Tommy Nobis

• Born: September 20, 1943
• Birthplace: San Antonio, Texas
• Died: December 13, 2017
• Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia

Sport: Football

Early Life

Thomas Henry Nobis Jr. was born on September 20, 1943, in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up hoping to be a football star at the University of Texas. His career at Thomas Jefferson High School began inauspiciously when he, a 150-pound quarterback, failed to play enough to earn a letter. By the next season, he weighed 185 pounds, was switched to linebacker, and became a star. By his senior year, he was pursued by recruiters for many colleges before accepting a scholarship to the University of Texas.

The Road to Excellence

Coach Darrell Royal’s Texas Longhorns had come close to winning a national championship but always seemed to miss an essential ingredient. When Nobis, 6 feet 2 inches and 230 pounds, arrived for the 1963 season, he represented that missing piece. In an era when most college players performed on both offense and defense, he excelled as both guard and linebacker. He helped propel the 1963 Longhorns to a perfect 10–0 season; a 28–7 victory over Navy and its Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback, Roger Staubach, in the Cotton Bowl; and a national championship. In 1964, Texas compiled a 10–1 record and upset top-ranked University of Alabama and quarterback Joe Namath 21–7 in the Orange Bowl. Following the graduation of many of its stars, the team was 6–4 in 1965.

Nobis was considered one of the outstanding players of his era because of the ferocity and intelligence of his play and his leadership. His competitiveness inspired his teammates to give their all. Paul Dietzel, the Army coach, called him the finest college linebacker he had ever seen. Nobis was part of all-American teams in 1964 and 1965; was named winner of the Outland Trophy, as the nation’s best college lineman in 1965; won the Walter Camp and Maxwell Awards; and finished seventh in the 1965 Heisman Trophy voting, a high ranking for a lineman. A panel of twenty-five coaches and reporters picked him as the greatest defensive player in the history of the Southwestern Conference. Royal called him “the best player I’[d] ever been around.”

Because of his excellence on the field, Nobis was selected by the expansion Atlanta Falcons in the first round of the 1966 National Football League (NFL) draft and by the Houston Oilers of the American Football League. Interest in his future was intense, especially in Texas. Astronaut Frank Borman, traveling 186 miles above earth in Gemini 7, asked mission control in Houston to tell Nobis to sign with the home-state Oilers. Nevertheless, he signed with the Falcons for a $400,000 bonus, a large figure for the time.

The Emerging Champion

While many college football stars do not duplicate their success in the NFL, Nobis had the necessary size, strength, intelligence, and aggressiveness to excel immediately as a professional linebacker. Despite his large body, he was quicker than many of the ball-carriers he pursued. Compiling 294 tackles, Nobis was named the league’s defensive rookie of the year. While the Falcons struggled, winning only six games during 1966–68, the team’s defense, anchored by Nobis, was always respectable. Ray Prochaska, offensive coach of the Los Angeles Rams, described him as 90 percent of the Atlanta defense. The Falcons slowly improved, posting winning records under Coach Norm Van Brocklin from 1971 through 1973.

Nobis played with the Falcons for eleven seasons, a long tenure for someone who both gave and took enormous hits every Sunday, though his nineteen-and-one-half-inch neck helped absorb blows. During his career, he played in five Pro Bowls and intercepted 11 passes, returning them for 177 yards and 2 touchdowns. He retired after the 1976 season following knee surgery.

Continuing the Story

After retiring, Nobis began working in the Falcons’ front office, becoming the vice president for corporate development and later a marketing consultant. In his postplaying career, he became a community leader in Atlanta, where he settled with his wife, Lynn, his college sweetheart and mother to Devon, Kevin, and Tommy III. In 1978, he founded the Tommy Nobis Center, in Marietta, Georgia, which provides job training for young people and adults with disabilities. The organization has helped more than 150,000 people find jobs in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Because of the Tommy Nobis Center and other community projects, Nobis received such honors as the NFL man of the year, Vitalis man of the year, Bobby Dodd Big Heart Award, and the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Award.

Like many other retired professional football players, Nobis struggled in his later years with illnesses related to the multiple concussions he suffered during his many years playing, particularly at a time when the long-term effects of repeated contact (especially to the head) were not well researched or understood. After a string of hospitalizations and witnessing the Falcons compete in the Super Bowl in February, he died at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 13, 2017, at the age of seventy-four.

Summary

Tommy Nobis is considered one of the greatest linebackers of all time in both college and professional football. He was selected for the College Football News all-time all-American team, the NFL’s all-1960s team, and Sports Illustrated’s all-century team (1869–1969). In 1981, he was named to the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Georgia and Texas Sports Halls of Fame.

Bibliography

Hawthorne, Bobby. Longhorn Football: An Illustrated History. U of Texas P, 2007.

Lawrence, Andrew. “Legacy of a Longhorns Legend.” Sports Illustrated, 7 Jan. 2006, p. 79.

Little, Bill, and Jenna McEachern. What It Means to Be a Longhorn. Triumph Books, 2007.

"Tommy Nobis, Star Linebacker and the First Falcon, Dies at 74." The New York Times, 14 Dec. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/obituaries/tommy-nobis-dead-first-atlanta-falcon-and-defenseive-star.html. Accessed 11 Apr. 2018.

Winkeljohn, Matt. Tales from the Atlanta Falcons Sideline. Sports, 2005.

Wolf, David. “Best Man Loses, and It Hurts.” Life, 19 Nov. 1968, pp. 89–90.