'I lived a boyhood dream'
N.D.'s MacAfee humbly takes place in Hall of Fame
Posted: Thursday August 13, 1998 07:20 PM
SOUTH BEND, Indiana (AP) -- The first thing Ken MacAfee told Notre Dame coaches when they recruited him was that he was too small to play for the Irish.
"He was 6-5, 235," said Joe Yonto, a former Notre Dame assistant who helped recruit MacAfee. "I just laughed at him and said, 'If you're too small, we might as well quit trying to recruit.'"
Still, MacAfee didn't think much of his chances to play at Notre Dame and only hoped he'd make the traveling squad his freshman season so he could make the trip to Georgia Tech for a nationally televised night game.
By the time he was a senior, he thought talk of him being a Heisman Trophy candidate was a joke, even though he would finish his career a three-time All-American and be the first lineman ever to win the Walter Camp Trophy as player of the year.
"I guess there comes a point that you set your ego aside a little and say it's time to realize that I was one of the better players," said MacAfee, who will be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame on Friday with 23 others. "All the accolades received throughout the years, you try to be humble."
MacAfee has earned the right to brag a little, but he won't. He finished third in the voting for the Heisman after Notre Dame won a national championship in 1977, and he still ranks fifth on the Irish's all-time receptions list. Also a first-team Academic All-American in 1977, he is the 36th Irish player to be enshrined into the hall.
After college, MacAfee went on to the NFL like many other Notre Dame greats, but his heart was somewhere else. So during off-seasons while playing two years with the San Francisco 49ers, MacAfee didn't take on any rigorous workout program or spend long hours in the weight room.
He went to dental school.
MacAfee, who is a practicing oral surgeon in Massachusetts near where he grew up in Brockton, said dentistry always was his first interest, especially since he never thought he'd be good enough to play at Notre Dame, let alone in the NFL.
"Academically, he always wanted to be a dentist and surgeon," Yonto said. "He had his priorities right. There's more to life than professional football."
So when 49ers coach Bill Walsh tried to convert MacAfee to a guard, he didn't have much luck. For one thing, MacAfee had played tight end his entire career and didn't feel like learning a new position.
"Secondarily, I don't feel like getting my head beat in every play," MacAfee said. "At least at tight end you can run downfield and avoid a couple hits and get some cheap shots in."
MacAfee doesn't regret walking away from football after a back injury during his third season in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings. But he sometimes wishes he'd stayed with the 49ers one more season -- they won the Super Bowl the year after he left.
MacAfee said the decision to leave football became clear after a goal-line stand against the Oakland Raiders. After he blocked down on the defensive tackle, a cleat stomped down on his hand, cutting it open.
He realized then that if anything ever happened to his hands, not only could he never play football again, but he wouldn't be able to go into dental work.
"You still have the memories that linger in the bones," MacAfee said. "I look at my father [who played professional football in the '50s with the New York Giants]; he can crack every bone in his body and his knees start to get swollen and you just say, 'When is my turn coming?'"
So MacAfee feels lucky he walked away when he did and grateful that he got a shot to be there in the first place.
"I lived a boyhood dream," he said. "Every kid that slips on a baseball mitt and wants to play professional baseball or throws around the football and wants to play professional football, I did it."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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