Sport: George Blanda Is Alive and Kicking

One week before the opening of the 1970 season, the Oakland Raiders placed Quarterback George Blanda on waivers. George waited and waited. Then, when none of the other 25 teams in the National Football League offered to sign him, he went back to practicing with the Raiders’ taxi squad. It did not seem to matter that Blanda had scored more points (1,477), kicked more field goals (240), booted more extra points (703) and completed more passes in one game (37) than any player in the history of professional football. He had just turned 43, and as the oldest player in the game, he was the first to admit: “My age is against me. A team has to look for younger players.”

Over the Fingertips. In overlooking Blanda. the Pittsburgh Steelers, Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Browns, among others, only succeeded in looking foolish. Three weeks ago, after the Steelers had knocked the Raiders’ starting quarterback, Daryle Lamonica, out of the game with a back injury, old roly-poly George took over and fired three touchdown passes, kicked three extra points and added a field goal to demolish the Steelers 31-14. Two weeks ago, with the World Champion Chiefs leading 17-14 in a battle for the division lead, Blanda came off the bench to attempt a 48-yd. field goal with just three seconds remaining. The Chiefs stationed 6-ft. 9-in. Tight End Morris Stroud at the goal post to try to jump up and block the ball on its downward flight. Blanda kicked, Stroud leaped, and the ball sailed inches over his fingertips­and over the crossbar. The Raiders had a 17-17 tie and the lead in their division.

Blanda’s heroics against the Steelers and the Chiefs were just a warm-up for his performance against the Browns last week. With four minutes remaining and the Browns leading 20-13, Lamonica left the game with an injured shoulder. On came George to move his offense 70 yards in seven plays. Blanda hit Wide Receiver Warren Wells with a 14-yd. scoring pass to tie the game 20-20 with 1 min. 34 sec. remaining. Then after the Raiders regained the ball on an interception, George completed his seventh pass of the afternoon to set up another last-ditch field-goal attempt with just three seconds left. This time, though, the goal post was 52 yds. away, a distance that Blanda had equaled or surpassed only three times in his 21-year pro career.* Undaunted, he got all of his 218 Ibs. into the kick and boomed a high end-over-ender that won the game 23-20. Said George: “I put a little more rear end into the kick than usual.”

Not Even a Shoe. Blanda has been getting his kicks in pro football ever since 1949 when he joined the Chicago Bears and played with such venerable old fry as Sid Luckman and Bulldog Turner. Son of a Youngwood, Pa., coal miner, George was signed out of the University of Kentucky for a measly $600­which Bear Coach George Halas demanded that he pay back if he made the team. He made it, playing linebacker and filling in as quarterback and place kicker. Never happy under Halas (“He was too cheap to even buy me a kicking shoe”), Blanda came into his own when he switched to the American Football League and led the Houston Oilers to the championship in 1960 and 1961. Rescued from possible retirement in 1967 by the Raiders, he reciprocated by leading the A.F.L. in scoring that year with 116 points; so far this season, he has completed 14 of 24 passes for four touchdowns and kicked 24 extra points and eleven field goals to lead Raider scorers with a total of 57 points.

“The guy almost embarrasses you,” says Raider Center Jim Otto. “He’s out there, 43 years old, running the wind sprints, yelling all the time, coming in to pull it out for us.” Adds Coach John Madden: “I don’t even think of George’s age. If we need him, he’s ready. Besides, I’m the coach and I’m 34, so I’d rather not discuss ages.” Neither would Blanda, who earns $40,000 a year and says he will keep playing “as long as I can walk to the bank.”

* That same afternoon, the New Orleans Saints’ Tom Dempsey, who was born without a right hand and only half a right foot, upset the Detroit Lions 19-17 in the final two seconds with a field goal that traveled 63 yds., seven yards farther than the old record of 56 yds. set in 1953.