The star quarterback that never lost...and never let me down

Editor's note: We see the joy in sports all year. This seven-part series was created to share some of the memorable, happy, heartfelt and inspiring moments from USA TODAY's reporters and columnists. 

The ballroom in downtown Toledo was filled with hundreds of football fans and high school football players on a spring evening earlier this year, waiting to listen to the man I was about to introduce. 

I had no notes. I didn’t need notes. His is a story I have known by heart for more than 50 years, since I was a young girl cheering from our family’s seats on the 40-yard line of the University of Toledo’s Glass Bowl and he was the quarterback with the greatest winning streak in college football. 

For three seasons, from 1969-1971, I was caught up in the most magical of relationships between a fan, a star athlete and his team. I threw everything I had, my heart and soul, into Chuck Ealey and the University of Toledo Rockets, and Chuck and his teammates never, ever disappointed me. They always rewarded my devotion with another victory, 35 of them in a row. They never let me down.

Chuck was a sophomore that first season, leading the Rockets to an 11-0 record, winning the Mid-American Conference and defeating Davidson in the Tangerine Bowl, 56-33. We went to every home game with our father and I listened to every road game on the radio, often with my dad sitting by my side. The Tangerine Bowl was the only one of those games to be shown on TV, just locally, but what a treat that was.

The next season, we again attended every home game as Chuck and the Rockets ran their unbeaten streak to 23 games, defeating William and Mary, 40-12, in the Tangerine Bowl. 

Chuck was a revelation; a 6-foot, 185-pound escape artist who managed to throw strikes downfield with a defender crawling on his back or hanging on his arm. The Toledo Blade had a nickname for him: “The Wizard of Oohs and Aahs.” The Rockets ended the season ranked 12th by the Associated Press, ahead of the likes of Southern Cal, Penn State and Oklahoma. Nothing like this had ever happened to our city and our team.

As the 1971 season began, people around the country were starting to notice. CBS came to town to do a feature on Chuck, now a senior, and Sports Illustrated devoted 1½ pages to him, which I cut out and put in my scrapbook. Chuck was attracting attention because he had never lost a game he started in high school or college.

But then came trouble. In the second game of the season, the first at home, the Rockets were tied with Villanova, 7-7, late in the fourth quarter.

“Does it count if we tie them?” I asked my father.

“Well, it’s not a loss, so you can say it’s an unbeaten streak, but you can’t say it’s a winning streak anymore.”

I had almost given up hope when Chuck took over at his 29-yard line after a punt with only 29 seconds remaining. He stepped back into the pocket and threw the ball deep toward our sideline for a 57-yard completion to the Villanova 14. Moments later, Toledo kicked a 30-yard field goal to win, 10-7. Fans stormed the field as all of us jumped around and hugged each other in the stands. The winning streak was still alive.

Chuck and the Rockets kept on winning, earning another MAC championship and one more trip to the Tangerine Bowl. When I opened a small present from my parents under our tree Christmas morning of 1971, I realized someone else was going to the bowl game. Me. There were two tickets to the game in Orlando; one for my dad, one for me. 

We sat in the Toledo section as the Rockets beat Richmond, 28-3. It was wonderful, but as the clock wound down, I strangely started to wish it would go the other way. I wanted to add time to watch this team, not subtract it.

When the game ended, I could feel tears welling in my eyes.

“That’s the end of an era, honey,” my dad said as he put his arm around me. Thirty-five games I had watched or listened to on the radio. Three consecutive years of football games. Chuck and the Rockets had won them all.

Toledo was ranked 14th in the final AP poll in 1971, and Chuck finished eighth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy. I was excited to see how he would do in the NFL draft, but pro teams were talking about moving him to defensive back or wide receiver and Chuck told them he didn’t want that, he wanted to be a quarterback.

There were 17 rounds of the NFL draft back then; 442 players were selected by the 26 NFL teams.

No one took Chuck Ealey.

I was crestfallen. My father tried to explain the inexplicable. Chuck is Black, and back then, NFL teams rarely let Black men play quarterback. 

Chuck never played a down in the NFL. Instead, he went to the Canadian Football League and won the Grey Cup in his rookie season with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, then played six more years in the league before settling into a very successful career in business in the suburbs of Toronto.

That’s where I found him on the phone on Jan. 8, 2003. I had met him once before, briefly, at a charity golf outing in Toledo, but this time, we talked at length. I had a lot of questions for him; he was going to be the subject of my weekly column in USA Today.

Why? A few days earlier, I was with friends in D.C. watching the Fiesta Bowl between Ohio State and Miami in which Hurricanes quarterback Ken Dorsey was trying to win his 35th consecutive game as a starting quarterback. (He didn’t; the Buckeyes won.)

Late in the game, a graphic appeared on the TV screen detailing the greatest winning streaks by starting quarterbacks in NCAA history. Dorsey was second on the list, with 34 consecutive games started and won.

At the top of the list, with 35, was Chuck Ealey.

“Who’s that?” one of my friends asked.

I’ve never been more ready to answer a question in my life.

It took just two phone calls to find Chuck for my column. As I caught up with him to hear his story, he started asking me about mine. I was thrilled to tell him I traced my love of sports back to my days cheering for him and his teammates.

We hung up and I thought that might be the last time we spoke. How wrong I was. A few days after the column ran, I received a call from a friend in Toledo, and Chuck and I soon were hosting a charity golf tournament for several years not far from the university where it all began. That tournament led us to at least a dozen other appearances together in Toledo and Washington, D.C., at charitable events, golf outings, banquets and the like. 

Which brings us back to that dinner earlier this year, the National Football Foundation event in Toledo, where Chuck and I were on the dais, together again. He was being honored for many reasons, including his recent, long-awaited, well-deserved induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. 

And me? I was in a role I’ve come to love, that long-ago girl sitting on the 40-yard line, telling the story once again of the college quarterback who never, ever lost.