Commentary : Paul Hornung’s Wait Only Gets Longer

They were called triple-threats, and they have become football’s dinosaurs.

The game no longer demands players who can do all the things with that strange-shaped ball for which it was intended--run with it, pass it, catch it and kick it.

You don’t have to go back too far in NFL history, though, to identify the last of the breed. Most of the great single wing tailbacks had such skills before that formation went the way of the dropkick. Then, later, there were players who bucked the trend even when the T-formation and all its progeny began to demand more specialization. Doak Walker fit that category with Detroit, and the Giants Frank Gifford.

And Paul Hornung.

A Heisman Trophy winner in his senior year at Notre Dame despite the team’s 2-8 record, Hornung went to the Green Bay Packers in 1957, two seasons before Vince Lombardi moved over from the Giants to turn a long-downtrodden franchise into the NFL’s dynasty of the ‘60s.

His Heisman may have been the result of hype. That can be the case in any year, and almost certainly it was a factor when college football’s “Golden Boy” received the statuette. But if there were doubts about Paul Hornung’s football skills, surely they had vanished by the time he ended a 10-year pro career in 1967.

Made an NFL halfback, Hornung led the Packers twice in rushing before backfield mate Jim Taylor started monopolizing that statistic in 1960. He also was the Pack’s leading scorer five times, kicking field goals and extra points as well as scoring touchdowns rushing and receiving. He said a league record by scoring 176 points in 1960 (15 touchdowns, 15 field goals and 41 points-after). The following year he scored 33 points in a single game against Baltimore (4 TDs, 6 PATs and a field goal), and in 1965, he crossed the goal-line five times in one afternoon against the Colts.

Not even that tells of Hornung’s contributions to a team which appeared in five title games and won four championships during his tenure. He could block; he was the man whose number Lombardi wanted to be called in key situations, and he was a leader.

Paul Hornung’s trouble was--and is--confined to a single season. In 1963, he and Alex Karras were suspended for the season by commissioner Pete Rozelle for gambling on games. A few other players received reprimands.

“I admitted gambling on the Green Bay Packers to win and on some other games--about $500 to $600,” Hornung said by telephone from his Louisville, Ky., home. “I think one year I won a little bit of money, another year I lost a little bit.”

In Hornung’s mind, Rozelle did what he had to do. “I’ve never had any animosity towards Pete Rozelle,” he said, adding that the commissioner “did some pretty good quarterbacking” by making examples of the two biggest names and heading off what could have been a federal grand jury investigation of the NFL. If that had happened, “it would have been more than Hornung and Karras going to Washington, I’ll tell you that.”

Hornung returned for three more seasons at Green Bay and a final one with New Orleans. He had served his one-year penance.

Or is he still serving it?

He became eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame five years after his retirement, in 1972. This week, the 1985 inductees--four players and Rozelle himself--were admitted to the shrine. Paul Hornung still is waiting.

“I would have liked to have made it,” he said, adding that he thinks the five who did, including Rozelle, “fully deserved it.”

But the disappointment he says he felt most in his first year of eligibility has lessened with each rejection. “I now have become quite experienced in this.”

Hornung said he thinks it is tougher on supporters who have gone to great lengths trying to overcome what they think is an injustice to the former Packer star. One year, a petition bearing 10,000 signatures calling for his induction were sent to voters. There have been transcontinental telephone calls and lots of letters.

“I don’t worry too much about it, but I feel sorry for them. They call to express their condolences . . . It’s not the kind of thing to look forward to every year.”

After this year’s vote was announced, ex-teammate Herb Adderley--one of eight Packers from those glory years already in the Hall--angrily denounced the selection process. Hornung, he said, probably should have been inducted before any of the other Green Bay alums.

Adderley was particularly critical of Rozelle being admitted when Hornung hasn’t been. “I can imagine how Paul must feel. You practice when it’s 10-below zero, you play on a frozen field and get your butt kicked black-and-blue for 10 years, then you see someone who never touched a football get voted into the Hall of Fame ahead of you. I can’t think of too many things that would make me bitter, but that would,” Adderley said.

There was a time, Hornung admits, that he was bitter. Now he is resigned.

“I’m not even going to worry too much about it. If it happens, it happens.”

If it doesn’t happen, an injustice will be perpetuated.