TEXAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME PROFILE: Transplanted Texan Howley still awaits Hall call
By John Werner - Tribune-Herald staff writer
DALLAS — Every winter, Chuck Howley anxiously awaits the call.
It’s been 36 years since he last played for the Dallas Cowboys, but he still hopes to someday hear those elusive words: You’ve been selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Long after their NFL careers ended, former Cowboys teammates Rayfield Wright and Bob Hayes were inducted in recent years. So the 73-year-old Howley still holds out some hope.
TEXAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2009
This is one in a series of profiles on the Class of 2009 inductees to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. The class includes Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey, former Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams, Houston Astros first baseman Lance Berkman, former Dallas Cowboys stars Harvey Martin, Chuck Howley and Dan Reeves, former Baylor wide receiver Lawrence Elkins, ex-University of Texas pitcher Burt Hooton, former Rice and Minnesota Vikings quarterback Tommy Kramer and former Dallas Chaparrals coach Max Williams.
“There’s no question Chuck should be there,” said former Cowboys defensive tackle Bob Lilly, a Pro Football Hall of Fame member. “He was a great athlete who always made big plays. He was the MVP of Super Bowl V. I recently watched a DVD of Super Bowl VI, and he could have been the MVP of that game, too. Just an amazing athlete.”
Howley played in the 1960s in an era epitomized by some of the greatest middle linebackers in NFL history. While famous names like Dick Butkus, Sam Huff and Ray Nitschke defined the middle linebacker position, Howley quietly put together a spectacular career as a five-time All-Pro outside linebacker for the Cowboys.
Never a big self-promoter, Howley has somehow flown under the radar. Even when he learned that he’d be inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame recently, Howley took the news with characteristic modesty.
“It was quite a surprise,” said Howley, a native West Virginian. “I thought you had to be a Texan.”
Howley might as well claim to be a Texan, having lived in Dallas since joining the Cowboys in 1961. Though he never made a fortune playing in the NFL like today’s athletes, he did quite well in the uniforms rental business after his pro career ended in 1973. He lives next door to Roger Staubach in a posh section of Dallas.
“When Chuck was playing, he’d do his wind sprints and would be gone after practice,” Lilly said. “We realized that he was going to work. We never thought of Chuck as a businessman. But he ended up with a big company and did very well.”
Howley doesn’t keep a lot of memorabilia at his home, but there are a couple of pieces that stand out. There’s a picture of Howley standing with other Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor selectees, including Don Meredith, Don Perkins, Lee Roy Jordan and Lilly. There’s a football for being named most valuable player of Super Bowl V, where he intercepted two passes and recovered a fumble in the Cowboys’ 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Colts in 1971.
Nearly 40 years later, Howley is still the only Super Bowl MVP from a losing team.
“It was hard to enjoy being MVP of that game,” Howley said. “How do you celebrate that? I remember some of the other guys saying, ‘Chuck, that’s fantastic.’ But it was very difficult to be enthusiastic. I just felt like we left some unfinished business out there.”
The Cowboys finished the job the following year when they blew away the Miami Dolphins, 24-3, for their first Super Bowl championship. Though Staubach was named MVP, Howley delivered another tremendous performance, returning an interception 41 yards and recovering a fumble.
Heading west from W. Virginia
“Going into that game, there was no doubt in our minds that we were going to win,” Howley said. “We dominated the Dolphins that day.”
Howley sometimes wonders where he’d be without his football career. Growing up in the 1950s in Wheeling, W. Va., Howley was the fourth of five children in a hard- working family. Howley’s father was a Wonder Bread truck driver, but many men in the area worked in the coal mines and steel mills.
Afraid that her son would get hurt, Howley’s mother didn’t allow him to play football until his high school years.
“My older brother was a water boy, but one day they needed players, so he put on a helmet and some shoulder pads and scored a touchdown on his first play,” Howley said. “After that, my mom let me play football. I was only 160 pounds, but our coach put me at noseguard and tight end. I was the youngest of four boys, so it was hard to get noticed. But when you made a play on the football field, people noticed you.”
College coaches began to notice Howley by his senior year of high school, and he ended up in nearby Morgantown at West Virginia University. After starting his college career at noseguard, Howley switched to linebacker after Sam Huff moved on to the NFL.
“I loved moving to linebacker because it gave me a lot of freedom and I could use my speed,” Howley said. “We played in the Southern Conference back then, but we also played a lot teams around our area like Penn State, Pittsburgh and Syracuse.”
Howley wasn’t just an all-conference football player, he also lettered in track, wrestling, swimming and gymnastics. He ran the 100 and 220-yard dashes while also throwing the javelin and shot put for the track team. He was a Southern Conference diving champion on the swim team and performed on the trampoline in gymnastics.
“A lot of people asked me if I ever went to school,” Howley said. “But I loved diving because it’s something I did a lot during the summers. Gymnastics helped me build agility. That was something I had done at the YMCA during my high school days, and we’d do shows at different functions. Some of those people ended up in the circus.”
One day during his senior year at West Virginia in 1957-58, the Mountaineers coaches got a call from the Chicago Bears inquiring about Howley. Heading to the Windy City was an eye-opening experience for a guy who hadn’t been in many big cities.
After the Bears drafted him in the first round, Howley signed a $7,000 contract with legendary Bears’ owner and coach George Halas, who was known widely as Papa Bear.
“I told Coach Halas that I was getting married,” Howley said. “He said if I’d sign now, he’d send me a $500 bonus when I got married. Sure enough, I got the check.”
Howley and his high school sweetheart, Nancy, have been married 51 years. But after a promising rookie year with the Bears, Howley sustained a serious knee injury during a preseason game in 1959 and retired from football. He and Nancy went back to Wheeling to operate a service station before he got a call from Dallas Cowboys scout Gil Brandt prior to the 1961 season.
Howley wanted to get back into football and jumped at the offer. The Cowboys were an expansion franchise that had gone 0-11-1 in 1960, but Howley felt he was getting in on the ground floor of a promising team with a cerebral young head coach named Tom Landry.
Gone to Texas
“Coach Landry was a fabulous person that I had so much respect for,” Howley said. “I loved his convictions, and I wanted to live my life like him. But on those Tuesday morning film meetings, we’d break down our previous game. He could see everything that happened to every player on the team. When Coach Landry looked at you, you wanted to crawl in a hole somewhere because you knew you were wrong.”
After struggling for a few years, the Cowboys enjoyed a breakthrough season in 1966, when they won the Eastern Conference with a 10-3-1 record. By then, Howley was part of one of the best linebacking corps in the NFL with Lee Roy Jordan and Dave Edwards.
“I often challenged guys in the huddle by asking, ‘Who’s going to make the big play?’ ” Jordan said. “Many times, Chuck was the guy who did it. His natural instincts for football were uncanny. He was a great playmaker, and had a knack for being in the right position.”
In 1966, Howley returned a fumble for a 97-yard touchdown against Atlanta, and he is still tied for second in Cowboys history with 17 fumble recoveries. Howley also intercepted 24 passes during his 13 seasons with the Cowboys, returning them for 395 yards and two scores.
But like his teammates, Howley grew frustrated when the Cowboys repeatedly failed to win the big game in the late 1960s. After losing to Green Bay in the 1966 NFL championship game, Dallas lost again to the Packers in the famous Ice Bowl in 1967.
Bitter loss in bitter cold
With the temperature dipping well below zero, quarterback Bart Starr scored on a 1-yard sneak in the closing seconds to give the Packers a 21-17 win. In a famous photo of Starr scoring the touchdown, Howley can be seen trying to tackle Starr as he dived across the goal line.
“That was the coldest game I’ve ever played in,” Howley said. “But I was glad I was playing instead of sitting in the stands because we could at least move around. I was lucky to be playing linebacker because I didn’t have to put my hand on the turf at the start of the play like some of our linemen who got frostbite. We gave everything we had, but it still wasn’t enough.”
After making All-Pro every year from 1966-70, Howley continued to start for the Cowboys until he was replaced by D.D. Lewis in 1973. He retired that season, but hasn’t stopped following the Cowboys. He was amazed when he made his first trip to the new $1 billion Cowboys Stadium this season.
Though he’s past retirement age, Howley still keeps his hand in the uniforms business along with his son and son-in-law. His six grandchildren keep him busy, and he continues to stay in touch with his old Cowboys teammates. During the Christmas season, Howley and teammates like Staubach and Jordan get together for a gift exchange.
“I wouldn’t trade my career for anything,” Howley said. “What Coach Landry taught me as a person I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. The friendships I made with my teammates have lasted a lot of years.”
jwerner@wacotrib.com
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