Love this stuff.
Quick stupid question:
Ted Hendricks- The Mad Stork is another one I’m trusting the history books on. He was really a unique player whose size earned him his nickname and helped propel him to the Pro FB Hall of Fame.
Is it possible that Hendricks earned his nickname by his size/frame and the fact that he his team's mascot was/is a stork-looking thing?
Ted Hendricks was an incredible game changer. He erased half an offense. You just couldn't run a play to his side. I don't know if I've ever seen a player dominate a half of the field the way he did.
I wish there was a video of the O.J. Simpson interview on one of the late night TV shows the winter he won the Heisman. I can still remember it...whether it was the Tonight Show or the Joey Bishop late night show. They took questions from the audience. One audience member asked OJ who the hardest hitting player was that he played. He said the hardest hitting was Kevin Hardy of Notre Dame, but the best "was a guy by the name of Ted Hendricks from the University of Miami...he would never stay blocked." Or words very close to that.
I remember OJ wanting to change the question to who was the best, not who was the hardest hitting. He also opened the sentence by saying "A guy by the name of Ted Hendricks...." He said that because he knew Ted and the University of Miami were not as prominent on the national football scene and he had to kind of introduce him.
That was the respect shown by one of the greats in college football history. Some felt he was the greatest running back in college football history up to that time.
I have some very distinct recollections of that interview and OJ standing up and taking questions from the studio audience.
I can remember that better than I can remember what happened last week.
EDIT: O.J. Simpson received the 1968 Heisman Trophy at the award ceremony dated December 5, 1968.
What is significant is that only one lineman finished in the top ten voting, and that was Ted Hendricks at number five. And he did that by only being among the top five in votes in the South; he did not appear among the top five vote-getters in any other region of the country. That illustrates how little known he was around the country. I'll post the regional and national voting. It is remarkable how well Hendricks did and how good he was given his relative anonymity nationally for a team that was not nationally prominent.
I found a reference to the Joey Bishop late night show that competed with Johnny Carson's Tonight Show that year. O.J. Simpson appeared on that show on December 11, 1968. Unfortunately, I cannot find a video of that program. I also have a recollection that the studio audience from which he was taking questions was a Los Angeles audience. O.J, knew that UM and Hendricks were not very well known on the West Coast. We had gone out there earlier that fall and lost to USC and Simpson, 28-3 in the Coliseum, but we were still not well-known in that part of the country. (Remember, it was pre-ESPN and pre-internet. When I lived in north Florida and Georgia during part of the '60's and in the mid-Atlantic and California in the '70s, all I could hope for was a tiny wire service report of a few sentences in my local newspaper.)
My recollection is that he appeared on late-night TV just shortly after he won the Heisman and received it in NYC. It must have been this appearance on the Joey Bishop Show.
O.J. Simpson on Joey Bishop Show talked about Ted Hendricks
(As an aside, Bishop's sidekick was Regis Philbin--this Notre Dame doofus got his start on this show.)
Here's the data on the 1968 Heisman Voting:
1968 Heisman Voting
As I said, notice that Hendricks did not end up in the top five in any other region besides the South. In the Far West, voters put an obscure fullback for Oregon State, Bill Enyart, in the top five.
If you look at the top ten in the voting, you'll also note that there were only two among the ten who had notable pro careers: Simpson and Hendricks. These are the only two from the list of ten to be elected to the Pro Football HOF.
Ted's accomplishments, both in college and as a pro, are all the more extraordinary, given the limited exposure he received nationally. Simpson was astute to realize that his west coast television studio audience probably was not that familiar with Ted. My recollection is that our 1968 team, which traveled to the West Coast for a night game against USC, kept it close for a half, but OJ had a big second half.
Among all the teams that played Simpson and USC that year, we were third best in yards allowed to and ypc by Simpson. We were even more stout than Number 1 Ohio State, which defeated USC in the Rose Bowl,
We had very tough defenses during that part of the '60's. We just didn't have the offensive firepower to compete with the best.
[Interestingly, our then-AD, Sam Jankovich, commented in the late '80's on the Western bias in voting in national awards. We felt we had a great candidate in '86, Jerome Brown, for honors. Jerome got screwed in the '86 Outland Award which went to a lesser player, Jason Buck of BYU. The next year, Danny Stubbs was one of three finalists for the award which went to Chad Henning of Air Force. That prompted Sam to comment on the fact it went to two westerners in a row. Sam himself was a westerner, having spent most of his life in the Northwest or on the West Coast. I recall vividly a quote from one western sportswriter and voter, who said, almost in so many words, "I don't know much about Jerome Brown. I can't see how he could be the winner because he took time off from playing for a bad toe. I don't see how a player who receives the award should be taking off for something as minor as a bad toe."
I also remember, after Stubbs was snubbed in favor of a less impactful western player, Chad Henning of Air Force, that Sam wanted to increase our exposure in the West. This would help us with national polls, awards, and recruiting. He also recognized that we had problems in getting decent teams to play us. He spoke about a north-south/east-west focus. We would try to schedule more northern teams, and develop regular scheduling with western teams. That is why he scheduled a twenty-year home and home arrangement with San Diego State. That all went by the boards when we were able to get into the Big East. People might not remember, but we had chronic difficulties in getting good games with national teams given our independent status and we were down at the bottom tip of Florida, pretty remote from the types of teams we wanted to play, which did not, at the time, include the SEC.]
