Out of the Orange Past

Off-the-field heroics: A busy football weekend ended with a thud last Saturday when Syracuse University crashed and burned against Penn State. The good news came from the festivities surrounding the legendary Ernie Davis, memorialized in bronze (right) in a ceremony attended by Dennis Quaid and Nancy Cantor, and the premiere of The Express, where SU great Jim Brown and his wife Monique walked the orange carpet. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTOS

A statue of Davis was unveiled at 1 p.m. on game day in a ceremony attended by everyone from actor Dennis Quaid—who played Davis’ SU coach Ben Schwartzwalder in the movie—to Floyd Little, a 1967 SU grad whom Davis helped recruit to succeed him at running back, as well as members from the 1959 team that, along with Davis, helped earn SU its only college football National Championship. 

The life-size bronze statue of Davis, clad in his No. 44 Syracuse football gear, is forever erect next to Hendricks Chapel at the SU Quad, his back to the Carrier Dome. The main reason it was stationed there was so that, as the football team takes its customary trek through the Quad on game days, they carry a little of his legacy and passion onto the Dome field with them. Unfortunately, Davis’ greatness did not rub off on the team as they embarked on their maiden voyage past the statue before the Penn State game.

“Obviously, our football program isn’t doing very well,” said Art Monk, a 1979 SU graduate who went on to a Hall of Fame career as a wide receiver for the Washington Redskins in the National Football League. “In them seeing this {statue}, it will give them some inspiration that if a guy like Ernie Davis can be as successful as he was under the circumstances that he had to play in, and now here they are, without any of those hardships, they can be just as successful. Hopefully it will motivate and encourage them to go out there and play harder and just try to make this program what it used to be. So hopefully it’ll change.”

During halftime of the Penn State game, Little, Quaid, Rob Brown (the actor who portrayed Davis in The Express), SU Chancellor Nancy Cantor and SU athletic director Daryl Gross (the latter receiving some loud booing) made their way to midfield for a commemoration of Davis. The following night, during halftime of NBC’s Sunday night NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns—the team that grabbed Davis during the 1962 NFL draft—Quaid and Rob Brown turned up for another nationally televised ceremony. They were joined by another important figure from Davis’ life: Jim Brown, who was noticeably absent at the Dome, although he was at the Landmark Theatre for The Express premiere.

Brown, a running back at SU before Davis, helped recruit Davis after recognizing his paramount talent and ethereal personality. The two developed a kindred friendship that lasted until Davis’ 1963 death from leukemia at age 23. And 45 years later, Brown still exudes the passion that drove both him and Davis on and off the field—despite the recent injuries to his leg and back in a car accident, in which he was forced to amble along with a cane while in the Salt City.  

“You don’t need to have talent to have energy and play hard,” said Brown. “I think that they have to understand that there is another level, so these kids need to go out there against Penn State and show us that they can come with some energy, man, come with some hitting and hit a little harder, run a little faster, ya know? Here we are trying to make sure that Ernie is given the right respect, so here I am walking with my cane and my leg is hurting and my wife is here helping me, but I’m here with my energy.”

The Browns fell to the Steelers, 10-6, but they sure came with energy, man. Davis’ muse was the football field, and it’s a shame that despite all that Syracuse did this weekend to honor him, his striving for achievement was best exemplified in a city where he never got the chance to play one snap because of his illness: Cleveland. If the fans at the Dome had sensed some “energy” from the SU football team, they would have given them a standing ovation even in defeat, as they did in Cleveland. Instead, Syracuse fans were shown wearing paper bags over their heads during the opening highlight montage of ESPN’s SportsCenter on Sunday morning, right before the talking heads mentioned that Davis’ statue was unveiled earlier in the day.

—Tom Kahley