The fastest man anyone had ever seen on a football field, a receiver so speedy NFL defenses were invented to stop him, finally accomplished something in the most unfamiliar of ways. Slowly.
The late Cowboys star Bob Hayes will be inducted Saturday into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, seven years after his death and four decades after leaving an indelible imprint on the game he loved.
“This would have meant the world to him,” said his friend George Atkinson, a former Oakland Raiders defensive back. “He figured he would never get in, as a result of some unfortunate incidents. I’m pretty sure he’s smiling down from up above.”
Hayes, who struggled with alcohol, drug and legal problems after his career, is the only person to win a Super Bowl ring and an individual Olympic gold medal — he tied a world record by going 100 meters in 10.0 seconds at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
He will enter the Hall of Fame with guard Randall McDaniel, defensive ends Derrick Thomas and Bruce Smith, defensive back Rod Woodson and Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson.
Of those, it was Hayes who struck fear in the hearts of defensive coordinators. He stretched the field with his blistering speed and forced opponents to resort to Cover-2 zones, with deep safeties lining up behind cornerbacks to ensure Hayes needed to beat more than one man for a rendezvous with the end zone.
As it was, Hayes scored 71 touchdowns in his 11-year career — still a club record for receiving — and averaged a staggering 20.0 yards per catch.
Clearly, Hayes wasn’t a shoo-in for Canton, and not only because of his problems off the field. He led his team in receptions in only three of his 11 seasons, and his 371 career receptions are less than a quarter of Jerry Rice’s record 1,549. Regardless, his world-class speed separated him from his peers.
“Here was a guy who was the fastest man on earth and yet he lumbered,” said NFL Films President Steve Sabol, who began his career as a cameraman. “[But] we’d shoot in super slo-mo and isolate on him, and there was this churn. When he ran, you’d see these clods of dirt in his wake. He was so powerful and so fast, it was almost like a speedboat.”
Hayes left something else in his wake too: a steady stream of track imitators such as Jimmy Hines, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Harvey Nairn and Renaldo Nehemiah. None of the experiments really worked.
As a pro, Hayes got the nickname “Bullet” for his speed. But years earlier, he went by “Crow,” because, according to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, he had dark skin and ran so quickly it was almost as if he could fly.
Atkinson, who was a track and football star at Morris Brown College in Atlanta when Hayes was at Florida A&M, remembers Hayes showing up to track meets with a live crow perched on his shoulder.
“Before we’d get into the blocks,” Atkinson recalled, “Bobby would say, ‘OK, who’s going to finish second today, boys?'”
Saturday in Canton — if only as a memory — Hayes once again will stand alone.
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