Jerry Smith - A Football Life
 

Anyone see the story on Jerry Smith tonight?

I remember him playing, and he was a very good player. He was a tight end for the Redskins and one of the top tight ends in the league during his era, which had a lot of strong players at that position. Apparently he's still in the top five for career receiving touchdowns among TEs.

Of course, he was most famous for dying of AIDS.

There were some interesting snippets during the show, including:

1. It was interesting to see the acceptance by his teammates. Some of those guys were pretty old-school guys like Sonny Jurgensen, who I would expect to be pretty macho, but they were all, "Meh, whatever. He was gay. We kind of thought that."

2. I remember Charley Taylor on the field, and he was kind of a parallel universe version of Otis Taylor. They seemed to have a similar style and were very elegant on the field. It was fun to hear him interviewed, because you practically needed subtitles. His speaking was not as elegant as his running.

3. In contrast, safety Brig Owens was very eloquent. Most won't remember him, but I do. His football card was in the first or second pack of football cards I ever owned, so I studied him a lot as a kid.

4. Former running back Dave Kopay was apparently the first pro athlete to come out as gay (after he retired). He was a Redskin and said that he and Jerry Smith ... umm ... you know. I didn't really think we'd had two NFL players having sex with each other, but I guess it's old news.

5. The biggest eye-opener for me was Charley Taylor saying, "Yeah, people said that the Redskins had the most gay players in the league. At one point, we had twelve." Twelve gay players on what was probably a 45-man roster? Really?

6. It was cool to see a bunch of those old Redskins players being interviewed. They talked to guys like Jurgensen, Billy Kilmer, Brig Owens, Chris Hanburger, Bobby Mitchell, and others.

7. The former players all said that Smith would have been fine coming out of the closet while he was playing. Smith's gay friend who was interviewed disagreed. The hostess probably settled the discussion by asking why no NFL player has ever come out during his career.

All in all, it was somewhat interesting, but probably more so for me because of the clips and interviews with the players of my era.

Very cool.

I think Aaron Rodgers and Richard Sherman should definately come out.

This guy should be some sort of hero here for actually having AIDS.

That only works if he got it from the tree.

Watched this earlier...interesting story, hard to watch his brother describing how Jerry looked as he was dying.

I think the Hall of Fame discussion is interesting. I knew that Smith was good, but his stats really stood out. I think he's still 4th or 5th in career TDs among TEs. There were some allusions that perhaps he was shut out because he was gay or because of the AIDS. However, I don't really buy that. He was a very small TE who wasn't much bigger than the receivers of his era. He was definitely one of the top TEs, but I remember thinking he was kind of second-tier behind guys like Jackie Smith and Charlie Sanders. Of course, maybe that's a meaningless comparison since those guys are both in the Hall, but Sanders just made it in the last couple of years.