Piccolo legacy goes beyond movie image
By Jordan Webster
Sports Editor

Around here, quite a few things are done in the name of Brian Piccolo. Golf tournaments, 5K runs, weight lifting and pancake flipping, among several dozen other events each year,serve to fill the coffers of the cancer research fund created in honor of the former Deacon and Chicago Bear. But I won’t lie to you; if I hadn’t committed the last three-plus years of my life to this institution, I wouldn’t be able to pick Pic from the Bears team picture. In fact, prior to last weekend, I still may have failed to do so. I knew Piccolo’s No. 31 had been retired. I knew he had gone on to a short career with the Bears. And I knew we had a dorm that bears his name.

So, with Disney’s remake of Brian’s Song, the movie based on Piccolo’s life, slated to air last Sunday night, I decided I needed to devote some of my time to Piccolo. I pored through old newspaper clippings and media guides, skimmed his biography and rented the original movie.

I found that Piccolo was an above average athlete but undersized, with an indefatigable work ethic. I found that, as a junior, Piccolo carried the Deacons to their first win in 19 games on Nov. 16, 1963, pounding South Carolina for 140 yards rushing, scoring the game-tying touchdown and booting the game-winning extra point. I found that Piccolo was the nation’s leading rusher and scorer in 1964, his senior season, a season in which he earned All-America and ACC Player of the Year honors. I found that, in that senior season, the Demon Deacons went 5-5, only the third season in the past decade that the Deacs did not have a losing record.

I also found that, despite his collegiate successes, Piccolo went undrafted and signed on with the Bears as a free agent. I found that he battled his way onto the 1965 Bears primarily because of the same work ethic and determination that made him the most productive back in the country in his senior year of college. All this despite the fact that the Bears had picked highly-touted running back Gale Sayers that same year, who would slice, cut, juke and then accelerate – and quickly, mind you – his way to Rookie of the Year honors. I found that he served as a very capable backup to Sayers for most of his career, shining in the final half of the 1968 season, after Sayers blew out his knee. He was no Sayers – “I won’t get you sixty,” Piccolo would say, “but I’ll get you 10 sixes” – but he was an integral part of that Bears team.

But his accomplishments on the field aren’t within a Sayers kickoff return of those off the field. Piccolo, by all accounts, was a good athlete. But by all accounts, he was incomparable as a person. He and Sayers roomed together – the first black/white combination in the NFL. In the mid ’60s, amidst the peril of the civil rights movement, this was a groundbreaking occasion. But not for Piccolo and Sayers. The pair started rooming together in 1967 during training camp, and a friendship that transcended the stereotypes of the era began and would flourish.

The Disney remake of Brian’s Song does not do the friendship justice. The scene with the Demon Deacon fight song was cut from the remake, as was all but one reference to Piccolo’s alma mater, but those were hardly the most important casualties of the director’s paring knife. Piccolo’s quick wit befriended the introverted Sayers, and the friendship that blossomed was not the tense, antagonistic type portrayed in the opening scenes of Disney’s version of the story.

The original, starring James Caan as Piccolo and Billy Dee Williams as Gale Sayers, embraced the type of friendship the backfield mates shared. Before being politically correct was virtually required by society, Caan and Williams were permitted to engage in friendly banter saturated with racial underpinnings – banter that was completely eliminated from the Disney version. Nothing was sacred, and Piccolo’s constant repartee drew Sayers from his self-imposed shell. As far as available documentation suggests, it was the affable, outgoing Piccolo that initiated the friendship between he and Sayers, a friendship that remained strong until Piccolo passed away on June 16, 1970 after a six-month battle with cancer.
The same wit that carried the friendship carried Piccolo through the last year of his life, in which he underwent two operations to rid his body of cancer, all to no avail. Midway through the 1969 season, Piccolo dropped several pounds and struggled to catch his breath. After taking himself out of a November game in Atlanta, he finally relented and saw a doctor. A tumor the size of a grapefruit was found behind Piccolo’s breastbone and attached to his lung. Within two weeks, Piccolo had surgery to remove the growth, but in early 1970 another was found, and Brian went under the knife again. All the while, Piccolo remained upbeat. “As much as he was faced with all these tortures,” Sayers writes in his autobiography, “his spirit would not be destroyed.”

It would be Sayers who would, at least symbolically, make the first donation in Brian’s name – the George S. Halas award, given to the NFL’s most courageous player each year. Sayers won based on his play in 1969, the season after his knee injury. In his acceptance speech in May 1970, Sayers made clear the meaning of courage, a scene from both movies that hardly leaves a dry eye.

“He has the heart of a giant, and that rare form of courage that allows him to kid himself and his opponent, cancer,” Sayers said. “You flatter me by giving me this award, but I tell you here and now that I accept it for Brian Piccolo … It is mine tonight, it is Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow.”

True to his word, Sayers pasted Piccolo’s name over his on the trophy, but never was able to present it to Piccolo personally – Piccolo died before he had the chance.
Piccolo’s wife Joy still has it.

The Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund has raised millions for cancer research, and has improved the survival rate of individuals diagnosed with Piccolo’s specific cancer, embryonal carcinoma, from practically nothing to more than half. In addition to contributions from this University, which have exceeded $500,000 since its involvement in the program, which began in 1980, scores of other organizations across the country have contributed. As recently as five years ago, the NFL directed 25 percent of any fine levied on a player into the fund. Ironic, really; modern-day players with little reason for misbehavior bordering on insanity contribute to a fund in Piccolo’s honor, a man that had every reason to lose control, but never did.

Just a few things to remember next time you’re asked to donate. Five bucks suddenly seems well worth it.