High School and College Years
From 1964 to 1967, Ealey played for Notre Dame High School under Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Famer Ed Miller. In 1967, Notre Dame captured its first Ohio High School Athletic Association state championship. Ealey was lightly recruited despite finishing his high school career with an undefeated record. He was offered a football scholarship to Miami University with then-coach Bo Schembechler to be the team's third-string quarterback, but Ealey refused. He was then offered a scholarship to the University of Toledo with an opportunity to start as first-string quarterback, which he accepted and would lead Toledo to 35 consecutive wins in a three-year span from 1969–1971, a National Collegiate Athletic Association record that still stands.
Ealey's greatest triumph with Toledo was helping the Toledo Rockets win the 1970 Tangerine Bowl. Ealey led the Rockets to three straight Top 20 finishes and three straight Tangerine Bowl victories during their run of unbeaten seasons, winning the MVP award in all three games.
In 1971, Ealey's senior season, he was named First Team All-American by Football News, Second Team All-American by the United Press International, and Third Team All-American by the Associated Press. He also finished eighth in the voting for the 1971 Heisman Trophy, which was awarded to Pat Sullivan of Auburn. Ealey finished his career as a three-time first team all-conference selection, and a three-time Back of the Year selection in the Mid-American Conference, leading the conference in passing yards in 1970 and 1971. His jersey is one of four retired jerseys in the history of Toledo football, and was elected to the MAC Hall of Fame as a charter member in 1988.
Despite all his amateur accomplishments, Ealey is not a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He was passed by in the 1972 NFL Draft, during a time in which most NFL franchises did not seriously consider African-American quarterbacks.
Read more about this topic: Chuck Ealey
Famous quotes containing the words high, school, college and/or years:
“They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy!
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“I’m not making light of prayers here, but of so-called school prayer, which bears as much resemblance to real spiritual experience as that freeze-dried astronaut food bears to a nice standing rib roast. From what I remember of praying in school, it was almost an insult to God, a rote exercise in moving your mouth while daydreaming or checking out the cutest boy in the seventh grade that was a far, far cry from soul-searching.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Though her years were waning,
Her climacteric teased her like her teens.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)