One of the fastest players to ever grace the gridiron was the 5-foot-4 Buddy Young. A native of Illinois, Young played for the Illini before joining the AAFC (All America Football Conference) and later the NFL where he enjoyed great success with the then Baltimore Colts. Buddy’s speed and quickness is what made him a threat on the field. At Illinois, the first time Buddy ever touched a football, he ran 64-yards for a touchdown. The second time he got a hold of the ball, he ran 30-yards for a touchdown. In fact, his first year with Illinois, he scored 10 touchdowns to tie the team record of the legendary Red Grange. In the pros, during Buddy’s 9-year career, he scored 17 touchdowns on the ground, caught passes for another 21 touchdowns, scored two touchdowns on punt returns and four on kickoffs, including a return of 104-yards. While Buddy was making a name for himself on the football field, one can only wonder how much more notoriety he would have garnered had he decided to stick with a different sport, one in which he excelled at immensely – track. He was simply a star on the track. He won the 100-yard dash and the 220-yard dash at the National Collegiate Championships, was the AAU’s 100-meter champion and he set world records in the 45-yard dash and the 60-yard dash. However, like so many others, Buddy’s shot at the Olympics was never a reality because of World War II. The games of 1940 and 1944 were cancelled, and by the time the 1948 games in London took place, Buddy was causing a lot of trouble for opposing defenses in the AAFC as a member of the New York Yankees. Buddy played three years in the AAFC with the Yankees, stuck with the team in its first year when it moved to the NFL and eventually found his way to the Baltimore Colts where he spent his final three years. After the 1955 season, Buddy retired from the game. He was just 29. Unfortunately, his years as an executive with the team were not without controversy … in a most unusual way – and I’ll talk about that controversy as well in this retrospective look at a terrific career on the field with Andy Piascik of the Professional Football Researcher’s Association.
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