Y.A. Tittle, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and LSU’s first T-formation quarterback, died Monday, according to LSU deputy director of athletics Verge Ausberry.
He was 90.
Tittle was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, joining the late Steve Van Buren (1965) from LSU. Former Green Bay Packers fullback Jimmy Taylor, who was inducted in 1976, remains as the only living Pro Football Hall of Famer from LSU.
Tittle was inducted into the LSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1948, just one year after completing his college career.
Known as “The Bald Eagle’’ for his lack of hair — which he began losing in college — throughout his 17-year pro career with the Baltimore Colts of the All-American Football Conference, the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants of the NFL, Tittle was a two-time NFL MVP and a seven-time Pro Bowl quarterback.
He threw for seven touchdowns in a game against the Washington Redskins in 1962, tying the NFL record. In that same game, he completed 27 of 39 passes for 505 yards, tying another record. In 1963, he passed for what was then the NFL record of 36 touchdowns.
Between 1961 and 1963, when he enjoyed his greatest team success by leading the Giants to three straight Eastern Division titles, Tittle passed for 86 touchdowns, making him by far the most productive quarterback in football. During that period, he became the first quarterback to pass for 30 or more touchdowns in consecutive seasons.
But Tittle was a titanic figure before he got to New York. When he was traded to the Giants for defensive end Lou Cordileone, the famed response from Cordileone was, “Me? Even for Y.A. Tittle? You’re kidding!”
Even in his final playing days, he remained in the public consciousness. A photo of Tittle kneeling the end zone with blood streaming down his head after being sacked — emblematic of a fallen warrior — taken by Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is still one of the most iconic in American sports.
Tittle’s career ended after the 1964 season with career totals of 242 touchdown passes and 33,070 passing yards.
Tittle left a lasting legacy at LSU, too, as the linchpin of a couple of memorable seasons. With Tittle under center, LSU was 7-2-0 in 1945 and 9-1-1 in ’46, racking up some memorable victories. But, just as in the pros, Tittle never quarterbacked a championship team.
Against rival Tulane in 1944, Tittle completed 13 of 17 passes, including his first 12 in a row in a 25-7 LSU win. In ’45, the underdog Tigers ventured to Athens and beat Charley Trippi-led Georgia 32-0. Later that season, he engineered a late drive in Atlanta as LSU won 9-7 to beat Georgia Tech for the first time. In perhaps the game of the year in the South in 1946, Tittle outdueled Harry Gilmer as the Tigers beat Alabama 31-21.
In the 1947 Cotton Bowl against Southwest Conference champion Arkansas, in near-Siberian conditions, the Tigers held Arkansas to one first down, drove five times inside the Hogs’ 10 (once to the 1) and accumulated 271 yards to the Razorbacks’ 54 but wound up with a 0-0 tie. Tittle was named MVP, and he cracked later that his teammates claimed the victory on penetrations.
He left LSU with tons of career records which aren’t eye-catching now but at the time were noteworthy: 166 completions, 2,525 passing yards and 23 touchdown passes.
LSU coach Bernie Moore fell into this passing protégé primarily thanks to three people. The first was legendary quarterback Sammy Baugh, who was the national rage when Tittle was growing up in Marshall, Texas.
Baugh made the forward pass as integral to of the sport as running and blocking, and movie shorts regularly carried pictures of him throwing a football through the holes of tires tied to tree branches — so Tittle did the same, emulating his idol.
“I did everything the way I thought Baugh would do it,” Tittle said, “even to the point of throwing footballs through the loops. I had seen Sammy do that in newsreels. I don’t think running ever crossed my mind.”
The second influence was Tittle’s older brother, who became an All-SEC player at Tulane.
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