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Kopay, a running back, knew about closets. "He got mugged a number of times hiring hookers." (Blair never came out before dying in 1995 at age 72.) "Totally, totally closeted," Dave Kopay says of Blair. You couldn't go into Joe Blair's house and not know."īlair was the team's public relations director, a small bow-tied man who showed up at work occasionally with a blackened eye or barked forehead, looking like Carmen Basilio after 15 rounds with Gene Fullmer. Going to Joe Blair's house one night at midnight-Jerry was staying with Joe at the time-I walked in and thought, Whoa. "I did not know for a long time, but I found out. God."Īt any mention of Smith's sexuality now, his former teammates start out by saying they didn't know back then, but in the next few minutes it becomes clear they did. Teammates, above all, and leaders.' Jerry and I were in training camp when we got the word Lombardi died. Try to be great athletes, but don't forget to be great friends.
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He told us, 'A football player is like a spoke in a wheel, and every spoke is very important to the balance of the wheel, the team. "Hearing him say it again," says Owens, "reminded me of when Jerry and I went to visit Coach in the hospital. He had said the same thing the day Lombardi died. He made us men." Because none of the old teammates around him could speak, everyone nodded. On his deathbed Smith said, haltingly, "Every important thing a man searches for in his life, I found in Coach Lombardi. Almost nobody knew that Lombardi had a gay brother, Harold, and an uncharacteristically sentimental attachment to the cause of gay rights. SMITH'S FAVORITE COACH WAS Vince Lombardi, who took the 1969 Redskins to their first winning season since '55 and then died of cancer. "He was one of the happiest guys on the team." He was an undersized tight end who could block."Ī reporter asked Allen if he knew Smith was gay. And this AIDS thing has nothing to do with it. "Jerry Smith will be my all-time Redskins tight end. "The easiest position for me to pick of all 22 is tight end," Allen said. It fell to George Allen, Smith's last head coach, to select the Redskins' all-time team for the 50th anniversary of the franchise, the year Smith died. That's why there weren't any meetings of the 5 O'Clock Club on Wednesdays." The 5 O'Clock Club was a society of Redskins who met after practice to have a few beers and talk over this thing they loved so much. The big guys didn't even eat supper the day before weigh-in. The big guys stepped on the scale in just their jockstraps. "For the Thursday weigh-ins," Hauss says, "the underweight guys like Jerry and me wore sweat clothes. Smith and Hauss had weight concerns in common, too. He had those gnarly fingers, like mine." Talons. Len Hauss, the Redskins' center and captain at the time, says, "Most receivers, when they hit the ground, the ball comes right out. If I'd say, 'Do you have time after practice to catch a few?' he'd say, 'As long as you want.' All I remember about the Super Bowl is, Jerry was wide-open in the end zone and I hit the goalpost." " a good, kind, nice man and a great football player. "Jerry was a team guy," adds Billy Kilmer, the other Redskins quarterback in the early 1970s. "He was the best pattern-running tight end I ever saw."
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"Covering Jerry at practice made me the safety I was," says Houston, a 10-time Pro Bowler in two leagues, a first-ballot Hall of Famer and a safety on the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team.