Max McGee

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1984

University: Tulane

Induction Year: 1984

In the third play of Super Bowl I, Max McGee thought his worst nightmare was coming true.

Vince Lombardi, the volatile head coach of the Green Bay Packers, was standing in front of McGee, screaming his name.

McGee was certain that Lombardi had found out that McGee was out partying with a blonde until 7:30 in the morning.

“He’s going to fine me $10,000 in front of 100,000 people,” McGee thought to himself.

“McGee!” Lombardi bellowed again. “Get in there for Dowler!”

McGee had been seated next to Paul Hormung, discussing Hormung’s upcoming wedding. Only then did he realize that Boyd Dowler, the Packer’s starting flanker, was leaving the field after suffering a shoulder injury trying to block linebacker E.J. Holub.

To say the least, McGee was an unlikely candidate for Most Valuable Player honors in Super Bowl I. Nearing the end of his career, he caught only four passes in 14 regular-season games.

Before they discussed the wedding, Hornung asked his hung-over teammate if he would be able to play.

“No way,” McGee said. “There’s no way I could make it.”

A few plays after McGee replaced Dowler, Packer quarterback Bart Starr Froze the Kansas City Line backers with a fake and threw to McGee—who was breaking across the middle.

The ball was slightly behind him, and McGee reached back with one hand, trying to break up an interception. The ball stuck in his hand while Chiefs safety Willie Mitchell went for the interception, and McGee had clear sailing to the first Super Bowl touchdown. He caught another touchdown pass in the third quarter.

The bottom line: seven catches for 138 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Packers to a 35-10 victory. That was more yardage than his combined regular-season totals for 1966 and 1967.

“What can you say about a guy like McGee?” Lombardi told the media after the game.

Actually, Lombardi had plenty to say about a player whose chief claim to fame was being the curfew breaking champion of the NFL.

Once, when he caught McGee, Lombardi said, “That’ll be $500 this time and $1,000 next time—and if you can find a girl who’s worth $1,000, I’ll go with you.”

During the week before Super Bowl I, the Packer’s coach set his maximum $10,000 fine as the penalty for breaking curfew. Only one player ran the risk of getting tagged with the big one.

“Lombardi only caught me about 10 percent of the time,” McGee recalled later, “so the odds were with me. Besides, I made the team breakfast.”

In retrospect, McGee thought Lombardi kept him on the roster because the former Tulane University standout was able to keep his teammates loose. “I think Lombardi kept me around to keep people laughing occasionally,” he said. “I could get away with throwing in a little punch line when he got everybody so up tight they couldn’t walk.”

Of course, Lombardi wouldn’t have ignored his cracks if McGee hadn’t proved himself on the playing field. He led the Packers in receiving four times catching 342 passes for 6,410 yards and 51 touchdowns in 11 seasons.

He was a running back at Tulane, averaging 4.4 yards per carry. He also returned kickoffs and punts, and was selected to play in the 1953 Blue-Gray game.

McGee caught 30 more passes in eight seasons—including seven in a row—and helped the Packers win five NFL titles and two Super Bowls.

“I think those early teams were psyched out by the Packers,” he said of the first two Super Bowls. “Oakland had a pretty dang good team and Kansas City had some good personnel. But it would have been like beating the Boston Celtics 20 years ago. People had read so much about us, I don’t think they were ready to play us.”

After his playing career, he was co-founder of a chain of Mexican restaurants. He also bought a discotheque called Maximallian’s in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield.

“I used to like bars anyway,” he explained, “and if I’m going to be in them the rest of my life, I might as well own some.”

While his pass-catching statistics are impressive, his record for breaking curfew was even more remarkable. At one point, he snuck out 11 nights in a row without being caught. “I must hold the NFL record,” he said.

“I wasn’t proud of it, but I sure was used to it.”