Gene Hickerson

Football Player

• Born: February 15, 1935
• Birthplace: Trenton, Tennessee
• Died: October 20, 2008
• Place of death: Olmsted Falls, Ohio

Sport: Football

Early Life

Born in 1935, in Trenton in western Tennessee, Robert Eugene Hickerson grew up in the Memphis region. There he later became a friend of singer Elvis Presley, who was born in northern Mississippi only five weeks earlier. Because of his friendship with Gene, Presley later became a fan of the Cleveland Browns, for whom Gene played football.

Gene attended high school in Trezevant, a town near Memphis and Trenton, and played on the school’s football team. An outstanding fullback, he was recruited by the University of Mississippi, which is not far from Memphis. At the university, he switched his position to offensive tackle and became one of the finest offensive linemen in Southeastern Conference history.

The Road to Excellence

In 1956, Gene played in the Cotton Bowl when Mississippi beat Texas Christian University. Paul Brown, the coach of the Cleveland Browns in the NFL, watched the game and was impressed by Gene’s speed. He imagined Gene playing in the NFL as a pulling guard—an offensive lineman who specialized in protecting the quarterback and sometimes blocking downfield for running backs. His vision was prophetic, as Gene was to become one of the finest pulling guards in NFL history.

At that time, college players could not go into the NFL until their classes graduated, and Gene was still only a college junior. In the 1957 NFL draft, the Browns used their seventh-round pick to make Gene a future choice. The strategy of drafting him early, before he had caught the attention of other scouts, worked well for the Browns. Although the Canadian Football League offered Gene a three-year contract worth fifty thousand dollars—a huge sum in those days—Gene accepted the Browns’ offer of ten thousand dollars for one year in addition to a one-thousand-dollar signing bonus after he graduated.

The Emerging Champion

In 1958, Gene started his professional playing career as one of Coach Brown’s “messengers”: guards, doing little more than alternating with another player to carry plays from the sideline to the huddle. During the 1961 season, his career was temporarily derailed when he twice broke his leg. However, after sitting out that season and two games in 1962, he never missed another game during his professional career.

In 1963, after Paul Brown left the team, Blanton Collier took over as coach and immediately made Gene a full-time player. Gene’s exemplary line play, particularly as lead blocker in the Browns’ trademark end-sweep play, contributed to the great success of legendary running back Jim Brown. Brown retired at the end of the 1965 season to pursue an acting career. The fact that an eighth-round draft choice named Leroy Kelly continued his string of 1,000-yard rushing seasons attests to the stability and talent of the Browns’ offensive line that Gene anchored.

The highlight of Gene’s career was the great 1964 Browns team that won the NFL Championship game (before the creation of the Super Bowl), 27-0, against the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, led by Johnny Unitas. Jim Brown noted that Gene and tackle Dick Schafrath routinely blocked three players between them on one play. Offensive tackle Monte Clark called Gene the best pass blocker on the team. Gene rarely allowed defenders whom he blocked to reach his quarterback. A testament to Gene’s versatility during that great season was the fact that he led the Browns’ special teams in tackles.

After the 1964 season, Gene began receiving wider recognition. He was named an all-pro player five seasons in a row and was voted to six consecutive all-star games between 1965 and 1970. This recognition was well deserved. The Browns had 1,000-yard rushers during nine of the seasons in which Gene played and boasted the league top rusher in seven of them. The Browns also led the NFL in average yards per carry through most of those years. Three of the Browns’ 1,000-yard runners—Brown, Bobby Mitchell, and Kelly—were later inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. All of them maintained that their success would not have been possible without the linemen who blocked for them, and they all called for Gene’s induction into the hall of fame. Gene was elected to the NFL’s all-decade team for the 1960’s, but his hall-of-fame call would wait for many years.

Continuing the Story

Variously described as a sensitive southern gentleman and a raucous practical joker, Gene was personable. During his playing years, his friends ranged from his teammates to business associates and included both Presley and members of the Cleveland Orchestra, whose concerts he attended. John Wooten, an African American player who held the other guard position while Gene was with the Browns, noted that the team maintained harmony during the racially turbulent 1960’s in large part because of men like Gene. A white southerner, Gene exemplified the manner in which the team overcame possible divisiveness through their deep respect for one another. Gene himself, when asked to account for the success of the 1964 championship team, attributed it to the players’ putting the team ahead of individual agendas.

Gene retired from football in 1973, at the age of thirty-seven, but was not inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame until more than thirty years later. The call finally came in 2007. By that time, he was seventy-two years old and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. He was unable to give an acceptance speech in the induction ceremony in Canton, Ohio, so Bobby Franklin, his best friend of fifty-two years and teammate at Ole Miss and Cleveland, introduced him. Gene’s only son, Bob, delivered his acceptance speech. Also attending were his daughter Nancy, his grandchildren, and other family and friends. In the minds of his former teammates and the three great running backs who had followed his blocking into the hall of fame before him, the recognition was long overdue. In a symbolic gesture, Brown, Mitchell, and Kelly joined Gene on stage and pushed his wheelchair over to view his bronze bust as if he were leading yet another sweep with his running backs behind him.

Summary

Offensive linemen in football are typically unsung heroes who do not receive the attention enjoyed by ballhandling backs and defensive stars. However, Gene Hickerson’s outstanding career bears witness to the importance of great linemen on successful teams. The Cleveland Browns never had a losing season with Gene on the team. During a fifteen-year career in the NFL, he played in 202 games, helped catapult three great running backs into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and helped lead his team to an NFL Championship.

Bibliography

Grossi, Tony. “Hickerson Pulls into Canton.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 5, 2007.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Tales from the Browns Sidelines. Champaign, Ill.: Sports, 2004.

Natali, Alan. Brown’s Town: Twenty Famous Browns Talk Among Themselves. Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press, 2001.

Pluto, Terry. Browns Town 1964: The Cleveland Browns and the 1964 Championship. Cleveland: Gray, 1997.

Ross, Alan. Browns Glory. Nashville, Tenn.: Cumberland House, 2005.