LINEMEN PARADISE

The brief career of "Big Daddy" Lipscomb Big Daddy LipscombPhoto courtesy The SPORT Collection "Big Daddy" Gene Lipscomb was a larger-than-life football player, a unique physical specimen, colorful and memorable, and completely suitable for a side career in pro wrestling. Yet, before he hardly got started, he was done wrestling, and then dead at the age of 31. Born in Uniontown, Alabama on August 9, 1931, Lipscomb never knew his father, and moved to Detroit with his mother at the age of three. When he was 11, his mother was murdered in the ghetto where they lived and he moved in with his maternal grandparents, where things weren't much better. He worked from a young age, paying room and board to live with his grandparents. A star football player at Miller High School in Detroit, Lipscomb didn't go to college. Instead, he was discovered by the Los Angeles Rams while in a Marine Corps camp in California. At 6-foot-6, 300 pounds, he was a monster for his day, suiting up as a defensive tackle for the Rams (1953-1955), Baltimore Colts (1956-1960) and Pittsburgh Steelers (1961-1962). He dominated football games the way few defensive players ever had. He did receive his share of honors too, including the Dan McGuire Award as the Pro Bowl's best lineman in both 1960 and 1963; he was on two Colts championship teams as well. Former Steelers head coach Buddy Parker had high praise for Lipscomb: "The best man I ever saw at knocking people down." Sports Illustrated's William Nack summed up Lipscomb's impact on the game in a lengthy feature in January 1999. "He was, in fact, the prototype of the modern lineman, the first 300-pound Bunyan endowed not only with enormous power but also with the two qualities usually denied men of his size: agility and speed. His belly did not roll out of his pants. He was hard and trim, and the fastest interior lineman in the league." A long-lived quote from "Big Daddy"-- he got the nickname because he used to call people he couldn't remember the name of "Little Daddy" -- carries on his legacy, which came to an abrupt and controversial end on May 10, 1963. "I just wrap my arms around the whole backfield and peel 'em one by one until I get to the ball carrier. Him I keep." In a column on ESPN.com, Hunter S. Thompson on ESPN described Lipscomb: "Gene 'Big Daddy' Lipscomb was arguably the cruelest pass rusher in NFL history. He was a violent junkie who invented the dreaded roundhouse whack upside the head -- directly on the ear-hole of his victim's helmet -- that often burst both eardrums of any hapless offensive linemen he could reach. Big Daddy weighed 300 pounds and he really wanted to hurt people. And he did -- but he is not in the Hall of Fame." Sounds like the perfect fit for professional wrestling, no? Yet, generally in the ring, he wanted to portray a hero. "Big Daddy" Lipscomb in action.