Winning Prescription : Bill McColl Credits Halas for Opportunity to Mix Career in Medicine With Football

As successful as Bill McColl has been as an orthopedic surgeon, his professional life wouldn’t have been complete without a big assist from the legendary George Halas.

When McColl graduated from Hoover High School in 1948 and headed for Stanford, he already had a master plan for his venture into the real world. Assuming that all went well in college, he would play pro football, then go into medicine.

McColl’s four years at Stanford fit in perfectly with his two goals. He epitomized the term student-athlete, becoming a two-time unanimous All-American end and gaining admission to medical school after his junior year. His athletic feats eventually got him elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Still, there was the matter of combining football with further medical studies, and that was where Halas came in. Of all the men of influence in the National Football League, only the late founder and coach of the Chicago Bears agreed to make it possible for McColl to pursue both careers.

Halas had done the same for several other Bear players who aspired to be doctors or dentists. Among them was guard Dan Fortmann, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who served for many years as team physician of the Rams.

So when the NFL draft approached in 1952, only Halas and the Bears saw fit to use a high choice on McColl. They waited at that, selecting in the third round a player who under normal circumstances would have been a first-rounder. At 6-4 and 230 pounds, McColl was a natural for the newly evolving position of tight end.

McColl, 59, looked back 37 years as he sat next to the pool at his La Jolla home, which is on a bluff overlooking Tourmaline Surfing Park. He has offices in San Diego and Baldwin Park.

“The fact that I got drafted so late is a story in itself,” McColl said. “It was pretty clear that it was because I was in med school. I told all the pros that I wouldn’t play unless I was allowed to continue in med school.

“Most coaches have less creative minds regarding football. George Halas was one of the more creative people in the league. If he saw a player he wanted, he would do what he had to do to get that player.”

Even though Halas was kind enough--and smart enough--to let McColl lead a double life, McColl didn’t join the Bears until he was granted one big extra concession.

“I insisted that if there was ever a conflict, medicine would take precedence over football,” McColl said. “Halas promised, and while I occasionally had to remind him of it, he never went back on his promise.

“I enrolled in med school at the University of Chicago, and my first year with the Bears, all my classes were in the afternoon. He arranged to practice in the morning, so I didn’t miss many practices.

“Sometimes I would miss meetings at night because I had to study, but those meetings were held basically to keep the players busy so they wouldn’t go out on the town.”

McColl played eight seasons with the Bears before retiring at age 29. He caught 201 passes and scored 25 touchdowns, reaching career highs of 36 receptions in 1953 and eight touchdowns in 1958.

Son Milt, who will turn 30 on Aug. 28, is a virtual clone of his father. Milt also starred in football at Stanford, also played eight seasons in the NFL--seven with the San Francisco 49ers and one with the Raiders--and also is a doctor specializing in orthopedics. He is near the end of his internship in San Jose.

Milt’s pro football career did differ from his father’s in two respects. He was a linebacker, and he made it in the NFL despite having been ignored in the draft.

All six children of Bill McColl and his wife, Barbara, graduated from Stanford, and four have master’s degrees. The two other boys also were athletes, Duncan in football and John in volleyball. Duncan, a defensive end, was a fourth-round draft choice of the Washington Redskins in 1977, but was cut after a season on injured reserve.

Of his relatively early retirement, the senior McColl said, “I would have liked to play the 1960 season, but I was at a critical point in my medical training. I was in my orthopedic residency, and certain professors thought I should have continuity instead of taking time off to play football.

“I was still at the peak of my career, and I was healthy and wanted to play. Halas wanted me to play, too, but I realized it was a good time to get out.”

A year later, a rookie named Mike Ditka came along. As McColl put it, “I don’t think the Bears missed me at all.”

Ditka, now the Bears coach, is the only former tight end in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

McColl was asked what was it like to play for Halas.

“He always let you know who was boss,” McColl said. “But he was a fine guy, a fine, loyal gentleman.

“People ask me this all the time, and many years ago, I put down my feelings about George Halas in a letter I wrote to him when he was being honored as Chicagoan of the year.”

McColl went inside for a few minutes and returned with a five-page letter, dated Jan. 20, 1976. In it, he told Halas how much their association had meant to him.

One passage in the letter brought to mind Ditka’s oft-repeated remark that Halas “threw nickels around like manhole covers.”

Referring to a time when Halas offered him a raise because he was interning and had just become a father, McColl wrote, “I concluded from these contract negotiations that, one, George Halas would never pay a ballplayer a nickel more than he felt he was worth, but that, two, there was no limit to his generosity or his willingness to go the extra mile when the personal lives of his ballplayers were concerned.”

McColl noted that Halas had even played good Samaritan to players who had openly criticized him. He cited these examples: Halas had loaned wide receiver Harlon Hill $15,000 to buy a chicken farm and had picked up a $5,000 hospital bill for the wife of defensive tackle Bill Bishop.

In summing up, McColl wrote, “If I were thrown into jail in any part of the world including Mexico or Turkey, and could make only one telephone call--the U.S. Consulate, my attorney or my father--I would call George Halas, because I know that not only does he have the contacts to help; he would go to hell if necessary to help one of his former players.”

McColl never was an All-Pro, although many people thought he should have been, but he was a consistent producer and never missed a game.

“This is my one injury,” he said, holding up a bent right little finger. “I caught a pass wrong in practice from Tommy O’Connell. It’s a chronic sprain, but it’s an effective thing because when patients show me their fingers, I tell them it’s not how a finger looks but how it works.”

The term “tight end” had just become part of football nomenclature when McColl joined the Bears. He didn’t invent the position, but he was one of the first to play it.

In the early ‘50s, some teams, notably the Rams and Bears, began using a third end instead of a third running back.

“Clark Shaughnessy split the Rams’ two ends,” McColl said. “They had Elroy Hirsch and Tom Fears. That opened up the passing game, and the formation came to be known as the pro set.

“Later, when I was a rookie, Shaughnessy was on the Bears’ staff. I started out a yard behind the line of scrimmage (as a slot back), but he moved me up to the line. That gave me an extra yard to get away from the linebacker. The position didn’t change at all, but it made it tougher on the linebacker and made for a more powerful running game.”

Many tight ends will say they get a bigger kick out of blocking than receiving, but McColl was not one of them.

“I think I liked receiving better,” he said. “I played wide a lot, too. At Stanford, I was an end who could split and also do a lot of blocking. I caught 42 passes one year. I could go deep, but I wasn’t much of a threat to run after I caught the ball.”

McColl’s talents were not confined to the basic duties of a tight end. He had such a strong arm that he threw one touchdown pass of 79 yards and another of 59, both to speedy Harlon Hill.

The 79-yarder, on which Hill made a juggling, lunging catch in the end zone, helped give the Bears a 17-17 tie with the New York Giants en route to the Western Division title in 1956. The Giants then routed the Bears in the championship game, 47-7.

“I could throw a ball 75 or 80 yards,” McColl said. “On the 79-yarder, I ran an end-around play toward left end. Then I came back and planted my feet and threw a bomb.

“Just as I released the ball, I got splattered. I jumped up and yelled to the referee, ‘Roughing the passer. Roughing the passer.’ Then I looked up and everybody was yelling ‘Touchdown.’

“Years later, Rosey Grier admitted he was the one who creamed me.”

The title game was played on a frozen field at Yankee Stadium in New York, and the consensus at the time was that the Giants had chosen their footwear more wisely than the Bears.

“The sportswriters seemed to think that was the case,” McColl said. “I would just say the Giants were on and we were off. I think it was a matter of biorhythms. It was our only title shot during my career (the Bears finished second four times), so it was a big disappointment.”

The quarterbacks who threw passes to McColl during most of that period were Ed Brown, Zeke Bratkowski and Hall of Famer George Blanda.

“My favorite was Blanda,” McColl said. “He would throw short, soft passes on anticipation. I’d look up and the ball was right in there.

“On third and 10, Brown would go to Hill on a deep out. Blanda would go to me over the middle for a first down. One time against Baltimore, Blanda threw seven passes to me in the fourth quarter, two of them for touchdowns.”

Before settling into orthopedic practice in 1965--he started in Covina--McColl packed up his family in 1962 and went as medical missionary to South Korea, where he became a pioneer in reconstructive surgery on leprosy patients. He produced, directed and narrated a film, “Highway of Hope,” on the rehabilitation of victims of leprosy. Today, he is board chairman of American Leprosy Missions Inc.

In 1965, McColl was named one of the nation’s 10 outstanding young men by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. From 1976 to 1980, he was a member of Stanford’s board of trustees, and he is now vice president of San Diego’s Hall of Champions.

There have been setbacks. McColl tried and failed three times to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, the last in 1982.

But everything else seemingly has gone right, and it all began when McColl was at Hoover High. He made the All-CIF teams in football, basketball and baseball and excelled in the high and low hurdles in track.

“My big rival center in basketball was Don Larsen of Point Loma,” McColl said, referring to the man who in 1956 pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees in the World Series. “He was named the star of the month in January of ‘47, and I was named in February.

“I beat Larsen once in American Legion baseball. I think I threw a no-hitter. I threw fast and wild, so I scared the hitters, but I was just lucky that day. My baseball coach, Les Cassie, wanted me to go to a Dodger tryout camp, but I never followed it up.”

McColl liked football too much to give baseball a try, and thanks to Halas, he had the best of both worlds.

“The pay in pro football wasn’t great, but it was sufficient,” McColl said. “It permitted me to go to med school, get married, have a family and become a missionary and still have a down payment on a house.

“I would have had a much tougher time if George Halas hadn’t let me mix medicine with football.”