Chuck Bednarik

Chuck Bednarik embodied the toughness and durability of football's golden era, earning lasting recognition as the NFL's last great "Sixty-Minute Man" while establishing himself among the hardest-hitting tacklers in league history. Born on May 1, 1925, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Slovak immigrant parents, Bednarik attended Liberty High School before entering the U.S. Army Air Forces service in World War II. As a B-24 waist gunner with the Eighth Air Force, he flew 30 combat missions over Nazi Germany, earning the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and four Battle Stars. Following the war, he entered the University of Pennsylvania at age 20, becoming a 60-minute man excelling at center and linebacker. He earned two-time Consensus All-American honors (1947, 1948), won the 1948 Maxwell Award, finished third in the Heisman voting, and was later voted the "greatest center of all-time" in 1969.

Selected first overall in the 1949 NFL draft by the Philadelphia Eagles, the 6-foot-3, 233-pound Bednarik played his entire 14-year career (1949-1962) at both center and linebacker, winning NFL Championships in 1949 and 1960. He earned ten first-team All-Pro selections (1950-1957, 1960, 1961) and eight Pro Bowl appearances while playing 169 of 172 games, missing only three contests in fourteen seasons.

Bednarik's playing strengths defined iron-man football: a strong blocker and quick off the ball as a center; an instinctive linebac…