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Trailblazing Argos coach Willie Wood shone in Super Bowl I, doesn't remember it

Former Packers' safety and Argonauts' head coach Willie Wood now lives in a Washington, D.C. nursing home and can't remember his football career. (Greg Kahn/The New York Times.)

With the fiftieth Super Bowl being played this Sunday, there have been plenty of retrospectives looking back at Super Bowl I, and one of those has a strong CFL connection. Bill Pennington of The New York Times wrote a fascinating piece this week on Pro Football Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood, who made a crucial interception to propel the Green Bay Packers to their 35-10 win in the initial Super Bowl, and then went on to be the first black head coach in pro football's modern era and the first black head coach in the CFL. The sad part, though, and part of the larger issues with watching football today, is that the 79-year-old Wood now resides in an assisted-living facility in Washington, D.C., has faced plenty of physical challenges, and now has so much memory loss that he doesn't remember playing in the NFL at all:

Wood remembers nothing of the play.

He does not even recollect playing in the first Super Bowl, on Jan. 15, 1967, or ever being on an N.F.L. roster.

Wood, who spends most of his time in a wheelchair, has been at an assisted living center in his hometown, Washington, for the last nine years, first for physical woes — debilitating neck, hip and knee operations — and later because dementia robbed him of many cognitive functions.

Nonetheless, Wood, 79, likes to wear a green Packers cap most days now as he sits in his sunny room listening to jazz and 1950s doo-wop. Wordlessly and impassively, he will point to the logo on the cap as if he knows it has some shadowy meaning in his life. But specifics elude him.

When asked about various photographs on the walls next to him — pictures of his wedding or the day in 1989 when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame — Wood stares vacantly.

“Do you remember going into the Hall of Fame, Willie?” Dee Dee Daniels, an assistant living coordinator at the center where Wood lives, asked one morning last month.

Wood cast his eyes downward and shook his head side to side: no.

“You were the best of the best,” Daniels said.

Wood, who sometimes goes days without speaking, suddenly looked up, his eyes glistening as he raised an eyebrow as if to say, “I was?”

Wood had a remarkable career, becoming the first black quarterback at USC and the first black quarterback in the history of the Pacific Coast Conference (now the Pac-12) in 1957, while also playing safety and kicker. He went unselected in the 1960 NFL draft, but wrote to Packers' coach Vince Lombardi, received a tryout, and made the team, but was switched to safety full-time. He wound up being an incredible safety in the NFL, earning all-NFL honours nine times in his 12-year career and making the Pro Bowl eight times. After his playing career wrapped up, he went into coaching, starting as an assistant with the San Diego Chargers and becoming the first black head coach in pro football's modern history with the World Football League's Philadelphia Bell in 1975. Unfortunately for him, the league folded halfway through that season, and he wound up out of football for a while.

The CFL was Wood's next landing spot in 1979, first as an assistant coach under former Packers' teammate Forrest Gregg (who spoke to Robert Klemko of The MMQB this week about his own Super Bowl experiences as a player and coach) and then as the head coach in 1980 once Gregg left for the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals (which he would take to the Super Bowl game in his second season, 1981). That made Wood the CFL's first black head coach. He didn't walk into an easy situation, though; the Argonauts struggled through most of the 1970s, went 4-12 in 1978 under Leo Cahill and Bud Riley and 5-11 in 1979 under Gregg, and were an easy punchline inside and outside Canada. The team made some improvements under Wood, going 6-10 in 1980, but the hire of new president Ralph Sazio from their rivals in Hamilton in August 1981 combined with the team's 0-10 start to lead to Wood's firing.

As Paul Woods relates in Bouncing Back, the 10th loss, against the Ottawa Rough Riders on Sept. 13, was particularly brutal, with Wood forced to start Sazio's new quarterback Dan Manucci instead of the much-better Condredge Holloway. The Argos lost 23-6 and Wood was fired the next day. Wood's son, Willie Jr., told Woods that the firing was hard for his father to take.

"He was really pissed off," Wood said. "The team was crap when he got there. The reason Dad gets the job is because they're crap and Forrest Gregg wants to get out of there."

Things got largely worse for the Argos the rest of that season under interim head coach Tommy Hudspeth, who brought in controversial American assistants John Ralston and Steve Goldman. They did go 2-4 the rest of the way, but alienated many of the team's key players, and their situation didn't really improve until new head coach Bob O'Billovich was hired in the offseason and legendary assistant Darrel "Mouse" Davis came in to teach the run-and-shoot. The 1982 Argonauts went 9-6-1 and made the Grey Cup (losing 32-16 to Warren Moon and the Eskimos' fifth-straight championship team), then went 12-6 the next season and won the Grey Cup. However, while Wood's era didn't end well on the field and took criticism from players (particularly for the tough "up-down" pushup-jumping jack-pushup exercises he required during the season as well as in camp, as well as for hiring inexperienced friends as assistants and for sometimes being too close to the players), he did help to build the Argos' team that would eventually find so much success, and he particularly made the crucial trade for Holloway in the 1981 offseason, eventually making the call to pull the trigger despite having to give up a good Canadian lineman in Kevin Powell. From Bouncing Back:

The deal to obtain Holloway had been on the table for some time, but Wood was initially unwilling to surrender Powell, the type of non-import starter an offensive line can be built around. 'It hurt me to have to give up Kevin," the coach told CKEY after the trade was announced. 'We had made a rule in our basic scheme of operations to never give up a good non-import for an import. The quarterbacking position, however, takes some exceptions. It will be easier to replace Powell than it would be for us to go and get another quarterback.

That quote illustrates both how important Wood was to the Argos' eventual success (as Holloway wound up being one of the most crucial pieces in their 1982 success and their 1983 Grey Cup victory) and how he understood the intricacies of the Canadian game (and specifically, the value of Canadian starters) in a way others like Ralston and Goldman didn't. Wood's time in Toronto may not have ended well, and he may not have been able to find much coaching work afterwards (as Pennington writes, his skin colour was a factor, and teams were also looking to hire younger candidates for assistant jobs), but he played a vital role in setting the Argonauts up for success. As his son Andre told Pennington, though, Wood wished he was able to stay in the world of football:

“The thing is, my dad never wanted to leave football,” Andre said. “He needed a stable way to make a living. But I know he would have stayed in the N.F.L. coaching track had he been asked to. But he wasn’t.”

The particularly unfortunate thing is hearing about the state Wood's in now. Pennington notes that doctors aren't sure if his mental struggles are related to football, aging, or both, but the incredible numbers of former NFLers who have been diagnosed with CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and experienced symptoms similar to Wood's certainly raises questions about the role football played in where he is now. It's not that every player experienced those (Pennington's piece also talks to former Chiefs' quarterback Len Dawson, who's doing well), but the numbers of those who do are certainly significant. It's hard to hear that Wood now can't remember his football career, and that he's had to face so many physical challenges as well. His CFL coaching stint may have been brief, but it was important; he paved the way for other black coaches, even if that's still sometimes a struggle for the league. (It's worth noting that 36 years after Wood became the Argonauts' head coach, there have only been two black head coaches to win the Grey Cup; Toronto's Pinball Clemons and Saskatchewan's Corey Chamblin.) He helped set the Argonauts up for the mid-80s success they did find, and he should be remembered for that. It's unfortunate to hear that he can't remember more of his remarkable career in the football world.