Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1999, he was born and raised in Cleveland, starred for the Cleveland Heights High football team, then went on to play for the University of Michigan’s 1964 Big Ten and 1965 Rose Bowl champions and to earn second team All-American recognition in 1965. A first round draft pick of the Los Angeles Rams in 1966, he played 13 seasons for the team at guard from 1966 to 1978, starting 176 of the 184 consecutive games he played, never missing a contest in his pro career. He was selected for 11 Pro Bowl games, a mark exceeded by only six players in NFL history, and to nine All-NFL first or second teams. Helped lead the Rams to eight division championships, including an NFL record six consecutive titles. Was team captain in his last four seasons. The son of Cleveland Indians second baseman and Case Tech football great Ray Mack, an early inductee into the GCSHofF, he became a vice president and regional executive for Bechtel Corp., the largest engineering and construction company in the United States, making his home in Las Vegas, NV.
An Alumni Wall of Fame has been established within the halls of the beautifully renovated John Hay High School located at the edge of Cleveland’s University Circle. A check of the internet for a list of those honored reveals the surprising fact there is no one listed. Perhaps the Wall is just too new a feature. Or perhaps the keepers of the Wall do not recognize the alum who the school has listed in its records as Timothy Dwayne Hatchett when he was starring for the school’s football team in 1980 and 1981 before moving on to the University of Tennessee had blossomed into national stardom as Timothy Dwayne Hatchett McGee. That would be the Tim McGee who left Tennessee in 1985 as UT’s all-time leader in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns with a first team slot on the College Football All-American Team, the same Tim McGee who was selected in the first round of the 1986 NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals and became a major contributor there for eight seasons, leading the league in kickoff returns as a rookie, helping them to a Super Bowl championship in 1988 and enjoying his best personal season in 1989 with 65 receptions for 1,211 yards and eight touchdowns before joining the Washington Redskins for one season in 1993, then returning to Cincinnati for a final season before retiring. The strong candidate for the John Hay Alumni Wall of Fame now lives in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason and is the head basketball coach at Ursuline Academy.
It has been almost 50 years now since he began making friends and influencing people on behalf of Cleveland sports organizations. Ask anyone in position to know and they’ll tell you nobody’s done it better. The Garfield Heights High grad forsook promising careers as a bartender and with The Illuminating Company to take jobs as a publicist for the Cleveland Division of Recreation’s amateur sports programs and semi-pro Cleveland Bulldogs football team. He moved into the pro world in 1962 as the public relations and promotions director for the Cleveland Barons. He moved to the Indians in 1967, to the Stadium Corporation in 1975, and to the Browns in 1981 remaining with them until they moved to Baltimore in 1996. He elected to remain in Cleveland and went to work for the NFL and the Cleveland Browns Trust, where he became an integral cog in the efforts to bring a Browns team back to his beloved city. That done he rejoined the Browns and eventually settled into the role of Director of Alumni Relations, a job vital to reinforcing the bond between ex-players and the new regime. During much of his career he has been involved in an untold number of fund raising functions which have netted sums in seven-figure amounts for charities. His induction into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame brings to four the Hall of Fame plaques on his wall, not to mention the Garfield Heights High School Distinguished Alumni Award. The Northern Ohio Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame’s Humanitarian Award is named for him as is the Cleveland Chapter of the Professional Football Writers’ Association “Good Guy” Award and in 2002 the Dino Lucarelli Media Center was unveiled in the new Cleveland Browns Stadium.
They didn’t come much better in Ohio’s high school football trenches in the Fall of 1972. In fact, no one in the state was better that season in the eyes of the Buckeye State’s sportswriters, who voted the Cleveland Cathedral Latin High prep star Ohio’s High School Lineman of the Year to go along with his national All-American honors. Those honors brought the nation’s premier college coaches scurrying to Cleveland, with Southern California eventually carrying off the prize to Los Angeles. By the third game of his freshman season with the Trojans, Jeter was a starter, an almost unprecedented achievement at USC. In 1975 he was selected to some All-American teams and in 1976 he repeated this time as a consensus first team defensive tackle. In the subsequent NFL draft in 1977, the New Giants tabbed him with the fifth pick of the first round. He went on to play six seasons with the Giants, before returning to California to play six more years with the Los Angeles Rams recording 11 sacks in 1985 and a career high 11½ sacks in 1988, before finishing his career with the New England Patriots in 1989. He subsequently returned to Greater Cleveland where he has made his home in North Royalton and has frequently been heard as a football analyst on Cleveland radio.
He was a general manager’s dream come true—a first round draft pick who proved to be worthy of the choice. A big, strong running back who plowed through Big Ten defenses with relative ease at Purdue, the Browns tabbed him with their opening pick in the 1976 draft and roundly enjoyed the presence of his company for nine solid season thereafter. The power he displayed in the college ranks continued to evidence itself in the pro game. Four times in five seasons beginning in 1978, he bulled his way to more than 1000 rushing yards, the string only interrupted in 1982, when injuries limited him to nine games. He was a Pro Bowler in 1979 and 1980, an all-AFC selection in 1979 and was picked as the Browns’ Offensive Player of the Year in 1980 and 1981 His 6,450 yards rushing were the third most ever compiled by a Brown, exceeded only by the numbers of Hall-of-Famers Jim Brown and Leroy Kelly. Supplemented by the totals he built in his final two seasons, spilt between Buffalo and Kansas City in 1985 and 1986, his career totals rank him 26th in total rushes, 32nd in rushing and tied for 39th in rushing touchdowns on the NFL’s all-time leaders list. Electing to remain in Cleveland after his playing days, he now lives in Strongsville and is the owner of two auto dealerships, Mike Pruitt Honda, located in Akron, and Mike Pruitt’s Superstore in Lima, OH.
He joined the Cleveland Browns as a second round draft choice in 1973 after a sensational career at the University of Oklahoma where he was a two-time consensus All-American back and runner up in the 1972 Heisman Trophy balloting. It was apparent early-on in his Browns career what the cheering had been about. In his second year with Cleveland he topped the NFC in kickoff returns with a 27.5-yard average, and in his third year he began a string of three consecutive 1,000-yard rushing seasons, missing a fourth by only 40 yards when he was sidelined for four games with an injury. After suffering a severe knee injury in 1979, he was moved into a receiver role coming out of the backfield and in 1981 his 65 pass receptions lad all AFC backs. He was named to the 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1977 Pro Bowl teams during his nine-year career with the browns, which ended when he was traded to the Oakland Raiders for an 11th round draft pick in 1982. His final career rushing totals for Cleveland stood at 5,496 yards, still fourth best of all Browns backs. There was one more good season leading kickoff returner in the AFC and third in the NFL, helping the Raiders to the NFL Championship in Super Bowl XVIII. That earned him a final Pro Bowl appearance, which he celebrated with a record 75-yard punt return. After his career came to a close he came back to the Cleveland area where he has become a successful businessman, currently making his home in Shaker Heights.
A remarkably successful and generous businessman, this transplanted native of Brooklyn, NY brought to his adopted city of Cleveland, a stunning array of values—humanity, generosity, patriotism, leadership and genuine devotion—which assured his name in a permanent place of honor in the city’s annuals. But, while his unparalleled support of the healthcare and educational communities built a listing legacy, he will, in all likelihood, be remembered best by the city’s legion of football fans as the man who resurrected their beloved Cleveland Browns by purchasing the dormant franchise in September, 1988 for a then-record sum and working with unswerving determination to rebuild both an organizational infrastructure and a team worthy of the Browns’ proud tradition. The process was not without obstacles, but the team seemed headed toward a resumption of its once-familiar role as a perennial playoff team when Mr. Lerner passed away in October, 2002. Dedicating the season to his memory, the Browns provided their popular leader with the most appropriate farewell gift they could muster by powering their way into the playoffs for the first time since their return to the league. Mr. Lerner is survived by his wife, Norma, two sons and seven grandchildren. His oldest son, Randy, succeeded him as president, keeping the quiet Lerner touch in plane with the city’s favorite football team and assuring its continuing presence in the city of its birth.
A native Clevelander who starred in football, basketball and track at Cleveland West High from 1945 to 1948, he stayed on to give his hometown reason to continue cheering his feats at Case Tech. and continue to cheer it did as he literally fashioned a Hall of Fame career for the Rough Riders from 1948 to 1952. Relatively slight, even in those days, for a halfback at 170 pounds, his speed and elusiveness enabled him to post some impressive numbers on the gridiron—none more so than on Thanksgiving Day in 1950 when he broke away on touchdown runs of 56 and 97 yards to give Case a 20-7 victory over archest of rivals Western Reserve. It was an effort that went a long way toward earning him the 1950 Les Bale Award as the team’s “Most Outstanding Player.” That was followed by the Cleveland Touchdown Club’s 1951 award as the Most Outstanding Local Collegiate Football Player, and a berth on the 1951 All-Big Four Offensive First Team. While honors piled up for his football skills, he quietly fashioned records in track as well, leading the team in points scored in 1950, 1951 and 1952 and setting a school record of 24.0 sec in the 220-yard low hurdles. Theiling, who now makes his home in Willoughby, was elected to the Case Western Reserve Athletic Hall of Fame in 1976.
He walked into his first Cleveland Browns camp in 1975 as a non-drafted free agent from Duke University where he had undergone five position shifts before the Blue Devils anointed him an offensive tackle in his junior year. It didn’t take the Browns nearly that long to decide the one-time North Carolina high school quarterback sensation was a guard, and by the eighth game of his rookie season he had settled in as a starter. That was the beginning of an 11-year run as a key player on some of the strongest offensive lines in Browns history. During those 11 seasons he missed only two games, was named Browns’ Man of the Year in 1981 and was selected to co-captain the 1985 team with future Hall of Famer Ozzie Newsom. He retired after the 1985 season to enter the insurance business, subsequently forming a partnership with Browns teammate (and now fellow Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame member) Doug Dieken to create a highly successful insurance agency in suburban Westlake. He makes his home in Bay Village, where has managed to fit a volunteer high school coaching job into a busy schedule of community and charitable activities.
Playing for the awesome Cleveland Browns teams of 1947-1953 which produced seven players and a head coach now enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame, he was one of the very best. An All-American tackle at Ohio State, he became the first African-American player signed by an All-American Football Conference team when Paul Brown recruited him for his new Browns team in 1946. Despite weighing barely 215 pounds he became an immediate starter both on the offensive and defensive line. But it was his lightning quickness and devastating tackling as a middle guard that elevated him above the pack. And it was those skills which he combined to create his signature play, one which deserved a permanent niche on the positive-side list of sports memories forever emblazoned in the minds of Cleveland’s long-suffering sports fans, opposite “The drive,” “The Fumble,” and “the Shot.” “The Tackle” took place on the afternoon of December 17, 1950 in the final quarter of the NFL American Conference championship game between the Browns and the New York Giants. With Cleveland clinging to a fourth quarter 3-0 lead, the Giants Choo-Choo Roberts broke into the open from the Browns’ 36 and seemed headed for a decisive touchdown when suddenly Willis flashed into the picture. Gaining ground with every step, he caught Roberts from behind at the four, paving the way for an 8-3 victory and a conference title which enabled the Browns to move on to capture the NFL championship in their first season in the league. It may have been the best of many incredible feats that were to earn him selections to three All-AAFC and four All-NFL teams, to play in three NFL Pro Bowls, to help his teams to four AAFC and one NFL title and propel him into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1977.