From four-time Super Bowl champs to four-time Super Bowl runner-ups, five of the best in pro football history are ready for Cantonization. Here, with the help of Sports Illustrated's photographers and writers, CNNSI.com takes a look back at this year's Hall of Famers in their athletic primes.
George Allen (Coach)
L.A. Rams, Washington Redskins
116-47-5 regular-season record
Allen was an unusual man, so preoccupied with coaching that he
couldn't find his own house without asking directions, so driven
to succeed that he scarcely found time to sleep or eat. "Your
father thinks chewing is a distraction," the author quotes her
hilariously outspoken French mother. "Your father's afraid
chewing might take his mind off football."
Allen was also something of a misplaced person, a milk drinker
among bourbon-sipping NFL pooh-bahs, a Boy Scout among cynics. He
coined platitudes not only for his players but also for
himself -- "Try to think of yourself as a winner" or, poignantly,
after a firing, "What will I do the remaining days of my life?"
Allen scarcely knew his own children. To his daughter he said, in
all sincerity, "So you better drink your milk, Jen, if you want
to grow up big and strong like Mike Ditka."
-- Ron Fimrite, reviewing a biography by Allen's daughter, Sports Illustrated, Oct. 16, 2000
Oak./L.A. Raiders, Houston Oilers, Minnesota Vikings 147 games at TE, 52 receiving TDs
Finally there's Dave Casper, who blocked like the tackle he'd
been at Notre Dame and caught passes deep or short through the
forest of legalized muggings that constituted pass defense in his
era. I consider him the best tight end in the history of the
game. -- Paul Zimmerman, making Casper's case for the Hall, Sports Illustrated, Jan. 24, 2000
"What we had with Buddy [Ryan] -- well, that was unique, but it's over.
Those meetings of ours, there was never anything like them, guys
lying around all over the room, the whole place filled with the smell
of Buddy's Captain Black pipe tobacco, Dan Hampton sprawled out in
the back, dozing off, and Buddy yelling to him, 'Big Rook, you got
that front?' and Danny's eyes popping open ... 'Yeah, Buddy, I got
it.' The laughter that used to come out of that room. The offensive
meeting was next door, and afterward those guys used to say, 'What
are you guys laughing about all the time?'"
-- Gary Fencik, to Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 22, 1986
Buffalo Bills
160 games, 84.4 rating, four AFC titles
It's easy to lose perspective here. It's easy to get carried away.
Let's just say, coolly and unemotionally, that the National Football
League debut of Buffalo rookie quarterback Jim Kelly was nothing
short of sensational.
Jim Kelly is Joe Namath with knees.
-- Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 15, 1986
Pittsburgh Steelers
165 games at WR, 63 receiving TDs
Off the field he wears sober, vested pinstriped suits and elegant though unassertive ties. He emulates [Lynn] Swann in the care with which he chooses his words, but there is a definite grain to the timbre of his voice, a deep, loamy reminder of his Cotton Belt roots.
"We're each of us about as quick as the other," Stallworth said, "and I guess we can both jump as high, though Lynn starts a little closer to the ground than I do," and he grinned wickedly across the table at his running mate. -- Robert F. Jones, Sports Illustrated, Jan. 22, 1979
