NFL Vet, 96, Is Living History

He tackled Jim Thorpe, made $50 a game, practiced an hour a week and retired after one season.

Jim Ailinger’s pro football career is noteworthy only because it ended in 1924. At age 96, he’s the oldest living former NFL player.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame notified Ailinger in November about the distinction, and he hopes to retain it for a long time. He suffered a heart attack early this month but was out of the hospital eight days later, still blessed with a firm handshake, a booming laugh and a sharp memory full of football history.

Ailinger has been around longer than the NFL. He’s older than the forward pass. He was friends with the Four Horsemen, played against George Halas and met Vince Lombardi.

Not Lombardi the coach. Lombardi the player.

“He was the captain at Fordham when I was officiating,” Ailinger says. “People can’t believe it when I tell them because Vince Lombardi has been gone for 20 years.”

From 1925 to 1960, Ailinger worked 425 games as a college referee, including Army-Navy four times and Harvard-Yale three times. He also spent 63 years as a dentist before retiring at age 88.

But it’s his brief career as a 5-foot-11, 195-pound lineman that caught the Hall of Fame’s attention.

Born July 10, 1901 in Buffalo, N.Y., Ailinger took up organized football in high school in 1915.

“It was a rougher game then,” he says. “The forward pass was just starting, and you could only throw once every series of downs. The ball was almost like a basketball, and it was hard to throw.”

He played at the University of Buffalo and then, needing money to finish dental school, Ailinger joined the Buffalo All-Americans of the NFL. The league was in just its fifth season.

“We’d practice madly from 10 to 11 on Sunday morning, and then we’d play a game,” he says. “You’d have just met a bunch of fellows, and then you’d play with them.”

It was the era of leather helmets, drop kicks and playing both ways. The NFL had 18 teams, including the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears, as well as the Frankford Yellow Jackets and Kenosha Maroons.

Games weren’t televised because TV hadn’t been invented, but the sport’s popularity was already on the rise, and Ailinger remembers crowds of 10,000. The most famous player was Thorpe, the Olympian who once tried to run over Ailinger on a kick return.

“All I could see were his knees going up and down. I was knocked out cold--but I tackled him.”

Ailinger’s career lasted eight games, including a busy Thanksgiving weekend. Traveling by train, the All-Americans played at Cleveland on Thursday, at Philadelphia on Saturday and at New York on Sunday.

“We only had about 26 guys,” he says. “We’d play hurt. If you could run out there, you’d play.”

The risk of injury prompted Ailinger to quit. The future dentist was fearful of hurting his hands.

Ailinger has put on a few pounds in the 73 years since retirement, but he still looks strong enough to make a tackle. Rising from his chair and hiking up his pants legs, Ailinger reveals thick, muscular calves. He slaps them with delight: Not one vein is visible.

“They’re solid,” he says proudly.

The eyesight is pretty good, too. Ailinger still drives and doesn’t wear glasses.

“I’ve got my license until 2001,” he says. “If something happens to me, I’m wondering if I can get a refund.”

He moved from Buffalo to Boca Raton five years ago and lives in an upscale neighborhood near the ocean with his second wife. He remarried at 91 after his first wife died in 1988.

A longtime Bills fan, Ailinger enjoys watching games on TV and was pleased to see Denver end the AFC losing streak in the Super Bowl.

“That was a good game,” he says. “It was good for football.”

Ailinger likes being the oldest living NFL veteran. After all, it beats the alternative. When asked if he ever hears from anyone he knew as a player, he chortles.

“No--they’re all dead!”

Even at 96, life’s too short not to laugh.