Yes, the athletes keep getting bigger and faster. If my memory serves me correctly, Lynn Matthews in the mid 60’s and Sam Holland in the late 50’s early 60’s were very good defensive ends for us. Matthews weighed in just north of 200lbs and Holland was around 190. There are cornerbacks bigger than that nowadays.
With the way things are trending, in 10 years this incredibly fast monster of a lineman will be able to tweet for NIL deal offers and transfer during halftime and suit up for the opposing team in the second half.
a couple of my dad’s buddies played offensive line for the gators in the early 70s and one guy is humongous, the other two are just some regular size guys
I had class with 3 Gator lineman in 1966: Guy Dennis, Red Anderson and George Dean. Dean was tall and muscular, Dennis, who played in NFL for several years, was pretty stout but, nothing like the lads today, and Anderson was not imposing physically at all but he was a helluva defensive lineman. I think he was a team captain on that very good 1966 team that had a pretty good QB named Steve something.
I ran into Doc Luckie a bunch when he was playing. He was a specimen even by today's standards. Guy was a weight room monster, lifted serious weight.
My senior year playing weight (not what they listed me at in the program) was 175 as the starting right side DT in HS. 165 the year before. Needless to say I wasn’t receiving any scholly offers. I would have just bounced off a 260+ pounder OL.
From an old SI faces in the crowd: DOCK LUCKIE FORT PIERCE, FLA. Luckie, a 269-pound University of Florida senior, set a national bench-press record by lifting 600 pounds. The 1980 SEC champion in discus and shot-put and defensive tackle on Florida's football team, he broke the old mark by 65 pounds
A classmate of mine that I went to school with got a scholly to UGA @ 6’3” 240 lbs in 88 …he was an OL.
With the size of pads back then making players look bigger, I bet the program listed him at 275+. 6’3” helps, too, but prolly listed at 6’4”.
You were right though. Maybe not the right game but we did wear some orange here and there in the 70s.
Couple of stories: 1.) In Punta Gorda last year I ran into a elderly gentleman wearing a weathered Michigan State letterman's type jacket. Had a opportunity to speak to him and while talking to him, I teased him by asking how good was his Michigan State trvia? He replies by saying pretty good, so I fire a trivia question at him by asking..." When was the last time Michigan State played in a football game where #1 faced #2, who did Michigan State play and what was the final score?" He smiles and pauses for a moment and then says the following " I think I should know the answer to your questions, because you see I played in that game." The fisrt words out of my mouth were "You are chittin me!" turns out he is Tony Conti played on the Michigan State OL, but was he really surprising was he wasnt a very big man, which I verified later by locating the program from the game online. His listed stats for that game were 5'10" 210 lbs. The answer to my question by the way was 1966 versus Notre Dame, final score 10-10 tie. 2.) While working for the USPS in Athens, GA, I was tasked once with purging the office of old "marked copy" periodical publications. These marked copy publications are kept, as a means of verifying publishers stated percentage of advertizing. Turns out I stumbled upon a whole pile of "Bulldog" magazines some dating back to the early 80's, One publication was for the 1980 season, where it focused on incoming freshman Hershel Walker, The article made mention of several things about Hershel in as far as the expectations for the football team as well as track team for that season, what really blew me away was his size at that time compared to the size of the expected UGA starting OL. Hershel was only 5-10 lbs lighter than every single member of that starting UGA OL.....I want to say the average weight was in the 230-245 lbs range if memory serves me right. I tell those stories as a means to illustrate on much the game has change relative to size of the players over the years.
Walker played class A football in HS. Class A - usually Class A schools don't field football teams because there are not enough participants. No wonder Walker set a ton of national records. Literally unfair a man like that was allowed to compete in that classification. He did prove he belonged at the NCAA level, I will admit.
