Quote:They beat Bart Starr with a wooden paddle until his back resembled a piece of raw meat. The quarterback was never the same again.

For more than 60 years, Bart Starr and his wife, Cherry, have kept a dark secret hidden away from the narrative of the Hall of Fame quarterback's career. No more. One of the most respected football players in the history of the game, and arguably one of the toughest, was hazed so badly while at the University of Alabama that it derailed his college career, disqualified him from military service and affected him throughout his 16 years with the Green Bay Packers.

In an exclusive interview with AL.com, Cherry Starr debunked the cover story used about why Starr's career at Alabama fizzled before his junior season, and why he struggled with back pain throughout his storied NFL career.

It has long been accepted that Starr hurt his back during a punting exercise at Alabama. That is false, says Cherry Starr, who was with him at the time and throughout his life. Cherry told AL.com the truth is that Bart's injury happened during a gruesome ritualistic paddling for initiation into the university's A-Club for varsity lettermen.

"He was hospitalized at one point in traction," Cherry said. "That was in the days when they were initiated into the A-Club, and they had severe beatings and paddling. From all the members of the A-Club, they lined up with a big paddle with holes drilled in it, and it actually injured his back."

Bart never disclosed the incident involving the lettermen's club, says Cherry, because he thought "it would make him look bad." In declining health following two strokes in 2014, Bart, 82, is no longer able to discuss the events of his career, but the trauma he experienced at Alabama and its aftereffects are things the couple lived through together and have shared throughout their lives.
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Hazed at Alabama: slideshow of a cover up 62 years in the making
How the news of Bart Starr's back injury played out in newspapers of the day.

News articles from 1954 give few details about how Bart injured his back, and five biographies about his life and career, including an autobiography published in 1987, craft a narrative about his back injury around a punting exercise. Bart Starr buried the real reason for his injury in 1954, and his beating at the hands of the A-Club was either never reported or lost history.

"But his back was never right after that," Cherry Starr said. "It was horrible. It was not a football injury. It was an injury sustained from hazing. His whole back all the way up to his rib cage looked like a piece of raw meat. The bruising went all the way up his back. It was red and black and awful looking. It was so brutal."

Alabama tight end Nick Germanos, who was teammates with Starr and also Alabama's senior captain in 1955, described the beatings in sobering terms.

Germanos served in the Marine Corps for 3 ½ years following his graduation from Alabama. He said hazing for the A-Club was worse than anything he experienced in the military.

"It was hell," Germanos said. "Lord have mercy it was a rough initiation."

And perhaps even worse for Starr, who not only broke the A-Club's fraternal code of the era by secretly eloping in May of 1954 — teams used to revoke or reduce scholarships for marriages — but he also had the temerity to wed an Auburn girl and move her to Tuscaloosa.

[url=http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2016/02/bart_starr_green_bay_packers_n.html#incart_article_small]
The epic love affair of Cherry and Bart Starr
He had to ask her four times before she finally said yes. He was too poor. She was too nervous. When the day came to elope, he borrowed a friend's car because his was a jalopy. She changed into her wedding dress inside a muddy service station in rural Mississippi. Cherry and Bart Starr were both 20 years old...

Starr suffered the worst of it before his junior season, and only a few months after his elopement, says Cherry. Newspaper accounts of the day detail a fascinating cover up when viewed through the focused lens of a revelation almost 62 years in the making.

COVER-UP STORY
There's a chance that Alabama coach Harold "Red" Drew never really knew how his star quarterback from Montgomery came to be injured before the beginning of preseason practice in the fall of 1954. Starr would miss most of the season due to his back injury, and Drew was fired that December.

History has painted a picture of Starr struggling throughout his career at Alabama and never materializing into a good quarterback until Vince Lombardi arrived in Green Bay in 1959. It's not that simple. Starr started his sophomore season, helped Alabama to an SEC championship and, entering his junior season, was lauded by Drew as possibly the best passer in Alabama history.

Hear Cherry Starr describe how brutal Bart Starr's hazing wasInside the story of Bart Starr's hazing at Alabama.
Drew's Split-T offense leaned heavily on Starr's ability as a passer to keep defenses honest. Unfortunately for Drew and Starr, the quarterback's back injury caused shooting pains throughout his upper extremities. It hurt just to lift his arms, according to later accounts of the injury.

Alabama finished 1954 with an overall record of 4-5-2 (3-3-2 in the SEC). With Starr either sidelined or playing through pain, the Crimson Tide went its final six games of the season without a victory.

The wormhole of what-ifs and fateful coincidences is a fool's game, but if Starr's back had never been injured, then Drew might have had a successful season in 1954 and stayed on as Alabama's coach. Instead, a timeline of events was put into motion that led Paul "Bear" Bryant to Alabama in 1957.

Of course, in the preseason of 1954, Bryant wasn't thinking about Alabama. He was just trying to figure out how to turn his new team, Texas A&M, into a winner. While Bryant's Aggies were being transformed into "Junction Boys" during a hellish two-a-day camp that first week of September 1954, Starr was watching Alabama's preseason two-a-days in shorts.  

(03-02-2016, 09:59 PM)Awful Llama Wrote: Sweet Jebus, that's sounds horrible.  If you're hell-bent on having an initiation then make'm streak through the gilrs' dorm or some silly nonsense and call it a day.

(03-03-2016, 05:17 PM)CarolinaBengalFanGuy Wrote: Well now you'd get saddled with some kind of sexual harrassment lawsuit that'd either get covered up or get you kicked out of school.