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Ken Stabler
Kenneth Michael Stabler was a highly touted football player at Foley High School in Foley, Alabama. He led Foley to a win-loss record of 29-1 over his high school football career-the only loss coming against Vigor High School. He was an all-around athlete in high school, averaging 29 points a game in basketball and excelling enough as a left-handed pitcher in baseball to receive minor-league contract offers from the Houston Astros and New York Yankees. During his high school career, he earned his nickname "Snake" from his coach following a long, winding touchdown run.
Stabler was recruited by head coach Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Due to NCAA regulations at the time, freshmen were ineligible to play on the varsity in the University Division. Stabler was on the freshman team in 1964, when the Crimson Tide won the National Championship with quarterbacks Joe Namath and Steve Sloan.
As a sophomore in 1965, Stabler was used sparingly as a back-up to Sloan at quarterback, following Namath's departure to the AFL. That year, the Crimson Tide won their second consecutive National Championship, finishing the season with a record of 9-1-1. The team defeated the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Orange Bowl, 39-28.
As a junior in 1966, he took over the starting quarterback position. He led the team to an undefeated, 11-0 season which ended in a 34-7 rout of Nebraska in the Sugar Bowl. Despite the unblemished record, Alabama was snubbed by the polls, finishing third behind Notre Dame and Michigan State, neither of which played in a bowl.
Stabler was selected in the second round of the 1968 NFL/AFL draft by the Oakland Raiders, the reigning AFL champions. Stabler signed a two-year contract with the Raiders in March 1968. Stabler made his first regular season appearance as a Raider in 1970. He first attracted attention in the NFL in a 1972 playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. After entering the game in relief of a flu-ridden Daryle Lamonica, he scored the go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter on a 30-yard scramble. The Steelers, however, came back to win on a controversial, deflected pass from Terry Bradshaw to Franco Harris, later known in football lore as the Immaculate Reception.
In the 1977 AFC playoffs against the Baltimore Colts on Christmas Eve, Stabler completed a legendary fourth quarter pass to Casper to set up a game-tying field goal by Errol Mann. This play, dubbed the "Ghost to the Post," sent the game to double overtime, which the visiting Raiders won 37-31, after Stabler threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to Casper. In the second game of 1978 on September 10, the Holy Roller (Immaculate Deception) Game saw Oakland win 21-20 at San Diego after a fourth quarter forward fumble by Stabler was caught and forward-fumbled by two other players to score a touchdown and win the game. This caused the Ken Stabler Rule to be enacted in 1979, permitting only the fumbling player to recover the ball during a fourth down play, or during any down played after the two-minute warning in a half or overtime.
Stabler had been selected for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he was officially inducted on August 6, 2016.
Stabler died of colon cancer on July 8, 2015, at the age of 69.