Tommy Nobis Was not an [Bad Word]!

I refuse to take responsibility for the flaws of Texas Longhorns Football History A to Z (2007). For one thing, the Boston-based publisher assigned me a female editor who was clueless about sports writing conventions. And while I was happy to have a cover with photos of Dana X. Bible, Earl Campbell, Mack Brown, Vince Young and Bevo, the horns of that brawny bovine critter were cut off. My protestations availed nothing.

The foreword was written by former UT kicker Jeff Ward. Although he had a nice career in orange and white, Ward was, after all, just a kicker. I was hoping for a much bigger name—Thomas Henry Nobis Jr., to be specific. It’s been a long time, so I do not remember how I made contact with this man who is certainly the most famous defensive player in UT history. I must have written to him in care of the Atlanta Falcons, where he worked in the front office. He responded tentatively, and a phone conversation took place. Nobis made clear his distrust of the media, and he perceived me as part of that broadly defined group. He said, “I don’t really know you or anything about this book you’re writing. You might be an [bad word]. I’m not saying you’re an [same bad word], so please don’t get me wrong.” I refused to beg, and in the end Nobis politely declined. Thus, I turned to Ward.

Nobis, from a blue-collar family in San Antonio, signed with Texas in 1962 and so played freshman football that season. Darrell Royal and his staff had no doubt whatsoever that this 6′ 2″, 235-pound specimen would make major contributions to the varsity program over the next three years. The Longhorns won the 1963 national championship, you know, with Nobis starring as a middle linebacker and guard on the offensive line. He went two ways even in 1965, after the rules of college football were changed to allow full platooning. DKR realized that the studly Nobis was needed on both sides of the ball. Twice a consensus all-American at linebacker, Nobis threw fear into opposing players. He ranged from sideline to sideline, committing all sorts of football mayhem and averaging 20 solo tackles per game. Nobis was a guy who never dogged it and had mastered the defensive fundamentals. Royal adored him, but he was not alone. Army coach Paul Dietzel (whose team faced Texas in 1964) said, “Tommy Nobis is not the greatest linebacker I’ve ever seen. He is the greatest linebacker who ever lived.”

As a senior, he appeared on the covers of Time, Life and Sports Illustrated, and won the Outland and Maxwell awards. Nobis came in seventh in Heisman Trophy voting, generally the exclusive domain of quarterbacks and running backs. In 1969, SI compiled an all-century team (the first college football game having been played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869), and Nobis was on it—as an offensive lineman!

Taken in the first round of the AFL (Houston Oilers) and NFL (Falcons) drafts in 1966, he opted for the latter. He played 11 seasons—all on defense—and had an immediate impact. Nobis was named defensive rookie of the year, was first-team all-pro once, made five Pro Bowls and allowed the expansion Falcons to have a decent team. Despite his hundreds of tackles, 12 interceptions and 9 fumble recoveries, they lost twice as much as they won. He has never been given serious consideration for the Pro Football Hall of Fame (he was inducted into the College HOF in 1981), which seems unfair. Nobody loves Dick Butkus more than me, but why is he in and not Nobis? His career was even shorter, and the well-established Bears were crummy most of those years. (Butkus could hit, that’s a fact, but so could Nobis. I saw a film clip in which an opposing running back was going around the right corner, following a blocker. Nobis blew up the blocker so bad he was thrown backward, colliding with his ball-toting teammate. They went down together, underneath the Falcons’ No. 60.) Butkus got more media attention in Chicago than Nobis did in Atlanta. I am not going to say who was better or worse because both were superb, but Nobis deserves to have a bust in Canton as well.

Nobis, whose second-to-last game was a 59-0 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, retired due to knee and other orthopedic injuries. He stayed with the Falcons in scouting, player development and marketing, eventually rising to vice president. No less significant were his efforts as head of a charitable organization that provided jobs for people with disabilities. Nobis was truly loved and respected within the Falcons franchise and in Atlanta as a whole.

He died at the age of 74 on December 13, 2017, and the retrospectives on his life in Texas and Georgia were many. Nobis, who suffered at least three concussions during his pro football career, had the most severe form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy—the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head. His wife Lynn had suspected this for many years because Nobis was known to suffer wild and sometimes violent mood swings. He was angry and addled, and people watched him warily. His daughter, Devon Nobis Jackoniski, gave interviews that were both poignant and painful. She recalled him being a wonderful family man and yet frightening his kids and many people whom he encountered. For example: Waiting in line at a bank, he thought the teller was going too slow, got upset and confronted her with a demand for instant service. Another: He caused such a problem at one Atlanta restaurant that he was asked not to come back. Yet another: He made an ugly scene at Jackoniski’s wedding. Nobis, who had embraced football with a rare passion, living it year round since his days as a San Antonio high schooler, could not grasp the significance of the Falcons reaching Super Bowl 51 in early 2017.

What happened to Nobis was, in some people’s view, another indictment of football—an admittedly brutal sport. But his daughter resisted that temptation. “Football was my father’s life, the air he breathed and therefore the air we breathed,” she said. “It brought discipline and recklessness, self-worth and depression, strength and weakness, determination and fear, teamwork and destruction of relationships, competition and dissension, friendships and loneliness, strategy and brutal honesty, entertainment and subsistence. In the end, it brought humility in every sense of the word.”