Tom Harmon

Football Player

• Born: September 28, 1919
• Birthplace: Rensselaer, Indiana
• Died: March 15, 1990
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Sport: Football

Early Life

Thomas Dudley Harmon was born in Rensselaer, Indiana, on September 28, 1919. As a boy, Tom developed a fascination with radio, which in the 1920’s was becoming a national craze. He began thinking even then about a career in that rapidly expanding industry.

The Road to Excellence

Tom was a talented, versatile athlete. He earned fourteen letters in four high school sports: football, baseball, basketball, and track. He had powerful legs and was a fast runner. In fact, he was the state high school champion in the 100-yard dash and the 200-yard low hurdles. In football, Tom revealed the great range of his athletic prowess. He could do everything: run, pass, block, tackle, punt, and kick. However, he never set out to develop his talents as a professional player. In 1937, he entered the University of Michigan to major in speech and radio technique, determined to pursue a career in radio broadcasting. Luckily for Wolverine fans, Tom was also determined to play college football.

The Emerging Champion

At Michigan, Tom gained national recognition, primarily as a tailback in the old single-wing formation. In his college career, he rushed for a total of 2,134 yards in just twenty-four games. He averaged 5.4 yards per carry and almost 90 yards per game. He also scored 33 touchdowns, two more than the legendary Red Grange had scored for the University of Illinois more than a decade earlier.

Tom, who was often compared with Grange, was a more versatile player, as his last college game showed. In that 1940 contest with Ohio State, he led the Wolverines to a 40-0 rout by running for 3 touchdowns, passing for 2 others, kicking 4 extra points, and punting three times for a 50-yard average. Not surprisingly, Michigan fans were calling their school “Thomas Harmon University.” On his best days, Tom, dubbed “Old 98,” put on a spectacular one-man show. One opposing coach reportedly said he would trade his whole team for Tom.

Despite the recognition and glory that came his way as a football player, Tom remained fixed in his career plans to become a broadcaster. Although he played college baseball, basketball, and football, he still had no intention of becoming a professional athlete, as he affirmed in his 1940 speech accepting college football’s most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy. Before finishing his degree, Tom even sacrificed his college eligibility by accepting a fee for performing on radio with comedian Eddie Cantor, thereby forfeiting his last seasons of basketball and baseball.

To Tom, career opportunities were very important. In fact, after graduating, Tom starred in a movie, Harmon of Michigan (1941), which was based on his life. Later, when picked first by the powerful Chicago Bears in the 1941 NFL draft, Tom declined to join the team, and signed instead to play for the New York Americans. Tom’s professional debut was short-lived. In his single game, he ran for only thirty-seven yards in ten attempts, and he left the team before playing another game not because of his lackluster performance but because he wanted to concentrate on broadcasting. Tom soon had to put even that dream on hold, however.

Continuing the Story

In December of 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Tom was called to active duty in the Army Air Corps. He served as a fighter pilot, winning both the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. Twice he was listed as missing in action. In 1943, he bailed out of his P-38 fighter plane when it was shot down over a lake in China. Badly hurt, he survived only with the help of Chinese guerrilla bands, who led him back to the American base through territory under Japanese control.

After the war, Tom returned to professional football, in part to pay a federal tax debt incurred by his movie earnings. He signed with the Los Angeles Rams, but Tom soon found out that his war injuries had taken their toll. Although he averaged five yards per carry and scored nine touchdowns in two years with the Rams, he had lost some of his speed and power. He decided to retire after the 1947 season. Tom never looked back with regret. His playing days over, he turned to sports announcing in radio and television, as he had always planned. He settled in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Elyse Knox, and raised his family of three, including son Mark, a well-known film and television actor.

Tom broadcast all sorts of sporting events, including professional baseball, college football, Winter Olympics, and golf, with both NBC and CBS affiliates. In 1961, he became the host of a nightly ABC-TV sports program, serving, too, as its producer and writer. In 1974, he took the post of sports director with the Hughes Television Network, where he ended his career as one of the deans of sports announcing. On March 15, 1990, Tom died of a heart attack shortly after winning a golf tournament at the Bel Air Country Club in Los Angeles.

Summary

Tom Harmon carried, kicked, and threw a football to collegiate glory in an era when the best players were on the field most of the game, playing both offense and defense. His great versatility made him a genuine triple threat, and he prided himself as much on his hard blocking and tackling as he did on his spectacular running and solid passing, punting, and kicking. Although there has always been speculation about the professional football player Tom might have been, his wartime injuries and career aims make all such conjecture moot.

Bibliography

Gauruder, Dana, and Rob Doster. Game Day: Michigan Football—The Greatest Games, Players, Coaches, and Teams in the Glorious Tradition of Wolverine Football. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2006.

Pennington, Bill. The Heisman: Great American Stories of the Men Who Won. New York: ReganBooks, 2004.