RIP, Ron Springs

Just breaking, but the former Ohio State and Dallas Cowboys RB has passed away at the age of 54 after being in a coma for nearly four years.

Springs will always have special place in my heart in that he helped make me laugh in the wake of my dad's death in April 2000. Saw him at a Bruce Hornsby concert a couple of weeks later and his humor and good-natured spirit gave me my first hint of moving forward afterwards.

 

Damn.

 

Shawn Springs' father, yes?

 

Yes.

 

I also remember Springs as one of the great multi-purpose fullbacks of the 1980s. A tough inside runner and a great blocker and pass catcher. Sort of a poor man's Tony Galbreath or Roger Craig.

By the way, the circumstances of his illness are frightening. He was having surgery to remove a cyst on his elbow, went into cardiac arrest on the operating table and never regained consciousness.

 

To the old #20.

RIP

 

Springs was on one of the first football cards that I owned, and I remember following him for most of his career.

And if I'm correct on this, he also was the player that had run off the field when Tony Dorsett made his 99-yard touchdown run against the Vikings.

 

Reading "The Catch" and the chapter I finished last night was on Springs and Walls and the transplant. Kind of freaky to see this today.

 

This dates me, but I just went through our microfilm files to find a 1974 story I wrote about Springs before his senior year at Lafayette HS in Williamsburg.

He was an outstanding receiver as an underclassman, catching the winning TD pass in the state semifinals in 1973, but because the entire backfield graduated, he moved to tailback as a senior.

He "bulked up" to 180 pounds, then ran for nearly 1,900 yards and scored more than 20 TDs that year. When we picked an all-time area FB team in 1993, he was one of the three running backs.

And I remember being at a basketball game at Lafayette HS the night Woody Hayes showed up to talk to Springs. You would have thought God Almighty had walked into that gym from the reaction. Springs wound up as a JUCO All-American at Coffeyville in Kansas, then played, I think, three years at Ohio State.

RIP