Goose Gonsoulin passes away

[Denver Native (Carol)]

Broncos legend Goose Gonsoulin passed away Monday.

Legendary Bronco Austin "Goose" Gonsoulin passed away Monday morning. He was 76.

The safety, inducted into the Broncos' Ring of Fame in its 1984 inaugural class, was a big figure in the team's history, as well as in professional football's.

Gonsoulin still holds the record for most interceptions in a season by a Bronco with 11, which came during his rookie season. He's also second in team history in total interceptions with 43. With four interceptions in one game against Buffalo in 1960, Gonsoulin is tied for first in the NFL for most picks in a single game.

rest - http://www.denverbroncos.com/news-and-blogs/article-1/Goose-Gonsoulin-passes-away/0c735da5-172b-480e-aa6d-2b97a2abeb56

[Davii]

RIP Goose

[BroncoJoe]

http://binaryapi.ap.org/df04cffefb834b44a389d0855f22c570/460x.jpg

[broncofaninfla]

I wish the younger fans had more appreciation of the players like Goose. One hell of a player and one hell of a Bronco. RIP Goose.

[OrangeHoof]

Another one of those guys who was a step slow to make the vaunted NFL but had those ball-hawking instincts to get in front of throws in that pass-happy AFL era. One of the early greats back when the Broncos had few of them.

[Denver Native (Carol)]

Austin "Goose" Gonsoulin, an original member of the Broncos known for his ability to make interceptions as a strong safety, died early Monday. He was 76.

Gonsoulin had been battling cancer for more than a decade. He was in hospice care in Beaumont, Texas, in late August, and died at 2:23 a.m. Monday, the Port Arthur News reported.

Gonsoulin was born June 7, 1938, in Port Arthur, Texas. He attended Baylor, and played for the Broncos from 1960-66 when they were in the American Football League.

rest - http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_26494527/broncos-ring-fame-member-goose-gonsoulin-dies-at

[Denver Native (Carol)]

from same DP article:


In one particularly bizarre incident, he swallowed his tongue during a game, but Broncos teammate Wahoo McDaniel, who went on to become a pro wrestler, pulled out Gonsoulin's tongue, saving him.

In 1960, after a game against the Chargers, a man walked up to Gonsoulin, handed him a piece of chalk and asked him the hardest play to cover. "I thought he was a sportswriter. So I drew up something easy for him," Gonsoulin said in a 2003 Denver Post story. Turns out, the man was Al Davis, a Chargers assistant at the time before becoming the longtime owner of the Raiders. The next time the teams met, Gonsoulin saw the play again and again.

http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_26494527/broncos-ring-fame-member-goose-gonsoulin-dies-at

[Denver Native (Carol)]

The following is an article, within the DP article I posted on Goose.


Gene Mingo thought he had died and gone to the big leagues. But then he looked out his airplane window and got his first glimpse of Denver, circa 1960.

"I looked down and thought to myself, 'How are they going to have a football team?' " Mingo said. "Man, it was so small. I couldn't believe a place that small could have pro football."

It was small, all right. Metro Denver at the time numbered about 930,000 people, roughly one-third of today's total. But there was a certain esprit de corps among the local population. And in the rest of the West, too, thanks in large part to the airline industry, which was rapidly turning the United States into a quaint global village.

rest - great article, with a lot of Broncos' early history. This article was written in 2009
http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_13320250