TRIPPI, Charles Louis ("Charley")

(b. 14 December 1922 in Pittston, Pennsylvania), football halfback who earned fame at the University of Georgia and with the Chicago Cardinals, and who was named to both the College and Pro Football halls of fame.

Trippi was the son of Joseph Trippi, a coal miner, and Joanna Attardo Trippi, a homemaker. He grew up with his five brothers and sisters in the hard coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania, near Scranton; the area was famous for its rough-and-tumble style of football and was a fertile recruiting ground for college scouts. However, Trippi was small as a youngster and nothing about his early childhood foretold his future success on the gridiron.

Trippi's best childhood sport was baseball, and he continued to excel in the sport in high school and college. By the time he was a high-school junior he had grown to 155 pounds, and he decided to go out for football. Trippi was designated as a center, which he didn't mind, saying, "I really liked to back up the line on defense." Part of the team's early practice routine was to punt the ball back and forth. Trippi was an excellent kicker and caught the eye of the Pittston High School coach Paul Shebby, who moved him into the backfield. Trippi, who showed some speed and good passing ability, led the lackluster team to victory in his new position and earned a permanent spot in the backfield. The next season Pittston was undefeated, with Trippi as the team's unquestioned leader.

Trippi wanted to go to college to continue his education and playing career, but the schools that regularly recruited in northeastern Pennsylvania all rejected him as too small for the college gridiron. Coach Shebby secured a scholarship for Trippi to LaSalle Military Academy, a preparatory school in upstate New York that Trippi entered in 1941. The training and diet at LaSalle added ten solid pounds to Trippi's six-foot frame—he weighed 175 pounds following his postgraduate year, 1942. This time the University of Georgia in Athens took a chance and awarded Trippi an athletic grant-in-aid.

The Georgia Bulldogs coach Wally Butts was so impressed by Trippi's running and all-around play that he shifted the All-America tailback Frank Sinkwich to fullback so that Trippi and Sinkwich could be on the field at the same time. In 1942 the duo led the Bulldogs to a 10–1 regular season record. On 1 January 1943 Trippi had the kind of day that defined his stellar career. In the Rose Bowl versus the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he personally gained more yardage than UCLA did as a team. Georgia won, 9–0. By April 1943 Trippi was in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he eventually earned the rank of sergeant. While in the service he played football for the Gremlins of the Third Air Force, stationed in Greensboro, North Carolina, and was rated as one of the service's best players.

After the end of World War II, Trippi returned to the University of Georgia, where in 1947 he would earn a B.S. degree. He continued to help the Bulldogs to great seasons and bowl victories after the regular seasons of 1945 and 1946. After earning All-America honors in 1945, Trippi made the All-America team a second time in 1946, this time unanimously; won the prestigious Maxwell Award; and was a runner-up in the Heisman Trophy balloting. After Georgia's Sugar Bowl victory (20–10 over North Carolina), Trippi was forced to choose between playing professional baseball or football. Baseball's New York Yankees offered him a four-year, $100,000 contract—big money at the time. But Trippi chose football.

In 1945, while he was still in the army, Trippi was taken by the Chicago (later Arizona) Cardinals as their number-one draft choice. The National Football League (NFL) and the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) were the two viable professional football leagues at the time. They entered a bidding war for Trippi's considerable talents. The AAFC team seeking Trippi's services was the New York Yankees, owned by Dan Topping of the baseball Yankees. Topping envisioned Trippi as a baseball and football Yankee, but because of a prior friendship with the Cardinals team owner Charlie Bidwill, Trippi signed with the NFL team. He was also permitted to play professional baseball, and before reporting to the Cardinals football camp he batted .334 for the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association.

As an NFL rookie in 1947, Trippi immediately became part of the "Dream Backfield" made up of the Cardinals quarterback Paul Christman, halfback Elmer Angsman, and fullback Pat Harder. With the halfback Trippi as their main man, the Cardinals backfield acted as a highly effective offensive unit. The famed Native American athlete Jim Thorpe once commented, "Charley Trippi is the greatest football player I ever saw."

The Cardinals won the NFL championship in Trippi's rookie season. On one of the first plays in the title game, Trippi burst for a forty-four-yard score. Halfway through the third quarter, Trippi, in a razzle-dazzle fashion, returned a punt for a seventy-five-yard touchdown. The Cardinals had one of their rare, and last, championships when the day was done, with a 28–21 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.

The next season saw a rematch for the NFL title: the Cardinals, paced by Trippi, played the Eagles, led by Steve Van Buren. This time the game was played in a Philadelphia blizzard. Neither team could do much offensively, but the Eagles capitalized on a Cardinals fumble and scored after a short drive to win, 7–0. The game marked the end of the team's championship reign, although Trippi continued his brilliant career through 1954.

Trippi's main asset was his ability to run with the football, but he also was a versatile and unselfish player. When the Cardinals needed a quarterback after Christman's retirement, Trippi filled the bill, leading the team in passing in 1951. When the defensive backfield was depleted in 1953 and 1954, Trippi switched to the defensive unit, and played at such a high level that he was chosen for the annual NFL All-Star game, the Pro Bowl.

Throughout his career Trippi led more by actions than words. He never said much on the field, but he was a fierce competitor. The crosstown rivalry with the more successful Chicago Bears produced several tense moments during the season and in the annual preseason games. Ed Sprinkle, a noted roughneck defensive end for the Bears, earned his reputation by giving a little extra on each tackle—an elbow to the ribs or a face pushed in the dirt. During the last moments of one preseason game, Trippi put himself back in the game long after most established veterans were resting on the bench. He had one thought in mind—to get Sprinkle. Trippi calmly walked up to the rugged Bears player and uncorked a roundhouse right that caught Sprinkle flush on the chin. Knowing he would be ejected from the game, Trippi immediately walked off the field and said to his astonished teammates, "That should about even the score."

During his playing career Trippi frequently returned to Georgia to assist his old coach Butts with spring practice. Once, before the sessions started, Butts said, "Gentlemen, I want to introduce you boys to the greatest all-around football player I ever saw." An embarrassed Trippi simply looked at the ground, demonstrating his trademark modesty.

At the height of his playing career, Trippi wrote a how-to book on backfield technique aimed at youngsters, Backfield Play (1948). After retiring from the NFL, Trippi established a successful beverage distributorship and realestate businesses in Athens, the home of his alma mater and the scene of his many collegiate football triumphs. Trippi had married his first wife in Athens in 1944. They eventually divorced, and he then married Peggy M. McNiven in 1977. Trippi and his second wife settled in Athens, where residents still revered Trippi for his performances "between the hedges" (a reference to the thick shrubbery surrounding the playing field at the Bulldogs' Sanford Stadium).

Trippi was one of football's most versatile and electrifying performers, playing in more All-Star games than any other college player. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1959. Nine years later, when Trippi was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he chose his high school coach Paul Shebby to be his presenter. The Cardinals franchise has had relatively few points of light—only two NFL championships, and one of them (1925) was controversial. But the point that still shines brightest, in the estimation of many, is Trippi.

Trippi's life and career are discussed in George Sullivan, Pro Football's All-Time Greats (1968); Murray Olderman, The Running Backs (1969); and Joe Ziemba, When Football Was Football (1999).

Jim Campbell