PA Season Ticket Holder
06-08-2003, 08:17 PM
n his previous life, he played the role of a rugged, eccentric, witty, and extremely talented running back, who'd muster a head of steam and carry a few defenders on his back. Was there a better short-yardage runner in the history of football than John Riggins?
In one of the greatest individual games in NFL history, Riggins ran for 166 yards on 38 carries in the 1983 Super Bowl and was named MVP as Joe Gibbs's Redskins defeated the Dolphins, 27-17. Washington was trailing, 17-13, in the fourth quarter when Riggins, on fourth and 1, took a handoff from Joe Theismann and ran off tackle 43 yards for a touchdown that gave the Redskins the lead for good.
In a lifetime prior to that, he was drafted sixth overall by the New York Jets in 1971, after breaking Gale Sayers's rushing records at Kansas.
Always a character, Riggins made headlines when he showed up at Jets camp with a Mohawk haircut one year, and at a 1985 party in Washington, when he said to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, ''Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're too tight.''
''Mr. January,'' as he was aptly nicknamed, quit the Redskins in 1980 and held out an entire year in a contract dispute, only to come back after Gibbs visited him at his farm in Kansas.
Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992, Riggins has reinvented himself again, finding a new passion in yet another lifetime: acting. After a cameo role in the 1992 play ''Illegal Motion,'' Riggins got the acting bug, though it went into hibernation for many years as he began a career in broadcasting and got remarried.
Last year, after taking acting lessons in New York, he landed the lead role in an off-Broadway play, ''Gillette,'' about an oil town in Gillette, Wyo.
A soap opera casting director saw Riggins in that role and invited him to try out for the part of Mitch Hendon, an egocentric, Rambolike character in the long-running CBS daytime drama ''Guiding Light.'' He got the part.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/159/sports/Riggins_s_latest_career_change_is_a_dramatic_one+.shtml
In one of the greatest individual games in NFL history, Riggins ran for 166 yards on 38 carries in the 1983 Super Bowl and was named MVP as Joe Gibbs's Redskins defeated the Dolphins, 27-17. Washington was trailing, 17-13, in the fourth quarter when Riggins, on fourth and 1, took a handoff from Joe Theismann and ran off tackle 43 yards for a touchdown that gave the Redskins the lead for good.
In a lifetime prior to that, he was drafted sixth overall by the New York Jets in 1971, after breaking Gale Sayers's rushing records at Kansas.
Always a character, Riggins made headlines when he showed up at Jets camp with a Mohawk haircut one year, and at a 1985 party in Washington, when he said to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, ''Loosen up, Sandy baby. You're too tight.''
''Mr. January,'' as he was aptly nicknamed, quit the Redskins in 1980 and held out an entire year in a contract dispute, only to come back after Gibbs visited him at his farm in Kansas.
Inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992, Riggins has reinvented himself again, finding a new passion in yet another lifetime: acting. After a cameo role in the 1992 play ''Illegal Motion,'' Riggins got the acting bug, though it went into hibernation for many years as he began a career in broadcasting and got remarried.
Last year, after taking acting lessons in New York, he landed the lead role in an off-Broadway play, ''Gillette,'' about an oil town in Gillette, Wyo.
A soap opera casting director saw Riggins in that role and invited him to try out for the part of Mitch Hendon, an egocentric, Rambolike character in the long-running CBS daytime drama ''Guiding Light.'' He got the part.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/159/sports/Riggins_s_latest_career_change_is_a_dramatic_one+.shtml