Former UCLA Player Loudd Dies

Rommie Loudd, a former UCLA football player who went on to become the first black assistant coach in the American Football League and later personnel director of the New England Patriots, has died of complications from diabetes. He was 64.

Loudd, who also served two prison terms for sexual misconduct and drug convictions before turning to the ministry, died Saturday.

“He was an example of how a person can fall and get up and fall again and get up again and keep moving,” said George McRae, pastor at Mount Tabor Baptist Church, where Loudd was associate minister.

The San Angelo, Texas, native was the leading receiver on UCLA’s unbeaten 1954 team and later played for the Chicago Bears of the NFL and the AFL’s San Diego Chargers and Boston Patriots.

He became the AFL’s first black assistant when he joined the Patriots’ staff in 1966, later moving into the club’s front office. He left the Patriots in the early 1970s to head the Florida Blazers of the short-lived World Football League.

Loudd also had run-ins with the law, including a six-month jail term in Los Angeles for forcing two boys, ages 12 and 13, to perform oral sex. In 1975, he was convicted of conspiracy to deliver cocaine for arranging the sale of $4,800 worth of the narcotic to an undercover officer in Orlando. He served three years of a 14-year sentence.

He later moved to Miami, where he became an activist in the black community and headed a ministerial group formed after the 1980 riots.