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One of a kind.
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RIPTERD Buckley over Troy Vincent, Robert Ferguson over Chris Chambers, Kevn King instead of TJ Watt, and now, RICH GANNON, over JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY LEONARD. Thank you FLOWERComment
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truley sad news, RIPComment
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Very sad indeed. A few years ago my neighbor in his 70's was up on his roof and I just about had a heart attack. I told his son a couple days later and he just said "damn, he thinks he's a kid, I wish he wouldn't do that.
Wasn't he pretty active with the Packers? I seem to recall hearing his name alot, even in recent years.Comment
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What a strange way to go.
RIP Max."I've got one word for you- Dallas, Texas, Super Bowl"- Jermichael FinleyComment
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This is so sad. Story is from the PG....
Former Packers star McGee dies after falling from roof
Hornung: 'I just lost my best friend'
MINNEAPOLIS — Max McGee, the unexpected hero of the first Super Bowl and a long-time challenge for Hall of Fame coach Vince Lombardi, died Saturday after falling from the roof of his home, police confirmed. He was 75.
Police were called to the former Green Bay receiver’s Deephaven home around 5:20 p.m., Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts to resuscitate McGee were unsuccessful.
McGee was blowing leaves off the roof when he fell, according to news reports. A phone message left at a number listed for an M. McGee wasn’t immediately returned.
“I just lost my best friend,” former teammate Paul Hornung told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “(His wife) Denise was away from the house. She’d warned him not to get up there. He shouldn’t have been up there. He knew better than that.”
Inserted into Packers’ lineup when Boyd Dowler was sidelined by a shoulder injury, McGee went on to catch the first touchdown pass in Super Bowl history in Green Bay’s 35-10 victory over Kansas City in January 1967. Still hung over from a night on the town, McGee caught seven passes for 138 yards and two TDs.
“Now he’ll be the answer to one of the great trivia questions: Who scored the first touchdown in Super Bowl history?” Hornung said. “Vince knew he could count on him. ... He was a great athlete. He could do anything with his hands.”
Though an admirer of Lombardi, McGee time and again pushed the tough-as-nails coach to the breaking point.
McGee — remembered for saying: “When it’s third-and-10, you can take the milk drinkers and I’ll take the whiskey drinkers every time.” — put Lombardi to the ultimate test prior to the first Super Bowl.
McGee had caught only four passes for 91 yards during the 1966 regular season and, not expecting to play against the Chiefs, violated the team’s curfew and spent the night before the game partying.
Reportedly, the next morning he told Dowler: “I hope you don’t get hurt. I’m not in very good shape.”
Dowler went down with a separated shoulder on the Packers’ second drive, and McGee had to borrow a helmet because he left his in the locker room. A few plays later, McGee made a one-handed reception of a pass from Bart Starr and ran 37 yards to score.
“He had a delightful sense of humor and had a knack for coming up with big plays when you least expected it to happen,” Packers historian Lee Remmel said. “He had a great sense of timing.”
Remmel said McGee once teased Lombardi when the coach showed the team a football on their first meeting and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”
“McGee said, ’Not so fast, not so fast,“’ Remmel said. “That gives you an index to the kind of humor that he served up regularly.”
McGee was a running back at Tulane and the nation’s top kick returner in 1953.
Selected by the Packers in the fifth round of the 1954 draft, McGee spent two years in the Air Force as a pilot following his rookie year before returning in 1957 to play 11 more seasons. He finished his career with 345 receptions for 6,346 yards — an 18.4-yard average — and scored 51 touchdowns and 306 points.
After retiring from football, he became a major partner in developing the popular Chi-Chi’s chain of Mexican restaurants. In 1979, he became an announcer for the Packer Radio Network with Jim Irwin until retiring in 1998.
McGee and wife Denise founded the Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in 1999.
According to the center’s Web site, his brother fought diabetes in his lifetime, and Max and Denise’s youngest son, Dallas, lives with the disease.
McGee is survived by his wife, four children and several grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were pending.Comment
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The Packer's were obviously struggling in the late 70's, early 80's. My Dad had taken a job that moved us from WI to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, so we couldn't hear the games very easily, and TV would mostly show the Vikings at that point becuase they were the dominant team of the division. My brother and I used to have my Dad pull his old Town and Country wood paneled station wagon into the driveway and we'd play catch and listen to a very staticky WTMJ broadcast and play catch with the football. Sometimes when it got cold, we'd bundle up and sit in the car. We would sometimes do our best Max McGee impressions, and loved hearing him and Jim Irwin call a game. He was like that Grandpa who always told good stories, was sometimes a little off color, but always full of fun. Goodbye Max! You will be missed. Condolenes to your family. I'm sure they are hurting right now."Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." -Daniel Patrick MoynihanComment
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I was hoping that Max's name in the header of ND's thread didn't mean "The Taxi" was gone. But he is, falling off a roof at 75? Sad, but does seem like a Max way to go.
Max was a special guy on that team and also lived for years for the Pack.
Lombardi liked two kinds of players. Vets you could count on in big games and players who kept the team happy and loose. In Hornung and McGee he had both. They kept the guys laughing and when the money was on the line, both guys could deliver every time.
Max was one hellacious athlete and had good moves and great hands.
He is gone now, but Max and Paul's reputation as major league party artists is well earned. Those two cut a rut from coast to coast and showed a whole ton of class while they did it.
Max made millions in business after he retired, but he didn't need the money. Because he made a million friends.
Say hi to Vince up there, pal, if they don't make you go to the temporary place first.
To make you work off them broken curfews.
Rest in Peace if ya want, I know you never liked to sleep.Comment
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I dont know much about the the old school player but I do know this guy was a legend. R.I.P. man.Comment
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I wonder if there is any tape anywhere of his one-handed TD catch in the Super Bowl?
For those who have not seen it, as best I can remember, the pass was behind him as he was sprinting away from a defender, sort of waist high or so. He hardly broke stride, reached back with one arm and caught the ball almost like you would carry it, one end in his hand, the other in his elbow. He just kept running in a sort of nonchalant manner, like it was no big deal.
I remember looking at my brother, not believing he really caught it like that.Comment
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They showed that tape on ESPN this morning. I had never seen it before. I listen to WTMJ quite a bit so I hear Max on interviews and commercials. Seemed like a very nice man. RIPOriginally posted by PatlerComment
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The most impressive thing about the catch was not that he caught it, but how effortless he made it look.Originally posted by mngolf19Comment
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Jim & Max weren't on shortwave radio? damn, they should have been.Originally posted by MadtownPackerComment
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NIce to see that the Packers have mentioned his passing on their "official" website. Oh wait they haven't
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You just never know when it's your turn. very sad. hire someone to clean off the leaves or cut down the damn tree... sheesh.Comment
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