QB’s great career started in Rochester
Vito “Babe” Parilli started out throwing the football around with friends in the scratchy grass patches of Rochester, Beaver County, not far from fellow quarterback Joe Namath in nearby Beaver Falls, but a long way from the heights of professional football that they would one day reach.
They followed different paths, but both learned the game under legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant — Mr. Parilli at the University of Kentucky and Mr. Namath later at the University of Alabama. They eventually would be joined as teammates on the New York Jets squad that won Super Bowl III in 1969.
The older Mr. Parilli was Mr. Namath’s backup that season. Twenty-some years earlier, however, it was Mr. Namathwho grew up under the soot-filled Beaver County skies, looking up to Mr. Parilli.
“I can remember walking past the Army Navy Store on my way home to lunch when I was in the fourth or fifth grade and checking out that Hutch helmet with Babe’s autograph on it,” Mr. Namath said in a profile of Mr. Parilli in the Post-Gazettetwo years ago.
Mr. Parilli, a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist and a member of the New England Patriots All-Decade team for the 1960s, died Saturday at the Center at Lincoln in Parker, Colo. He was 87.
A graduate of Rochester High School in 1948, Mr. Parilli attended the University of Kentucky where he was a first-team All-American in 1950 and 1951. The Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in 1950, he led the Wildcats to the Orange, Sugar and Cotton bowls between 1949-51 and finished in the top four in Heisman Trophy voting as a junior and senior.
“Babe is among the greatest legends of Kentucky athletics history,” Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart said in a news release to the Louisville Courier-Journal. “He was the quarterback for a golden era of Wildcat football and loved returning to Lexington for the team reunions. We are saddened by his passing and send our sympathies to his familyand friends.”
Mr. Parilli, who quarterbacked Bryant’s Kentucky teams to a 28-8 record in three seasons, totaled 4,351 passing yards and 50 touchdowns. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1982.
The Green Bay Packers selected Mr. Parilli with the fourth pick in the 1952 NFL draft, but Mr. Parilli played for them for only two seasons before joining the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League. He would later play for the Cleveland Browns, the Packers and the Rough Riders again. When the American Football League was started in 1960, Mr. Parilli played for the Oakland Raiders before being traded at age 30 to the Boston Patriots in 1961.
Sports publications tell of how his career was reborn as one of the upstart AFL’s best and flashiest players. In seven seasons, Mr. Parilli was responsible for more than 25,000 total yards and 200 touchdowns. Named to three all-star games, he finished among the top five quarterbacks in nearly two dozen categories, including passing yards, passing touchdowns and rushing yards. Many of his franchise records stood until being broken by current Patriots star Tom Brady.
His prime target, especially in 1964, was teammate Gino Cappelletti. The pair was nicknamed “the Grand Opera twins.”
In 1968, Mr. Parilli joined the AFL’s New York Jets, where he earned a reputation as one of the game’s best holders and was nicknamed “Goldfinger” as kicker Jim Turner booted a then-record 145 points.
The next season, Mr. Parilli, Mr. Namath and the rest of the Jets upset the NFL’s Baltimore Colts — led by Brookline-born quarterback Johnny Unitas — and triggered the eventual merging of the two leagues into the force it is today.
Mr. Parilli retired in 1970 at age 40 after 18 seasons of pro football. He is one of only 20 players to play in the AFL for its entire 10-year existence.
In 1973, Mr. Parilli took to the sidelines as quarterbacks coach for the Steelers’ Chuck Noll. He later would be head coach of the World Football League’s New York Stars, Chicago Winds and several Arena Football League teams.
Funeral arrangements at his home in Colorado are incomplete, but a representative of the William Murphy Funeral Home on Adams Street in Rochester said a local memorial service is being planned.