Nicknamed "The Dutchman," Van Brocklin was born in South Dakota but attended high school in Walnut Creek, California, and played college ball at Oregon under the great Len Casanova.
Playing the early part of his career in the Rams' wide-open offense, he once threw for 554 yards in one game. It's still an NFL record. That was 1951, when most teams would have settled for half that. It broke the previous record by 86 yards.
In his early years with the Rams, he and Bob Waterfield created the NFL's first version of the modern Quarterback Controversy. In his latter years, after Waterfield retired, he and Billy Wade paired up to keep the controversy alive. In his 12-year career, he threw for 23,611 yards and 173 touchdowns. He averaged more than eight yards per attempt (compare that with the five yards or so that today's West-Coasters average).
He also was an outstanding punter, averaging 42.9 yards over his career.
After nine years with the Rams, he was traded to the Eagles - for a guard, a defensive back, and a first-round draft choice.
Van Brocklin's eventual departure from the Rams was brought about by a coach-player dispute that few fans of today, when coaches communicate with quarterbacks by radio, would even understand. As he himself wrote in "Norm Van Brocklin's Football Book," co-authored with Hugh Brown, in 1961:
"My nine years with the Rams were happy and prosperous. I probably would still be serving out my time with them, except for a delicate situation that arose in 1957 involving coach Sid Gillman and myself. It has been publicized extensively, and needs no retelling here. Suffice it to say that we both wanted to call the signals; Gillman from the sidelines, the way Paul Brown does. I thought I could call the plays better from my position back of the center. The Rams felt they had to back their coach, so we parted company."
At first, he was not particularly happy about having to relocate his family to the East Coast, to play for a team that hadn't won more than four games in any of the previous three seasons. But teaming with the great Buck Shaw, who had just been hired as Eagles' coach and arranged for the trade, he led the long-sorry Eagles to a 7-5 record in his second year there, and in 1960, took them to the NFL title game, where they defeated the Packers.
For his efforts, he was named the Sporting News-Marlboro Pro Player of the Year.
Following the win, Shaw retired, and Van Brocklin expected to be named his successor. When the Eagles instead hired Nick Skorich, Van Brocklin bitterly denounced Eagles' management, claiming that he'd been enticed into moving East with the promise that he would succeed Shaw. Instead, he was hired to build the Minnesota Vikings.
The Vikings won only three games his first year, but played exciting football, mainly because of the way he used his scrambling quarterback, Francis Tarkenton, the guy on the left in the photo. (The great irony of that, of course, was that Van Brocklin defined the term "immobile passer." In his 12-year pro career, he "rushed" 102 times, for a grand total of 40 yards. In Tarkenton's first season with the Vikings, he rushed 56 times for 308 yards.)
He got the Vikings as far as a second-place conference finish by 1964, but in 1966, after the Vikings failed to improve and he and Tarkenton were unable to get along, he was fired.
After a year out of coaching, he was hired by the Atlanta Falcons to replace Norb Hecker, three games into the 1968 season. His 1972 and 1973 teams both finished second in the conference, but in 1974, after starting out with high hopes, the Falcons went into a tailspin. With the team stuck at 2-6, he was let go with six games left in the season. He retired to his pecan farm in Georgia and never coached again.
All told, he was named to nine pro bowls and played in eight of them. He played in five NFL championship games, and in the last game he ever played, he led his team to the NFL championship.
He was noted for his temper and his sarcasm, and his first coach, Hamp Pool. predicted that he would break every NFL passing record, "if somebody doesn't break his neck first."
He was known to fire a football at any teammate who wasn't paying attention. Once, at practice, when he spotted a Los Angeles reporter who'd written something that angered him, he called a sweep to be run in the guy's direction.
As a coach, he didn't suffer fools gladly, and made his share of enemies among the news media, many of whom are fools.
He was one of the founders of the NFL Players Association. When his efforts to organize players were ridiculed by the Redskins' militantly anti-union (and notoriously stingy) owner George Preston Marshall, Van Brocklin said, "The best thing that could happen to Marshall's players and the National Football League would be for him to step in front of a moving cab."
Lest you get the idea that Norm Van Brocklin was a total jerk, I came across an interesting story in "Ain't the Beer Cold," famed Orioles' and Colts' (Baltimore- the real Colts) broadcaster Chuck Thompson's autobiography. It was 1962, and Chuck was in Minneapolis, disconsolate. He'd just learned that his longtime buddy and onetime broadcast partner, Bailey Goss, had been killed in an automobile accident the night before. (Goss, an employee of the company I once worked for, the National Brewing Company, was much-loved by Baltimore sports fans, and had been driving home late at night from a Colts' function of some sort or other. His was the voice-over in all National commercials, and he represented the company at all kinds of community affairs. In the early days of television, he did all National Beer Commercials live. There was a lot of whispering about the circumstances of his death, and I can say this: brewery employees were expected to enjoy the company's product when out in public, and driving after imbibing was not the capital offense in those days that it is now.)
"I found it hard to concentrate when I broadcast the game on the night after learning of Bailey's death. But it was better than sitting in a hotel room wondering why such tragedies happen. "I got through the game, but then the brewery asked me to do what I consider the most difficult task I had ever been assigned in broadcasting. They asked me to fly to California immediately and put my voice on the soundtracks that had featured Bailey, so that the commercials could continue until the brewery and the advertising agency could develop a better plan.
"I boarded the plane for California with a heavy heart and Vikings football coach Norm Van Brocklin, who was aboard, apparently felt the depth of my misery. He sat down next to me in the first-class section and started to sketch plays and talk football.
"He just forced me to listen. He didn't want me to sit and brood, to feel sorry for myself, as had been the case during the day and through the game. I'll never forget that flight, what Van tried to do for me. He may have been a very volatile man, but in his heart he was considerate and caring as he tried to help me get over something that took me a long time to shake. As we parted in Los Angeles, the "Dutchman" said something I'll never forget: "You're a pro - do your job."
Norm Van Brocklin was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1971, while he was still actively coaching.
