Early Years and College Career
Born in Wichita, Kansas and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Sayers graduated from Omaha Central High School. There he set a state long jump record of 24'11¾". He went on to play college football at the University of Kansas and was a two-time All-American. During his Jayhawk career, he rushed for 2,675 yards and gained 3,917 all-purpose yards. In 1963, he set an NCAA Division I record with a 99-yard run against Nebraska. In his senior year, he led the Jayhawks to a 15-14 upset victory over Oklahoma with a 96-yard kickoff return. Sayers is considered by many to have been the greatest open field runner in college football history. While being interviewed by Len Kasper and Bob Brenly during a broadcast of a Chicago Cubs Baseball game on Sept. 8th, 2010, Sayers said he had originally intended to go to the University of Iowa. Sayers said that he decided against going to Iowa after the Iowa head coach, Jerry Burns, did not have time to meet Sayers during his on campus visit.
Read more about this topic: Gale Sayers
Famous quotes containing the words early, years, college and/or career:
“I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.”
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“Thirty-five years ago, when I was a college student, people wrote letters. The businessman who read, the lawyer who traveled; the dressmaker in evening school, my unhappy mother, our expectant neighbor: all conducted an often large and varied correspondence. It was the accustomed way of ordinarily educated people to occupy the world beyond their own small and immediate lives.”
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