Gehrig's Football Career

On Sunday's during the off-season, Rattler Radio is running excerpts from Luckiest Man, Jonathan Eig's biography of Lou Gehrig. This week, how Gehrig began his collegiate athletic career at Columbia...as a football player.

Gehrig [a halfback] also played defensive tackle and punted. In his first game, a 48-3 victory over Ursinus College, he scored two touchdowns. The school's Alumni News noted: "Gehrig is the beef expert and has mastered the science of going where he is sent, for at least five yards. His plunges seem to carry force, for they invariably sent the defenders back when they tackled him." He may have been the school's finest athlete, but he somehow managed to make it seem utterly unglamorous. Yearbooks and newspapers routinely described him as "consistent".