BECAUSE IT WAS SUNDAY: The Legend of Jack Youngblood
D.W. Cooper
Copyright 2011 by Tom Zenner, Bravda Velo Publishing and D.W. Cooper
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4658-6816-9
Cover design by: Carl Bezuidenhout
Copy editor: Tim Kuck
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FOREWORD: Rich Eisen of NFL Network
CHAPTER 1: Dawn of a New Day
CHAPTER 2: Role Models
CHAPTER 3: Granddaddy
CHAPTER 4: Big and Gettin’ Bigger
CHAPTER 5: Hunches and Homework
CHAPTER 6: Gator Nation
CHAPTER 7: Young Pup
CHAPTER 8: Impossible Dream
CHAPTER 9: Come Monday
CHAPTER 10: Prime Prospect
CHAPTER 11: Gut Pick
CHAPTER 12: The Will to Belong
CHAPTER 13: Mr. Jones and Merlin
CHAPTER 14: Mr. Muscle Beach
CHAPTER 15: Fort Knox
CHAPTER 16: Of Vikings and Cowboy
CHAPTER 17: No Threshold at All
CHAPTER 18: Because It Was Sunday
CHAPTER 19: Standing Among Giants
CHAPTER 20: Scare of a Lifetime
CHAPTER 21: A Star Redefined
CHAPTER 22: Captain Blood Hangs It Up
Epilogue
Sources
FOREWORD RICH EISEN, NFL NETWORK
As it has always been, the game of professional football will forever be played by men. That’s not to suggest the National Football League will ever go unisex; notice the emphasis on the word “men.”
It may sound obvious but it bears noting in black and white: Not just any man can play in the NFL.
The players who have breathed life into the great game for the past eight decades to help professional football overtake baseball as the national pas-time have been and will always come from a group of men who fearlessly put their livelihoods and reputations on the line each and every game. In fact, these men would not have it any other way.
Indeed, it takes a special type of person to undertake an endeavor in which every snap of the football could possibly be the last. Forever.
I mention this because, one day, when they can grasp the concept, I will tell this to my two little boys. And it won’t be difficult to explain. The reason: I’m going to tell them about Jack Youngblood.
Why?
First, there’s his name itself: Jack Youngblood. It just oozes “football man.” Then there’s the man himself. His resume reads like those fake facts about Chuck Norris that circulate the internet as a joke.
To wit:
• Jack Youngblood played at the University of Florida when they CREATED Gatorade.
• Jack Youngblood played an entire Super Bowl on a broken fibula.
• Jack Youngblood once recorded a sack, forced fumble, blocked kick and pick six…in one game.
• Jack Youngblood’s team plane once included in-flight entertainment from Don Rickles.
• Jack Youngblood ruled the trenches for 14 years and still played in 201 consecutive games.
• Jack Youngblood earned the nickname of “The John Wayne of Football.”
• Jack Youngblood once sacked a quarterback with his mind.
All right. That last fact is false. But I’m sure you believed it.
Because when Jack Youngblood played the game, he seemed larger than life. A virtual Marlboro Man in cleats. In fact, I’ve heard a handful of stories in which Jack was seen in a tunnel underneath the Los Angeles Coliseum taking a smoke break…during halftime.
Of course, in order to project an otherworldly aura like this, one must first possess a talent, passion and dedication to create it and cultivate it. And, boy howdy, Youngblood had all of that in spades. Seven-time Pro Bowler, five-time All-Pro first-teamer and perhaps most important of all: voted by his teammates as the Rams Most Valuable Player three times. His 201 consecutive games played still stands as a Rams franchise record today. So do his 17 playoff starts.
And then there’s that time when he did indeed play in Super Bowl XIV on a broken leg…and then played on that same leg in the Pro Bowl the very next week. In case you’re wondering, no fewer than 19 players declined to appear in the 2011 Pro Bowl – in Hawaii, no less – citing injuries or the need to recuperate from a long playing season. None of these players suffered from a snapped fibula.
Yes, one day, when my sons ask me what a football player is or what a football player looks like, I will hand them this book and tell them all about Jack Youngblood and to play the game like him. Except for, you know, the halftime smoke breaks and whatever else a star lineman who played in Los Angeles in the 1970s did off the field.
That said: for all of us who talk pigskin for a living and live and breathe and cherish the sport every day, thank the football gods for making Jack Youngblood and allowing us to enjoy him. And to enjoy this version of “True Grit” with the NFL’s version of John Wayne.
Rich Eisen, Host, NFL Network
CHAPTER 1: DAWN OF A NEW DAY
The year 1950 is considered the beginning of pro football’s modern era. After the Philadelphia Eagles’ 14-0 defeat of the Rams in a soggy Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum brought the curtain down on the 1949 season, a merger between the National Football League and All-America Football Conference was announced. The Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts joined the NFL, and brought the league’s count to 13 teams.
In those days, trailblazing quarterbacks like Y.A. Tittle, Otto Graham, Bobby Layne and Slingin’ Sammy Baugh scrambled from the relentless pursuit of rough-and-tumble defensive stalwarts like Chuck Bednarik, Art Donovan, Ernie Stautner, and Andy Robustelli. That generation of the NFL defensive players could correctly be categorized as a group of toothless and bloody warriors who ignored pain for the pleasure of the kill, with the quarterbacks serving as the prey.
Just over a month after the 1949 title game, in the foggy, early morning hours of January 26, 1950, in Jacksonville, Florida, Jack and Kay Youngblood welcomed their first child, an eight-pound, 21-inch, blue-eyed boy named Herbert Jackson Youngblood III. How young “Jacky” came to be, originated on a bus ride.
A blue collar man if there ever was one, Jack’s work ethic came from his father, Herbert Jackson, who labored building road systems before his career as the long-reigning sheriff of Nassau County in the northeast corner of Florida. Continuing the custom, Jack went straight to work upon graduating from high school. In 1941, he volunteered to fight, but was denied due to a heart condition. As a child, he suffered a bout of rheumatic fever, which enlarged his heart.
For some time after, he drove Greyhound buses for long and unsafe stretches through Florida’s back roads. On one such grueling route, from Jacksonville to Birmingham, the slender, 6-foot-2 country boy with charm and Cary Grant looks, met a pretty redheaded girl from Alabama with soft eyes and a warm smile named Kay Jackson. They fell in love along the way and married shortly thereafter. Jacky was born a few months later.
In 1957, the Youngblood family, which then also included daughters Paula and Lynn, moved from Fernandina Beach, Florida, to Orlando, before finally settling in Jefferson County. The Youngblood’s liked the simply southern feel of the city of Monticello, nestled along Florida’s border with Georgia, midway between Jacksonville and Pensacola, thirty miles east of Tallahassee.
Settled in 1827, Jefferson County spreads south to the Gulf of Mexico across rolling hills, rivers, and swamplands. Lakes and ponds of all sizes dot the countryside. By the late 1800’s, the region would come to produce two major foodstuffs – watermelon and pecans. For many years, the annual Pecan Bowl in Monticello was played for high school football bragging rights.
Rich with turn-of-the-century lore, Monticello could well have been conjured up from a William Faulkner novel. Named for Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home, the town was and still is mostly working class, generations of farmers, lumberjacks, hunters and fishermen coming and going. Burrowed along its tree-lined streets are antebellum homes with broad porches. Acres and acres of farms, pastures, preserves, woods and swamps flank the territory just outside of town.
When the Youngblood’s arrived in 1957, Monticello, with 1,800 residents, was a slice of Mayberry U.S.A. The town had just one stop light, but one hundred fishing holes. Jack bought a Standard Oil station on North Jefferson, where he pumped gas, changed oil, and, unlike others, provided upkeep on giant logging rigs. Once he established a trustworthy reputation, he secured a loan to build a quaint home for his family on a rolling pasture with three bedrooms, one bath and a wood-burning furnace.
As the child of a Southern-bred sheriff, Jack ran a disciplined, God-fearing household, which meant Sunday school in the mornings and church in the afternoons. First Baptist on Washington Street was the children’s second home. A deep and abiding faith was paramount and something Jacky never lost grip of. In the summer, he went to “vacation” bible school in Monticello. Discipline was judicious.
One time, when Lynn was four, Jack brought home chewing gum for the girls. “She opened five pieces, stuck ‘em all in her mouth, and threw the crumpled wrappers on the floor,” recalled her brother. “Daddy said, ‘Pick ‘em up.’ She sat there, looked up at him, and kept right on chewing, not paying one bit of attention. Well, he picked her up right there and swatted that behind. I think it was the last time she disobeyed.” On most days after school Jacky could be found piddling around, fussing with parts at his daddy’s station. In greasy uniform, a smiling Jack greeted his wide-eyed, dimpled son with a pat on his buzzed-cut noggin. On sweltering afternoons, Jacky climbed up on the Coca-Cola cooler and washed down Lance Fresh cheese crackers with ice-cold chocolate milk. All the while, his gregarious father shot the breeze with customers, laughed all day, and made cars and trucks run smoother than ever. Everyone in the county knew and admired him for his decency and work ethic. Up through fall of 1958, Jack put in a day’s work as if it were his last. And his son soaked it all up atop coolers and under transmissions.
Beneath the laughter and backslaps, though, beat an old man’s heart – a heart with a hole in it. Stubborn or not, Jack refused to allow his worsening condition to restrict his passions: hunting, fishing, and family. His attitude, Jacky believed, was that if it hurt, he’d be fine later; and if it didn’t hurt, maybe it would go away altogether. As we would come to see, the Young-bloods’ characteristic snubbing of pain was a genetic trait.
To his kids, Jack was a genuine hero. On Christmas 1958, Jack presented his son with the perfect coming-of-age present – a .410 bore shotgun. “I wasn’t along just for the walk,” said Youngblood, who used his daddy’s favorite 16 gauge Browning as he got older. Back then, father and son could walk out the backdoor, hunt a covey of birds, chase squirrels at the creek line, or catch blue gill and bass before suppertime. After prayer, the family enjoyed simple but bountiful feasts. “He never took it easy, but he knew he’d have to pay for it one day.”
The heroes Jacky idolized as a young boy were his daddy, his momma, granddaddy, and an occasional bird dog – not the defensive stalwarts of the newfound NFL… and certainly not those trailblazing quarterbacks.
CHAPTER 2: ROLE MODELS
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil…”
– Psalm 23:4
His heart unable to pump as it should, Jack was in and out of Archbold Hospital in Thomasville, Georgia for most of 1959. He never revealed much about his dire condition to his family, but his children sensed something was wrong when they found their normally up-with-the-sun-and-off-to¬work daddy in bed all day long, disappearing only for treatments. Business suffered without him at the station. The girls squabbled over who got to play nurse and make him comfortable in the hospital bed Kay had installed. It was an old-fashioned hand-crank, the kind where the feet went up, the knees bent, and the back straightened.
Tuesday, January 26, 1960, was supposed to be a big day. Jacky was turning ten. But it wouldn’t be a birthday celebration he would remember fondly. Jack’s courageous heart gave out as his son was sleeping – cruel fate of the highest order.
“They took daddy away after I had gone to bed,” Jacky said. “The next morning I was buttoning my shirt, getting ready for school, when momma came in and told me, ‘You’re not going to school today.’ Right away I knew something was wrong. Then she told me daddy was dead.” He allowed himself to cry as any boy would. And through the tears of a child, came the strength of a young man who put the needs of his family first. “I had two sisters and figured it was up to me to support them. Here I was, ten years old, thinking ‘I need to go find a job.’ I was the man of the house.” His momma, with a heart as big as her children’s imaginations, broke down at her son’s noble proposition. She tried to reassure him that everything would be okay. “You’re gonna hunker down and plow through,” she said, “and you’re gonna get out of bed and go to school every day.”
Kay didn’t allow the three children to witness their father’s burial on January 29 at Roseland Cemetery. She was channeling her husband’s manner of dealing with his own imperfect heart. Kay knew the hurt the kids would feel wouldn’t go away later if they saw their father’s casket being lowered into its grave. Her only hope was that it wouldn’t hurt if they avoided it altogether.
“Big Red” to her kids, Kay was made of pure Alabama backbone. Her father was a sheriff in Dorr County and taught her to be resourceful and self-sufficient. She had a job with the Florida Power Corporation, but the times were lean in the years following Jack’s death. Still, seeking charity was not an option.
She worked “two jobs, too many times,” according to her son. If two jobs didn’t work, then she would take a third. Without complaint, dogged and determined, Kay ensured here children wanted for nothing, a deep-in¬the-bones belief that would serve her son well in critical moments of his life. They never went hungry; a tribute to her Irish roots was how she could make a meal last for days. “The miracle of the five loaves and two fish, that was the fundamental lesson, and she proved it over and over,” he said. “Momma could make a loaf of bread, a quart of mayonnaise and tomatoes feed us for a week.” She kept a garden and grew enough in the summer to offset shortages later. Some days it was bologna and powdered milk. Others, especially if Granddaddy Youngblood brought homemade sausage from his farm, Big Red made to-die-for biscuits and gravy. “I remember sitting at the dinner table many a time and we’d have chicken,” her son recalled years later, overcome by emotion, “but she wouldn’t eat anything but the little wings. I’d say, ‘Take the breast, momma. ‘No,’ she would say, ‘that’s for you, and the girls get the thighs.’ I didn’t realize how truly sacrificial that was at the time. There was just enough for everyone.”
Kay did not date or marry again. Her eyes never quite regained the sparkle they once had, but she did the best she could to be everything her kids needed her to be. One thing she couldn’t be for Jacky, however, was a male role model.
A man’s depth of character and convictions is shaped by life’s experiences. And Jacky would be shaped by the men closest to him following the passing of his father. During the summer, he worked on his granddaddy’s farm, about three hours away in Hilliard, Florida. It was there on the ranch that Jacky soaked in a lifetime’s worth of wisdom. “I’d be cutting grass and getting tired and lazy, maybe slacking off a bit and that wasn’t lost on granddaddy,” he said. “Many a time I heard, ‘Boy, if you’re gonna do it, you better do it right, and finish what you start.’” Jacky learned that everything you do, you do it with purpose. “There were times when I wasn’t too confident or felt sorry for myself, and he’d tell me to do everything to the best of my ability and expect excellence. I guess it stuck.”
Only a few miles away, at Kay’s sister Polly’s farm, Jacky absorbed more down-to-earth lessons. Polly’s husband, Julian Nobles, a left-handed pitcher in the minors with the Thomasville Tigers and Americus Phillies before an injury ended his career, treasured the eager young boy as if he were his own. He had seen things in life. During World War II, Nobles served on a naval transport vessel, moving soldiers to and from distant shores. One day, deep in the Pacific, his companion ship was torpedoed and sunk. He watched helplessly on deck as men drowned, burned in the fiery wreckage, and were devoured by sharks. He never talked about the horrific incident.
And it never left him. He devoted himself to working tirelessly to provide for and protect his family, and these principles were not lost on his nephew.
As for school, Jacky was, by all accounts, a good and attentive student. He always did his homework on time and retained information like a sponge. It would be fair to say he was a budding scholar, captivated with science, biology and astronomy. On star-burned nights, he pondered how Einstein developed theories, how Oppenheimer gained knowledge on physics, and how men might someday travel to distant planets. “Divine intervention,” the young scientist believed. He also possessed a passion for Greek and Roman history. In daydreams, he transported himself to ancient times, not as a conquering warrior on mythological battlefields, but as a student of the roots of language and ancient philosophies that advanced whole civilizations.
Monticello was and still is Youngblood’s beating heart. Back then, though, kids in town realized that while home was where the heart was, the only way to feed the mind was to pursue an education elsewhere. Most parents couldn’t afford to send their children to four-year universities, in-state or otherwise. It was a hand-to-mouth community, and perhaps Kay and her kids embodied that better than anyone. Save the small few who did leave for higher education, by and large the boys of Monticello attended local junior colleges in pursuit of their dreams.
CHAPTER 3: GRANDDADDY
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”
– Ecclesiastes 9:10
Born in Thomasville, Georgia in 1895, Herbert Jackson Youngblood followed in the footsteps of his father, Francis, the superintendent of county convicts in Brooks County, Georgia, and began a fabled law enforcement career in 1915, which stretched for more than 50 years. He was superintendent of roads in Suwannee County, a rural northwest Florida town, for five years before moving his family to Fernandina Beach in Nassau County to become head of the county road department.
He stood guard for 20 years as captain over the chain gang and, in that role, is credited with constructing the backbone of the present-day Nassau County road system. Bound with leg irons and wearing striped uniforms, the prisoners, aided by mules, cut down trees and uprooted stumps to carve out more than 300 hundred miles of roads from swamps and pine forests. Youngblood’s guards monitored prisoners with bloodhounds and shotguns. Even then, a few tried to escape. He fascinated his grandson with stories of chasing prisoners in snake-infested marshes. He was also scarred by violent run-ins with convicts – a crooked trigger finger broken when a prisoner tried to snatch a pistol from his grasp; a missing toe from a shotgun blast after another tried to pull it away.
During his years as road superintendent, Youngblood earned the nickname, “Cap.” When prisoners saw the tall man with a tie and hat striding toward, they would say, “Here comes Cap’n. We’re gonna go to work now.” When riots and mischief occurred in camps alongside the roads, the Governor called on Cap and he solved problems. Of all the accounts of Youngblood’s reign on those roads, his granddaughter Paula shared one that stands out as the image of a man who was both feared and respected. After an uprising one summer night, Cap gathered prisoners around the camp fire. Furious, they yelled, “Cap’n, we have fleas, and they won’t do nothin’ about it, they’re eatin’ us up!” Instead of punishing them and allowing the problem to fester and escalate, Cap dealt compassionately with the issue. Right then, he ordered them to clean out the tents and place infested mattresses and clothing in a pile, where they burned everything to the ground. Within days, Cap’s laborers received new bedding and uniforms. And there was never again a problem in camp.
In 1932, Cap lost his first election for sheriff of Nassau County by a single vote in a controversial recount. He did not lose another, and went on to be re-elected six times. For more than a quarter century (1941-69), Youngblood’s commanding shadow cast across the county, and it meant law and order. As Teresa Burney described in a 1981 Florida Times-Union profile, his name and picture stared down from billboards along the county’s 649 square miles, warning speeding visitors to “Take your time, not your life.” The name “H.J. Youngblood, Sheriff, Nassau County” was in black and white on every car in the force. Nassau County Judge J.E. Weatherford told Burney, “He was known as being a law enforcement tiger. He had a heart as big as this table here, but you would never know it to look at him. He just looked like an old-time sheriff.”
Standing 6-foot-4, Cap struck an imposing figure. He wore a white, ten-gallon Stetson, which made him appear even more intimidating. He was also known for his signature cowboy boots and thick black eyeglasses, and he never went a day without a tie (Cap wore a suit and tie during a visit to Hawaii to see his grandson play in the 1980 Pro Bowl, albeit with a lei draped around his neck). A cigar was usually jammed in his crooked finger, described Burney. The permanent scowl on his face could make even the most hardened criminal wince. In essence he was an old-style version of 6-foot-6 folk hero Sheriff Buford T. Pusser, the one-man war on moonshiners and gamblers depicted in the movie, Walking Tall.
In the suffering and prejudice of the Jim Crow era, the sheriff was, by most versions, crime blind. The Office of Sheriff, in his view, was to be the peace officer that upheld the law without prejudice. Cap’s doctrine meant pursuing anyone – black or white, rich or poor, moonshiners or gamblers – for violating statutes. One night, it was reported, Cap and his posse walked straight through Evans’ Rendezvous Nightclub on American Beach, out to the porch, picked up the winnings from the table, and arrested the gambling entourage. In 1952, Cap orchestrated the capture of James Francis Hill at a road block, which put an end to a series of kidnappings, assaults, and robberies along his roads. The local newspaper ran a photograph the next day of a proud sheriff standing alongside his deputies, freed kidnapping victims, and a table of confiscated weapons, as Hill and another convict looked on dejectedly in the background. Local lore is that people worried more about going to the sheriff’s two-story red-brick jail on Third Street than they did about much else. All through Cap’s fiefdom, deputies made arrests for just about anything including disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, reckless driving, and possession of guns. In 1984, Nassau County Sheriff, Laurie Ellis, whom Youngblood hired 20 years earlier, remarked, “He was just known for being a good and honest sheriff.”
With Cap, he didn’t preach it, he showed it, a life proverb carried on by his earnest young grandson, who followed him around the fields in Hilliard yearning to learn all he could about farming, tractors, horses, and cattle. The love for farming was passed down through generations of Youngbloods, too, dating back to the early 19th century when Thomas and Elizabeth plowed Georgia crops.
One time, Cap presented his granddaughters with prized calves to raise, show and sell (according to her brother, however, Lynn took granddaddy’s gifts, fed them, and turned them into pets). Never one to show emotion, his gesture was a reminder of how much he cared about his fatherless grandchildren. During summer nights at the farm, Jacky fell asleep listening to chatter between deputies and the controller coming through a pair of speakers and an old transmitter, which were positioned next to Cap’s bed. Sheriff Youngblood was never off duty. “Many times, he would come in to my room, shake me, and ask, ‘You wanna go?’ I’d be coming out of a deep sleep, get dressed, jump in that car, and we’d be off on some wild goose chase, racing to the scene.” Beneath his fearsome glare lurked a caring man who made sure his son’s family was safe and secure. He kept an extra sharp eye on his grandson.
Back home, Jacky and his pack of buddies ran neighborhoods and fields. Not of the Greases and Socs variety. They didn’t do bad or hateful things. Besides, if he even thought of jumping a fence, an alert had already been sent thanks to Cap’s extra eye. Alcohol and drugs, too, was the farthest thing from the kids’ minds in Monticello. The front page in the Fernandina News Leader on March 28, 1963, read: Sheriff Arrests Four in Crackdown on Sale of Alcoholic Beverages to Minors. Jacky didn’t stand a chance.
The boys, including Tommy Richter, Ricky Davis, and Turnbull Anderson found just enough trouble to be dangerous. That is, if shooting BB guns, fighting in tree houses, and climbing water towers are considered dangerous deeds. “We climbed about 300 feet, to the top of Monticello, and only by the grace of God we survived. Someone at the top falls and we all die,” he recalled. “So we get up there with a bucket of blue paint and say, ‘we’re gonna put our mark on this thing.’” One by one, the mischievous boys painted their initials across the tower’s face – “JY”, “TR”, “RD” and “TA”. Before daylight, suspects were identified. “We get to school and guess who’s waiting in the parking lot? The sheriff and chief of police asked me, ‘Did you paint that tower, Jacky?’ First thing I said was, ‘No sir, it wasn’t us.’ That didn’t work out too well, so I fessed up.” Jacky never wanted to let his family down. Accountability was instilled in him as a virtue.
“Momma was afraid of the dark and, after daddy died, we were all afraid,” said Paula. “Our granddaddy had a barn a ways down from the house. One night around nine o’clock, he told Jacky, ‘Go down to the stables.’ Being out in the country, it’s darker than you can imagine and the pathway wasn’t lit. Jacky said, a little apprehensively, ‘But it’s dark out there.’ He didn’t want to go. But he didn’t want to disappoint granddaddy. So he got up the courage and went. He was scared to death at every step. What he didn’t know, though, was that granddaddy watched him the whole way. He even called down to his farmhands and told them to watch for him. When he got back up, granddaddy said, ‘There isn’t anything in the dark that isn’t there in the daylight, so don’t be afraid of what you don’t know.’”
CHAPTER 4: BIG AND GETTIN’ BIGGER
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas Edison
Jefferson County High School’s football tradition was built upon the beefy shoulders of country boys. Looking more like a long-legged, 100-pound crane, Jacky Youngblood was the furthest thing from that image as a sixth grader. As awkward as an empty dance card, he had two left feet, clumsy mitts, and limbs that moved in the same direction at the same time. The biggest thing on him was his ears, he used to joke. He had “future lineman” written across that scrawny chest.
In those early years, however, playing football had a little more to do with winning girls than games. The dimpled, blue-eyed soon-to-be-teen was an amiable ladies’ man. He was quite the roller skating phenom, too. In snug blue jeans and his own pair of white skates with red toe stops and shoelaces, Youngblood held court at the local rink, impressing giggling girls by skating – backwards – to the 1962 hit, “The Duke of Earl.” The game of football, it appeared, was the farthest thing from his mind as Jacky doo-wopped all over the floor.
He may have liked the girls, but Youngblood’s inherent competitiveness also emerged. Whether playing football, baseball, home run derby, red rover, you name it – he loved to compete against the best and oldest of the bunch. When teams were divided up, it fueled his motivation and simmering intensity when he wasn’t chosen. ‘I’m not gonna let Larry run by me even though he’s 25 pounds bigger,’ he’d say to himself, letting the snubs burn in his gut.
Without Pop Warner football, a sixth grade Youngblood tried out for the junior high team, the B squad to Jefferson County High School’s varsity comprised mostly of seventh and eighth graders. The problem was his elongated shin bones were growing much faster than his calf bones. Painful knotted calcium crustaceous formed in his knees. “I was growing so fast that they felt infected all the time, they were on fire like a fever,” he said. “It was a horrible aching pain.” Pulling on a pair of jeans was agonizing. Saddling a horse was nearly impossible. And being hit on the knees in football practice caused severe inflammation on impact. At twelve, Youngblood questioned if he could even walk correctly let alone play the game he was growing to love. Faced with failure, Jacky was determined to get through the growing pains one way or another. That persistence was a measurement of faith in his abilities. A familiar voice inside told him so. His father, a letterman at Fernandina Beach High, couldn’t be stopped on the field, a real wild man, even with a hole in his heart. His courage resonated in his son’s. After sitting out the season, Jacky’s natural talent and resolve to be the best earned him a spot on the junior varsity team the next year as a seventh grader. He started taking the game seriously and made excitingly positive strides. In the fall of 1962, Jacky experienced his first taste of action in the trenches as a two-way starter at defensive tackle and offensive guard. Varsity was in his sights.
In the 1960’s in rural, northern Florida, there were two NFL teams to root for: the storied Washington Redskins and the Atlanta Falcons, who joined in 1966. Every Redskins game could be seen on television. In front of the tube, however, was the last place you would find Youngblood and his pals. They were too busy playing, hunting or fishing to care much about what the pros were doing. “I wasn’t that interested in pro football,” he said. “We had birds to hunt and the only reason we played football was for competition. It wasn’t about trying to advance to another level or play on television, which was the farthest thing from our minds.” So up north, as future Hall of Famers like Sonny Jurgensen, Tommy Nobis, Claude Humphrey, Sam Huff, and Chris Hanburger roamed the turf, and the fledgling NFL became an American ritual, Jacky couldn’t have cared less.
His depth of talent was, at the time, relatively un-mined, but the game also became a channel for his uncommon drive to improve and succeed as he entered his junior year in 1965. Under the searing summer sun, he rolled up his sleeves and worked the land on Cap’s farm, put in a good day’s work at a local gas station, and stretched his muscles crating watermelons. Over time, those one-time bumps became bigger biceps. His thighs got thicker. His gangly body started to align itself. Even as a 15-year-old playing a ferocious game with kids almost two years older, Youngblood held his own. Football paralleled his adolescent maturation, and thus began to forge his identity.
Tiger football was a Friday night religion in Monticello. The game’s innocence, in some respects, was preserved in the hearts of those who cheered and competed. Anticipation was at a fever-pitch all day. A bit more aw¬shucks than most, Youngblood didn’t pay much attention to local adoration of players. In small-town football, anyway, quarterbacks always get the girls. The game wasn’t about notoriety, or, for that matter, girls any longer.
During crisp fall nights, the slow-setting sun gave way to booming kickoffs at Memorial Stadium. For the Youngbloods, the game was a source of strong family pride. Big number 52 had an equally intense cheering squad. Paula even entertained in sequins, cool boots and a shiny baton as majorette of the school band. Lynn played clarinet. Big Red might well have thrown on pads what with her occasional testy, err, passionate exchanges with coaches and refs. She had a zeal for football, her son came to know, and the girls just adored their gangly homespun hero. Sometimes after elementary school, Lynn anxiously waited for him to reach the playground for his walk home after football practice. Baby sis wasn’t along just for a stroll. “She ambushed me from the merry-go-round,” he laughed. She skipped alongside, nearly stepping on his heels, as he tried to dodge the tiny, pig-tailed rascal. “Give me a dime, Jacky! I want chocolate milk! Give me a dime!” she chirped over and over until her sweaty, exhausted brother surrendered. So much for hero worship.
Epiphanies don’t come easy. Even for those who believe in fate, as Jacky did. This, however, was one of those rare times that the forces of the universe and God – and maybe a slight nudge from Deacon Jones – were sending him a sign: it’s your time. The tale unspools under an autumn sky in 1965. As practice wound down, Coach Bill McRae put the Tigers through a primal competition aptly called, “Last Man Standing.” It was survival of the fittest. Lord of the Flies, Southern-style. As adrenaline surged, the team formed a circle. Inside, on coach’s whistle, two rabid players launched from three-point stances, slammed into each other in a series of collisions, and did everything to knock the other out of the ring of battle. The team shouted, jumped and fist-pumped like barbarians. You’d half expect them to wager bets.
As fate would have it, on this day, Youngblood came face-to-face with Herman Walker. Neckless in shoulder pads, Walker was the Tigers’5-foot-9, 220-pound senior guard from Wacissa River, swampland known for otters, water snakes, alligators, and bully fish like stumpknockers and shellcrackers. Herman looked as if he wrestled a gator for breakfast. And then ate him. “He was meaner than a snake,” remarked Youngblood years later. He was also the Tigers’ best lineman, “Conrad Dobler of northern Florida – all heart and ass.” Youngblood, who was playing offensive line and linebacker, knew that to prove his mettle; he would have to get past the bulldog. “This was mano-a-mano, and I was determined not to allow Herman a chance to kill me. I won the first round. Coach said, ‘Line up and do it again.’ He won the second. By now, we’re stark raving mad. ‘Best out of three,’ coach says.
I won that third round.” As teammates hollered, the epiphany arrived in the time it took to catch his breath. “At that moment, I believed that I could compete against the best – and win at that level. That’s what I’d been chasing. Everybody has one of those moments, where the challenge is greater than anything you’ve ever faced. And, if you win that challenge, the feeling overwhelms you. You’re full of confidence. I think Herman’s still pissed at me.”
Beating back swamp creatures is one thing, but overcoming an otherwise meaningless season is another. The underachieving Tigers won only five games in 1965, a disappointment to the team, townsfolk and boosters. McRae stepped down as coach to concentrate on teaching. Returning players scratched their heads. For them, talent and athleticism weren’t the issues. Running back Ricky Davis and quarterback Tommy Richter had interest from colleges. What the team lacked was discipline, maybe even old-fashioned motivation, a challenge to be the best. Too often, the team unraveled late in games and was unable to sustain momentum. And losing didn’t always properly channel Youngblood’s rough-and-tumble disposition.
Late in a game against Madison County, he got tossed after a brawl with 200-pound senior center, Randy Mickler. “Golly Moses! Jack couldn’t hear the whistle or couldn’t care less about the whistle,” said the man who might be the only one to have ever gotten Youngblood out of a game. “He got up swinging and, I mean, we were going full blow right there at the 40-yard line.” Despite the team’s lapses and occasional skirmishes, the tall, skinny boy with big ears and a mean streak emerged as one of the top defenders in the Big Bend Region. So much so, that the Democrat News hailed him as lineman of the week following his performance in the season’s only bright spot, an 18-0 shutout of Perry High, a game in which he also blocked a punt to set up a touchdown.
As Christmas neared, disappointment lingered from the hum drum season. Pressure built to find a coach and restore a proud city’s pigskin morale. That is where Desmond “Dude” Bishop stepped in. He was the Jefferson County superintendent of schools and a fixture in Monticello for decades. He made one call to Gene Cox, an outstanding coach who led the Tigers to 24 wins in three seasons during his time in Monticello from 1958 to 1960. At the time, Cox coached at Leon High in Tallahassee, a dominant program in the shadow of Florida State. He led teams to state championships and molded plenty of All-Americans. If he knew anything, it was good coaching. After his chat with Dude, and as quick as a sip of coffee, Cox went straight to his young defensive assistant, Brent Hall, who had also coached at powerhouse, Live Oak. “Gene came up to me one morning and asked, ‘You think you’re ready to be a head coach?’ I said, ‘Yes sir, I am,’ and he said, ‘Well, call Dude.’”
As his nickname suggests, Dude was as big as he was bombastic. And as chief of schools, he was an advocate of old-fashioned discipline, a component of winning football games he believed the Tigers sorely lacked. Among the assorted knee slapping, backroom tales about Dude, a University of Florida graduate no less, were some cringe-worthy accounts of his own brand of punishment. One such story was that if a student disobeyed or acted up in class, Dude had a nasty proclivity to amble up and down rows of desks, like a prison guard would, and slowly and methodically roll an enormous college ring between his thick fingers as he zeroed in on the offender. And, when least expected, he thwacked that boulder on the boy’s head. Folks claim Jacky received his share of Gator welts.
“First thing Dude asked me was, ‘What’s your feeling on discipline?” said Hall. “Then he launched into a verbal epistle on discipline and how important it was.” According to coach, the thing that roasted Dude the most was that on the night the Tigers lost their final game to finish even, players went out and pulled pranks, as if losing was a prelude to a night of fun, silliness and cow tipping. “I told him, ‘No wonder they got beat, they wouldn’t have had the energy to play and win.’ I believed strongly that discipline went hand and glove with winning, and also building tradition and character. I made no apologies for that kind of commitment.” Dude bit, hard. “An hour later, I had the job.”
Around the time Youngblood earned all-county, the Los Angeles Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome” was gang-tackling, bull-rushing, sacking quarterbacks, and causing all kinds of chaos in the NFL. Not that Jack noticed much. Going into his final high school season, the rangy 6-foot-4, 196-pound center-linebacker was among Hall’s diamonds in the rough. “If you gave them vision, demanded every ounce of everything they had, they could be winners,” he believed. “But they’d never been pushed that hard before.” Fortunately, Youngblood responded naturally to good coaching. Equal parts defensive theorist and unbending taskmaster, Hall had been an integral part of winning traditions at several schools throughout Florida. His career, which included three state titles, was celebrated years later with induction into the Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The Ohio native had a knack for mining and shaping potential. And Youngblood needed strident re-shaping. His momma once told the Gainesville Sun that her son had the “heart of a kitten” and “didn’t like to fight.” All good and well, but histories don’t lie. Youngblood was in Principal Cooley’s office a few too many times. When Coach Hall arrived on campus, that all changed. The rabble-rouser got straightened out. With his sudden evolution into a focused and motivated beast-in-cleats, it might be said that quarterbacks became endangered. On the threshold of his senior season, the new coach became another important voice in Youngblood’s life – and his influence was immense.
CHAPTER 5: HUNCHES AND HOMEWORK
“Dear Fellow Tiger,
As you well know we are soon to start another football season. The coaching staff hopes you have a good summer and share our eagerness to get back to work in rebuilding Tiger Football. We will begin practice on August 15 at 6:00 A.M. You will need a pair of shorts and T-shirt. Afternoon practices will be scheduled at a meeting to be held before our first practice on the 15th of August. Use whatever time you have left to do some running and getting in shape. We are looking forward to seeing you again on the 15th.”
– Brent Hall Head Coach
One fact lost on those who played against him and which was often overlooked by scouts, was that Youngblood was only 16-years old as a senior. His potential to grow bigger, taller and stronger was enormous. He didn’t know where his arms and legs were all the time, but his coordination started to connect as training intensified under Hall. He was feeling more at ease in his body and confident learning the mechanics of his positions – center, guard and linebacker. The lessons from home settled into his bones. A fierce desire to become the best burned beneath. And, to be truthful, it couldn’t be coached. It was innate like an animal in the wild. It was a Youngblood thing. “He was a big, raw-boned boy with potential,” recalled Hall. “Jacky didn’t know how great he could be.”
In the opening game at home, Hall’s boys faced Woodham High, a new school out of Pensacola in the larger class AA. In the course of the 7-6 loss, Youngblood and Richter had 11 bad snap exchanges. To make matters worse, Youngblood had five holding penalties – all in the first half. At halftime, the coach pulled his discouraged center aside and told him to concentrate on defense. “I was embarrassed after getting pulled,” he said. “Their nose tackle was 5-foot-7, and I couldn’t catch him, he was too quick. I told myself, ‘I’m gonna do whatever it takes to block him.’ It seemed like I got called for 15 yards every time I reached out my arms.” After the initial shame - and sting of being replaced by a sophomore, no less – he thought the idea of focusing on one thing might not be too bad. Coach, though, wasn’t finished coaching.
“After the game, I took Jacky and Tommy in a side room, off the locker room, and sat them down. I said, ‘Gentlemen, we got beat because of one of you in this room. I don’t know whether it was Jacky not getting ball up to Tommy, or Tommy pulling his hands back before the ball got there, but I’m gonna find out.’” At that point, his all-county players braced for the inevitable. “Jacky, you’re not ever gonna play center for me again.” His eyes got real big. “Well who’s gonna snap?” Coach said, “Let me worry about that.” And then, “Tommy, if we have the same issue next week with a new center, you’re the problem, and you will never play quarterback for me again.” Tough-nosed and decisive as he was, Hall also had intuitiveness to know how not to lose players. “Before he left, I told Jacky, ‘Son, you have the potential to be best linebacker I have ever coached. Trust me on this, I promise you. Just give me what I ask from you on defense.” It was a perceptive move, indeed. There were no more bad snaps – and no more losses.
To travel to their first away game in Mayo, the Tigers boarded an old yellow bus, not a slick Greyhound that players at bigger schools had the luxury of traveling in. But coach earned points for style. “We had a rule that when you got on the bus, you better have a white shirt and a tie,” Hall said. Florida in September is subtropical. Not the climate for tight collars, especially on 16 and 17 year olds. “It was five minutes before we were scheduled to pull out when Jacky comes walking down the sidewalk dressed in an open shirt with no tie. ‘You’re not getting on the bus,’ I said. He was a little surprised. ‘I got to go,’ he said. And I told him, ‘No, you don’t have a tie, son.’ Then I turned to Mr. Sasser, our driver who carried the kids home after practice four days a week, ‘Give him five minutes to get a tie and back on this bus. If he’s not here, we’re pulling out and he can get a ride with his buddies. They can watch the game. We’re gonna go play football.’”
After a slight shrug, Youngblood disappeared. “The look on his face was priceless,” said Hall. “He was 16 and full of fire and vinegar. He put me to the test, wanted to see how serious I was. He realized I was fixin’ to leave him. He wasn’t gone five minutes before he came up the sidewalk at a half trot, straightening his tie. He got on the bus and I said, ‘Mr. Sasser, we’re ready to go.’ You had to keep Jacky in line. But once he knew the score, what he needed to do, you had one hellacious player. We won 38-0. I’m sure he stashed that tie someplace.”
The Tigers had a renewed focus. Not to mention a dominating defense that froze out more opponents than Mother Nature. In fact, Youngblood led an effort that saw four of their first six opponents denied even one point. Hosting perennial powerhouse Florida High, coached by former Alabama tackle and Florida State assistant, Dick Flowers, the Tigers had a chance to make local history and, at the same time, snap the Demons’ 11-game win streak. Not exactly Hoosiers, but you get the drift. They had never beaten the Class B bully. It was a big deal for Monticello’s pride. Because of his substantial reputation, Flowers had the luxury of recruiting top players in the region to his college football breeding ground. “When I walked out on field and saw their players, I thought, ‘Holy Toledo.’ Their tight end was about 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, and their tailback, something like, 6-foot-2, 225 pounds. They had some athletes… intimidating.”
The night before the game, Hall dined with Dynamite Goodloe Jr., the legendary recruiter for Georgia Tech in town to scribble notes on Florida High’s elite players, including said giant-sized tight end, Karl Wiess, who signed with Vanderbilt, and the tailback that had Hall concerned, future Tech recruit, Doug Mullins. At about 5-feet-6 and 240 pounds, Dynamite resembled a cross between Mickey Rooney and Al Capone. Despite his physique, he had an outstanding athletic career playing football at Tech, and, as one of the best and most colorful U.S. amateur golfers, competed with Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson in many tournaments including The Masters and British Open. Dynamite joined Tech’s staff in 1959 as freshman football coach and Bobby Dodd’s top recruiter. “I told him over dinner, ‘If Mullins gets the ball, our guys will nail him for a loss.’” Coach nearly won the bet.
In a game that many still consider one of the most thrilling in the county’s rich football history, the Tigers pulled off the stunning upset and beat the Demons, 21-20, a nail-biting tussle in which Youngblood and the defense took no prisoners. On the opening kickoff, Terry Walker, Herman’s brother, caused a fumble and returned it for a touchdown. The score was 7-0 with only a few seconds elapsed on the clock. On the final play of the first half, the Demons scored on a 38-yard touchdown. Monticello was buzzing. A confident Tigers squad went into the locker room up, 14-13. After an impassioned speech from Hall, Youngblood was ready to finish what he’d started. And he was as menacing as a runaway train. “They never put a hand on Jacky. They couldn’t account for him,” said his coach. The Demons took the lead for the only time on a two-yard plunge. The clock ticked down in the final period as Richert threw a 36-yard touchdown pass to Billy Bassett and after the ensuing extra point the crowd went wild in celebration. Afterward, Hall told the Monticello News, “This was the best effort of any team I have had the pleasure of coaching.” At that moment, he knew in his heart that the Tigers could win the whole thing.
Two years earlier, a stout, cigar-chomping gentleman pulled into Pete Griffin’s gas station. Youngblood was pumping gas and changing tires that spring. “I filled up his car, washed his windshield,” he said. The man introduced himself, “I’m Dynamite Goodloe, pleased to meet you.” The two talked a bit and then Goodloe asked Jacky, “Do you play?” Unsure of whom the man was, he replied, sheepishly, “Yeah, I’m trying to.” They shook hands and he was gone. At that point, Pete ran up and asked, “You know who that was, don’t you?” Still having no idea why the man was there, he said, “Nope.” Pete was beside himself. “That was Dynamite Goodloe from Georgia Tech.” Years later, the young station hand recalled, “It didn’t register, and I wasn’t thinking that he might be on a recruiting mission. But it turns out he was doing his homework, that was Dynamite’s territory, and he was checking to see who was working, who was loafing.”
By midseason, Jacky’s athleticism and intensity were becoming lethal. Coach Hall turned him loose. Down-to-down, he was the Tigers’ “wild card.” Offenses didn’t know where he might line up. Standing up in size 13 black cleats like a snarling grizzly bear, number 52 played mostly at middle linebacker. He shifted before snaps at times. And because of his speed, he dropped back into coverage. Opposition prepared for imminent attack. Linemen grimaced. Quarterbacks flinched. Running backs scurried in opposite directions as if a choice between life and limb. These were serious encounters. “I made a point to call the opposing coach the week before a game,” said Hall, “And when I got on the phone, Jacky’s name always came up. They’d ask me, ‘How can we stop Youngblood?’ I’d tell them, a little facetiously, ‘I don’t know, but glad I don’t have to worry about it.’” As his carnivorous surname evokes, Youngblood hunted cleated prey, a curiously gangly, fast-moving creature that must have appeared eight-feet-tall to passers. Most didn’t stand a chance. The fury of his assaults on anyone with a ball and a pulse was a swarm of grass and dirt – and scars.
In a rugged meeting rated by one Tallahassee sports commentator as “the best high school football game I’ve ever seen,” Jefferson County and Class A Rickards High grappled to a scoreless tie. The Tigers stopped the Redskins eight times inside their own territory, four times inside the 10. The next week against Madison County, the offense bared its own claws in a 45-0 drubbing, a game in which John Rhymes scored six touchdowns. As usual, the Tigers’ defense was impenetrable, holding Madison to six rushing yards and only 69 through the air, on their way to a sixth shutout. “I was a second string quarterback for that year,” recalls Tim Sanders, today the county’s clerk of the court, “and I weighed about 120 pounds in pads. Jefferson County always fielded a good team, strong and fast. We were getting beat 40 something to nothing, and coach says, ‘Start warming up.’ I turned around with a ‘Who, me?’ look on my face. Nobody wanted to go in. In Monticello there was an old fence that separated fans from players behind the visitor’s bench. It was the only place to warm up. So as I started to throw the ball, I looked to my side and saw Dude Bishop’s brother standing there. ‘Son, what are you doing’?’ he asked. ‘I’m warming up,’ I said. He shook his head, ‘I’m not gonna let you go in there, son, they’re gonna kill you.’ I never went in. I don’t know if he threatened the coach or what, but I never saw a snap.”
In the final game at the Blountstown Tigers, Youngblood had one of his roughest encounters, on and off the field. “We’re having one heck of game and I was going against this midget,” he said. “I wasn’t even bending my knees, and this guy would get into my legs. He wouldn’t come out and attack me. He just came out and dove – at my legs.” His star linebacker frustrated and ineffective, coach had seen enough and snatched Youngblood off the field with Blountstown inside the 20. “It was embarrassing enough to get pulled, but on the 20? Coach told me, ‘Sit your ass down.’ So there I am on the bench, helmet off, head hanging, thinking what was I gonna do to kick this guy’s tail, when all of a sudden, I hear from the bleachers behind me, ‘Jack! Jack!’ Oh man, I knew that voice. I said to myself, ‘Not now, momma.’” Ignoring Big Red wasn’t a wise choice. “The third time, she yelled ‘Herbert Jackson!’ I turned around slowly, ‘What momma?’ She asked me, ‘What are you doing on the bench?” I pointed to coach, and said, ‘He made me.’” And Hall heard the whole exchange. “She shouted at the top of those lungs, ‘Get up, get your act together, and get back in that ballgame!’ I said, ‘Yes ma’am.’” About that time, Hall signaled him to the sideline. “Let me tell you, he thoroughly enjoyed listening to me get humiliated.” Hall then asked, “You think you can play now?” Jacky grumbled, “Yes sir.”
The Tigers won 48-21 and finished the regular season with an 8-1-1 record. The team’s celebration was limited to one boisterous Friday night. The next morning it was back to work. The Tigers prepared to face Graceville High in the state semifinals. College scouts, mostly from the southeast, sniffed around a little more. One day, in the middle of practice, a sedan rolled into the parking lot next to the field. It came to a stop and parked, and the engine quietly rumbling. Huddled inside were Florida State Head Coach Bill Peterson and four assistants. Peterson was royalty in Florida and guided the Seminoles to college football nobility with a victory over Oklahoma in the 1964 Gator Bowl. “They watched for about 10 minutes tops – and left,” said Hall, who never discussed the incident with Peterson. “I may be the only person who even noticed them, and I didn’t say anything about it to my players.”
Youngblood grew up about 23 miles east of Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium. More than a few old-timers in Monticello were alums and, although the school didn’t get football until after World War II, they listened to radio accounts of the team’s clashes. There was a sense of garnet and gold loyalty. And many recalled that the Tigers were coached at one time by Gene Cox, who played for the Seminoles in 1954 and 1955 and, later on as a high school coach, sent players to Peterson, including their very own Don Watson.