I HAVE POTENTIAL UN-TAPPED! I AM READY TO HELP SOME TEAM!!
_Reggie Williams, writing on the line of the Bengals info sheet stamped Nov. 12, 1975 asking for any comments he may wish to add.
His Draft Day call crackled through from the front desk at the YMCA in White Plains, N.Y., where rugged and regal Dartmouth linebacker Reggie Williams was staying while he helped coach a local high school wrestling team.
"The Cincinnati Bengals are calling," it said.
Williams, the poet laureate of the Bengals' first two Super Bowl teams, says now, "The Bengals were my first love, and we danced at the prom for 14 years. We just didn't get the corsage."
But back then, when the Bengals were calling, Williams already had J.I. Albrecht on the line. And Albrecht, the general manager of the CFL Argonauts who wined and dined Williams in Toronto during a media circus a few weeks before while offering to take him as their first round-pick, was being quite adamant.
(That had been quite a night. Anthony Davis, the former USC running back and World Football League refugee, had picked up Williams in his Rolls-Royce.)
But now in the stark daylight of an NFL Draft Day, here was Albrecht doubling his offer to $1 million for three years.
"And he said, 'But you have to accept the extra half million right now,'" says Williams 50 draft days later. " 'Don't accept the phone call that is coming.'"
Williams didn't blink then, and doesn't now.
A Cincinnati icon. Bengals Ring of Honor nominee. A career of unvarnished honor stretching over 14 years, 206 games, seven more in the playoffs. No Bengals linebacker has more than his 62.5 sacks or his 16 interceptions. Two-time Super Bowl starter, one while a Cincinnati City Councilman. A Sports Illustrated cover as a Sportsman of the Year.
It was all there. A phone line connecting a moment in time to a lifetime moment.
"I've got to take this call," 21-year-old Reggie Williams told J.I. Albrecht.
He's pretty sure it was Bengals director of player personnel Pete Brown clicking in, telling Williams he was a Bengal, the 82nd player taken in a draft winding through the third round. He would be flying to Cincinnati tomorrow. Then he would head downtown to check into the Netherland Hotel.
Not the YMCA.
"I made the biggest philosophical decision of my life right then," Williams says. "That money was not as important as opportunity.
"My passion was to play in the NFL. I had zero desire to play Canadian football. My favorite player that I grew up with was Jim Brown. He was my father's favorite player. It was the dream I never believed would actually come true. Especially since Bo Schembechler said I wasn't good enough to be a Wolverine when I came out of Michigan."
When Williams watches the draft this weekend, he says he'll feel the same things he felt at the YMCA all those years ago.
"It's so emotional for me when I watch it because you know there are going to be real-life dreams and shattered dreams," Williams says. "If you choose the sport for passion over money, you'll still feel it."
"He finished his test in 18 minutes … First-class person, high-class family … I could not time him in the 40-yd dash – Gym didn't allow enough space after the finish line … He looks like an excellent future pro prospect … Good speed and quickness – smart – very well built."
_Bengals defensive coordinator Howard Brinker in a scouting report dated Jan. 26, 1976 after visiting Williams in his hometown of Flint, Mich.
Bo Schembechler, the University of Michigan head coach wound tighter than a Grammy guitar, never even made it to Williams' house to bark at him. He stopped short at Southwestern Academy to tell him that even though he had a full academic scholarship to Michigan, don't bother to come out for football.
Howard Brinker, the Bengals defensive coordinator, did make it to McPhail Street, the only NFL coach to ever sit down in the living room of pink, Julia Williams' favorite color. Elijah, her husband and Reggie's father, saw every color but maybe pink as a millwright building Buicks when General Motors still reigned in Motown.
Come to think of it, Williams says, Brinker is the only college or pro coach that ever came into the house he'd been living in since first grade, when he went to Scott Elementary, Flint's first integrated school. He's one-for-one on visits.
"It's just kind of a blip because I didn't spend much time in Flint after I graduated," Williams says. "I wasn't thinking about the Bengals. I was sure that call was coming early because Gil Brandt of the Cowboys told me they were going to take me in the first. By the time the Bengals called, it was late afternoon, and I was just hoping anybody would call."
It was the Bengals on the line, in part, because of that down-home scouting report from Brinker, a dead giveaway the Bengals knew more about him than Bo since Brinker was one of the Bengals' best men and a confidant of Bengals founder Paul Brown.
No one knew Brown longer than Brinker. Brinker, then 61, had played under Brown at Massillon High School before becoming his defensive coordinator in Cleveland. When the Browns let Brinker go ten years after Paul Brown, Brown brought him to Cincinnati as his linebackers coach. Then he made Brinker defensive coordinator that month he visited Williams, the first month Brown was no longer the Bengals head coach.
"He was kind to my mother. Really made her feel comfortable," Williams says. "He didn't get mad often. When he did, he had this stutter. A really good coach."
Brinker couldn't find much wrong:
"He picked up single coverage technique very quicky in the gym."
Negatives? By his own account on the info sheet stamped Jan. 1, 1975 after his junior year, Williams listed himself just 6-1 and a half, 219 pounds.
"Height – lacks good college competition," Brinker wrote.
But, although he was scouting a player from a college that hadn't had a player drafted before the fourth round since Gone With The Wind, Brinker circled the second and third rounds for his projection.
Williams is still Dartmouth's highest drafted player since running back Bob McLeod went fifth overall to the 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers.
Bo Schembechbler?
"I saw him ten years later, after my sixth season in the NFL," Williams says. "He said everybody makes mistakes, but no apology."
"Excellent movement. Good quickness. Runs well."
_Bengals president Mike Brown's scouting report dated Oct. 27, 1975, in which he circled the third or fourth round.
Fifty years later, and Mike Brown, a former Dartmouth quarterback now 90 years young, can still remember a certain joy when they took Big Green linebacker Reggie Williams in the third round of that bicentennial draft of 1976 from their hamlet of Hanover, N.H., known more for letters than Xs and Os.
And, no, Dartmouth and the Ivy League hadn't been playing football that long.
It just seems that way when Brown can recall that the first player who took money to play football was an Ivy Leaguer out of Yale named Pudge Heffelfinger when the Allegheny Athletic Association gave him 500 bucks to play Pittsburgh a few days after Grover Cleveland took back the White House from Benjamin Harrison in 1892.
"It isn't often you get a guy from the Ivy League who is a top-flight NFL player," Brown says on the eve of another draft. "But if you look back historically, there's a good number of them starting with Pudge Heffelfinger."
But Reginald "Reggie," Williams? (Which is how he wrote it on the info sheet in exquisite block printing. Before putting "63," for his jersey number.) With 213 regular-season and post-season, still the most NFL games played by an Ivy League defender. Four years ago, still named Dartmouth's No. 1 male athlete.
"He was a star player. By Dartmouth standards, a once-in-a-lifetime player," Brown says. "I knew quite a bit about him. And I was pleased to have the kind of guy who went to Dartmouth and could start for us. That was fun to do."
Which is probably how Brinker ended up in Flint. Mike Brown, class of '57, knew all about Williams. He even took in the Dartmouth-Harvard game in '75 to scout and write his report. Now Brinker could confirm he was man and not an Ivy Frank Merriwell myth.
"Howard was the most detailed and most knowledgeable about everything that went into the system of anyone we ever had," Brown says. "He was extraordinary. When the coaches had a question, they went to Howard."
There was still that matter of timing a 40. Brinker couldn't do it, but he put in his report, "Ran 4.6 On Pro Day. Atlanta had 4.5."
Pro Day?
"That would be odd at Dartmouth then and now," Brown says.
Exhibit A of how Williams dominated the Ivy.
Before his senior season started, his head coach, Jake Crouthamel, decreed he wanted Williams to work out in August of '75 before one group of pro scouts. The draft was scheduled to take place Feb. 8-9, 1976, so Williams would have to work out during his season on the schedules of the teams, not his own, and Crouthamel didn't want to lose his best player to a blown hamstring.
It was big news in Hanover. "Reggie Williams Day," was bannered across a four-page spread in a Dartmouth magazine headlined "The Trials of Reggie." The story said more than half the NFL teams were represented and one scout was ga-ga over the Williams' 4.6 and 4.59, saying he put the stopwatch on 200 players a year and only a dozen ran a consistent 4.6.
(Remember, it was 50 years ago.)
Williams doesn't remember Reggie Williams Day as much as he does his first day as a Bengal running 40-yarders at Spinney Field about 48 hours after he was drafted. He remembers Brown greeting him with a smile after they put the watches on him. The next thing he knew, someone was taking a picture.
"He was thanking me for confirming that time," Williams says.
"A real hitter … Has the lateral pursuit & mobility needed … stay after the ball carrier - made a big tackle to save as TD on the 34DLine … Feels holes well – Good blitzer … Can Miss & stay after DL … Blocked the last P.A.T … Has It All But Size _ Could be A Back up – Watch closely next year …."
_Bengals scout Frank Smouse from his scouting report dated Nov. 23, 1974 after watching Williams play Penn in his junior season.
This is why the Bengals didn't have to send anyone to "Reggie Williams Day." Like Howard Brinker, Bengals scout Frank Smouse had the implicit trust of Paul and Mike Brown, and Smouse already had him pegged between the sixth and seventh rounds with a year to go.
"Those are two of the best pair of eyes you can get," Mike Brown says.
Smouse went back for more in '75 and jacked his projection to the third and fourth round after seeing him play Brown in October,
"Can strong arm tackle them – Pop their head back – Gives them shoulder jab!!" gushed Smouse, who couldn't think of a harder hitting backer in the history of The Stripes.
Next to COMPETITIVENESS, Smouse wrote, "EXCELLENT - Best or Next best HeavyWt. Wrestler in The East." Next to CHARACTER "GREAT (3 Coaches)"
It's a scouting report that turned out to be the eulogy of Williams' career. When he went to Dartmouth, he joined the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity that adopted the way of life expressed in the poem "Invictus," an ode to defiance, resilience, and inner strength no matter the pain.
(Williams likes to tell the story of his only Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brother as a Bengal, Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback Ken Riley. Riley immediately welcomed him into the huddle the first time Williams walked in on the right side at linebacker against Cleveland in his first NFL game and whispered in his ear, 'Invictus.")
I AM QUICK, HAVE GOOD LATERAL MOVEMENT, EXCELLENT SPRING, GOOD FOOTBALL INSINCT, LOVE TO HIT!!!
_Reggie Williams, on a Bengals info sheet stamped Jan. 1, 1975, a year-and-half before the Bengals drafted him, explaining why he wanted to play defense.
When Reggie Williams was a freshman at Dartmouth, he looked up to the leading scorer on the basketball team, junior Billy Raynor, a Boston prep legend destined to work with kids and dreams.
"No one went to Dartmouth to go on to sports after college," says Williams, but he saw how Raynor would channel his skills into a towering career in education. A coach, athletic director, special assistant to college presidents, founder of the far-reaching Young Men and Women of Color program at MassBay Community College.
And yet Raynor, two years older, also looks up to Williams these days.
After his career on the Cincinnati City Council that drew praise from South African Bishop Desmond Tutu for his anti- Apartheid work, Williams became director of sports development for the Walt Disney World Resort and was named one of "101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports."
"He's had a very eclectic career, if you will, professionally. and someone who has set a standard for giving back," Raynor says. "If you think about his NFL career, absolutely incredible. When you think of Ivy League football players, Reggie and Calvin Hill come to mind. Guys that dominated the sport in the Ivy League and then went on to be dominant players in the National Football League. You'd have to say the closest thing in basketball is (Princeton's) Bill Bradley."
Ah, Yale's Calvin Hill. For one thing, that's why Williams believed Brandt when he said the Cowboys would pick him No. 1. Hill, a first-round pick of Dallas in 1969, had back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons for the Cowboys to certify himself as the greatest Ivy Leaguer of all.
Hill also played his final four of 12 seasons in Cleveland. Grant Hill, Calvin's son, once told Williams his father said he gave him the biggest hit of any tackle in the NFL. Ivy on Ivy grime.
"Made him disappear," Williams says.
Now Williams, at age 71 in Orlando, Fla., is only hitting family time. Four of his five grandchildren are close by. After more than 20 surgeries, a stroke, open-heart surgery, he says, "I'm at peace." The late Bengals strength coach Kim Wood, who gave him the book, "The Way of the Samurai," saw him wage a daily war in the weight room for 14 years.
"He's in city council and he comes down to work out and he takes off his suit," Wood once told Bengals.com. "It would be 15 to 20 minutes of hell. And he'd put his suit back on and go back to city council. He had to budget his time."
Mike Brown remembers those days.
"He was an all-out guy," Brown says. "That was the way he was. He put every ounce of effort he had in him in every play."
No 50-year dust on this scouting report.
