As an ex-jock, broadcaster and actor, Karras was decades ahead of his time.
Alex Karras first found fame as a football player with the Detroit Lions.Karras played Mongo, a dim-witted outlaw in “Blazing Saddles.” He rode a Brahman bull into town and dismounted in front the saloon. A sniveling man on a horse rode by.
“Hey, you can’t park that animal over there!” he says.
Mongo calmly walked over, reared back and KO’d the horse.
They don’t make scenes like that anymore. PETA would protest outside theaters. They also don’t make characters like Karras anymore, though it’s not for lack of trying.
Ex-jocks love show business. ESPN alone must employ 793 ex-NFL players as on-air personalities trying hard to entertain us. Whether they’re actors, announcers or analysts, they should all want to be like Karras.
Sadly for the audience, there was only one. Karras’ kidneys failed him Wednesday, though they were hardly his only problem.
He suffered from dementia. Most of his years were lived way out in public, but the final ones were dark and reclusive. His mind failed him, and he joined thousands of ex-players in suing the NFL for allegedly hiding the effects of concussions.
Before his health failed, Karras was as big a character as there was - long before he first entered the movie business or put on a Lions jersey in 1958.
How many NFL players smoke cigars, even in the shower? But categorizing Karras as just good-time Mongo would be selling him wildly short.
He was ahead of his time in a lot of ways. Karras was cracking wise as a football analyst long before it was fashionable. He questioned college football’s exploitive nature years before scandals bothered anybody.
“I guess I’m about 25 years away from getting my degree. Not 25 semester hours – 25 years,” he told the Des Moines Register in 1977. “I think it’s silly to push people to go to college.”
Talk about bucking the system. Karras went to Iowa, but he didn't exactly get along with coach Forest Evashevski. They eventually decided not to talk to each other unless it was absolutely necessary.
If Twitter had existed in 1957, every Big Ten fan would have followed the Karras’s rants. Then he would have become the NFL’s most amusing headache.
“I made a collect call to the Lions after they drafted me,” Karras said, “and they wouldn’t accept it.”
They embraced him soon enough. Weighing only 245 pounds, Karras was one of the first speed rushers. He made the 1960 NFL All-Decade team.
Karras was nicknamed “The Mad Duck,” but he’d roar like a bull when he took his stance. Then he’d do his best to destroy the quarterback. The only thing that stopped him was a one-year suspension for betting on NFL games.
During that hiatus, Karras became a pro wrestler. It turned out he was a natural actor. What is it about playing defensive line and the ability to deliver lines?
Think about it. For all the O.J. Simpsons and Bruce Jenners who tried, the most accomplished ex-jock thespians are arguably Fred Dryer, Merlin Olsen and Karras. (With a nod to Rosey Grier and his work in “The Thing with Two Heads.” The other head belonged to a 65-year-old white guy, Ray Milland. Pulling that one off should have gotten Grier a Best Supporting Actor nomination).
Karras could have been typecast as the Big Lug, especially after “Blazing Saddles.” It wasn’t just the horse scene or the campfire/bean dinner scene, which you have to see (if not smell) for yourself. It was the memorable line when Sheriff Bart tried to interrogate him.
“Don’t know,” Karras said, looking into the camera. “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”
He didn’t need a great script to be funny. One of the enduring lines in Monday Night Football history came when the camera focused on Oakland’s Otis Sistrunk. Steam was coming off his bald head, prompting Karras to muse that Sistrunk graduated from “The University of Mars.”
Karras outgrew the football booth. When he played Babe Zaharias’ husband in “Babe,” critics realized he could do a lot more than punch out a horse. By the time he starred as Emmanuel Lewis’s father in “Webster,” millions of viewers probably forgot Karras was once an All-Pro defensive tackle.
He had a lot of roles over 77 years – player, rebel, announcer, comedian, loving father of an African-American orphan. Karras excelled because he didn’t come off like a guy trying to play a role. You had the feeling he was just being himself.
Before the shadows of dementia set in, he called his old college coach. Evashevski was 90 years old, and Karras wanted to apologize for all the ruckus he caused 50 years earlier.
“Eveshevski was flabbergasted,” Karras said. “What did he expect? It’s the same old story. Everybody’s out of step but me.”
The story with Karras was wherever he stepped, the result was never dull.
Rest in peace, Mongo. You were far more than a pawn in the game of life.