Long shot catches on

So here was the lineup for “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Nov. 25, 1962:

Tony Bennett, with “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” still on the Billboard 100. Rosemary Clooney. Anthony Quinn, fresh from “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” Jackie Mason, of course – wasn’t he on every week? The Hugh Lambert Dancers.

And Gail Cogdill.

If you only knew what it took for a Spokane boy to get to the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Start with handing the Green Bay Packers their only defeat of the 1962 National Football League season in the annual Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit. Cogdill, three years removed from Washington State University, caught touchdown passes of 33 and 27 yards from Milt Plum just 21 seconds apart and the Lions’ front four sacked Bart Starr 11 times in a 26-14 wipeout that was nowhere near that close.

But the real odyssey came afterward.

“After every Thanksgiving game, 12 or 13 of us would pile in cars and drive up over the Straits (of Mackinac) to the Upper Peninsula,” Cogdill recalled. “We’d go hunting at a little place near Tahquamenon Falls. We’re up there on Saturday night and somebody comes driving in from the store in town – we’re about eight miles into the woods – and said there was a phone call. So I go back to town and it’s Ed Sullivan saying he wants me on the show.

“So I drive back to the cabin, get my stuff, drive all the way back to Detroit six hours in a snowstorm, caught the plane Sunday morning and met Milt Plum at the theater.”

Where Sullivan had them stand up to take a bow. They got to meet Anthony Quinn, too.

It didn’t get much bigger in 1962.

In 2008, well, it’s nice to know people still remember. Two weeks ago, the Lions flew Cogdill from Spokane to Detroit for ceremonies honoring the club’s all-time team on the franchise’s 75th anniversary.

Thirty-six players were chosen. Wayne Walker, the Idaho Vandal great, was on the list. So was Jason Hanson, the Mead and WSU kicker in his 17th NFL season. Barry Sanders, Alex Karras, Night Train Lane – and Gail Cogdill.

“It was awesome,” he said. “They gave us jerseys with our names on the back and they must have taken a thousand pictures. It’s hard to explain the feelings that you have going through something like that. My life with football wasn’t anything I planned. The game was good to me and I had a lot of people believe in me – and I got a little lucky.”

That luck seems to be holding, too.

Now 71, Cogdill lives in Spokane Valley with his wife, Dian, and two teenage children. Six years ago, he survived a six-way bypass for a heart problem “I didn’t even know I had.” He makes the rounds of card shows and charity golf tournaments, including one he co-hosts in Portland. And over the years he’s been involved in almost every kind of business venture you can name – from selling wood chippers to financial planning to trucking to promotional marketing.

His latest: an Idaho gold mine in the Orogrande area near Elk City with longtime friend and former NBA player Darrall Imhoff. On a 40-acre plot, the mine was a producer but shut down during World War II.

“We’ve been working on this for years and years,” Cogdill said, “but the price of gold didn’t make it workable until recently. The geological testing that’s been done shows they missed the vein completely and they were still pulling it out of there.”

Cogdill’s hope is to funnel some of the profits toward health care for NFL veterans whose needs continue to slip through the cracks in the contract between the NFL and its players’ association. Though he isn’t a militant principal in the veterans’ ongoing battles with the union, he was cheered by the $28.1 million verdict a jury awarded older players in a lawsuit filed by former Packers defensive back Herb Adderly over the improper marketing of their images in video games.

“I just don’t get how (the union) can say it doesn’t represent you guys,” Cogdill said. “There’s 2,000 of us out here who don’t have care. I spent 11 years in the NFL and my retirement is $200 a month.”

That career could have been seen as a long shot. Cogdill didn’t play football until his junior year at Lewis and Clark High School, but blossomed in Jim Sutherland’s passing game at WSU and was a sixth-round draft pick of the Lions – and promptly became the NFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1960. He would catch 356 passes in the NFL for 5,696 yards and 34 touchdowns, but if anything was underutilized even before injuries cut into his playing time. Even a rival like Adderly noticed. Cogdill sent him an attaboy e-mail after the verdict a few weeks ago and received a gracious response from the ex-Packer noting that Cogdill, Pat Studstill and Terry Barr were as skilled a receiving corps as any Adderly had to cover.

“The only thing you didn’t have was a quarterback,” Adderly said.

True enough. While Starr led the Packers to title after title, the Lions played dial-a-passer with Plum, Jim Ninowski, Earl Morrall and Karl Sweetan – none household names.

But the statistics fade and the stories remain. Cogdill has dozens – one favorite involving not a catch, but a block.

Well, sort of a block.

“We’re playing Baltimore my rookie year and at halftime our coach, George Wilson says to me, ‘Gail, there’s other things besides catching the ball – can you block?’ ” Cogdill recalled. “I don’t know anything about these guys. Ninowski calls a strong right and I have to come in tight, and if the linebacker goes inside then Ollie Spencer, the right tackle, picks him up – and all of a sudden the guy in front of me is Big Daddy Lipscomb.”

Six-foot-six, 285 pounds – a Goliath in those days, with a mean streak occasionally leavened with a playful showmanship.

“He was going to blow right over me, so I tackled him,” Cogdill said. “And he dragged me into the backfield and I just fell down over the pile. Honest to God, he picked me up with one hand and held me up by the shoulder pad, right underneath my chest. Then he stuck his finger in my face and said, ‘Little white man, you think twice before you ever do that again.’ And all my teammates are doubled over laughing.”

It would have been a good story for the Sullivan show. Maybe Ed should have bumped Jackie Mason.