Later Life and Death
Collier continued to work with the Browns after he stepped down, serving as a scout and quarterbacks coach until leaving the game for good in 1976. He was the coach of the college team in the 1971 College All-Star Game, a now-defunct matchup between the NFL champion and a selection of the best college players from around the country, replacing former Browns quarterback Otto Graham. Georgetown College in 1970 awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws degree.
Collier was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1976 and retired to a house on a lake in Texas, where he played golf and visited with friends and family. He died of the disease in 1983. His wife died in 1996 and was buried next to him in Paris, Kentucky. Collier and his wife had three daughters, Carolyn, Jane and Kay.
Read more about this topic: Blanton Collier
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or death:
“If youth is the period of hero-worship, so also is it true that hero-worship, more than anything else, perhaps, gives one the sense of youth. To admire, to expand one’s self, to forget the rut, to have a sense of newness and life and hope, is to feel young at any time of life.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Young lover to old lover: I do not feel death in your embrace, but the adoration of the patriarchs.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)