Ex-Husker QB David Humm was a Blackshirt to the finish

My favorite David Humm story has nothing to do with him leading Nebraska to victories in the Orange, Cotton and Sugar Bowls during his illustrious college football career, or of the Chicago Bears’ Richard Dent and Otis Wilson planting him in the artificial turf at Soldier Field when he came into a game after Marc Wilson was injured for the Raiders.

In the rare instance you could get him to talk about himself, Humm would tell you that he had two teeth knocked out and cartilage in both knees torn and that he never played another down of professional football because of Richard Dent, Otis Wilson and the 46 defense.

We were in Lincoln when the UNLV football team needed to pay some bills. I had asked “The Hummer” if he would take me to some of the watering holes near the Nebraska campus where people would be talking Cornhuskers football.

It was only a couple of seasons since he had retired as an NFL backup quarterback. I think he still had the gunslinger mustache. But The Hummer remembered where all the watering holes were.

He was sitting on the next bar stool, keeping his usual low profile, when the barkeep began rattling off the names of his favorite Nebraska players: Johnny Rodgers, Mike Rozier, Jarvis Redwine, Dean Steinkuhler, the offensive guard who scored a touchdown in the 1984 national championship game against Miami on the “fumblerooski.”

“What about David Humm?”

“David Humm — yeah, great quarterback,” the bartender said, or something to that effect.

“Would you like to meet him?” I asked.

Mike the bartender, or whatever his name might have been, didn’t recognize David Humm at first because of the gunslinger mustache. But he bought the next round.

Fighting MS

Here’s the postscript to that story. David Humm had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1988. Except for family members, he didn’t tell anybody. He didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. Not when Richard Dent and Otis Wilson sacked him. Not even for this.

He would lose the use of his legs in 1997. It wasn’t until Tuesday night, with family members at his bedside, that David Humm lost his life. He would have been 66 on Monday.

“One of the best quarterbacks ever to play in the state of Nevada and beyond is gone,” wrote local high school coaching icon Frank Nails in an email about the former Bishop Gorman star.

I considered Dave Humm a friend. He probably mostly considered me as the guy who was always calling for a quote about the Raiders, for whom he played twice and hosted a call-in show from the studio in his Las Vegas home that Al Davis had built when The Hummer no longer could walk.

Though we talked regularly, or whenever the Raiders were in the news, I only saw him once after that.

He was sitting up in front in the Napa ballroom at the South Point, sipping from a glass of wine. A bunch of former Cornhuskers and Raiders had come to see him receive an honorary Blackshirt from the Husker Greats Foundation.

The Blackshirts was the nickname bestowed upon Nebraska’s vaunted defense when Bob Devaney was coach: Black was the color of the jerseys the first-team defense wore in practice. David Humm was the first offensive player in Nebraska history to be called a Blackshirt.

Tougher than the rest

This was the Huskers’ way of saying that Dave Humm was tough, that he had courage, that a lesser man would have yielded to the ravages of MS. The Hummer kept scrambling away as if the disease were Richard Dent and Otis Wilson.

The old quarterback told me on that night that he had been battling MS for 25 years, that he had been in the wheelchair for 15. He used a swear word to describe the wheelchair.

And yet he said he still felt like Lou Gehrig, that he was the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

He talked about having been recruited by Devaney and having played for Tom Osborne and John Madden and Tom Flores, of owning two Super Bowl rings, of having earned the respect of Al Davis — Mr. Davis. He said he had survived a night on the town with Ken Stabler, and how many guys could say that?

I said he must have been pretty tough to last nine years in the NFL where the average career lasts three years.

David Humm corrected me.

He said it was 10 years, and that if I shortchanged him again, he was going to jump out of that blankety-blank wheelchair and whip my ass.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.