Hub Arkush: Gale Sayers was the greatest open field runner in the history of the NFL

LAKE FOREST – Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s the guys that cemented my love affair with the National Football League beyond my dad were George Halas, Vince Lombardi, Jim Brown, Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers.

When Sayers passed away Wednesday at the age of 77 after a long battle with dementia-related illnesses, the sports world lost not only one of the greatest running backs of all time but one of its best-known icons.

Hoping to be a tough guy myself some day, what spoke to me about Brown and Butkus was that they are the two most physically dominant players I’ve ever seen.

Each would take on two, three and four tacklers or blockers at a time and still win the day.

But Sayers, he was different, and he was oh so special.

Gale Sayers didn’t have to physically dominate opponents because so few ever actually laid hands on him.

Lombardi once said of Sayers, “He would surprise you, even when you knew he was coming.”

Sayers is near universally recognized as the greatest open-field runner in the history of the game, and from the first day he stepped on an NFL field, he did things no one had ever seen before and a few we haven’t seen since.

In seven seasons, Sayers totaled 4,956 yards rushing with 39 touchdowns (averaging 5 yards a carry), 1,307 receiving yards with nine TDs, 91 kickoff returns with six TDs and 27 punt returns with two TDs. He did all that in spite of missing the final five games of the 1968 season and playing only two games each in 1970 and 1971.

He was a five-time All-Pro, went to four Pro Bowls and was the offensive player of the game in three of them in a time when guys actually showed up to play.

At 34, he was the youngest player ever inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Sayers' 1968 season was cut short by a devastating knee injury at a time when a torn ACL was much more a career death sentence than it is today, and yet he returned in 1969 to lead the NFL in rushing with 1,032 yards and win Comeback Player of the Year honors on sheer guts and determination with his open-field magic lost forever to the surgeon’s knife.

George Halas once described what made Sayers so special and why he knew he had to make him a Bear, saying, “I couldn’t stand to let Gale go elsewhere after I saw him make a totally unique move in a Kansas game film. Gale started one way, left his feet and seemed to change direction in the air. When he landed, he was running the opposite direction. When I saw that move, I knew we had to get that young man.”

Historians and old sportswriter hacks like me have spent the past 50 years wondering what might have been were it not for his damaged knees.

Honestly, Gale did too.

In his post-NFL life, Sayers wasn’t shy about mentioning what could have been, and some thought him bitter because although he was warm and pleasant when you got to know him, he wasn’t the most outgoing or approachable guy around.

That came with good cause.

Being a Black superstar in the '60s wasn’t what it is today.

What made him a true sports icon was his relationship with teammate Brian Piccolo and the impact their special friendship had on the desegregation of the NFL.

Ever the visionary, Halas knew what he had in Sayers from the jump, and he had to figure out how to make him the face of the team near the tail end of the Jim Crow South and when the NFL was as predominantly white as it is Black today.

Halas also knew in Piccolo he had the perfect match to make them the first interracial roommates in the history of the league.

What emerged was so much more than a great sports story, it was a cultural breakthrough against the significant racial bias of those times.

Sayers’ story rings particularly loudly today with so many players currently speaking out and becoming activists against the racial unrest they see in America more than 50 years later.

He would face other challenges born of racism in his time in Chicago, and Sayers handled them all with the quiet dignity and determination that made him a Hall of Famer off the field, as well.

In covering the Bears' 100th season celebration last year, I asked dozens of today’s players what was special to them, and to a man they talked about meeting Butkus and Sayers.

Gale Sayers left an indelible mark on the National Football League, the city of Chicago and on our culture as a whole.

How many people can say that?