Gale Sayers, the will-o-the-wisp running back who in a short but brilliant career with the Chicago Bears left opponents, as they used to say, clutching at air, died Tuesday at his home in Wakarusa, Ind. He was 77.
His son Guy Bullard said the cause of death was complications of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
In March 2017, his family revealed that Mr. Sayers had dementia after he had publicly displayed symptoms of it for four years. He joins a growing list of football players who developed dementia and died of brain damage.
Though his career was cut short by knee injuries, “Sayers is the greatest halfback I ever saw,” Ernie Accorsi, who was general manager of three National Football League teams, wrote in an e-mail in 2017.
Few could cut corners like Mr. Sayers.
“I never saw anyone who could be at full speed, stop on a dime and, in one step acceleration, be at top speed again,” Accorsi said. “I saw runs he made that if it was one-handed touch football instead of tackle they couldn’t have caught him.”
As Mr. Sayers himself said of his ability to elude tacklers in close quarters, “All I needed was 18 inches.”
A consensus All-American at the University of Kansas — where he was called “the Kansas Comet” — Mr. Sayers chose to play for the Bears of the established NFL over the Kansas City Chiefs of the upstart American Football League in 1965.
He was taken with the overall No. 4 pick in the draft, right after the Bears chose middle linebacker Dick Butkus, who also would end up in the Hall of Fame.
Butkus said he hadn’t even seen Mr. Sayers play until a highlight film was shown at an event in New York that both attended honoring the 1964 All-America team. He said the real-life version of Mr. Sayers was even better.
“He was amazing. I still attribute a lot of my success from trying to tackle him [in practice],” Butkus said at the Bears’ 100th anniversary celebration in June 2019.
“I never came up against a running back like him in my whole career, as far as a halfback. And that was counting O.J. [Simpson] and a couple of other guys,” he added. “No one could touch this guy.”
It didn’t take long for Mr. Sayers to win over veterans who had helped the Bears take the NFL championship in 1963.
“We were both No. 1s, so they’re going to make it hard on us and show us the ropes and everything else,” Butkus said. “But Gale just ran circles around everybody. Quickly, they adopted him.”
He went on to have one of the greatest rookie seasons ever.
He led the league in all-purpose yards (rushing, receiving, and punt and kickoff runbacks) with 2,272 yards, scored an NFL-record 22 touchdowns — and tied a record with six in one game — and was named to the all-league team for the first of five consecutive years.
He was a unanimous choice for Offensive Rookie of the Year.
In 1967, a friendship was forged between Mr. Sayers and backfield mate Brian Piccolo when the two became unlikely roommates. In an era of sometimes tense race relations, Mr. Sayers was black and already a star; Piccolo was white and had worked his way up from the practice squad. Early on, they were competing for playing time and carries.
But when the club dropped its policy of segregating players by race in hotel room assignments, they forged a bond. In 1968, Piccolo helped Mr. Sayers through a tough rehab process while he recovered from a torn ligament in his right knee. After Mr. Sayers returned the next season to become an All-Pro, he made sure his friend shared in the credit.
They became even closer after Piccolo pulled himself out of a game early in the 1969 season because of breathing difficulties and was diagnosed with cancer. That phase of their friendship was recounted first by Mr. Sayers in his autobiography, “I Am Third,” and then in the 1971 movie “Brian’s Song.”
With actor Billy Dee Williams playing Mr. Sayers and James Caan in Piccolo’s role, the made-for-TV movie was later released in theaters.
Mr. Sayers stayed by Piccolo’s side as the illness took its toll, donating blood and providing support. Just days before Piccolo’s death at age 26, Mr. Sayers received the George S. Halas Award for courage and said: “You flatter me by giving me this award, but I can tell you here and now that I accept it for Brian Piccolo. ... I love Brian Piccolo and I’d like all of you to love him, too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.”
An injury to his left knee held Mr. Sayers to only two games in both 1970 and 1971. After fumbling twice in three carries in an exhibition game in 1972, he retired. He had scored 39 touchdowns in only 68 pro games and compiled a career average of 5.0 yards per carry.
In 1977, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 34; he remains the youngest person to receive the honor. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame the same year. In 2007, he published a second memoir, “Sayers: My Life and Times,” written with Fred Mitchell.
Gale Eugene Sayers was born on May 30, 1943, in Wichita, Kan., the middle of three sons of Roger Sayers, a car mechanic, and Bernice Ross Sayers. The parents and three sons moved to Omaha, where as a high school standout Gale received, by his account, 75 college scholarship offers before choosing the University of Kansas. He played three varsity seasons there — 1962, ’63, and ’64 — and was a consensus All-American selection in his two final seasons.
After his playing career ended, Mr. Sayers briefly worked as a television commentator and stockbroker and then for his alma mater, Kansas. He was the athletic director at Southern Illinois University for five years, resigning in 1981.
He had several ventures in private business, including a computer supply company in the Chicago area. He said he had applied to every NFL team for a front-office job but never received an interview — a source of sadness for him, according to friends.
Mr. Sayers was married to Linda McNeil in 1962 during his freshman year in college; they were divorced in June 1973. That December he married Ardythe Elaine Bullard. He also leaves a daughter, Gale Lynne; two sons, Timothy and Scott, from his first marriage; three sons, Gaylon, Guy, and Gary, from his second marriage; two brothers, Roger, a former track and field star, and Ron, who played eight games as a running back for the San Diego Chargers in the NFL; and two grandchildren.
Since 1987, Gale and Ardythe Sayers had a home in rural Wakarusa, Ind. They had been active in the Ardythe and Gale Sayers Center for African American Adoption, part of The Cradle, an adoption center in Illinois. (His first son, Timothy, was adopted.)
A half-century after his playing career, Mr. Sayers could still be found in highlight reels of NFL plays.
His jaw-dropping ability to elude tacklers was perhaps best on display on a play against the Super Bowl-bound Baltimore Colts in 1968.
“I was playing right safety, and he was running a sweep to his right — my left,” Rick Volk of the Colts recalled. “Mike Curtis came up and Gale reversed to his left. We had him stopped. But he reversed again, and I had an angle on him, but I couldn’t catch him.”
Mr. Sayers later likened his 59-yard touchdown run to a slapstick movie chase and claimed he had run past Bubba Smith, the huge All-Pro Baltimore defender, three separate times. Mr. Sayers called it “the greatest run of my professional football career.”
Asked to describe his strategies and techniques, Mr. Sayers told Sports Illustrated in 1965: “I have no idea what I do. I hear people talk about dead leg, shake, change of pace, but I do things without thinking about them.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this obituary.
