With almost any other team, the last half of 1968 might have found Elvin Bethea on his way to the anonymity of life as an offensive lineman in the National Football League. But Fate played her hand when one of the established defensive linemen for the Houston Oilers, the team that in the spring had drafted Bethea in the third round, was sidelined with an injury.
Had this happened in New York, it might have been the Wally Pipp-Lou Gehrig story all over again with Bethea playing Gehrig. When New York Yankee first baseman Pipp decided to take the day off because of a headache, a rookie named Gehrig drew the starting assignment and the rest is history.
And so it was with Bethea, except that the name of this Wally Pipp is apparently lost to the ages.
Bethea, who had been a two-time All-NAIA lineman at North Carolina A&T, was pressed into the thin blue defensive line and never again returned to the offensive side of the football, though he had been projected out of the draft as a solid candidate at offensive guard.
He arrives for induction tonight into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame as one of the greats ever to play the game in the NFL. He already is enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
And for good reason.
The gap-toothed defensive lineman, never the tallest, strongest or fastest in the era of Minnesota’s Purple People Eaters and Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain defensive lines, played for 16 seasons in Houston and did it so well that in half of his seasons he was chosen to appear in the Pro Bowl game.
If a case must be made for Bethea for inclusion into any hall of fame, consider that he played in 210 games for Houston - no Oiler ever played in more - and in his career recorded a quarterback sack for each of those games. His 210 quarterback sacks (or quarterback tackles as they were known for much of Bethea’s career) still rank No. 1 in his team’s franchise history. He had 17 of them in 1973, also a team record for a single season, though he was playing for a team that would compile a dismal 1-13 record.
In a profession in which career-ending injuries are part of the occupation, Bethea lined up as a starter for the Oilers, including some remarkably inefficient teams, in 135 consecutive games until a broken arm suffered against the Oakland Raiders in 1977 ended that streak.
While some professional athletes stay too long, Bethea stayed a year longer than he had planned at the request of the Oilers. It had never been easy getting the New Jersey native off the field and it took little persuasion by the front office to talk Bethea into one extra year. Bum Phillips, one of his coaches at Houston, knew he would answer the call.
Under Phillips, Houston reached the AFC championship game in both 1978 and 1979. With his team losing to Pittsburgh, 34-5, late in the 1979 game, Phillips ordered his veteran starters out of the game and his rookies in. Except that Bethea and Curly Culp, his defensive line teammate, refused to take their places on the bench.
“We tried to get them off,” Phillips said. “They wanted to stay. I’m proud of that.”
by Wilt Browning
May 19, 2005
