Nevers, "Ernie" (Ernest A.)
Football
b. June 11, 1903, Willow Grove, MN
d. May 3, 1976
The 6-foot-1, 205-pound Nevers played fullback at Stanford in "Pop" Warner's double wing formation, in which the fullback was the triple threat tailback who handled the ball on virtually every play. Warner, who had coached the great Jim Thorpe, said that Nevers was the better football player because he had all of Thorpe's skills and he tried harder.
A starter as a sophomore, Nevers was named to Walter Camp's third All-American team in 1923. However, he missed the first six games the following season with a broken ankle and, when he finally got back into the lineup, he broke the other ankle.
Stanford faced Notre Dame and the Four Horsemen in the 1925 Rose Bowl. With his ankles wrapped in bandages and deadened by novocaine, Nevers played all sixty minutes. He gained 114 yards rushing and, according to one sportswriter, made three-quarters of Stanford's tackles, but Notre Dame won, 27-10.
That performance brought him national attention and he was an All-American in his senior season, when Stanford lost just one game. Like "Red" Grange, Nevers began playing professional football shortly after the college season ended. In January of 1926, he was with the Jacksonville All-Stars when they played Grange and the touring Chicago Bears. The Bears won, 19-6, but Nevers out-played Grange, rushing for 46 yards, completing 8 of 16 passes, punting for a 53.3 yard average, and intercepting two passes. He scored Jacksonville's only touchdown.
In the fall, he joined the Duluth Eskimos of the NFL for $15,000, the highest salary in league history at that time. The Eskimos played 29 games, 28 of them on the road, and Nevers missed just 27 minutes. The team won 19, lost 7, and tied 3.
The Eskimos weren't as successful in 1927 and the franchise folded. Nevers didn't play in 1928, then spent the next three years with the Chicago Cardinals. On November 28, 1929, he scored all of his team's points in a 40-6 victory over the Bears, still the league record for a single game. A week later, he scored all of the points in a 19-0 win over Dayton.
Nevers retired after the 1931 season, but he made a final appearance in an all-star game for charity in January of 1932. Before leaving the game with a broken wrist, Nevers again scored all of his team's points in a 26-14 win.