BleedGopher
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per The Athletic:
Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned on Wednesday, Sept. 8.
“Leo came out of Chicago, never played football in high school, and I think the advantage of that was, he was never beat up,” said Grant, who maintains an office at Vikings headquarters and sounds closer to 64 than 94, his actual age. “Leo was new to football and he was a very raw, raw talent when he came to Minnesota. He was 265 pounds, had extreme strength and could run. Some guys are quick and fast, but he could outright outrun just about anybody.”
In 1948, when Minnesota needed a few points to win the NCAA track and field title, a coach summoned Nomellini to the hammer event, where there were only five competitors for six slots. An athlete from Harvard won with a throw near 171 feet. Nomellini, with no practice, threw the 16-pound weight without employing the customary spin to generate momentum. He simply stood there and hucked the thing as far as he could: 92 feet, 8 ⅝ inches. Point taken. Title won for Minnesota.
“He was as strong as three bulls,” Hall of Fame 49ers teammate Joe Perry once said. “He’d slap you on the back and knock you 20 feet.”
Nomellini would in the current era be a scholarship player poised to profit from “name, image and likeness” usage under evolving NCAA rules. Back then, he attended Minnesota not on scholarship, but on the GI Bill, living on $120 a month. He earned another $65 monthly counting cash for Northwest Bank, wrapping coins and separating bills. The extra income helped him support his mother and two sisters, who lived with him in the Twin Cities.
“Leo came from nothing, I came from nothing, so we were both poor together,” Grant said, “although I learned later that Leo wasn’t averse to walking in and saying, ‘Hey, coach, I’m broke,’ and he’d get something. I wish I’d known that.”
The financial picture improved for Nomellini less through his excellence on the football field than through his association with college football teammate Vern Gagne, who won two NCAA wrestling titles and later founded the American Wrestling Association. Gagne drew Nomellini onto the pro circuit in Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota.
“I didn’t even have enough money to buy shoes (in college),” Nomellini said in 1953. “I was Raggedy Ann on the campus. Ten days after I began (pro) wrestling, I showed up on the campus with a new automobile, and you should have seen the raised eyebrows.”
At his peak in the 1950s, Nomellini defeated National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight champ Lou Thesz before 12,000 fans at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. An Associated Press story said Nomellini planned to step away from the 49ers for the 1955 season if he remained the NWA champ at that time. But Thesz, who had lost by disqualification after kicking Nomellini in the face while Nomellini was outside the ring, joined manager Ed “Strangler” Lewis in protesting the outcome (naturally). They claimed rules prevented the title from changing hands when the champion remained on his feet (of course).
The title remained with Thesz. Nomellini remained a 49er, but he still headlined dozens more wrestling cards into the mid-’60s (he and Thesz met multiple other times, once drawing more than 16,000 to the Cow Palace in a match refereed by the Manassa Mauler, Jack Dempsey).
“Wrestling was real to him,” Nomellini’s youngest son, Drew, said. “As the story goes, one time my grandmother packed a lunch for Dad and the Sharpe brothers, Ben and Mike, who used to wrestle with him. They were all going to a Sacramento job and they would ride together to save money. Ben ate all the meat out of Leo’s sandwich, and they pulled it over in the middle of the trip and started wrestling out there in the middle of a cornfield.”
theathletic.com
Go Gophers!!
Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned on Wednesday, Sept. 8.
A new world at Minnesota
Hopp, Nomellini’s coach at Cherry Point, had played at Minnesota under coach Bernie Bierman, a World War I Marine captain. That connection was critical for Nomellini in the absence of a high school career. With Hopp’s help, Nomellini joined the Gophers after his own service ended in 1946. He was a two-way sensation over the same period Grant starred there. Bierman called Nomellini the closest thing to Nagurski, another Minnesota alum, in sheer physical prowess.“Leo came out of Chicago, never played football in high school, and I think the advantage of that was, he was never beat up,” said Grant, who maintains an office at Vikings headquarters and sounds closer to 64 than 94, his actual age. “Leo was new to football and he was a very raw, raw talent when he came to Minnesota. He was 265 pounds, had extreme strength and could run. Some guys are quick and fast, but he could outright outrun just about anybody.”
In 1948, when Minnesota needed a few points to win the NCAA track and field title, a coach summoned Nomellini to the hammer event, where there were only five competitors for six slots. An athlete from Harvard won with a throw near 171 feet. Nomellini, with no practice, threw the 16-pound weight without employing the customary spin to generate momentum. He simply stood there and hucked the thing as far as he could: 92 feet, 8 ⅝ inches. Point taken. Title won for Minnesota.
“He was as strong as three bulls,” Hall of Fame 49ers teammate Joe Perry once said. “He’d slap you on the back and knock you 20 feet.”
Nomellini would in the current era be a scholarship player poised to profit from “name, image and likeness” usage under evolving NCAA rules. Back then, he attended Minnesota not on scholarship, but on the GI Bill, living on $120 a month. He earned another $65 monthly counting cash for Northwest Bank, wrapping coins and separating bills. The extra income helped him support his mother and two sisters, who lived with him in the Twin Cities.
“Leo came from nothing, I came from nothing, so we were both poor together,” Grant said, “although I learned later that Leo wasn’t averse to walking in and saying, ‘Hey, coach, I’m broke,’ and he’d get something. I wish I’d known that.”
The financial picture improved for Nomellini less through his excellence on the football field than through his association with college football teammate Vern Gagne, who won two NCAA wrestling titles and later founded the American Wrestling Association. Gagne drew Nomellini onto the pro circuit in Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota.
“I didn’t even have enough money to buy shoes (in college),” Nomellini said in 1953. “I was Raggedy Ann on the campus. Ten days after I began (pro) wrestling, I showed up on the campus with a new automobile, and you should have seen the raised eyebrows.”
At his peak in the 1950s, Nomellini defeated National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight champ Lou Thesz before 12,000 fans at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. An Associated Press story said Nomellini planned to step away from the 49ers for the 1955 season if he remained the NWA champ at that time. But Thesz, who had lost by disqualification after kicking Nomellini in the face while Nomellini was outside the ring, joined manager Ed “Strangler” Lewis in protesting the outcome (naturally). They claimed rules prevented the title from changing hands when the champion remained on his feet (of course).
The title remained with Thesz. Nomellini remained a 49er, but he still headlined dozens more wrestling cards into the mid-’60s (he and Thesz met multiple other times, once drawing more than 16,000 to the Cow Palace in a match refereed by the Manassa Mauler, Jack Dempsey).
“Wrestling was real to him,” Nomellini’s youngest son, Drew, said. “As the story goes, one time my grandmother packed a lunch for Dad and the Sharpe brothers, Ben and Mike, who used to wrestle with him. They were all going to a Sacramento job and they would ride together to save money. Ben ate all the meat out of Leo’s sandwich, and they pulled it over in the middle of the trip and started wrestling out there in the middle of a cornfield.”
NFL 100: At No. 83, Leo Nomellini was bigger than life, and his life was very big
From supporting his family at an early age to World War II service to pro wrestling, Nomellini was much more than an all-time NFL great.
Go Gophers!!