The Players and Coaches that Transcend the Game
June 24, 2008 2:38 PM
Red Grange - In the Roaring Twenties, America just wanted to have a good time. In a time when the country began to fall in love with college football, the sport had no greater star than Red Grange. He burst onto the scene with four touchdowns in the first 12 minutes of the 1924 game against Michigan. In three seasons at Illinois he rushed for 2,071 yards, passed for another 575 and scored 31 touchdowns. By the time that Grange completed his senior season in 1925, this is how big a star he had become: Ten days after his final game for the Illini, a crowd of 73,651 fans went to the Polo Grounds to see Grange and the Bears beat the New York Giants, 19-7. The typical NFL crowd of the day barely climbed above 10,000. "I will never have another Grange," his coach, Bob Zuppke, once told Grantland Rice, "but neither will anybody else."
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