Giants great Sam Huff dies; Pro Football Hall of Famer was 87

Sam Huff initially was not as familiar to America as Frank Gifford, his more glamorous teammate on the Giants, and other contemporaries. But there was a time when for many casual fans, he became the face of the NFL.

It was an era when pro football was early in its rise to the top of the American sports agenda, but it was not there yet, and there was Huff on the cover of Time magazine on Nov. 30, 1959, only the second NFL player so honored.

Eleven months later, he was the focus of a CBS documentary, "The Violent World of Sam Huff," hosted by Walter Cronkite, that brought the sport into many homes that had not yet considered it.

Huff died Saturday at age 87 in Winchester, Virginia. Huff family lawyer Deborah Matt- hews told The Associated Press that he died of natural causes.

"Sam was one of the greatest Giants of all time," Giants president and co-owner John Mara said in a statement Saturday night. "He was the heart and soul of our defense in his era. He almost singlehandedly influenced the first chants of ‘Defense, Defense’ in Yankee Stadium."

Huff did enough on the field to justify his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982, but his brief star turn as the most famous middle linebacker in America attracted added attention and added to his lore.

It all began with an old-school football back story: A kid who grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia and saw enough of that hard life to know he wanted to avoid it.

He did so because of his football talent, which earned him a scholarship to West Virginia and eventually landed him in the third round of the 1956 NFL Draft.

Huff, a 6-1, 230-pounder, initially struggled as a tweener between lineman and linebacker, and he and fellow rookie Don Chandler, a placekicker, at one point left training camp in frustration to head home.

Offensive assistant coach Vince Lombardi went to the airport and talked them out of it.

Good thing, because by midseason, defensive assistant Tom Landry had Huff starting and thriving for a team that would go 8-3-1 and beat the Bears, 47-7, in the NFL championship game.

Huff helped the Giants reach the final game again in 1958 and ’59. They lost both times to the Baltimore Colts, but in the process, they helped to put the NFL on the map by getting the media capital of the country interested in the game.

It was an era without a National League baseball team in town, making the Yankees and their Yankee Stadium co-tenants the talks of the sports town.

That Time cover included the headline "Pro Football: Brawn, Brains & Profits" at a time when the NFL’s profits of today would have been unimaginable.

The CBS show, an entry in its documentary series "The Twentieth Century," runs less than a half-hour — it is available on YouTube — and is a fascinating, and tamer, ancestor to HBO’s "Hard Knocks" training camp series.

The show follows Huff, who has a microphone attached to his pads, through camp in Winooski, Vermont, and into the Giants’ preseason game against the Bears in Toronto in August 1960.

Cronkite promises the show will take viewers "closer to pro football than you have ever been before."

What follows is a curio with appearances by assorted Giants of the era, including a charming training camp scene of players singing a song together in Polish while defensive tackle Roosevelt Grier plays his guitar.

During the preseason game, Huff politely trash-talks Bears end Willard Dewveall, yelling "You do that one more time, [No.] 88, and I am gonna sock you one!"

The Giants reached the NFL championship game six times in Huff’s eight seasons with them — he made the Pro Bowl every year from 1958-61 — but after a third consecutive title-game loss in 1963, the Giants made major changes.

Huff was traded to Washington, where he played from 1964-67. He came out of retirement in 1969 to play for Lombardi when he signed to coach the team.

Huff never forgave Giants coach Allie Sherman for trading him away, especially after he said Sherman assured him he would not.

In 1966, with Washington leading the Giants 69-41, Huff ordered Charlie Gogolak onto the field to kick a late, meaningless 29-yard field goal. The 72-41 final remains the highest-scoring game in NFL history.

After retiring, Huff had a successful career in business, including as an executive at Marriott, where he fostered a close relationship between the NFL and the hotel chain.

He briefly worked as a radio analyst for Giants games in the 1970s, but he is better remembered for a long run doing Washington Football Team radio with Sonny Jurgensen.

"Anyone who knew Sam knew what an amazing person he was," Washington owners Dan and Tanya Snyder said in a statement Saturday. "He was an iconic player and broadcaster for the franchise for over 40 years and was a great friend to our family. He represented the franchise with honor and respect on the field in the booth and was beloved by our fans."

Huff’s final season in the booth was 2012, by which point some listeners openly were expressing concern about his mistakes and apparent memory lapses.

In 2016, The Washington Post reported that Huff was suffering from dementia and was at the center of a family dispute over the proper course for his care.

It was not certain whether his decline was related directly to his football career, but the man who in his youth became a face of football’s rise eventually became another example of the cost of living in its violent world.

The Associated Press

contributed to this story.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.