Sports of The Times

When Johnny Blood was inducted into the professional football Hall of Fame as a charter member in 1963, this somewhat legendary and totally implausible character was ceremoniously presented to the. Canton shrine by that model of propriety, Byron (Whizzer) White. They were an odd couple then and they still aro.

During his 15 years in the National Football League, most of them with the Green Bay Packers, the colorful Blood lit up the skied with his spectacular play. He was known as the Vagabond Halfback and the Magnificent Screwball. He also lit up a lot of nocturnal skies, off the field. Tall, dark and handsome, with a personality to match, lie was such an irresistible swashbuckler that ,he would have made Joe Namath look like a choir boy.

Although the Whizzer's life style was diametrically opposite to Blood's, there were bonds that have held them together. Johnny was in his second year as playing coach of Pittsburgh in 1938 when White joined the club in a rookie season of such splendor that he was the leading ground‐gainer in the league.

Despite that promising start, the Whizzer let himself he diverted to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship. Returning to pro football in 1940, this time with the Detroit Lions, he again was the leading ground‐gainer. But he was using pro ball to finance his way through Yale Law School. Naturally, he graduated first in his class and a great career on the gridiron was abandoned. What did it get him? Only a place on the. United States Supreme Court.

Without Authorization

The eleCtrifying Blood came breezing into town yesterday to do Some unauthorized shilling for White as Democratic candidate for President. Neither dismayed nor deterred by the fact that Senator George McGovern seems to have a , lock on the nomination,. the old smoothie from Green Bay wants to be ready to spring his boy as a solution to all difficulties if the convention becomes deadlocked:

“The dark horse is White,” said Johnny, eyes twiinkling and the charm turned on full blast. “Delegates can unite around my guy. He leaves them nothing to shoot at. Everything he has done in his life he has done superlatively well. The standout quality of the man is his balance. He has shown it in every department—psychologically, socially, physically. In every field he's tried he led the league, athletically, scholastically and everywhere else.

“As a football player he was a slashing runner who won the ground‐gaining championship with very little help trom the rest of us. We were ab ad team, winning only two games, and that is deeply significant. Beattie Feathers of the Chicago Bears holds ground‐gaining records that still stand, but he did it because he had Bronko Nagurski blocking for him and the Bronk opened up holes like a tank flattening out a wheatfield. The Whizzer had no Bronk to help. He did it alone.

“When he joined our Pittsburgh team, Art Rooney was paying ‐him a salary of $15,000 and that was as fantastic as the $100,000 paid out today. Know how much I was making? My salary was $3,500 and I was both coach and player. That was when I first developed my. admiration for the Whizzer. So a group of fellow admirers banded together to seek his nomination for the Presidency, if not this year, at least in 1976. We haven't sounded him out or spoken to him. But he is so responsive to the call of duty that he would regard a draft as such a call.”

Best in the Clutch

If Johnny's self‐imposed assignment seems slightly impossible, that's down his alley. He was the clutch player supreme, losing interest in lopsided games but making the impossible catch or the impossible run in the closing minutes of the squeaker. He just had a flair for it and the bizarre was his particular dish.

His name wasn't Blood, you know, even if he once signed a contract by using his blood instead of ink.

His name was McNally and, fortunately for him, his family was wealthy. He was thrown out of Notre Dame for going off with a girl on a motorcycle escapade on St. Patrick’ Day, a day that invariably got him into trouble. While ah undergraduate at St. John's College in Minnesota later, he needed a nom de.guerre for a venture with the pros. He saw a theater marquee advertising Rudolf Valentino in “Blood and Sand.” He took Blood and gave the more prosaic Sand to his companion.

Although Johnny didn't get around to qualifying for his degree until 26 years after his original class had graduated, he was a brilliant student. He edited the school paper, was the top debater and star of the drama club. In later years he once got entangled with John Barrymore in a saloon discussion and they matched Shakespearean quotes until dawn. Oh, yes. He also wrote a book on the Maithusian theory of economics.

Presumably the Whizzer is uneasy at Johnny's enthusiastic campaign in his behalf. If White doesn't want the nomination, he can take comfort in the way John Blood McNally once ran his own campaign for the office sheriff.

Asked what his platform was, the impish Blood destroyed everything.

“Honest wrestling,” he said.