Charley Trippi, a Chicago Cardinals star who was one of football’s most versatile players in the 1940s and 1950s, has died at age 100.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1921, Trippi sought out sports as an alternative to working in the coal mines like his Italian immigrant father. He starred on both his high school football team and a semi-pro baseball team, and eventually made his way to Georgia on a football scholarship.
As a sophomore at Georgia in 1942, Trippi turned in one of the most impressive performances in the history of the Bulldogs’ longtime rivalry with Florida, throwing a touchdown pass, running for two touchdowns, and intercepting a pass and returning it for a touchdown in a 75-0 Georgia win. At the end of that season Georgia beat UCLA in the Rose Bowl, and Trippi was the game’s Most Valuable Player.
Then Trippi left Georgia to spend two and a half years serving in the Army, and during that time the Cardinals made him the first overall pick in the 1945 NFL draft -- even though his college career was not yet over. Trippi returned to Georgia midway through the 1945 season, and then he remained at Georgia in 1946 as well, leading the Bulldogs to an undefeated season.
In 1947, when he was finally ready to turn pro, Trippi was a rare professional athlete who had negotiating leverage: The Cardinals desperately wanted him to play for them in the NFL, but the owner of the New York Yankees made Trippi an offer that would have allowed him to play Major League Baseball and also play in the All-American Football Conference, where the Yankees’ owner owned a football team also called the New York Yankees.
Eventually, the Cardinals offered Trippi the unheard-of sum of $100,000, and he went to the NFL. Trippi said it was awkward to make 20 times as much money as his teammates.
“I felt kind of guilty,” Trippi once said, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If I ever went out to dinner with them, I’d never let them pay.”
But Trippi’s teammates couldn’t possibly resent him when he led them to a championship as a rookie: Trippi did it all in leading the Cardinals to the Western Conference title, and in the NFL Championship Game Trippi totaled 202 yards, scoring a 44-yard rushing touchdown and a 75-yard punt return touchdown, as the Cardinals beat the Eagles 28-21. The 1947 championship remains the most recent championship the Cardinals have won.
Trippi was the Cardinals’ top running back in his first four seasons, then played quarterback for two years before moving back to running back. All the while he was also playing defense, punting and returning punts and kickoffs. At the time Trippi retired in 1955, he owned the NFL’s all-time record for total offensive yards.
After retiring from the NFL, Trippi went into coaching and spent time with both of the teams where he had been a star, the Cardinals and Georgia. He was selected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1959 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968. He remains the only player in NFL history with more than 1,000 yards rushing, 1,000 yards receiving and 1,000 yards passing in his career.