After guarantee, Collins delivers in Browns' 1964 title game
By:
Jason Bristol
HERSHEY -
Looking back on his remarkable football career,
Gary Collins has few regrets.
"In my career I dropped seven balls," recalls
Collins. "
Total."
There is this one thing, this one collectible,
Gary wishes he still had.
"It would be nice to have," Collins said. "I blew it.
Young, dumb, stupid."
Let's forget all that for a minute, though. How Gary Collins ended up pictured on the hood of a car is one of the best football stories you've likely never heard. It starts during the
1960s, when Gary Collins was one of the top receivers in the
National Football League for many years with the
Cleveland Browns.
"There was no one who could stop Gary Collins inside of the red zone (inside the opponent's 20-yard line),"
Browns teammate
Paul Warfield said in an interview with
WOIO-TV, the
CBS television station in
Cleveland. "He had magnificent hands
. In the red zone, he was unstoppable."
Yes, unstoppable. But who would have ever predicted this? At the 1964
NFL Championship game in Cleveland, Collins and the Browns stunned the mighty
Baltimore Colts. Collins caught three touchdowns passes -- still a title game record (
Jerry Rice of the
49ers twice caught three touchdowns in a
Super Bowl http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/records/playoffs/player/receiving).
"The first ball I caught, I thought I was going to drop it," Collins remembered.
Cleveland was a 17-point underdog and pulled the upset. Fifty years later, the
City of Cleveland hasn't won a major sports title since.
"
Once you have a memorable game like that, which I did, you're remembered by that game alone, Collins added "I played 126 games."
But what a championship game it was. Who would have predicted it? Well, Gary Collins did. Before that game, he said he told a reporter, 'We're going to win by three touchdowns.'
"I don't know why I said it, but I was 24 [years-old at the time]."
Collins was right; the final score was 27-0.
Here's what makes this story even more astonishing, that picture of Gary on the hood a car,
It's a
1965 Corvette -- a prize given to the championship game's
Most Valuable Player.
"I was the
MVP, Collins said.
Gary Collins predicted that, too.
"(He) told me before the game all week, he was going to win that corvette," offensive lineman
Dick Schafrath in another interview with WOIO-TV said. "By golly, he called his shot. He was something."
"I was just confident," Collins replied.
ESPN ranks Cleveland's stunning 1964 title game victory as the second-greatest upset in National Football League history; behind only the Jets' win four seasons later over the Colts in
Super Bowl III, which featured
Joe Namath's more famous 'guarantee.'
Collins, from
Williamstown, now lives in
Hershey. That corvette? Who knows.
"
My son traced it," Collins said, "up to ten years ago to
Arizona or something."
Collins traded it in.
"I was 24 when I won it.
Things come easy then. '
I'll get another. It don't matter," he said.
It's one of his few regrets but he still has another collectible, his 1964
World Championship ring. It's a piece of
NFL history; something he'll never get rid of. Gary Collins guarantees it.