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NFL Greats
Bob Hayes, Dallas
by Sam Monson
3/9/2007
 In September 2002 one of the game’s all-time greats died. He left behind him another story of athletic triumph and personal tragedy. Bob Hayes remains one of the most dominant players to ever step onto an NFL playing field, but has yet to be honoured by induction into the Hall of Fame, and tends to be forgotten about in discussions about all-time great wide receivers.
Hayes was a two-sport athlete in college, where he excelled in both track and football during his career at Florida A&M.; He exploded onto the sprinting scene by equalling the world record for the 100 yard dash in 1961, aged just 18 years, and over the next 4 years he would dominate the sprinting world. Hayes was such a successful sprinter that he was never beaten in a 100 yard race, and only lost twice over the 100 metres, once in a disputed photo finish, and once after missing 3 weeks of training recovering from a virus. In his time he also set world records for the 60 yards indoors (a record which has never been beaten), the 100 yard dash, the 100m and the 200m, not to mention numerous record times that were never ratified for one reason or other (including the starting gun being of the wrong make). Hayes also became the first man ever to run the 100m in under 10 seconds when he ran a wind-assisted 9.9 in 1963. His sprinting career was phenomenal for such a young man, and he is regarded as one of the greatest sprinters of all time despite retiring from track by the age of 22, competing the entire time in college, and often around his college football career.
At the Olympics Hayes took Gold in both the individual 100m, and the 4x100m relay. His individual gold was made all the more remarkable by the fact that he did it in borrowed shoes, and running from lane number 1, which had been so badly chewed up by the 10,000m race and 20,000m walk that it had to be raked before the race. His leg of the 4×100 relay has been termed ‘the most astonishing sprint of all time’ by the Los Angeles Times more than 20 years later. The consensus time for this leg was 8.6 seconds, which enabled him to take 6 or 8 metres out of some of the best sprinters in the world, overtaking 5 of them along the way, to take the Gold with a healthy lead. Adding to the legacy of Tokyo his semi-final time of 9.91 was the fastest time ever run in the Olympics (Ben Johnson aside..) until 3 people ran faster in Atlanta in 1996, 32 years later!
The Bullet Hits the NFL
The 4×100 relay in Tokyo was the last race he would run before he permanently switched to football. Hayes was a pioneer in bringing world class sprinting speed to the NFL, and the league was simply neither prepared, nor able to stop it. In his first year with the Dallas Cowboys Hayes led the league in receiving TDs, with 12, on his way to recording a 1000 yard season on only 46 catches. That’s an average of 21.8 yards per reception! That 1000 yard season made him the first receiver in the history of the Dallas Cowboys to attain that mark, and he did it in his first year with the team. His speed earned him the nickname ‘Bullet’ Bob Hayes, and it terrorised the league so much that it caused a change the way teams defended the pass. Teams had previously never had to deal with anybody with that kind of speed, and had no one defender that could cover Hayes one on one, so they invented the concept of zone coverage to try and defend him. The concept of zone coverages that we take for granted today never existed until Bob Hayes rendered the old style of man-coverage useless. The Cowboys also made use of Hayes’ speed by putting him back returning punts, and in 1968 he led the league in punt returning with a 20.8 yard average, and 2 TDs.
During his time with the Cowboys Hayes was selected to the Pro-Bowl 3 times, was named All-Pro 4 times, helped Dallas win 5 Eastern Conference titles, 2 NFC titles, and a Superbowl. This last feat makes Hayes the first athlete ever to win both the Superbowl and Olympic Gold, a feat that has yet to be matched. In an era before the likes of Michael Jordan and Deion Sanders were getting credit for simply trying to compete at the highest level in 2 sports, Hayes reached the pinnacle of two, winning championships in both.
Hayes, even today, holds 10 regular-season Cowboy receiving records, four punt return records and 22 overall franchise marks, including the 71 receiving TDs he posted during his career. He is still the 3rd leading TD scorer in Cowboys history, behind Emmitt Smith and Tony Dorsett Hall of Fame running backs, both. He finished his career with an average of 20 yards per reception. Randy Moss by comparison, the most dominant deep threat of the last decade, has only a 15.8 career average per reception. These statistics were as good as, or better than most of the WRs of his era, and he would have seemed an obvious candidate for the Hall of Fame, but to this day he has never made it. This is in large part due to his battle with drugs and alcohol, in a time where the public wasn’t used to seeing it’s sports stars dealing with personal battles in public.
Pain In My Heart
In 1979 Hayes was convicted of drug offences, having brought dope from one informant to another, and served 10 months in jail. When he got out, the only thing that awaited him was rejection from NFL honours, and the bottle. This rejection from NFL recognition was something that wound haunt him for the rest of his life. He said being left out of the football Hall of Fame made him feel “like an outcast — like I’ve been left out and forgotten throughout the nation.”
“There’s a lot of pain in my heart because what I accomplished was second to none,” he said in 1999. “I’m not losing any sleep, but I do pay attention every year at this time.” The cold shoulder for Bob Hayes continued until he was finally added to the Cowboys Ring of Honour in 2001. “I’m thrilled, I’m grateful, I’m blessed,” Hayes told the crowd at his induction. “I played for the world’s greatest professional sports team in history. Once a Dallas Cowboy, always a Dallas Cowboy.”
Hayes was one of the most dominant players ever to step onto an NFL field, from the moment he arrived in Dallas training camp, he was changing the game. At times during his career he was averaging of the football field every time he touched the ball, and if he touched it 4 times, one of them was for a TD. Dr Zimmerman famously resigned from the Hall of Fame selection committee in 1994 after Bob Hayes made it down to the final selection and was then shunned once more. Ex Dallas Cowboys GM Tex Schram believes that “The situation with Bob Hayes and the Hall of Fame is one of the most tragic stories I’ve ever been associated with during my time in professional football.”
Hayes always had the speed, he has the numbers, he has all the other honours, it’s time for the Hall of Fame to recognize one of the game’s true greats, and allow Bullet Bob to finally stop running.
Learn More about past NFL greats in our History Archive
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