Dicky Maegle died at the age of 86; A football star is remembered for a strange tackle

Dicky Maegle was an all-American runner at Rice University. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. And he was a defensive player for the Pro Bowl in his first NFL season.

But when Rice announced that Maegle had died on Sunday at the age of 86, he was mostly remembered for a moment: one of the strangest episodes in the history of college football, as witnessed by some 75,000 fans at the 1954 Cotton Bowl in Dallas and national television audiences.

Maegle took a handoff on the Rices 5-yard line with Alabama in the second quarter of his match to the right and drove the sideline down. As he passed the Alabama bench as he crossed midfield, on the way to virtually a certain touch, Crimson Tide player Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period, without a helmet, got on the field and leveled Maegle on the blind wall in Alabamas ’42-yard. line.

The judge ruled that Maegla was entitled to a 95-yard touch. Rice, ranked 6th in the nation by the Associated Press, went on to win 28-6 in 13th place in Alabama.

Maegle, who was this season’s junior, also scored a goal in the Cotton Bowl with 34 and 79 yards and scored 265 yards with 11 spurs.

Lewis apologized to Maegele at half time.

I’m too emotional, he said when the game ended. When I got him to handle it, I jumped up and returned to the bench. I told myself I didn’t do it. But I knew you did too.

The following Sunday, Maegle and Lewis were reunited as so-called guests at Ed Sullivans ’popular CBS variety show.

I saw him when he was about a step and a half away from me, Maegle told The Dallas Morning News in 1995. I went left, which helped alleviate the blows. If I hadn’t deviated from him, I really think he would have broken both my legs.

Maegle was the parent of all Americans in the 1954 season, when he ran 905 yards and 11 touches and finished sixth in the vote for the Heisman Trophy, which was presented annually to the most significant player in college football. The trophy was won that year by Wisconsin player Alan Ameche.

The San Francisco 49ers selected Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 NFL Draft. He was 49er for five seasons, playing mostly with proper safety and occasionally as a running defender, and then ended his career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes and ran one of them back into contact.

He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.

Richard Lee Moegle (he later legally changed his last name to match its correct pronunciation) was born on September 14, 1934, in Taylor, Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. He played high school football, then got sports funding for Rice.

After leaving football, he continued to own real estate and managed Houston hotels.

Maegles ’wife Carol told The Houston Chronicle that she died at their home in Houston and that her health had deteriorated several months ago after the fall.

Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

Tommy Lewis, who played in the Canadian Football League, coached high school football and worked in insurance business in Alabama, died in 2014.

Roy Riegels, of the University of California Center, who ran 69 yards in the wrong direction when Georgia Tech took a drop in the 1929 Rose Bowl, leading to a Cals 8-7 loss and earning monster Wrong Way Riegels, watched the Maegle-Lewis drama evolve from his California home .

He had advice for Lewis the next day:

Laugh with them, all you have to do. What the hell is that? It’s just a football game.

Maegle didn’t laugh at Cotton Bowl over time. he believed that Lewis ’episode overshadowed his remarkable football achievements.

People still don’t just get it, he pointed out about 40 years later. I led the people profitably. I led the people at the yards per carriage. I led the conference in a hurry and scoring. But when people present me, all they ever mention is what happened in that game.