Y.A. Tittle

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1972

University: LSU

Induction Year: 1972

Nobody went into the National Football League record book with more reluctance than Yelberton Abraham Tittle, Jr.

On Oct. 28, 1962, at the age of 36, Y.A. Tittle became the fourth player in NFL history to throw seven touchdown passes in a single game – equaling a record shared by Sid Luckman, Adrian Burk and George Blanda. He also became the second player to pass for more than 500 yards in a single game. But he really didn’t want to do either.

Tittle was content to run out the clock in the final minutes, but teammate Frank Gifford insisted that he take a shot at the record.

“If you don’t call a pass,” he threatened, “we’re walking off the field.”

Tittle threw one more pass – to Gifford – and he scored a touchdown. The passes accounted for all seven touchdowns in the Giants’ 49-34 victory.

“I wasn’t even sure I could play that week,” Tittle recalled. “I had injured my arm in the previous game. But it worked out OK.”

He completed 27-39 passes for 505 yards and seven touchdowns.

Four others have thrown for more than 500 yards, with all of them except Norm Van Brock doing it in the 1980s after NFL rules changes opened up the passing game. But nobody else has down it with fewer than 40 attempts. Two of the others (Dan Marino, Phil Simms) threw 60 or more passes.

One year before his record-breaking performance, Tittle was considering retirement at the age of 35 when the San Francisco 49ers traded him to the Giants.

“But throwing a football was the best thing I could do in life,” he said when he was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1972, “and I had done it since I was in the sixth grade. So I took my old shoulder pads that I’d used for 16 years and went to New York feeling like a rookie trying to make the team for the first time.”

Tittle was “Player of the Year” in two of his last four seasons in the NFL, and directed the Giants to three consecutive conference titles. But he never attained the goal he wanted more than anything else: an NFL championship.

In 1972, he shrugged off that disappointment as “happenstance.”

“The years that Green Bay beat us, we played the championship games in ice and snow,” he recalled. “But they were probably better than we were. The other games could’ve gone either way. Winning all the time, like loving your neighbor all the time, is impossible. But if you’re trying to win all the time, you’ll win most of thethem.”

When New York clinched the Eastern Conference title in 1961, Tittle phoned his wife in San Francisco with a two-word message: “We won.” Then they both cried over the telephone until the operator informed him that his three minutes were up.

Growing up in Marshall , Texas , Y.A. Tittle’s idol was Slingin’ Sammy Baugh of TCU. When he saw Baugh throwing a football through a tire in newsreels, Tittle rigged up a tire in his back yard to sharpen his arm.

He probably would’ve never seriously considered laying college football at LSU if an older brother, Jack Tittle, hadn’t played at Tulane.

When the family attended LSU-Tulane games, Y.A. Tittle was impressed with the tiger mascot, the campus and the football atmosphere at LSU. After he led Marshall High to the state playoffs as a senior, Y.A. signed a letter of intent with LSU. But a few days before he was scheduled to go to Baton Rouge , he was pressured into going to the University of Texas .

One reason everybody was courting Tittle was that he had asthma. In 1944, that meant he wasn’t likely to be drafted by the Army.

His summer roommate in Austin was Bobby Layne, and they had barefoot races in the street in front of their boarding house. But Y.A. wasn’t hooked on the ‘Horns.

When LSU assistant coach Arthur “Red” Swanson visited him the week before registration, Tittle was eager to go to Baton Rouge . Swanson insisted that he obtain the permission of Texas coach D.X. Bible. Tittle pretended to call the Longhorns’ coach from a telephone booth, breathing a sigh of relief when there was no answer. Then he lied to Swanson, assuring him that everything was alright. Bible howled about the “kidnapping,” but couldn’t do anything about it.

Tittle set passing records at LSU that would stand until Bert Jones came along more than a quarter-century alter, but the favorite memory of Tittle for many Tiger fans was the time he nearly lost his pants against Ole Miss.

Tittle intercepted a deflected pass and managed to pull out of the grasp of a Mississippi player – but not before the Rebel grabbed his belt and yanked it hard enough to break the buckle.

Holding the ball with one hand and his pants with the other, Tittle got as far as the Ole Miss 20-yard-line before he was dragged down. The Rebels stopped that threat and held on for a 20-18 victory.

Coach Bernie Moore was kidding when he said, “When Tittle leaves, I’m leaving too.” But that is exactly what happened. Moore became commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and never coached after Tittle’s final game.

During his four seasons, the Tigers made the switch to the T-formation. His school records included 166 completions for 2,517 yards and 21 touchdowns, but the best was yet to come for the “Bald Eagle.” In a 17-yaer pro career, his passed for 33,070 yards and 242 touchdowns. When he retired, he was second to Johnny Unitas in both categories.

When John Brodie joined the 49ers in 1958, he thought Tittle – already bald at the age of 31 – was over the hill, and figured it wouldn’t take him long to claim the starting position. But as time went on, his respect for the veteran grew by leaps and bounds.

“I quickly realized,” Brodie later wrote, “that he was playing the game at a level with which other players – myself included – were not familiar.”