Lee Roy Selmon

It is only appropriate that my blog, related to Eufaula, OK in a very loose way, should note the passing of Eufaula's most famous son, Lee Roy Selmon.

Universally recognized as an extraordinary human being as well as a truly legendary football player, Lee Roy Selmon passed away yesterday, Sept. 4, 2011, as a result of a massive stroke he experienced on the preceding Friday.

Few football players have been as honored in life as Lee Roy Selmon, and few are as held in high regard in the memories of his teammates, coaches, opponents, and fans as he. To have helped the Sooners win back-to-back national championships, started off as the first-round draft pick of the then-new 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which then promptly went 0-14 that season, but then worked with his teammates to turn things around so that just three years later they played in the NFC championship game, to have his career cut short by a back injury, but then to continue to live with the same humility and yet such drive as he showed during his playing career shows the true nature of who Lee Roy Selmon was. The Lombardi Trophy. the Outland Trophy. National Football Foundation Scholar/Athlete. Two time All-American. Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. NFL Defensive Player of the Year. 6-time Pro Bowler. Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

What people have had to say about him has been amazing. "It has been a life's pleasure to know Lee Roy Selmon for 33 years," said Tom Edrington, of the Tampa Tribune. Barry Switzer called Lee Roy "the best player I ever coached."

Gary Shelton, in the St. Petersburg Times, perhaps said it best:

"The measure of a man is not in the games he plays. The measure of a man is not in the money he makes. It is not whether he has an expressway named after him, or a restaurant, or if his name is in the Bucs' Ring of Honor. It is not a bust in the Hall of Fame, or a statue that may be built on his college campus, or in the memories of a thousand black and white photographs from his playing days.

"In the case of Selmon, the measure of him and his meaning should be measured by the shadow he has cast. By the lives touched. By the grace shown . . .

"In sports, in life, there are a lot of a good, decent people. There are caring athletes, and charitable athletes, and socially aware athletes. But there has never been an athlete whose basic decency has come easier to him.

"Selmon [w]as never been a man who had to work at being a good guy. There are a great many athletes who work at being a good guy, who want the world to know they are being a good guy, who border on playing a role of a good guy. Not Lee Roy. Lee Roy [was] just being Lee Roy."

And so it is dismaying to find that the city of Eufaula, which for many years had a billboard on US 69, on the north end of town, near the hill where the hospital is located, billing Eufaula as "The Home of The Selmon Brothers", no longer lays claim to Lee Roy and his brothers, at least in a public forum. In a state that has such a huge emphasis on athletics and in football in particular, and in such a small town (only 3,500 or so) that has produced 4 spectacular players (Lee Roy Selmon, his brothers Lucious and Dewey, and J.C. Watts), to not recognize them is unconscionable. I would gladly contribute to an impressive bronze statue of the four of them, in their Eufaula Ironheads uniforms (yeah, they're the Ironheads; I never heard why that particular name was selected for the high school's teams), perhaps there off of Highway 9 on the south end of town, near the high school. And there's plenty of empty storefront spaces there in town for a small museum, too.

It was in Eufaula, or more precisely just outside of town, where Lee Roy and his brothers grew up, where they learned the values and developed the character, not to mention the strengths and skills, that would so set them apart from the others who took the field with them, and later on in life. (Lee Roy was also a member of the National Honor Society while in high school there.) Eufaula should claim at least a little bit of pride of having been where these men grew up, who went on to such greatness and universal acclaim. And it is altogether fitting and proper that the town should honor their memory: such things should not be the exclusive purview of the Sooners and the "Gaylord Family/Oklahoma Memorial Stadium", it should be, first and foremost, in their own hometown.