good talk

In 1996 I was suprised that nobody, at least where I read, had noticed the resemblance between Bob Dole and a more successful presidential candidate, Richard Nixon. I thought that they looked roughly similar, sort of a dark-white, I had read that Nixon's ancestors came from an area in England near Scotland and I'll bet Dole's also came from around there. I thought that their public personalities seemed much the same, I thought that Dole seemed to share a quality that I've seen ascribed to Nixon, the "dour hardness." In 1966 I saw the Cleveland Browns play the St. Louis Cardinals at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland and the quarterbacks were Dr. Frank Ryan for the Browns and Dr. Charley Johnson for the Cardinals. Both these young men were in their late 20's and had acquired Ph D's in their spare time. Frank Ryan had a Ph D in Mathematics and Charley Johnson (his full first name) had a Ph D in Chemical Engineering. And both of them were among the best of NFL quarterbacks and both had very lengthy careers. Frank Ryan is more or less retired but Charley Johnson is still a Professor of Chemical Engineering at his alma mater, New Mexico State. There's nobody like that around today, most of the current NFL quarterbacks don't have one degree. In 1993 I wrote the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio (if you go to see that also go see McKinley's Tomb) saying that Leroy Kelly should be in the Hall of Fame and I received a really nice letter in reply. No doubt coincidentally Kelly was inducted a year later. A year ago I wrote them that Gary Collins should be in and there was no reply. Gary Collins caught 70 touchdown passes in a 10 year career and scored all 3 of the Browns' touchdowns when they defeated the Colts for the NFL Championship on December 27, 1964. I took my younger brother, Tom, out to "Koch's Clothing Store" in west Akron to see Gary Collins and ask him questions (some guy was trying to bait him about his punting), he was an exceptionally good-looking guy. In his 10 year career Collins estimated that he dropped 8 passes, in the first half of this season Braylon Edwards has dropped 13 (bring back the stick-em).