When William McGarvey Dudley died a week ago today at the age of 88, few students blinked an eye. Heck, it took nearly a week for this newspaper to run a story about him.\nBut if there's any community who should mourn the passing of "Bullet" Bill Dudley, it is the University community.
Dudley was an all-star in numerous areas. He enrolled at here in 1938 and graduated in 1941. He was a member of the Z Society. He served the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. He spent two terms in the Virginia House of Delegates.
Oh, and he was the greatest Virginia football player of all time.
Dudley was not well-known as a football player when he came to Virginia - though he was a three-sport athlete in high school, he came to college at the age of 16 and weighed in at 150 pounds. Back then, freshmen weren't allowed to play with the varsity. Even when he was a sophomore, though, it took the coaching staff some convincing to give him a uniform. The coaches finally gave him one, but only so he could serve as the fifth-team tailback.
As so often happens in football, however, injuries ahead of Dudley presented him with an opportunity. The first three tailbacks went down, and, as the story goes, Dudley won a coin toss between him and the fourth-string tailback for who would start in a game against Navy. All Dudley did that day was run a 45-yard reverse for a touchdown and return a punt 43 yards for another score.
And Dudley's utility that day would foreshadow just how useful he became to Virginia. Sure, he was a star tailback. But he also threw touchdown passes. He kicked field goals and extra points. He punted. He intercepted passes as a defensive back.
His senior season in 1941 was one of the best seasons any college football player had ever compiled. He led the nation in scoring (134 points), touchdowns (18) and total yards (2,467). And Dudley ended his 1941 season with a bang against the Cavaliers' biggest rivals at the time: North Carolina. Dudley carried 17 times for 215 yards and three touchdowns - that's a ridiculous 30.7 yards per carry - completed 6-of-11 passes for 118 yards and a touchdown, and kicked four extra points. By a score of 28-7, Virginia won the battle of the "Oldest Rivalry of the South" for the first time in nine years.
And, in case you didn't do the math on the scoring, Dudley scored every single point that day. He was 19 years old.
The Cavaliers finished 8-1 that season, falling only to then-powerhouse Yale. Dudley's 29 touchdowns, 23 extra points and one field goal represented nearly half of the team's scoring. On the season, he ran for 968 yards, passed for 856 yards, caught six passes, averaged 17.2 yards on 28 punt returns, made four interceptions and averaged 35.8 yards per punt. He became the first consensus All-American in the history of Virginia football, won the Maxwell Trophy and the Washington Touchdown Club's Camp Memorial Trophy for the most outstanding college football player and finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy vote.
The greatness didn't stop there. He was the No. 1 Draft pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1942. But after just one season, he volunteered for the service. Age, though, was still a problem for Dudley - still younger than 21 years of age, he had to get his parents to sign a release for him to join the Army Air Corps.
After serving two years as a flight instructor and flying one mission in Japan, Dudley returned to the Steelers in 1945. He went onto a nine-year career in the pros - three with the Steelers, three with the Detroit Lions and three with the Washington Redskins. He amassed 8,157 yards in rushing, receiving and kick returns; scored 484 points; and intercepted 23 passes. He played in three pro bowls and was a first-team or second-team all-NFL selection on six occasions.
With the Steelers in 1946, Dudley led the league in four categories: rushing (604 yards), interceptions (10 for 242 yards), punt returns (27 for 385 yards) and lateral passes attempted. No one had ever led the league in four unrelated categories as Dudley did, and no one has since. Needless to say, Dudley won the MVP award that season
During 1956, Dudley was the first Virginia football player ever to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Ten years later, he was selected to the NFL Hall of Fame, becoming one of just a handful of former University athletes to be selected to a professional hall of fame.
After Dudley retired, he went on to serve two terms with the Virginia House of Delegates. Most notably, he was instrumental in raising the Virginia driving age from 14 to 16 and in instituting the state's first sales tax to help finance the commonwealth's first community colleges. With his brother Jim, he also enjoyed a 50-year career in the life insurance business.
All the while, he remained a loyal Wahoo. Some of you might remember that Dudley raised the "Power of Orange" flag before a Virginia home football game this season. He was in attendance at new Virginia coach Mike London's welcoming press conference, just weeks prior to his 88th birthday Dec. 24.
The morning of Jan. 30, however, Dudley suffered a stroke. Five days later, Dudley passed away, in the arms of his wife, Libba, with whom he was married for 62 years.
Yet, even with the passing of the greatest Cavalier football player of all time, I did not hear one word about it within the student community.
I hope that those who bothered to read this column will join me in saluting "Bullet" Bill Dudley.
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