Camp Countdown: Day 29 - Assistant Coach Beattie Feathers
7/9/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
July 9, 2009
Beattie Feathers was an All-American running back at the University of Tennessee and became the first NFL player to rush for 1000 yards in one season, playing with the Chicago Bears in 1934 beside the legendary Bronko Nagurski. After his playing career ended, Feathers coached all over North Carolina but settled at Wake Forest as an assistant football coach and later, head baseball coach until he retired in 1975. Still actively volunteering with the Deacons, Beattie passed away just four years later at the age of 69.
No Jogger; He Sprints
By Milton Richmond, Knoxville News-Sentinel
Originally Published May 18, 1977
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Beattie Feathers always had one thing drummed into him as a kid: "Pick up your feet."
He's 67 now and still picks up his feet ... so well, he can outrun some of the football players here at Wake Forest where he's a part-time assistant under head coach Chuck Mills.
"I never cared much for jogging," says Feathers, who hasn't much left of his hair, which once was jet black and now is deep gray.
"Once in a while I go out and still sprint. Not far, but some of the players who see me say, `I hope I can run that way at his age.'"
Two states, Virginia and Tennessee, always have claimed Beattie Feathers as their own, the reason being he came into this world in Bristol, Va. - Tenn., where one side of the street is in Virginia and the other in Tennessee.
"I was born on the Virginia side, lived on the Tennessee side and then moved back to the Virginia side," he says.
He had a peculiar crow-hop stride that gave tacklers fits when he played for the University of Tennessee first and then for the Chicago Bears, Brooklyn Dodgers and Green Bay Packers.
His running style wasn't fancy, but he could fly.
With big Bronko Nagurski clearing the way for him, he was the first pro player ever to gain 1000 yards in a single season. Don't forget they played only 12 games a season back then. That was in 1934, his rookie season with the Bears, and it took 14 years before Steve Van Buren became the second man to do it, with the Philadelphia Eagles.
In his first season with the Bears also, Feathers gained 9.94 yards per carry to set an NFL record which still stands.
He played both ways for the pros, and now says with a laugh he liked it "because it gave me a chance to get even."
Before the bears signed him for $2400 a season or $200 a game, he was one of the finest running backs the South ever produced. Feathers also played as an outfielder at Tennessee.
"I've been called a lot of things in my time," he says. "'Chief,' `Cochise,' `Antelope.' With the Bears, they always called me `Sam.' Our quarterback, Carl Brumbaugh, hung that one on me. He loved to recite `The Cremation of Sam McGee.' You know how cold it can get during the winter. Well, Carl would have a drink, look at me and start singing, `Sam McGee, was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and grows. Why he ever left the sunny south, God only knows.'"
Feathers, who is in the college football Hall of Fame, almost made it in baseball with the Cincinnati Reds before signing with the Bears.
He went to spring training with the Reds in 1934 and was told he could hit the ball as hard as Ernie Lombardi, Chick Hafey and Jim Bottomley.
"Larry MacPhail and Frank Lane talked to me and said I could hit, run and field. I was having trouble throwing, though, because I hurt my arm. The Reds signed me for $500 a month. When they wanted to cut me to $250 and send me to Columbia, S.C., of the Sally League, I said now and went with the Bears instead."
Those who had the most influence on him, Feathers says, were Fred Reuning, his high school coach; Gene McEver, one of Tennessee's all-time football greats, and the late Gen. Bob Neyland, long-time coach of the Vols.
"Nagurski was probably the strongest man I ever played with or seen play," said Beattie. "You talk about a quiet person. He'd play a whole game and not say a word."
"We were practicing one day and when we huddled up, I said we didn't have a fullback. Nagurski was standing right behind me but I didn't notice him. He hit me on the top of the head and I went to my knees. Never said a word. Just wanted to let me know he was there."
Feathers has had head-coaching jobs at North Carolina State, Appalachian State and with the Fort Jackson Army team. He also was assistant football coach and head baseball coach at Texas Tech.
"Playing and coaching, I've been in football 54 years," says Feathers, fresh from his latest recruiting trip. "I'd like to stay in it all my life because it is my life."
"I feel more comfortable at home around youngsters and coaching football. I never made a lotta money and I don't have a lotta money, but I'm happy. To me, that means more than anything else."
