David Briggs: Tony Dungy starts 'crusade' to get Ealey in Hall of Fame

Feb. 28—Add another voice to the cavalry of Chuck Ealey supporters who can't believe the University of Toledo legend is not in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Maybe you've heard of him.

"I'm starting a crusade," Tony Dungy said.

How cool is that?

Since we revisited Ealey's confounding exclusion in recognition of the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest winning streaks in sports history — the Rockets' never-to-be-repeated 35-0 run from 1969-71 — the campaign for the pioneering star of that golden era to receive his proper due has gained another round of momentum.

And no one has pounded the table harder than Dungy, the Hall of Fame coach and popular TV analyst.

In a tweet that went viral last week, Dungy wrote: "I'm sorry College Football Hall of Fame. I'm going to keep shouting about QB Chuck Ealey. He was 35-0 at U of Toledo. In 7 years before he got there Toledo was 28-38-2. The 7 yrs after he left they were 25-41. While he was there they NEVER LOST A GAME! How is he not in the CFHOF?"

It's a great question, of course, and one he expanded on in an interview with The Blade.

For Dungy, who grew up in nearby Jackson, Mich., and called Ealey one of his heroes, this is personal.

As an African-American who played quarterback himself, he saw Ealey as a beacon of what was possible, the dual-threat magic of the Toledo star capturing his imagination. Dungy said Ealey was Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson "before we realized [quarterbacks] like that could play in the NFL."

"I try to tell my kids now, they're enamored by what some of these guys can do and the greatness we see in some of these really creative quarterbacks, and I said we had that in our days," Dungy said. "They just didn't get to demonstrate it in the NFL. With Chuck Ealey, what stood out first of all was the winning, because that's what a quarterback is supposed to do. Find ways to win, find ways to make the big play. The creativity and mobility and throwing on the run and making plays, as we say now, off schedule. ... Now we see guys making plays and throwing back 30 yards across field after dodging three rushers, it's exciting and we marvel. That was Chuck Ealey."

Dungy, 65, said he was disappointed when Ealey didn't get a chance in the NFL, a snub that reflected the retrograde belief that a quarterback should look and play a certain way. Ealey instead played quarterback in the Canadian Football League, just as Dungy — who became a star passer at the University of Minnesota — would have if he had not been willing to change positions.

"Five years later, I come out of school, it's the same thing: You have the choice to change positions or go to Canada," said Dungy, who played safety in his four seasons in the NFL. " The Montreal Alouettes had my rights, and I thought about going there, but I wanted to play in the NFL I wanted to play with the best."

Still, even if Ealey did not enjoy the stage he deserved, his impact was towering just the same.

"I felt fortunate to go to the Big Ten and try to do the same thing as Chuck," Dungy said. "That kind of set the stage. When I played, we had seven African-American quarterbacks in the Big Ten, and Chuck Ealey was a big reason for that."

The longtime former coach — who led the Colts to a Super Bowl title in 2006 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016 — said he is just now joining the #InductChuck fight because he is just now learning about it.

"I tweeted about Chuck in 2018 during Black History Month and someone resent it the other day saying, 'It's a shame that Chuck Ealey is not in the Hall of Fame,'" Dungy said. "I said, 'Well, you must be mistaken. He's got to be.'"

He then learned the story and became as puzzled as the rest of us.

As Toledo fans know well, the issue with what should be Ealey's open-and-shut Hall of Fame case is that he does not meet the main criterion for induction, which states that a player must have been a first-team All-American by an NCAA-recognized organization. Ealey was honored as such by the Football News, which is on the list of approved entities today but was not when he played.

The easy solution is to make an exception. It wouldn't be the first time. There are many players in the Hall who did not meet the stated first-team requirement, including Georgia's Fran Tarkenton and Mississippi's Archie Manning, who were inducted in 1987 and 1989, respectively.

National Football Foundation president and CEO Steve Hatchell previously told The Blade that the foundation — which operates the College Football Hall of Fame — has followed the provision "since 1990."

"I could live with it if they didn't make an exception for Archie Manning, who played in the very same years," Dungy said. "Why? What's the rationale for the exception for Archie Manning? Well, he had a great career and was a fantastic player at the University of Mississippi? OK, I can live with that. I'll buy that. But what about Chuck Ealey?"

He added: "This is as bad of an omission as I've seen. People talk about the NFL Hall of Fame and this guy should be in and this guy got slighted. When you look at what Chuck Ealey did at Toledo ... for the quarterback of that group, and no question the leader and catalyst, to not be in the Hall of fame, it doesn't make sense."

With that, Dungy had some calls to make, including to Hatchell, and a fight to begin.

Well done, coach.

"If it takes 50 years, we still have a chance to fix this," Dungy said. "We have the chance to right this wrong."