Cherry Starr, wife of 82-year-old Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr, recently outlined severe hazing her husband underwent while at the University of Alabama.
"He was hospitalized at one point in traction," she told Joseph Goodman of AL.com. "That was in the days when they were initiated into the A-Club, and they had severe beatings and paddling. From all the members of the A-Club, they lined up with a big paddle with holes drilled in it, and it actually injured his back."
She added, "His back was never right after that. It was horrible. It was not a football injury. It was an injury sustained from hazing. His whole back all the way up to his rib cage looked like a piece of raw meat. The bruising went all the way up his back. It was red and black and awful looking. It was so brutal."
The Starrs hadn't disclosed the injury until now, as the former quarterback always maintained he had injured his back in a punting exercise.
"It was hell," Starr's teammate and former Alabama tight end Nick Germanos said of the beatings from the A-Club. "Lord have mercy, it was a rough initiation."
Starr possibly got the worst of it because he not only eloped before his junior year—schools would remove or reduce scholarships for players who married in those days, according to Goodman—but he also did so with an Auburn student, Cherry.
His back injuries, which would hound him for the rest of his career and most of his life, cost him a major chunk of his junior season before he was inexplicably benched for much of his senior year.
Bart Starr graduated from the University of Alabama in 1956 and started his professional career with the Green Bay Packers. Paul "Bear" Bryant replaced head coach,Jennings B. Whitworth for the Crimson Tide of Alabama following a 0-10 record. Bryant was famous for his barbaric tactics and the hazing continued.
In 1954, Bryant had been the head coach of Texas A&M. His first season produced a mark of 1-9 which led to the training camp battle in the summer of 1955 held in Junction, Texas. Bear took his squad out onto the scorched plains to see who would survive.The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys".
Shortly before his death, Bear Bryant met with evangelist Robert Schuller on a plane flight and the two talked extensively about religion, which apparently had a considerable impression on the coach, who felt considerable guilt over his mistreatment of the Junction Boys and hiding his smoking and drinking habits from his mother.
Starr, who’s now 82, is unable to discuss the matter after suffering two strokes in 2014. According to Cherry, he never wanted the hazing injury to become public because “it would make him look bad.” Only now do she and her husband feel comfortable talking about an injury that required spine adjustments and epidurals until the 1980s, when famed orthopedist James Andrews discovered a nearly invisible crack in one of Starr’s vertebra.
In a weird twist, the back injury is indirectly responsible for Starr’s standout NFL career. After his rookie season in 1956, Starr was called to active duty in the Air Force. But his back was so badly injured that he failed his physical and was deemed unfit for military service. He ended up playing 15 seasons in Green Bay, helping lead the Packers to five NFL titles, including victories in Super Bowl I and II. Starr is only one of five players to capture multiple Super Bowl MVP's. In 1977, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Paul Murphy
Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy
The pain that poor man has endured all these years.
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