cindy; their daughter, Victoria, and a son, Michael. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.“In training camp, he told us his greatest asset would be his ability to relate,” Kevin Johnson told The Seattle Times in February 1999 when Westphal was in his first season as the Sonics’ coach. “He was a rookie, he was an All-Star, he was a free agent, he got waived, he was traded, he got old. He’s been through every possible experience.”“I hoped to be a player, but always planned on being a coach,” Westphal said. “I was able to play for 12 years and postpone my coaching career.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Kevin Greene, Master of Sacking the Quarterback, Dies at 58

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKevin Greene, Master of Sacking the Quarterback, Dies at 58A charismatic player with seemingly inexhaustible energy, he recorded the third-most sacks in N.F.L. history and the most by a linebacker.The linebacker Kevin Greene in 1994, the year he led the N.F.L. in sacks for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He said that sacking a quarterback brought him relief.Credit…George Gojkovich/Getty ImagesDec. 22, 2020Kevin Greene, a relentless linebacker who attacked quarterbacks like prey on his way to recording the third-most sacks in National Football League history, died on Monday at his home in Destin, Fla. He was 58.The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced his death but did not provide a cause.Over 15 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, Pittsburgh Steelers, Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers, Greene used his speed and strength, mostly from the outside linebacker position, to hunt quarterbacks. His 160 regular-season sacks rank third behind the totals of the defensive ends Bruce Smith (200) and Reggie White (198).“I believed in my heart that I was unblockable,” Greene said in 2016 during his Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement in Canton, Ohio.Greene was a brash and charismatic performer on the field, possessed of long blond hair that flowed from beneath his helmet and seemingly inexhaustible energy.“He was an awesome force on the field and as a person,” Bill Cowher, the former Steelers coach, said in an interview. “When you coached him, he gave you everything he had. He was a man of tremendous energy, passion and respect.”Greene registered 16.5 sacks in both 1988 and 1989, then 13 more in 1990, while playing for the Rams. But he did not lead the league until he had 14 in 1994, with the Steelers, and 14.5 in 1996, with the Panthers. In 1998, his penultimate season, he had 15 sacksGreene said that sacking a quarterback brought him relief.“My teammates depended on me to do that,” he said in an undated interview on Steelers.com. “I contributed. I didn’t want to let my teammates down. I did something to stop that drive. Either I hit the quarterback at the right time and caused a fumble we recovered, or we got an interception.”He added: “A sack was different than making a tackle for a loss, or a tackle at the line of scrimmage. It was just me making a contribution and not letting my brothers down.”Greene (91) in action for the Los Angeles Rams in 1989. In his 15-year career he played for the Rams, Steelers, Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers.Credit…Allen Dean Steele/Allsport, via Getty ImagesKevin Darwin Greene was born on July 31, 1962, in Schenectady, N.Y., to Patricia and Therman Greene. His father served in the Army for 30 years and retired as a colonel.When he lived on the Army base in Mannheim, West Germany, where his father was stationed, “football began to burn inside of me,” he said in his Hall of Fame speech. He played against other military youngsters — “the best that the athletic youth association had to offer.”His family returned to the United States in time for him to attend high school in Granite City, Ill., where he played football and basketball and was a high jumper on the track team.He entered Auburn University in 1980, but failed to make the football team as a punter. He played intramural football before joining the varsity in 1984 as a walk-on, playing defensive end.“He had the physical tools and ability, and he came with a vengeance,” the longtime Auburn coach Pat Dye said in a 2016 NFL Films documentary about Greene. “But the thing that set him apart is what he had inside of him. He played the game with every molecule in his body.”Greene was drafted by the Rams in the fifth round of the 1985 N.F.L. draft. He played defensive end at first before moving to outside linebacker, where he thrived in the 3-4 defensive scheme — three linemen and four linebackers — which suited him best. But he left for Pittsburgh as a free agent in 1993 after the Rams shifted to a 4-3 defense.“If you were going to play against Kevin, it was going to be a full day’s work,” Dom Capers, who coached Greene in a 3-4 formation as the defensive coordinator of the Steelers and the head coach of the Panthers, said in an interview. “He’d get sacks late in a down by outworking the other guy. He had that extra something, that ‘it,’ you were looking for.”Late in his football career, Greene wrestled occasionally for the World Championship Wrestling circuit, most notably teaming with Roddy Piper and Ric Flair to win a match at the Slamboree in 1997.After retiring from football in 1999, he pursued some business ventures and N.F.L. coaching internships. In 2009, when Capers was the defensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers, he brought Greene along as his outside linebackers coach.“There’s no better guy to teach young guys,” Capers said, “and Clay Matthews made the Pro Bowl four out of the five years Kevin coached him. Kevin lit a fire under Clay.”Greene left the Packers in 2013 to coach his son, Gavin, in high school football. In 2017 and 2018, he coached the Jets’ outside linebackers.In addition to his son, Greene’s survivors include his wife, Tara, and his daughter, Gabrielle.While coaching the Packers’ outside linebackers, Greene reflected on the differences between sacking quarterbacks and teaching others to pursue them.“It’s hard to replace sacking Joe Montana and the next week going to Denver and knocking around John Elway and Dan Marino the following week,” he was quoted as saying in Madison.com, the website of the Wisconsin State Journal. As a player, he said, “you’re in the flame and you get burned and you feel that.” As a coach, “you’re standing next to the fire and you feel its warmth. It feels good.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Alex Olmedo, 84, Dies; Tennis Star Known for a Remarkable Year

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAlex Olmedo, 84, Dies; Tennis Star Known for a Remarkable YearIn 1959, Olmedo won the Australian and Wimbledon men’s single championships and reached the final of the United States Nationals.Alex Olmedo in action against Neale Fraser of Australia in 1959. He defeated Fraser in four sets for the Australian championship.Credit…Associated PressDec. 13, 2020, 12:36 p.m. ETAlex Olmedo, the Peruvian who dominated the world of international tennis in 1959 when he won the Australian and Wimbledon men’s single championships and reached the final of the United States Nationals at Forest Hills, died on Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 84.The International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., said the cause was brain cancer. Olmedo was inducted into the hall in 1987.Olmedo took his first steps toward tennis acclaim at the club in Arequipa, Peru, where his father, Salvador, who oversaw the courts, gave him pointers. He was also guided by Stanley Singer, an American tennis coach working in Peru. He made his major championship debut in 1951 when he was 15, losing in a preliminary round at Forest Hills.After settling in the Los Angeles area, he was coached at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. Playing for the University of Southern California, he won the N.C.A.A. singles and doubles championships in 1956 and 1958.Olmedo won his two singles matches and a doubles match, teaming with Ham Richardson, to lead the United States to victory over a strong Australian team in the 1958 Davis Cup final, at Brisbane.His selection for the American squad proved controversial, since he was not a United States citizen. But regulations permitted a player to compete for a country after at least three years of continued residence. And Peru did not have its own entry in Davis Cup play.Allison Danzig, the longtime tennis writer for The New York Times, wrote that Olmedo’s selection showed that U.S. tennis authorities gave “equal opportunity to every player, to the foreign born as well as the homebred.” But Arthur Daley wrote in his column, Sports of The Times, that Olmedo’s participation “has to make American tennis the laughingstock of the rest of the world.”Don Budge, the 1938 Grand Slam champion, responding to a Sports Illustrated survey of sentiment among leading tennis figures, wrote: “Selecting Olmedo isn’t saying there is something wrong with our tennis. However, we should stimulate more interest here to match Australia’s.”Olmedo, who held a student visa while playing for U.S.C., said that if he decided to remain in the country permanently he would become a citizen. He did, many years later.Late in the 1958 season, Olmedo teamed with Richardson to win the men’s doubles title at Forest Hills.Olmedo was at his best on fast surfaces, where he could display his quickness and forge an aggressive game.His extraordinary 1959 season began when he defeated Neale Fraser of Australia in four sets for the Australian championship. He downed another Australian, Rod Laver, who at the time was only 20 years old and unseeded, in straight sets in the Wimbledon final, adding lobs to his customary serve-and-volley game along with strong groundstrokes.Olmedo lost to Fraser in the Forest Hills singles final.After only two seasons as an amateur (and long before the Open era, when professionals were allowed to compete alongside amateurs), Olmedo joined Jack Kramer’s touring pro circuit. He defeated Tony Trabert for the 1960 U.S. Pro Tennis title.Olmedo retired from competitive play in the mid-1960s. He was a longtime teaching pro at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a magnet for Hollywood stars, where his pupils included Katharine Hepburn and Robert Duvall.Alejandro Olmedo was born on March 24, 1936, in Arequipa. His survivors include his son, Alejandro Jr.; two daughters, Amy and Angela; and four grandchildren. His marriage to Ann Olmedo ended in divorce.Olmedo was the second International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee to die in recent days. Dennis Ralston, also a star at U.S.C. and a five-time doubles champion in majors, died on Dec. 6 in Austin, Texas.While honing his skills at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, Olmedo received pointers from George Toley, the club’s head pro and the coach of the U.S.C. tennis team.But above all, he was confident in his own instincts and court savvy.“I have a philosophy,” he told Sports Illustrated in September 1959. “I have heard so much from so many. I never listen exactly. I mean, I listen, but I don’t. I learn most from the players I play against. That’s the big way you learn tennis.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Ray Perkins, Coach at Alabama and in the N.F.L., Dies at 79

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRay Perkins, Coach at Alabama and in the N.F.L., Dies at 79With the Crimson Tide, he had a tough act to follow, Bear Bryant, but he enjoyed some success. He didn’t fare so well with the Giants and the Buccaneers.Ray Perkins coaching Alabama in the 1980s. He took over after Bear Bryant,  his mentor, retired, and he remained in Tuscaloosa for four years before returning to the N.F.L.Credit…Al Messerschmidt/Associated PressDec. 9, 2020, 6:39 p.m. ETRay Perkins, who spent nearly four decades as a college and N.F.L. coach and was best known for succeeding Paul “Bear” Bryant at the University of Alabama, his alma mater, died on Wednesday at his home in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was 79.His death was confirmed by his daughter Rachael Perkins, who did not specify the cause but said he had struggled with heart problems in recent years.A hard-driving coach in the mold of Bryant, his mentor, Perkins did not enjoy as much success as a coach as he did as a player, when he won championships with the Crimson Tide and later with Baltimore Colts. Though he spent many years on winning teams as a positions coach and offensive coordinator, he had a losing record in his eight years as an N.F.L. head coach, with his teams qualifying for the postseason just once.Perkins with the Giants quarterback Phil Simms in 1981. During his tenure as head coach in New York, he hired the future head coaches Bill Belichick, Romeo Crennel and Bill Parcells, who succeeded him.Credit…Ray Stubblebine/Associated PressHis first stint as a head coach, with the New York Giants, was not an overwhelming success. He was 23-34 in four seasons, including a 9-7 record in 1981, when the team made the playoffs. But Perkins developed several players who formed the core of the Giants’ 1986 Super Bowl-winning team, including quarterback Phil Simms and linebackers Harry Carson and Lawrence Taylor. He also hired the future head coaches Bill Belichick, Romeo Crennel and Bill Parcells, who succeeded him in 1983.Perkins returned to Alabama that year to take over for Bryant. In his four years in Tuscaloosa, his teams won two-thirds of their regular-season games and three bowl games.But compared with Bryant, who turned the Crimson Tide into a national powerhouse during his quarter-century there, Perkins had only middling success at Alabama. His teams were never in contention for a national title, finishing in the top 10 only once. In his second season, Alabama finished 5-6; it was the team’s first losing season since 1957, the year before Bryant took over the program.Perkins left Alabama after four years and returned to the N.F.L. in 1987, this time to coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With the additional title of vice president of player personnel, he had an even harder time winning games, going 19-41 as head coach in four seasons in Tampa.Perkins spent one losing season coaching at Arkansas State and seven years as an offensive coordinator and position coach with the New England Patriots, Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns. After more than a decade away from the sidelines, he resumed coaching in 2012 at a junior college and then at Oak Grove High School in Hattiesburg, Miss., near where he had grown up. He fully retired from football in 2017.Through his long career, Perkins earned a reputation as a workaholic, studying film of practices and games often at the expense of his family.“I don’t remember taking a vacation,” he told The New York Times in 1979, when he took over the Giants. Then he remembered one: “There was a week once in Toledo Bend — that’s in a corner of Louisiana and Texas.”Walter Ray Perkins was born on Nov. 6, 1941, in tiny Mount Olive, Miss. — “the middle of nowhere,” he once said — the second of three children born to Woodrow and Emogene (Lingle) Perkins. His father was a carpenter, and his mother was a homemaker. When Ray was 3 the family moved to to Petal, Miss., a suburb of Hattiesburg.He played running back on the football team at Petal High School and won a scholarship to Alabama. Bryant moved him to wide receiver after a serious head injury during his freshman season required surgery, with doctors drilling three holes in his skull to relieve the pressure. Perkins become a cornerstone of Alabama’s offense between 1964 and 1966, the heyday of the tough-nosed Bryant’s tenure there.Perkins with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Steve DeBerg in 1987. Perkins coached the Buccaneers for four season while also serving as vice president of player personnel. Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated PressPerkins was a teammate of the future Hall of Fame quarterbacks Joe Namath and Ken Stabler, and was chosen as an All-American in 1966. Alabama won the Southeastern Conference title in all three of Perkins’s seasons and was national champion in 1964 and 1965.While his college statistics — 63 catches for 908 yards and 9 touchdowns — were modest compared with those of players in today’s pass-first offenses, Perkins, in the reflective glow of having played at Alabama, was picked in the seventh round of the N.F.L. draft by the Baltimore Colts, who were in the midst of their own heyday, led by the star quarterback Johnny Unitas and Coach Don Shula (who died in May).Unitas was wary of young receivers, but he took an immediate shine to Perkins, who had good speed and an intuitive grasp of the game.“I could tell right away when he came to the team that he looked like he had been playing for four or five years in the N.F.L.,” said Upton Bell, the Colts’ director of player personnel in those years. “Forget Shula, you had to please Unitas, and he stepped right in.”Perkins played five seasons at wide receiver and appeared in eight playoff games, including Super Bowl V, when the Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys, 16-13, for their lone title in Baltimore.After several knee surgeries, Perkins finished his N.F.L. career in 1971 with 93 catches for 1,538 yards and 11 touchdowns.Perkins’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Rachael, from his second marriage, he is survived by his second wife, Lisa Perkins; two sons from his first marriage, Martin Anthony Perkins, known as Tony, and Michael Ray Perkins, who works for the Jacksonville Jaguars of the N.F.L.; another daughter from his second marriage, Shelby Perkins; a sister, Susan Thornton; and two grandchildren. Another sister, Shirley Sellers, died in 2007.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Dennis Ralston, 78, Doubles Champion in Tennis Hall of Fame, Dies

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDennis Ralston, 78, Doubles Champion in Tennis Hall of Fame, DiesOne of the so-called Handsome Eight, he was among the first players to sign on with the World Championship Tennis tour in the ’60s.Dennis Ralston in the men’s singles finals at Wimbledon in 1966. He lost to Manuel Santana of Spain but found greater success in doubles competitions.Credit…Terry Fincher/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesBy More

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      Mourning in Argentina Where Diego Maradona Walked

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      In front of Estadio Diego Armando Maradona, the stadium of Argentinos Juniors, where Maradona first played professionally.Mourning at the Places Where ‘El Dios’ WalkedDuring three national days of mourning for Diego Maradona, Argentines traveled — sometimes hundreds of miles — to honor him at the sites where his talent once made them smile.In front of Estadio Diego Armando Maradona, the stadium of Argentinos Juniors, where Maradona first played professionally.Credit…Supported byContinue reading the main storyPhotographs by More