Rob Oller | Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers shed tackles, tears during HOF career

My first guy-cry over something besides a scraped knee was watching “Brian’s Song” in 1971. Until then, I was a kid wrapped in a culturally protective cocoon of Hot Wheels, banana-seat bikes and electric football; too emotionally clueless to understand the human condition.

Gale Sayers changed that, with help from Billy Dee Williams, who portrayed the Chicago Bears running back in the ABC Movie of the Week based on Sayers’ 1970 autobiography “I Am Third.”

"Brian’s Song" focuses on the friendship between Sayers and Bears teammate Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer in 1970 at age 26. I remember watching the TV movie wondering what the heck was happening. What was this thing called cancer? That sounds shallow today, but at the time life’s lone worry was struggling to hit a Wiffle ball curve, which led to the added concern of being late to 5:30 p.m. dinner.

Sayers’ story, which deserves to be retold in the wake of his death Wednesday at age 77, reached into my safe suburbia, showing a side of sports beyond bubblegum cards and halftime marching bands. It wasn’t so much that sports had a depressing side previously hidden to a 9-year-old; more a revelation that the superstars of my day had feelings. Seeing Sayers (Williams, pre-Lando Calrissian) cry at the bedside of the dying Piccolo (James Caan, pre-Sonny Corleone), it dawned on me for the first time that a real person existed behind the player.

Gil Brandt knew that person. The 88-year-old longtime NFL executive met Sayers in 1963 while scouting the Kansas running back for the Dallas Cowboys, who had the fifth pick in the 1965 draft; Sayers went fourth to Chicago, right after the Bears took Dick Butkus at No. 3.

“He was a guy who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and was very proud of his hometown,” Brandt said. “He was very humble. As great a player as he was he was always explaining how his wife (Linda) was successful designing greeting cards. If you rate guys on a scale of 1 to 10, he was a 10-plus.”

Despite suffering from dementia, Sayers until recently showed up every year in Canton for the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He believed he owed it to the Hall of Fame, which in 1977 made him the youngest inductee at age 34.

“We have a lot of guys who are great players who are in the Hall of Fame,” Brandt said. “Eric Dickerson is one of my favorite people, but he shows up about every three or four years. Sayers was there every year, promoting the Hall. He was both a great player and a great person.”

Until Brian’s Song, I didn’t know or much care about athletes being great people. I also didn’t know or care much about Sayers, whose on-field accomplishments were slightly before my time. From 1965 to his retirement in 1971, he averaged five yards a carry, twice led the league in rushing and set an NFL record with six touchdowns in a game. But his career was cut short by multiple knee injuries.

“No telling what he would have done in today’s era, when knee operations are routine,” Brandt said, adding that Sayers’ abilities would have translated well into today’s spread offenses.

“He was probably one of the first guys who stayed in the game and caught passes out of the backfield, and became a factor that way,” said Brandt, who ranks Sayers No. 4, behind Jim Brown, Walter Payton and O.J. Simpson, over a 25-year era from 1960 to 1985.

Sayers was ahead of his time in other ways, too, becoming the first Black NFL player to room with a white teammate (Piccolo.) The two forged an unlikely bond – Sayers was the quiet Midwesterner, Piccolo the outgoing fullback from Wake Forest – that intensified when Piccolo’s cancer spread in 1969.

Seeing how much Sayers loved Piccolo turned the “Kansas Comet” into my post-playing-career hero. In 1970, just days before Piccolo died, Sayers received the George S. Halas Courage Award, given by the Pro Football Writers Association to a player, coach or staff member who overcomes the most adversity to succeed. His acceptance speech remains a testament to compassion and unselfishness:

“I accept it for Brian Piccolo,” Sayers said. “I love Brian Piccolo and I’d like all of you to love him, too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”

Brandt almost got it right when he said, “Gale was one of those guys who come along once every 20 years.”

Make it once every 50. In 2020, we need more like him.  

roller@dispatch.com

@rollerCD