Today's Tidbit... Gene Roberts' Rushing Triple Crown
The NCAA basketball tournament is when we look for upsets by teams about which we know a little, over teams about which we know a lot. It is the time of year when we most often ask, “What are the chances?”
With thoughts of the improbable and chance effects floating around, it is an appropriate time to cover a player whose combination of three records is among the least probable records in football history. I speak, of course, of Gene Roberts, the only player who was the season scoring leader at the NCAA, NFL, and Canadian pro football levels, doing so in 1946, 1949, and 1953, respectively.
As improbable as it was for a player from Tennessee-Chattanooga to earn those honors, it would not have surprised his Kansas City high school peers, where he earned the top player award as a senior in 1940, and ran a 9.8 100-yard dash.
Roberts attended Kansas and was sufficiently impressive on the freshmen team that area sportswriters described him as a potential Big Six Conference player during his sophomore preseason. A knee injury held him back early that season, but a reception and a touchdown run after the catch versus Nebraska left folks gasping and wondering what might have been.
Roberts was part of the Navy’s V-12 officer training program at Kansas before enlisting in a Navy aviation cadet program in May 1943. The Navy released him in time to begin his junior year at Tennessee-Chattanooga in 1945, where he gained 819 yards rushing in eight games, including 202 against Ole Miss.
Nicknamed the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, he captained the 1946 team, gaining 1,113 rushing yards and scoring 18 touchdowns and 9 conversions in 10 games, leading major colleges in scoring with 117 points. His performance allowed Choo-Choo to play in the 1945 and 1946 Blue-Gray games, and the 1947 College All-Star game.
Drafted by the New York Giants, injuries again hampered his progress, as he gained 354 and 713 yards from scrimmage in his first two years, before blowing up in 1949, when he gained 1,345 yards from scrimmage, led the league in scoring with 102, and was named All-Pro. His 1950 season saw him with 627 scrimmage yards, setting a Giants rushing record for yards in a game with 218 against the Chicago Cardinals.
After that season, the Giants traded Roberts to Green Bay, so, figuring if he had to play in cold weather, he might as well move another degree north latitudinally, signing with the Montreal Alouettes of Canada’s Interprovincial Rugby Football Union. They put him on waivers after the season, so the Ottawa Rough Riders picked him up in what proved to be one of the bargains of the decade. Roberts played three years there, including the 1953 season when he led the league in scoring with 88 points and earned All-Canadian honors.
He retired after the 1954 season and worked in accounting before becoming a chiropractor.
The Cinderella teams of the NCAA basketball tournament often benefit from a few lucky breaks. Still, they also tend to have grit and underlying talent that allows them to take advantage of those breaks. Roberts had a similar career: things went his way three times, allowing him to break out with stellar seasons and outscore all others at the NCAA, NFL, and Canadian pro football levels.
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