Hall of Famer Gale Sayers, who made his mark as one of the NFL’s best all-purpose running backs and was later celebrated for his enduring friendship with a Chicago Bears teammate with cancer, has died. He was 77.
Nicknamed “The Kansas Comet,” Sayers’ shy and reserved nature belied the stylistic and commanding way he played football. Unbeknownst to many, Sayers was also a business owner in the East Bay after his storied NFL career.
Sayers died Tuesday at his home in Wakarusa, Ind., a family member told The New York Times on Wednesday. Relatives of Sayers had said he was diagnosed with dementia. In March 2017, his wife, Ardythe, said she partly blamed his football career.
Sayers was a blur to NFL defenses, ghosting would-be tacklers or zooming by them like few running backs or kick returners before or since. Yet it was his rock-steady friendship with Brian Piccolo, depicted in the film “Brian’s Song,” that marked him as more than a sports star.
“He was the very essence of a team player — quiet, unassuming and always ready to compliment a teammate for a key block,” Hall of Fame President David Baker said. “Gale was an extraordinary man who overcame a great deal of adversity during his NFL career and life.”
He became a stockbroker, sports administrator, businessman and philanthropist for several inner-city Chicago youth initiatives after his pro football career was cut short by serious injuries to both knees.
One of his businesses, Sayers Computer Source, a computer sales and consulting firm, was based in Livermore and Pleasanton during the 1990s and early 2000s. The bulk of their business was an account with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Sayers frequently hosted clients for leisurely rounds of golf at the Wente Vineyards course in Livermore, and participated in fundraisers for Pleasanton’s school district. But otherwise you wouldn’t have known arguably the greatest running back in NFL history was living among us.
And that was how Sayers wanted it to be. While here, Sayers politely resisted overtures from this news organization over the years to be interviewed for a profile story.
Sayers’ time on the football field also had a noteworthy Bay Area connection — both the high point and low point of his NFL career came against the San Francisco 49ers.
He had maybe the greatest game in NFL history in 1965 while running circles around the 49ers in the mud at Wrigley Field. Sayers tied an NFL record with six touchdowns that day, running for four touchdowns, catching a pass for an 80-yard score and returning a punt 85 yards for a TD in a 61-20 victory.
No NFL player in the past 55 years has duplicated Sayers’ six-touchdown game.
“It was really incredible, something to behold,” Mike Ditka, who was a Bears tight end back then, said years later. “Probably the greatest single game, I think, in the history of the game.”
Three years later, while enjoying his best season, Sayers suffered a season-ending and career-altering knee injury when he was tackled by 49ers defensive back Kermit Alexander. Sayers suffered two torn ligaments and ruptured cartilage.
“The injury was only serious because they had to saw through muscles and nerves,” Sayers would say years later. “If they’d had arthroscopic techniques in those days, I’d have been back in a couple of weeks.”
Sayers never regained his speed and elusiveness and wound up playing just 18 games over the next three years. He retired after the 1971 season at the age of 28.
Sayers was a two-time All-American at Kansas and inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as well. He was selected by Chicago with the fourth pick overall in 1965, and his versatility produced dividends and highlight-reel slaloms through opposing defenses right from the start.
He set an NFL record with 22 touchdowns in his first season: 14 rushing, six receiving, one punt and one kickoff return. Sayers was a unanimous choice for Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Sayers followed that by being voted an All-Pro during the first five of his seven NFL seasons (1965-71). But he was stuck on a handful of middling-to-bad Bears teams and, like Dick Butkus, another Hall of Fame teammate selected in the same 1965 draft, he never played in the postseason. Sayers appeared in only 68 games total and just two in each of his final two seasons while attempting to return from those knee injuries.
Butkus said he hadn’t even seen Sayers play until a highlight film was shown at an event in New York that both attended honoring the 1964 All-America team. He said the real-life version of Sayers was even better.
“He was amazing. I still attribute a lot of my success from trying to tackle him (in practice),” Butkus said at the Bears’ 100th anniversary celebration in June 2019.
“I never came up against a running back like him in my whole career, as far as a halfback. And that was counting O.J. (Simpson) and a couple of other guys,” he added. “No one could touch this guy.”
The Bears drafted them with back-to-back picks in ’65, taking Butkus at No. 3 and Sayers at No. 4. It didn’t take long for Sayers to win over veterans who had helped the Bears take the NFL championship in 1963.
“We were both No. 1s, so they’re going to make it hard on us and show us the ropes and everything else,” Butkus said. “But Gale just ran circles around everybody. Quickly, they adopted him.”
The friendship between Sayers and backfield mate Piccolo began in 1967, when the two became unlikely roommates. Sayers was Black and already a star; Piccolo was White and had worked his way up from the practice squad. Early on, they were competing for playing time and carries.
But when the club dropped its policy of segregating players by race in hotel room assignments, they forged a bond. In 1968, Piccolo helped Sayers through a tough rehab process while he recovered from a torn ligament in his right knee. After Sayers returned the next season to become an All-Pro, he made sure his friend shared in the credit.
They became even closer after Piccolo pulled himself out of a game early in the 1969 season because of breathing difficulties and was diagnosed with cancer. That phase of their friendship was recounted first by Sayers in his autobiography, “I Am Third,” and then in the 1971 movie “Brian’s Song.”
With actor Billy Dee Williams playing Sayers and James Caan in Piccolo’s role, the made-for-TV movie was later released in theaters.
Sayers stayed by Piccolo’s side as the illness took its toll, donating blood and providing support. Just days before Piccolo’s death age 26, Sayers received the George S. Halas Award for courage and said: “You flatter me by giving me this award, but I can tell you here and now that I accept it for Brian Piccolo. … I love Brian Piccolo and I’d like all of you to love him, too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”
Just over a year ago, Sayers made the 130-mile trip from his home in Indiana to attend the opening ceremony of the Bears’ 100th-season celebration, receiving a rousing ovation.
“It’s amazing someone that was so beautiful and gifted and talented as a player and later in life to have that happen to you is really, I know, tough on everybody,” Hall of Fame linebacker and ex-49ers coach Mike Singletary said that weekend.
“It’s tough on his teammates, former teammates. It’s tough on the league. And as a player,” Singletary concluded, “it just makes you take a step back and thank God every day for your own health and blessings.”
Associated Press contributed to this report.