WHERE ARE THEY NOW? DON BURROUGHS : ‘The Blade’ Played a Different Game : Former Fillmore High Standout Says Pro Football Has Changed but Not Always for Better

Don Burroughs, a former National Football League defensive back who was known as “The Blade,” took a sip of coffee and then went to work slicing up today’s professional players.

“They’re spoiled,” he said.

Now 58 and a Ventura businessman, Burroughs was a tall, skinny strong safety with the Rams and then the Philadelphia Eagles, playing from 1955 through 1964. With 50 interceptions and an NFL championship ring on his right hand, he can look back at a successful career during the days of 33-man rosters, “when everybody had to be a football player.”

There is a trace of nostalgia and sarcasm in Burroughs’ comment. Sitting in a Ventura restaurant, he expressed his respect for the ability of modern athletes but has great disdain for their behavior.

“I played with a different fraternity of men,” said Burroughs, a former Fillmore High athletic standout. “Yes, players today are bigger and faster and make more money, but I feel the men I played with were better. Nobody ran out of bounds. Never did anybody take themselves out of the game voluntarily.

“And I guarantee you, there was no laughing or cracking jokes on the sidelines when we were behind by 14 points.”

When men were men, Burroughs said, they weren’t pampered. “Take the Rams. Their training room looks like the Embassy Suites. It’s got everything. Whirlpools. Jacuzzis. On the field, golf carts bring water and players sit on their helmets.”

Burroughs winced. The vision of a player resting on his helmet is too much to bear. He played with tough guys like Norm Van Brocklin, “Jaguar” Jon Arnett and Maxie Baughan, none of whom ever used their helmet for anything other than what the manufacturer intended.

Burroughs chomped on a roast beef sandwich, then mentioned a few more beefs he has with today’s players. Although yesterday’s players drank excessively and took amphetamines, they didn’t use steroids and cocaine--”which have hurt the NFL’s role-model image”--or treat their opponents with malice and contempt.

“Football has become more violent,” Burroughs said. “I don’t feel the players are any tougher, but there’s something in their own makeup that wants to punish opposing runners and receivers. There are a lot more cheap-shot artists in the game now.”

And bad sports. “There was no Icky Shuffle” when he played, Burroughs said. “I really don’t know what that does for an athlete. To me, it’s as dumb and silly as a 5-year-old trying to eat a double scoop of ice cream. There’s no place for it in football. It makes a mockery of the game and makes the player look ignorant.”

When Burroughs was a free-agent rookie with the Rams in 1955, he earned $6,500 (a season, not a game) and wound up his career with a salary of $33,500. A member of the board of the then-infant NFL Players Assn. in 1959, Burroughs doesn’t begrudge modern athletes their princely wages, but ask him if he’s against them renegotiating contracts, and he almost goes ballistic.

“I believe a player should be able to get all he can get, but if you sign a contract for millions, you’re certainly obligated to adhere to it,” he said.

Today’s disregard for binding contracts is “very sad,” Burroughs said. “It’s made a scar on the NFL. Fans have to read about these” acts of what Burroughs regards as disloyalty and greed. To Burroughs, Eric Dickerson--a former Ram running back whose chronic contract squabbling got him traded to the Indianapolis Colts--is “not a football player but a baby.”

Burroughs’ candor does not surprise one of his teammates on the Eagles’ 1960 championship team. “He was always outspoken,” said Tom Brookshier, a former cornerback and television commentator. “But that’s because he liked the game so much.”

When Burroughs played in the NFL, he visited most of the big cities in the country and decided there was no place like home. After retiring from football following the 1964 season, he returned to Ventura County. He had grown up in Fillmore, where he was a multi-sport star at Fillmore High, even winning the Ventura County high jump title his senior year by clearing 6 feet 1 inch.

After graduating high school in 1949, Burroughs went to Ventura College as a quarterback, becoming a Little All-American and getting scholarship offers, he said, from such major football powers as USC and Notre Dame. But he chose little Colorado A&M.;

“My father wasn’t an athlete and he left the decision up to me,” Burroughs said. “With all the scholarship offers I was getting, I was a little mixed up. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go to a big university and get lost in the shuffle.”

A&M;, now called Colorado State, is in Fort Collins, Colo., which was “a cow town,” Burroughs recalled. The school had only 5,000 students, and Burroughs initially believed he “had made a mistake” in choosing A&M.; But he stayed, got a degree in business administration and made all-conference as a quarterback.

Burroughs was drafted in 1953--by the Army--after he had signed a contract to join the Rams as a free agent. But instead of going to Korea, Burroughs said, he was assigned to special services after Rams General Manager Tex Schramm pulled some strings with an Army general. Playing three sports at the Presidio in San Francisco, Burroughs made All-Army as a quarterback.

Released by the Army in 1955, Burroughs rejoined the Rams, who certainly didn’t have any dogfaces at quarterback. Van Brocklin was there along with Billy Wade and Rudy Bukich, so Burroughs was switched to defense.

Staying late after practice to defend against Ram receivers Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch and Tom Fears, Burroughs became a starter his rookie year and “never rode the bench” during his five years in L.A.

Asked if he ever received a bonus with the Rams, Burroughs literally gagged on his coffee. “Bonus?” he said. “Nobody got bonuses back then. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking of money as much as fulfilling my boyhood dream,” which was to play pro football.

At 6-5 1/4, Burroughs said he was “the biggest defensive back who ever lived,” and also probably the skinniest, weighing in at a gangly 188 pounds. His beanpole body prompted Van Brocklin to nickname him “The Blade” and made Burroughs the butt of locker-room needling.

“He gave the league a bad name,” Brookshier joked. “We used to laugh at him and tell him to get another job.”

But nobody laughed at Burroughs on the field. “For a guy who hit as hard as he did, it’s amazing he never was seriously injured,” Brookshier said. “He was one helluva player.”

It was also Van Brocklin, traded by the Rams to Philadelphia in 1959, who suggested that the Eagles acquire Burroughs. In 1960, the Eagles got him in exchange for a fifth-round draft pick. The timing couldn’t have been better. The Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers in the 1960 NFL title game, 17-13, with Burroughs playing a key defensive role.

Early in the game, after an Eagle turnover, Green Bay had fourth and inches inside the Philadelphia 10. As the Packers lined up, Burroughs whispered to linebacker Baughan, “If Max McGee blocks down, I’m going to fly across and go after Taylor.” The play unfolded as Burroughs had hoped and he threw fullback Jim Taylor for a one-yard loss.

“It was a gamble,” Burroughs said. “It could have been a play pass, with Paul Hornung sneaking out of the backfield.”

Taylor later got a measure of revenge when Burroughs tackled him and knocked himself out of the game. On the next play, Taylor scored Green Bay’s only touchdown.

Burroughs was a bachelor during his NFL career, apparently creating a legend off the field. “We figured his little black book was worth $10,000 in those days,” Brookshier said. Burroughs, now married with three daughters and a stepson, was glad he didn’t have the responsibility of a family during his playing days. “It wasn’t a yellow brick road for a player with a family,” he said.

Unlike today’s player, who can make enough in a couple of years to live comfortably the rest of his life, Burroughs had to plan ahead for life after football. After every off-season, he worked in the business world, learning how to become an executive. He has run a trucking company, beer distributorship and restaurant.

“Football is a tea party compared with running a restaurant,” said Burroughs, who now owns a company that supplies fuel to offshore oil rigs.

With all the awards Burroughs has collected, he probably is running out of wall space. Recently, Colorado State inducted him into its athletic hall of fame. He’s in the Ventura County sports hall of fame and the California Junior College hall of fame.

He also made second team on the Rams’ 40th anniversary team and was named to the Eagles’ all-time team. “It’s nice to be remembered,” he said. “I’m glad I played when I did.”